ARIES (March 21-April 19): I apologize in advance for the seemingly excessive abundance of good news I’m about to report. If you find it hard to believe, I won’t hold your skepticism against you. But I do want you to know that every prediction is warranted by the astrological omens. Ready for the onslaught? 1. In the coming weeks, you could fall forever out of love with a wasteful obsession. 2. You might also start falling in love with a healthy obsession. 3. You can half-accidentally snag a blessing you have been half-afraid to want. 4. You could recall a catalytic truth whose absence has been causing you a problem ever since you forgot it. 5. You could reclaim the mojo that you squandered when you pushed yourself too hard a few months ago. TAURUS (April 20-May 20): August is Adopt-a-Taurus month. It’s for all of your tribe, not just the orphans and exiles and disowned rebels. Even if you have exemplary parents, the current astrological omens suggest that you require additional support and guidance from wise elders. So I urge you to be audacious in rounding up trustworthy guardians and benefactors. Go in search of mentors and fairy godmothers. Ask for advice from heroes who are further along the path that you’d like to follow. You are ready to receive teachings and direction you weren’t receptive to before. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): When a parasite or other irritant slips inside an oyster’s shell, the mollusk’s immune system besieges the intruder with successive layers of calcium carbonate. Eventually, a pearl may form. I suspect that this is a useful metaphor for you to contemplate in the coming days as you deal with the salt in your wound or the splinter in your skin. Before you jump to any conclusions, though, let me clarify. This is not a case of the platitude, “Whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.” Keep in mind that the pearl is a symbol of beauty and value, not strength. CANCER (June 21-July 22): It’s your lucky day! Spiritual counsel comparable to what you’re reading here usually sells for $99.95. But because you’re showing signs that you’re primed to outwit bad habits, I’m offering it at no cost. I want to encourage you! Below are my ideas for what you should focus on. (But keep in mind that I don’t expect you to achieve absolute perfection.) 1. Wean yourself from indulging in self-pity and romanticized pessimism. 2. Withdraw from connections with people who harbor negative images of you. 3. Transcend low expectations wherever you see them in play. 4. Don’t give your precious life energy to demoralizing ideas and sour opinions. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): You’re not doing a baby chick a favor by helping it hatch. For the sake of its well-being, the bird needs to peck its way out of the egg. It’s got to exert all of its vigor and willpower in starting its new life. That’s a good metaphor for you to meditate on. As you escape from your comfortable womb-jail and launch yourself toward inspiration, it’s best to rely as much as possible on your own instincts. Friendly people who would like to provide assistance may inadvertently cloud your access to your primal wisdom. Trust yourself deeply and wildly. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I hear you’re growing weary of wrestling with ghosts. Is that true? I hope so. The moment you give up the fruitless struggle, you’ll become eligible for a unique kind of freedom that you have not previously imagined. Here’s another rumor I’ve caught wind of: You’re getting bored with an old source of sadness that you’ve used to motivate yourself for a long time. I hope that’s true, too. As soon as you shed your allegiance to the sadness, you will awaken to a sparkling font of comfort you’ve been blind to. Here’s one more story I’ve picked up through the grapevine: You’re close to realizing that your attention to a mediocre treasure has diverted you from a more pleasurable treasure. Hallelujah! LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Could it be true that the way out is the same as the way in? And that the so-called “wrong” answer is almost indistinguishable from the right answer? And that success, at least the kind of success that really matters, can only happen if you adopt an upside-down, inside-out perspective? In my opinion, the righteous answer to all these questions is “YESSS???!!!”—at least for now. I suspect that the most helpful approach will never be as simple or as hard as you might be inclined to believe. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your strength seems to make some people uncomfortable. I don’t want that to become a problem for you. Maybe you could get away with toning down your potency at other times, but not now. It would be sinful to act as if you’re not as competent and committed to excellence as you are. But having said that, I also urge you to monitor your behavior for excess pride. Some of the resistance you face when you express your true glory may be due to the shadows cast by your true glory. You could be tempted to believe that your honorable intentions excuse secretive manipulations. So please work on wielding your clout with maximum compassion and responsibility. SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Did you honestly imagine that there would eventually come a future when you’d have your loved ones fully “trained”? Did you fantasize that sooner or later you could get them under control, purged of their imperfections and telepathically responsive to your every mood? If so, now is a good time to face the fact that those longings will never be fulfilled. You finally have the equanimity to accept your loved ones exactly as they are. Uncoincidentally, this adjustment will make you smarter about how to stir up soulful joy in your intimate relationships. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You may experience a divine visitation as you clean a toilet in the coming weeks. You might get a glimpse of a solution to a nagging problem while you’re petting a donkey or paying your bills or waiting in a long line at the bank. Catch my drift, Capricorn? I may or may not be speaking metaphorically here. You could meditate up a perfect storm as you devour a doughnut. While flying high over the earth in a dream, you might spy a treasure hidden in a pile of trash down below. If I were going to give your immediate future a mythic title, it might be “Finding the Sacred in the Midst of the Profane.” AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I’ve worked hard for many years to dismantle my prejudices. To my credit, I have even managed to cultivate compassion for people I previously demonized, like evangelical Christians, drunken jocks, arrogant gurus, and career politicians. But I must confess that there’s still one group toward which I’m bigoted: super-rich bankers. I wish I could extend to them at least a modicum of amiable impartiality. How about you, Aquarius? Do you harbor any hidebound biases that shrink your ability to see life as it truly is? Have you so thoroughly rationalized certain narrow-minded perspectives and judgmental preconceptions that your mind is permanently closed? If so, now is a favorable time to dissolve the barriers and stretch your imagination way beyond its previous limits. PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Are you lingering at the crux of the crossroads, restless to move on but unsure of which direction will lead you to your sweet destiny? Are there too many theories swimming around in your brain, clogging up your intuition? Have you absorbed the opinions of so many “experts” that you’ve lost contact with your own core values? It’s time to change all that. You’re ready to quietly explode in a calm burst of practical lucidity. First steps: Tune out all the noise. Shed all the rationalizations. Purge all the worries. Ask yourself, “What is the path with heart?”
Homework: What if you didn’t feel compelled to have an opinion about every hot-button issue? Try living opinion-free for a week. testify at Tr**********@gm***.com.
The new Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie is not for the uninitiated. If you’re not already a fan of the cultish ’90s TV series, chances are you’ll have no clue what’s supposed to be funny about two clownish women of a certain age in ridiculous clothing attempting to stave off the ravages of time with gallons of champagne, while clinging desperately, by ferociously manicured claws, to the ragged fringes of trendy pop culture. But those who already have a soft spot in their hearts for the ribald and outrageous TV series will find much to chuckle at in the big-screen adventures of sad-sack Edina (Jennifer Saunders) and coolly caustic Patsy (Joanna Lumley). Scripted by series creator Saunders for director Mandie Fletcher (veteran of many of the TV episodes), the movie falls prey to the usual pitfalls of TV-to-film adaptations: it’s tough to maintain a coherent storyline and keep delivering the laughs over 90 minutes instead of 30. Still, despite the slower passages, the brio with which Eddie and Patsy pursue their absurd agenda—in the face of common sense, common decency and reality—remains oddly cheer-worthy. And beneath the frantic facade lurks a sharp satire of our celebrity-obsessed society, along with, at times, a surprisingly poignant look at how women who have the bad judgment to age are treated by the popular culture that finds them so instantly disposable. In the movie plot, would-be PR maven Eddie and sporadically employed fashion editor Patsy are at a crossroads. The alimony payments Eddie has been receiving for decades from her ex are about to run out. This is bad news for the household his checks support, which includes Eddie’s sane, straight-arrow, long-suffering daughter, Saffy (Julia Sawalha), her elderly, slightly nuts mum (June Whitfield), her loopy factotum, Bubble (Jane Horrocks), and Saffy’s mixed-race 13-year-old daughter, Lola (Indeyarna Donaldson-Holness), recently arrived from Africa. The cheerfully dysfunctional duo is unable to grasp the concept of economy, even after Saffy cuts up her mother’s credit cards and empties all the champagne from their walk-in refrigerator. (“If you want things, you’re going to have to pay for them,” Saffy declares, to which Patsy replies with scrunch-faced disbelief, “Since when?”) When Eddie tries to sell her memoirs to a publisher (Mark Gattis, portrayer of Mycroft Holmes on TV’s Sherlock, which he also co-created), her book is rejected on the grounds that her life is “not interesting,” and nobody’s ever heard of her. When word comes that supermodel Kate Moss is in the market for a new PR firm, Eddie and Pats crash a trendy London fashion event to try to sign her up—a celebrity-crammed sequence that lambasts the cult of the famous, and the even more vapid folk who interview them on the red carpet. Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones) and Jon Hamm are very funny as themselves in cameos. But a major mishap has Eddie and Pats pursued by police and paparazzi alike. They pack up Lola (who’s just been sent a shiny new credit card from her dad), and head for Cannes, where they hope to reconnect with a wealthy playboy who once pined for Pats, sometime back in the Thatcher administration. But the plot doesn’t matter; it’s just the framework on which to hang random laughs, like the girls’ first distasteful experience flying economy class (Rebel Wilson is their tough-cookie stewardess). When Pats runs out of champagne, she snorts Chanel No. 5 out of a flask. Hot on the trail of her wayward mom and daughter, Saffy winds up at a drag club, singing “At Seventeen”—which has all of the drag queens singing along, in tears. The perpetual joke is that our heroines don’t realize they are no longer players in the trendy fashionista scene (if they ever were)— even though Pats still wears the same beehive hairdo, and Eddie incurs the wrath of Stella McCartney for daring to wear her clothes. As a movie, there’s not much there, but it’s still touching when Eddie admits their outrageous antics are their only defense against the fear of getting old and obsolete. At least the Ab Fab franchise continues to tout the joys of growing old disgracefully.
ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS: THE MOVIE **1/2 (out of four) With Jennifer Saunders, Joanna Lumley, Julia Sawalha, Jane Horrocks, and June Whitfield. Written by Jennifer Saunders. Directed by Mandie Fletcher. A Fox Searchlight release. Rated R. 86 minutes.
Craft beer is a thing in a lot of places now, I realize. But, even so, there’s something special going on in Santa Cruz’s scene, and I think everyone who’s discovered it here can agree on that. The problem with covering it is that it’s growing so fast that by the time you get an interesting snapshot of the scene together, it’s already added new breweries and artisans who are ready to morph it into something new.
Case in point: this week’s cover story. In the time between Aaron Carnes doing his tour of local breweries and his story about it running in this issue, a couple of brewer posts have changed, and a new brewery has gone online. (The story has been updated to explain those changes.)
Despite the rapid evolution, though, I think Carnes’ article accomplishes its goal of visiting almost all the local breweries (one, Sante Adairius Rustic Ales, declined to participate) in search of what makes the local craft brew scene unique. It’s a useful overview of what brewers here are doing differently to make Santa Cruz stand out.
For a deeper dive into a single brewery, check out Lily Stoicheff’s story on the innovative techniques at Elkhorn Slough Brewing Co. It’s the flipside of the cover story, with a narrow scope and a lot more detail. Between the two of them, I think this issue provides a nice snapshot of the current state of beer in Santa Cruz. Prost!
STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Highway 1 and Climate Change
In your recent article “Transportation Measure Gets Unlikely Ally” (GT, 6/1) Paul Elerick dismisses opponents of highway widening by saying they are “single-issue environmentalists who … only care about global warming,” and that they don’t care about people who can’t get home from work due to traffic.
With all respect to Mr. Elerick, neither of these claims hold water.
For one thing, a main focus of opposition to highway widening is the fact that such projects don’t actually work to provide long-term traffic relief. Caltrans’ own Environmental Impact Report for the proposed Highway 1 project states that it would result in only “a very slight improvement in traffic congestion.” Even this slight improvement may be overly optimistic, as Caltrans’ report ignores the well-documented pattern of “induced traffic,” wherein new lanes invite drivers onto the road who used to stay home during peak traffic times. Highway widening is therefore bad public policy, and a colossal waste of taxpayer money.
On the other hand, climate change is perhaps the greatest threat ever to face humankind. So far we’ve experienced only a 1 degree Celsius increase above historic averages, and already we’re seeing more severe droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events. Even in the best-case scenario, assuming an immediate, rapid transition away from fossil fuel use, we are faced with the likelihood of an additional one-half to 1 degree temperature rise, multiplying the catastrophic effects of climate change. Yet so far such a rapid shift is only a dream, as the U.N. climate talks have left us on a trajectory for a far higher and more catastrophic temperature rise. If we want to avoid an apocalyptic future in which sea level rise floods huge cities around the globe, extreme weather and drought cause crop failures, and changing conditions uproot unimaginable numbers of people as refugees, citizens around the world need to take the lead in steering our societies away from fossil fuel dependency.
In Santa Cruz County, driving is our biggest source of emissions, and we should be working to reduce our miles traveled in the county rather than increasing driving capacity. While the RTC plan includes a lot of funding for low-carbon transit, including bicycle projects, these cannot outweigh the harm of expanded driving capacity. The climate is not going to reward us for trying; we need to actually sharply reduce emissions. To that end, no amount of new “green” infrastructure is going to help unless it serves as a real alternative to driving, leading to a major decrease in miles driven. That this plan includes added lanes for driving shows that it does not take transit alternatives and emissions reductions seriously, but rather keeps us on course to continue driving as much or more than ever, endangering future generations.
Steve Schnaar | Santa Cruz
River Safety Re-Revisited
Re: “River Safety Revisited” (Letters, GT, 7/6): We appreciate your reviewing the Advisory Group minutes/agendas and our “Dangers of Paddling on the San Lorenzo River” report.
We respect your statement about the skilled/experienced paddler, but we consider it prudent to think of the people who have minimal swim skills, no paddling experience, no boat safety knowledge, and who are unfamiliar with the construction hazards in the lower San Lorenzo River.
History shows that constitutional rights are reviewed according to existing conditions.
So the question is: Is it really in the best interest for society and the environment to insist on paddling a short urban river stretch for a few days in the year with so much at risk? Is your constitutional right to paddle the river more important than human safety, more important than protecting at-risk environments and worth the hefty financial expense?
And yes, we do want the paddling stopped for the safety of the birds, but that does not negate the very real hazards that our article also identified for humans!
Lisa Sheridan and Jane Mio | Members of the San Lorenzo River Advisory Group
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
Submit to ph****@go*******.sc. Include information (location, etc.) and your name. Photos may be cropped. Preferably, photos should be 4 inches by 4 inches and minimum 250dpi.
GOOD IDEA
TALENT EFFORT
A newly formed group aiming to match eager young people with equally eager employers is having its first event this August. The summit for Monterey Bay Internships (MBI) is from 6 to 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 2, at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History. MBI, an offshoot of the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, went live earlier this year, partnering with the Santa Cruz County Business Council, the Community Foundation and local colleges.
GOOD WORK
DOC BOX
Homeless advocate and videographer Brent Adams has spent more than a month traveling around West Coast cities and investigating the conditions of homelessness. Along the way, he’s been shooting a documentary, and he recently launched a Kickstarter to help finish the journey. The project, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,†has 22 days left to raise the remaining $682 of his $3,000 goal. Bidders can get gifts like entry to a dinner party screening and a DVD copy.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.â€
It’s official. Santa Cruz has gone beer crazy. Not long ago, there was just a small handful of brewers in the county. Now there are more than a dozen, with more undoubtedly on the way. When I realized Santa Cruz’s brewery scene was blowing up, I knew the only way I could do the scene justice as a journalist was to go into the trenches myself and visit every single brewery—in a single weekend. Well, it made sense in my head. So I got on the phone and called my buddy John MacAvoy and explained this very important mission. I knew John would bring the much-needed high-alcohol-tolerance perspective. Our goal was to find the Santa Cruz-ness within each brewery. In other words, we looked for the strangest and most unique beers in the county. I’d spoken to enough brewers already to know that they’ve been brewing up some pretty unusual flavors (Bacon Brown Ale, anyone?). With the help of John and Uber, I resolved to get to the heart of what makes our brewery scene tick. Here’s my journal of how it all happened.
DAY 1
9:30 a.m. I don’t normally start drinking this early, but I am a professional, and sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the public good. It’s off to Corralitos Brewing Co. first. A few weeks earlier, co-owner Luke Taylor told me that they grow hops on their property, which they use in their My Girl Rye Pale Ale, which he considers their most unique beer. I’m anxious to try it. 10 a.m. Corralitos Brewing Co. is located on the outskirts of Corralitos, a gorgeous piece of property with a phenomenal view. The brewery interior is decorated entirely with wood. This is what all breweries should look like. Taylor greets me in the warehouse, which is also filled with lumber from his parents’ business. I briefly meet his partner Mike Smith, but he is busy doing something. Taylor, like most other men in their 30s, has a bushy beard. He’s friendly and eager to tell me about the brewery, including his plans to open-ferment some beers. There’s what looks like a cow trough in a room next to the brewery. That’s where the open fermentation magic happens. 10:45 a.m. Taylor pours us several beers. My Girl is a phenomenal drink—not strange per se, but distinctive, and it has a nice backstory. How many brewers can claim to grow their own hops? It tastes like a clean pale ale, but smoother and fresher. He also pours us Plan A, a solid sour with just the right amount of tart, and a hint of Chardonnay. John is drinking roughly twice as much as I do, and seems unfazed. Taylor tells us about a beer he wants to can called the Steady Ed, a tribute to Ed Headrick, inventor of Disc Golf. It’ll be a low-alcohol, easy-sipping red ale. You know, the kind of beer you’d want to pound while doing a few rounds on the disc golf course. 12 p.m. We pull up to the Uncommon Brewers warehouse, where head brewer Alec Stefansky is waiting for us with a row of Uncommon beer cans lined up on a stack of pallets, along with three cups. On the way, I picked up Good Times news editor Jake Pierce and his pal Nick. Stefansky grabs two more glasses and starts cracking open cans. We drink seven in total, and they are strong! Three that stuck out were the Japonica Pils (Pilsner, ginger, wasabi), the Flamenco Roja (Flanders red ale, pomegranate, raspberries—aged in Pinot and Syrah barrels), and the Baltic Porter (porter, licorice, star anise). So much flavor. In no time we are buzzing hard, and John starts interviewing Stefansky. Hey, that’s my job! AT HIS DISCRETION The author (center) and John MacAvoy (left) with Discretion Brewing Chief Beer Ambassador Dustin Vereker. 12:45 p.m. Most people may know Uncommon Brewers for their outlandish concoctions, like the previously mentioned Bacon Brown Ale, but really, their beers are all balanced quite well. Stefansky, a lively character in his early 40s, tells us about his early rebel years of college home-brewing, and time spent working in restaurants. Funny, his beers seem exactly how a crazy mad chef would approach brewing. “I’m looking for a way for the spices to contribute, not dominate,” Stefansky says. We all nod along. 1 p.m. Stefansky gives us a sneak peek of his soon-to-be tap room over on 415 River St., and it is gigantic at 2,400 square feet. The plan is to open later in the year, with food provided by El Salchichero. (Sausage sandwiches! Pho! Ramen!) Right now, all he has is a big open room with giant wooden tables everywhere. It should be a happening spot when it opens. John and Stefansky are really hitting it off. John is already planning to bring his girlfriend down on opening night, whenever that is. I swear, John makes instant friends with everyone. 1:30 p.m. Santa Cruz Ale Works brewmaster Marc Rosenblum explains they don’t do weird, just dependable and consistent. It’s understandable considering that they began by bottling their product nearly a decade ago, and only opened a tasting room a few years ago. I had a sandwich too—the Holy Smokes. Delicious! 3 p.m. It’s raging at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing. This is one of the oldest breweries in town, open for about 11 years. Inside, the décor is a little artsy—glasses hanging upside down from the ceiling, weird art on the wall. Owner Emily Thomas isn’t there yet. She sends her partner Chad Brill to meet us. We start with a Lavender IPA. I don’t normally like flowers in my drinks, but this one wins me over. Next, he pours us the Madame Grey, which is even better. It’s a milk stout with lactose, Earl Grey tea and honey. What a tasty, unusual beer! This would have been perfect for my 10 a.m. drink. 3:35 p.m. Thomas arrives and gives me the tour, while John hangs back and chats with Brill. She tells me that anyone on staff is free to contribute a recipe idea, and it’ll end up in the tasting room. “If we can think of it and brew it, we can definitely sell it,” she says. Employee Pepe Palacios created their Lavender IPA, as well as a whole series of floral IPAs (hibiscus, jasmine, lavender). One of their most intriguing recipes is the horchata pale ale, made by head brewer Tommy Mills. The beer is a combination of cream ale, rice syrup, cinnamon, and vanilla. Thomas describes it as “very drinkable.” When I tag John to go, he and Chad are best buds. 4:30 p.m. Seabright Brewery is the oldest-standing brewery in town. They opened back in 1988, when people thought Sierra Nevada was a wacky, experimental beer. It has an “established” feel to it. Head brewer Jason Chavez, is an absolute delight, a cross between an old hippie and a goofy surfer dude. The three of us sit in a booth. He starts ordering us drinks, and telling us his entire brewing history. [Editor’s Note: Jason Chavez has since left Seabright Brewery, and the head brewer there is now Cat Wiest.] 5 p.m. A common theme with these brewers is that they started out home-brewing. Chavez has them all beat. He started back in 1985, while still in high school. His mother is German, he explains. Yet, Chavez strikes me as a guy without a roadmap. He’s just tossing ingredients in the pot and seeing what works. When it does, he’s as surprised as anyone. Chavez brews a lot of standard traditional beers for the regulars, but also likes to experiment. My first drink is a prime example: A Cask Ale stout, brewed with chocolate and raspberries. Meanwhile John is drinking the much-less adventurous Sunday Morning Sidewalk, a “hangover beer,” and a clever reference to the brilliant Kris Kristofferson song. 5:30 p.m. We drink I don’t-know-how-many beers, chatting with Chavez. For brave drinkers, I recommend walking in and just ordering whatever Chavez has recently brewed in the cask, because he’s always tossing in his weirder ingredients there. “A lot of the cask I don’t really think about. Kind of the morning of I just go, ‘oh maybe I’ll do this,’” Chavez explains. 6 p.m. I learn a new term today: “session beer.” It’s where you take a craft beer style, like IPA, and give it Budweiser-level alcohol. Discretion Brewing Chief Beer Ambassador Dustin Vereker talks about session beers at length. He’s a young, wholesome-looking whippersnapper. Their goal, he says, is very different from, say, a dive bar’s. “We don’t want people to get totally trashed. We’re a really family-friendly establishment,” he says. They even have toys and games for kids to play with. 6:15 p.m. Vereker pours us several drinks, including a session English-style mild ale (Song in Your Heart), an Irish-style red ale (Dublin Sunburn), a rye IPA (Uncle Dave’s), and my personal favorite, the Shimmer Pils, a light, refreshing, summer-style German pilsner. There’s nothing strange about Discretion’s beers, but they nail the standard flavors spectacularly. In just three years, they’ve expanded from a 500-barrel-a-year operation to nearly 3,300 barrels a year. The place is busy, and it’s no mystery why. 7 p.m. John and I sit down and enjoy a plate of pork sliders and chicken and waffles, which are insanely delicious. Vereker comes over and hands us three large bottles of Discretion beer. 9 p.m. We’ve been in New Bohemia Brewing Company for a half hour, and it suddenly strikes me that John and I are next-level, totally-out-of-our-minds drunk when I realize we are entertaining ourselves by playing a lively game of “flick the rubber band on the wall so the other person can catch it” and then screaming our asses off when one of us does (or doesn’t). At one point, John dances backward toward the exit door, then proceeds to dance around the building and back inside the front door. 9:15 p.m. New Bohemia has a wonderful atmosphere with two floors. Downstairs is a bar/stage area. Co-founder Dan Satterthwaite is unable to meet us because his child is sick, so he texts me three beers to check out. There’s the Velvet Revolution, a malty pilsner that tasted like a red ale, the Double Agent, a very hoppy, flowery double IPA, and my personal favorite, and the weirdest of the bunch, the Double Duchess, a coffee-infused chocolate porter. Yum! John and I leave without getting kicked out. 10 p.m. I can’t recall much at this point. Looking at the photos, I see that we got tortas at Los Pericos, and later I held a large pet snake! I vaguely recall lying down on Pierce’s couch, while one of his roommates watched Seven Samurai. Everything else is a blur.
DAY 2
10 a.m. The fine folks at Elkhorn Slough Brewing Co., whose tasting room is open as of last weekend, tell us to come to their home in Watsonville for brunch. Michael Enos and Julie Rienhardt are the nicest people, and their egg casserole (using eggs from their chickens) is simply wonderful. As for the beer, they have something truly unique. (See this week’s dining column.) 10:40 a.m. The first glass Rienhardt and Enos pour is called “Mothership,” and everyone should try it. The couple discovered that they had some incredible live yeast right on the apple tree on their property, which they use in the fermenting process of their “wild ale.” The Mothership is made from 100-percent live yeast. It is one of the oddest flavors I’ve ever tasted in a beer. It has the crispness of cider, but without the sweetness. The rest of the beers they serve us have some percentage of this yeast, but with other ingredients. Rienhardt and Enos are a hilarious, eccentric boomer-aged couple. John and I love talking with them. At one point, Enos explains how yeast is really aliens that are taking over the planet, and Julie says that he “agreed to not talk about aliens.” 1 p.m. Scotts Valley’s Steel Bonnet Brewing Company owner Donald Cramb is a soft-spoken man in his 50s. He and his wife are from Scotland, and their accents are subtle. His concept for the brewery is to highlight beers from the British Isles and the American West Coast. Cramb pours us drink after drink and gives an explanation of their heritage. Everything fits within the concept, expect for their Belgian ale, which Cramb says, “goes against everything I stand for.” He put it on the menu for his son. 1:20 p.m. We try English IPAs, American IPAs, pale ales, red ales. I lose track at some point. The most interesting drink of the afternoon is Reiver Red Peat smoked red ale. It has a distinct smoky bite to it, very similar to Laphroaig Scotch Whisky. Both are made with peat-smoked grains. It’s borderline medicinal, but balanced, and that smoky aftertaste is quite pleasant. Before we leave, we check out Cramb’s brewing equipment. His wife is busy brewing. There are large pots of wet grains on the ground. The aroma is intoxicating. SECRET BEER STASH Former tequila barrels that now house Humble Sea’s beer. 2:20 p.m. Humble Sea Brewing Company isn’t in Ben Lomond’s downtown, but on some property on the outskirts of town. I feel like we’re staring at a mad scientist’s lab. This garage, in the country, right next to a gushing river, is packed with brewery equipment, and tubes going every which way. Humble Sea is in its early stages. They sell their beers to a few restaurants in town. Later this year they will be opening their own tasting room and a production brewery on Swift Street, and presumably taking over the world. For now, it’s just humble. 2:40 p.m. Brewer Nick Pavlina gives us the tour and pours us some beers. He opens with Playa Grande, which is a jalapeño IPL. I don’t expect to like it, but it’s surprisingly refreshing, and only mildly spicy. He also pours us a Maritime Medicine (coriander, lemongrass, pilsner), and a barrel-aged Playa Grande, aged in tequila barrels, with intense vanilla and oak flavors. Pavlina admits that the recipe needs toning down a bit. He pours us some Crusty Sea Dog, an absolutely delicious cherry sour beer, and tells us that he wants to try a version of Playa Grande that has mango in it, like mango salsa. “I don’t want to go over the top with the weirdness. I want to avoid the novelty of it and make drinkable beers,” Pavlina explains. Both John and I feel excited to see what will become of Humble Sea in the coming year. 4:05 p.m. I’m immediately struck by the gallery-like ambience of East Cliff Brewing Company. The walls are filled with artwork. Owners James Hrica and Jon Moriconi immediately serve us small-glass flights of beer in muffin tins. Moriconi is wearing a Slow Gherkin shirt, which I immediately point out. There’s a third owner, but he’s not here today. East Cliff Brewery is unlike any other brewery in the area. It’s entirely inspired by traditional English pubs. The beer is made in casks (which is 10-15 degrees warmer) and served from beer engines, which produces a creamier texture. These guys are really committed to recreating the English pub experience—they even serve their beer in English pints (19.2 U.S. ounces) for authenticity. A good starter beer is the E.O.B., a session standard bitter. It’s a very simple, palatable traditional English ale, and has a hint of honey flavor to it. 4:45 p.m. Hrica gives John and me a full tour of their cask ale storage unit, and even shows us how to change a cask, which is fascinating. He tops off the demonstration by showing us how to pump some beer out of a beer engine. What an educational stop! 5:30 p.m. It seems appropriate that John and I finish our beer tour at Shanty Shack Brewing, the brainchild of two young skater-looking guys in their late 20s and early 30s, Nathan Van Zandt and Brandon Padilla, and a recent addition to the local brewery scene. Van Zandt and Padilla have a particular fondness for sours, but hope to master every popular flavor. They don’t have any flagship beers quite yet, but are experienced homebrewers, and even ran a beer delivery operation years earlier for friends and family. All their beers are solid, but I am most interested in a beer they served at Twisted Tasting. They call it Lamb’s Wool. It’s a hot beer, a strong Scottish Ale, with sugar, butter and roasted apples. “It’s like a Christmas drink,” Padilla explains. Man, I hope they bring that one back. 6:30 p.m. John and I linger at Shanty Shack longer than necessary. Van Zandt and Padilla give us a tour. They have big plans, and are still tweaking their recipes and trying to find their identity. Their excitement is intoxicating, and epitomizes the enthusiasm and outside-of-the-box thinking that defines the entire Santa Cruz brewery scene.
There’s nothing I like more than opening a chilled bottle of Viognier on a summer night. And when you’re imbibing on a good one such as the Loma Prieta 2013—with grapes from the Amorosa Vineyard in Lodi—it’s a little bit of heaven in a glass. With its aromatic fragrances of orange blossom, hibiscus, coconut milk, honeydew melon and jasmine, you will be transported to a tropical island from the first swirl and smell. And when you taste it, gorgeous flavors of guava, papaya, lychee and ripe peaches put you further into the tropics, flowing “smoothly and softly across the palate like a fine silk robe,” says winery owner Paul Kemp. For $28 this is a luscious white wine. Plus, Viognier is a nice departure from the “usual suspects.” Loma Prieta Winery is a beautiful place to visit, with stunning panoramic views of the Monterey Bay from their patio. Kemp says his is one of the few wineries worldwide making Pinotage—and is America’s largest producer, in fact. So if you love this full-bodied red, then that’s another good reason to visit Loma Prieta Winery. Rather than rely on a navigation system, the winery suggests that you follow the directions on their website to the tasting room, which is located at an elevation of 2,600 feet, up a bucolic winding road—well worth the drive. Loma Prieta Winery, 26985 Loma Prieta Way, Los Gatos. 408-353-2950. Open Saturday and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. and on Fridays in the summer. lomaprietawinery.com.
Mountains to the Bay Wine Tours
If you’re looking for a great wine tour in the Santa Cruz Mountains, then Seth Kinman, owner of Mountains to the Bay Wine Tours, can plan your whole trip for you. Or, Kinman can take you to the wineries of your choice. He offers his service to couples, private parties and corporate events. Kinman has a wealth of experience with local wineries, so your wine-tasting experience is sure to be fun, upbeat and informative. And when you’re enjoying several flights of wine, it’s always better not to drive. Visit mountainstothebay.com or call 275-4445.
A few years ago, City Councilmember Don Lane remembers Robert Norse, a perennial critic of city officials, throwing a pointed question his way: “Do you ever use your private email to talk about City Council issues?” “I don’t do it very much, and I try to steer away from it, but I wouldn’t say, ‘No, I never have done it,’” recalls Lane, one of a handful of city councilmembers who have used private email addresses in some official capacity, of how the question was a wake-up call. “From that moment on, it raised my consciousness.” Every now and then, someone will email Lane at his personal Cruzio email address about a city issue. And should someone make a public records request on a given topic, he says he will include messages about city-related business from his personal email account if there are any. But just to be safe, he also makes a point of carbon copying his city email address when he replies to such emails. That’s exactly how officials everywhere should respond, says government transparency expert Peter Scheer—but they often don’t. Scheer is the director of the First Amendment Coalition, which is based in San Rafael. He says all local governments should have a policy stating that if someone is going to use a non-government email, like a Gmail account, they need to either cc: their city address or forward their messages to an official account, preserving them for public records. “It’s possible to have it both ways. You can use your personal email. But you have to have a policy that if you use your private email, you have to send your copy to the city’s server,” he says. In 2016, our options for communicating with one another via technology continue to expand. And when it comes to the regulations that ensure transparency, most governments across the country are still, at least in some ways, like the Wild, Wild West. The city of Auburn has a policy like the one Scheer calls for, but such policies don’t appear to be very common. In Santa Cruz County, no local government has a protocol regarding emails, personal or otherwise. The topic of emails and government is one that readers will, of course, be familiar with because of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State. Transparency and security concerns spurred an FBI investigation, resulting in scathing criticism from both the FBI and the State Department—a specter that continues to hang over the presidential candidate during the Democratic National Convention this week. But it’s not just a Clinton issue—arm-wrestling matches over the “private” emails of government officials have been playing out all over the country, and California is no exception. A lawsuit fighting for the non-city emails of former San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed and other officials there about a city project has been sent to the California Supreme Court after a lower appeals court demanded that Reed and company turn them over. And earlier this month, a court order embattled Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson to turn over more than 50 personal emails on city matters to the Sacramento News and Review. Scheer and others have additionally called for the email records of the members of the California Coastal Commission. Activists are seeking a window into the commission’s backdoor discussions that led to the firing of esteemed director Charles Lester—and the commissioners, apparently, do not have official Coastal Commission email addresses. Earlier this month, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. ruled that government officials may not use private email accounts to dodge Freedom of Information Act requests. Essentially, the case, which overturns a lower court’s ruling, states that as long as the employee is corresponding about government business, they are doing so as a government agent. Tony Condotti, the city attorney for both Santa Cruz and Capitola, says it’s a “best practice” for city officials to keep city business on their city email. “In so doing, they don’t create the problem of intermingling their personal email communications with those that relate to city business. Also, it keeps clear that the communications are a public record,” Condotti says. A few Santa Cruz city councilmembers have been known to use non-government emails over the years—something that could create confusion when it comes to public records requests. In 2012, activist Steve Schnaar, a Bike Church mechanic, looked into why the city had ended a popular bike distribution at the Bike Church, and began making public records requests. The city’s records coordinator told him at first that then-Vice Mayor Hilary Bryant had more records, but she later followed up with Schnaar that “those emails were under a personal email account and not relevant to any city business.” Schnaar felt that city officials were hiding something. “What are the protocols for public employees using private email addresses?” he asked me at the time, suggesting I look into it. Bryant, who is no longer on the council, did not return messages seeking comment for this story, but the distribution ended up going to the Bike Dojo after she put in a good word for them, which critics said was inappropriate because of her connections with the owners. (The city ultimately took the distribution away from the Dojo as well, setting up its own distribution because the business was not a nonprofit, like the Bike Church, and was therefore ineligible for the program.) In past years, City Councilmember David Terrazas has used his private email address for city business, although he now asks people to reach him on his city address. City Councilmember Pamela Comstock says she has three email addresses, one for her personal use, one for her day job and a third for her council position. She says when she checks her email remotely, her phone will sometimes reply to the wrong address, and she finds herself constantly forwarding emails to her city email or cc:ing her correct address. Councilmember Micah Posner uses a non-city email address to send out newsletters and updates, although he was on vacation and unavailable for comment as of deadline. (Ironically, his personal email sent back an auto-reply about his schedule, but his city one did not.) In Scotts Valley, the mayor and all of the city councilmembers use their own personal email addresses, which are posted on the city’s website. Tracy Ferrara, the Scotts Valley city clerk, says their emails are, nonetheless, available when someone files a public records request. Lane notes that even a request for someone’s city email in Santa Cruz requires a certain degree of trust in public officials. When someone makes a request for his messages, he still has to go through his archives himself, copying and pasting messages one by one. Scheer says that, in general, if someone uses their private email and doesn’t comply with a public records request, it’s often easier for them to hide their messages. It creates extra steps for community members to access them, and they would never be able to do so without filing a lawsuit. As forms of communicating become more advanced, it becomes easier for government officials to avoid public oversight, he adds. Scheer, who has written about this topic for nearly a decade, says that he has never heard of anyone filing suit over Facebook messages, for instance. “The issue really hasn’t changed that much,” says Scheer, “although certainly technologies do complicate it.”
Julie Johnson delights in pointing out bluebirds whenever one alights in her certified organic vineyard. To encourage the colorful avians to stick around, she’s put up more than 20 nest boxes, and she instructs her vineyard workers to recognize and spare the nests of other songbirds when they are working in the vines. “People get excited about seeing these birds do good things,” says Johnson, who owns Tres Sabores Winery in Napa Valley and hopes the bluebirds will snatch up problematic insects. The good these birds are doing in this and the scores of other organic and sustainable winery operations that have installed nest boxes, however, has until recently remained somewhat anecdotal. Johnson has also placed several nest boxes for owls at Tres Sabores. The nearly ubiquitous owl box mounted high on a pole almost functions like a totem these days; on many a vineyard tour the guide will point to these boxes as evidence of the winery’s environmentally friendly bona fides—be they certified organic, sustainable or merely well-intentioned. “They’re like superstars of the vineyard,” Johnson says of the owls. “We know that barn owls are among our nighttime predators that are really crucial for vineyards, capable of eating an incredible amount of rodent pests.” But vineyard operators like Johnson can’t say for sure whether a vineyard is even a particularly good place to site the nest, from the owl’s point of view, or if the whole fad amounts to a new kind of greenwashing. To answer questions about the efficacy of owl boxes, graduate student researchers from Humboldt State University have begun a first-of-its-kind study, painstakingly mapping the interaction between owls and vineyard habitat in the Napa Valley. “Finally, we’re starting to get some really great research,” says Johnson, who hopes that the findings will help her to develop a program for “bird-friendly” farming or wine, similar to Fish Friendly Farming, based in Napa, and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center’s bird-friendly coffee program. In the forested hills somewhere between Loma Prieta and Los Gatos, Jerold O’Brien sees wild owls flying around his Silver Mountain Vineyards. “I see a number of them around. It seems like there are more of them in summertime than in the wintertime. I would assume they’re there because they’re eating something,” says O’Brien, who also has an owl box on his property, although he isn’t sure how often it gets used. The organic winery is home to swarms of gophers, too, which love to chomp on grapevine roots and can kill a young plant—anything younger than eight years—O’Brien explains. “We have a lot [of gophers], because we go out trapping every six or eight weeks. We’ll trap for three or four days. In three or four days, we might catch 15 or 20 gophers,” says O’Brien, whose 9-year-old dog Spencer assists in finishing off the pesky rodents.
Research Takes Flight
Under the shade of the oaks at Tres Sabores last summer, Carrie Wendt is on break explaining the owl study research she began in the winter of 2015. A graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in natural resources and wildlife at Humboldt State University, Wendt studies the ecological services that wildlife can provide in agriculture. Although owl boxes have been used in vineyards for several decades, there is little to no scientific literature about them. Many of the oft-cited statistics on owls come from studies done in England and elsewhere. To start, Wendt cold-called hundreds of vineyard managers up and down Napa Valley for permission to monitor their owl boxes. With a list of nearly 300 boxes in hand, she visited them all three times at 10-day intervals—making for long drives around Northern California. Nest boxes fail for a variety of reasons, says Wendt: opportunistic mammals may climb into them, or red-tailed hawks and great horned owls may hunt the parent owls while they fly to and from the box. Widely used poison bait for rodent control is also a hazard, as owls may be poisoned when consuming stricken rodents. But sometimes it’s a lack of available prey that makes owls abandon their nest. From Tres Sabores, I follow the student’s bumper-stickered truck across the valley to Saint Helena Winery, off the Silverado Trail, on the search for a surviving chick. An owl box is located in the middle of a vineyard, and was last seen containing one healthy, surviving chick. As Wendt maneuvers a swaying camera pole into the box, a chick’s head appears out of the darkness. Still a fuzzball of downy feathers, he’s almost grown-up, and looking downright surly as he sways and bobs in front of the camera. The dark side of his success is that, most likely, he consumed his siblings—not uncommon in the unsentimental world of the barn owl. Following up on Wendt’s work, Humboldt State grad student Xeronimo Castaneda has been tagging adult owls with GPS transmitters. The work must be done within a demanding time frame: Castaneda has to find owls while they’re in the nest box with chicks 14 to 21 weeks old. Afterward, the adults roost elsewhere while continuing to feed the increasingly large chicks. The boxes have hinged doors to facilitate cleaning. But it’s not for amateur ornithologists. The team had to apply to two agencies, the Bird Banding Laboratory, a division of the United States Geological Survey, and the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, to obtain permission to capture and tag owls. Researchers will then be able to track the owls and their hunting habits using GPS. Castaneda suggests that while further study needs to be done, it may be true that even if owls aren’t actively hunting within the vineyard, their very presence affects the behavior of rodents, deterring them from eating vintners’ precious grapevines. Castaneda mentions a small experiment conducted by an undergraduate that has yielded some interesting preliminary results. The student created a set of sandboxes, burying 100 sunflower seeds—rodent food—in each, and placed some in areas known to be populated with owls. “It’s interesting that across the board,” says Castaneda, “those little bait stations where there were no owls—all the seeds were gone. But where there were owls, a portion of those were still left.”
A thunder and lightning storm brewed over Philadelphia around midday on Monday, July 25, and inside the Democratic National Convention (DNC), the weather forecast also looks intense. That storm started at California’s delegation breakfast inside the downtown Marriott hotel over eggs, oatmeal, coffee and juice. Alex Padilla, the California Secretary of State who’s in charge of voting, took to the podium in front of the state’s Clinton-Sanders delegates, and the chanting began: “Count our votes, count our votes!” Sanders delegates rose to their feet during the meeting and broke into chants of “Bernie, Bernie.” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Berkeley) asked delegates to join her in voting for Clinton and the chants of “Bernie, Bernie” rained down upon her. The same happened to Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Rep. Mike Honda (D- San Jose)—all Clinton-supporting superdelegates. I sat between two Santa Cruz Sanders delegates, Shawn Orgel-Olson, who ran Sanders’ Santa Cruz campaign, and former County Supervisor Gary Patton. Both looked stunned, at first, before joining in the chanting. “What burns the butts of these Bernie people is that [the DNC leaders] want to pretend Clinton is the nominee, but it’s not official,” Patton shouted over the chanting, noting that the nominating process was scheduled to be finished the following day. “We are still his delegates and we’re glad to be out here supporting him,” Orgel-Olson added. This is my third DNC, and I’ve never seen this kind of raw, angry energy. It poured out onto the street, where more than 5,000 protesters came ready for a battle. At the Florida delegation earlier that morning, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida), the recently disgraced DNC chair, got booed off the stage. Toward the end of California’s two-hour breakfast, Clinton supporters finally caught on and chanted, “Hill-a-ry, Hill-a-ry.” But it was too late. The “Bernie” voices ruled the day.
“Mac and Cheese.” “Pizza Rolls.” “Marble Soda.” No, this isn’t the menu for a new downtown café; they’re titles of songs by electronic artist Shawn Wasabi. So is he obsessed with food or what? Well, yeah—but that’s not why he’s named so many of his songs after it. The real reason is actually a window into his approach to the electronic genre, which he thinks of more as mashups than standard electronic music. “I like to see the parallels between modern fusion food and musical mashups. It’s kind of funny,” Wasabi explains. “Mac and cheese is a mashup of American cheese and Italian pasta. Pizza rolls are a mashup of pizza and egg rolls. A lot of my stuff is mashups of other material. I take a lot of different styles and make them work together.” And he doesn’t just mean he draws from a lot of influences—he literally rams different styles together into a single song. “Pizza Rolls,” for instance, is a mashup of metal riffs and EDM beats. “Mac and Cheese” is a mixture of modern house music and retro video game noises. Originally from Salinas but now living in L.A., Wasabi has been making music for a little more than three years. His early songs were comprised mostly of samples, which he’d bring to life using a triggering board and other electronic equipment, and it was posting videos of them on YouTube that got him a following. He records himself playing his songs live in single takes, usually with close-up shots of his fingers on the equipment. His videos have garnered millions of views, with “Marble Soda” approaching 10 million. Fans are dazzled by his nimble fingers; one YouTuber commented: “I have no idea what you’re doing, but it’s amazing!” Another wrote “You are insane. This is insane. What is this?” “I’ve gotten used to the fact that what I do isn’t as easy as playing a guitar,” says Wasabi. “It takes me hours upon hours to get the perfect take where I play everything correctly and not mess up bad.” To the delight of his fans, Wasabi plays some of his songs live, just like in his videos. His concerts are a mixture of live tracks and a more DJ-like approach to playing music, adjusting filters to pre-recorded tracks. “People like seeing the live aspect thing brought into electronic music, but it would be really exhausting to mash up buttons for an hour,” Wasabi says. One time, Wasabi remembers messing up a song live, and getting so tripped up he just had to stop and move on to the next song. If there’s any wonder why retro video game noises are so prominent in his early tunes, it’s because before recording solo, Wasabi was in a band that played chiptune, a style that mixes rock and electronic music with the bloops and bleeps of ’80s video games. What Wasabi is doing isn’t exactly chiptune, but it’s very similar. Even when he’s not sampling old video game noises, the fun, friendly vibe is right in line with the chiptune ethos. His music is just plain fun, sprinkled with cute noises, and doesn’t have an ounce of the aggression that has so dominated the big room and dubstep subgenres. Basically, Wasabi is a gentle guy with green hair who loves to play video games and eat junk food, and his music reflects exactly who he is as a person. “I’m not really threatening. I don’t think I have music that’s threatening either. I hardly get mad at people,” Wasabi says. “I tried making aggressive music, but that’s difficult for me.”
INFO: 9 p.m., Friday, July 29, Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $10/adv, $12/door. 429-4135.
Next week, Santa Cruz will host the world premiere of a work by American composer John Adams, commissioned by the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in honor of Marin Alsop, and it’s serendipitous for many reasons. One of them is that Adams, a Pulitzer-prize-winning composer of opera and symphonic works, was himself the interim artistic director of the Festival in 1991, during the period between a Dennis Russell Davies sabbatical and the hiring of Alsop as director for her unprecedented 25-year tenure. A frequent contributor to and featured artist of the Festival, Adams and his wife Deborah O’Grady established in 2011 an invitational competition for young composers to create short musical pieces. Those selected each year add to the rich texture and youthful energy of the innovative annual program. Many a career has thus been launched. This year Adams was commissioned to create a tribute and musical farewell to the outgoing artistic director. And the ridiculously busy composer just happened to have an idea-in-progress up his sleeve. On Aug. 6—the second evening of this year’s Festival—audiences will be treated to an orchestral piece excerpted from a larger work, an opera about the California gold rush Adams is in the throes of creating with his frequent colleague Peter Sellars (Doctor Atomic). The new work represents a moment in Adams’ larger work in progress called The Girls of the Golden West, partly inspired by Puccini’s opera Girl of the Golden West (La fanciulla del West). “Peter Sellars wanted to do an update of that opera,” Adams says. “He had been asked to do the Puccini opera thinking that the libretto was very dated. I read the libretto for the Puccini and found out that the librettist [Guelfo Civinini, working from a play by American David Belasco] actually did spend time in California.” The Puccini opera premiered in New York in 1910. “But we’re looking at the story with modern eyes,” Adams promises. As he thought about what he might create in honor of Marin Alsop, Adams found something close at home. “There is an orchestral portion—a dance for Lola Montez—within the opera I am working on,” he says. “The idea was sparked by a San Francisco newspaper from the 1880s, where we found a histrionic description of her rather fabulous spider dance.” Adams reminded me that Montez was a celebrated and controversial fixture of courts, saloons, and theaters the world over in the mid-19th century. “She was the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, who made her a countess,” he says. The Irish-born Montez also had an affair with Franz Liszt (among others) before she fled Europe for the wild frontier of the California gold rush. Here she developed her daring spider dance which she flaunted in the gold fields of Australia as well. Montez was a girl of two golden Wests, as it turns out. Adams, who confessed he hadn’t yet written the music for Montez’ dance, has used the occasion of the Alsop commission to “jump ahead in the opera and write this section. It’s a stand-alone piece for Marin and I expect she will perform it elsewhere in the future.” Montez was only one of the “girls of the golden west” Adams and Sellars describe in the upcoming opera. Few women ventured into the 1850s gold fields, but Adams found two extraordinary stories. “I have a little cabin in the high Sierras near Downeyville, and there was a famous event that happened there,” Adams says. “A young Mexican woman was working in a bar and was harassed by a miner. She stabbed him to death. Apparently there was a quick trial and within 24 hours the town had hanged her. We wove a lot of stories around her,” he reveals. “And the other woman was Louise Smith Clappe, who wrote for a local newspaper under the name Dame Shirley. She spent 18 months in crude mining camps, and she wrote letters, called the Shirley letters, that I consider an outstanding example of 19th-century American literature,” he says. Clappe and her physician husband had come to the West for the mountain climate, and the writer mined her personal experience of the gritty ambience of the rough mining camps during the 1850s height of gold fever. “We’ve created scenes around those letters,” Adams adds, tantalizingly. “The opera will premiere in 2017, the year of my 70th birthday,” he says. “San Francisco Opera seemed the right place to premiere it, given the history behind the opera.” Will there be more operas from the composer of The Death of Klinghoffer? “More opera?” Adams laughs. “I’ve been working on this opera daily for almost two years, and I’ve just begun orchestrating the second act. It’s a lot of work.” A sneak preview of Adams’ next opera can be heard on Aug. 6, as the composer’s gift to outgoing conductor Alsop.
Edit 7/27/16 11:00am: Opera incorrectly attributed to John Adams was removed.
