Russian River Resort

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The photo is of the pool at the Russian River Resort, 1954. I think a lot has changed since then, although there is still a pool, the guests today are predominately gay and lesbian. Unaware of any of this and in need of a room for the night, the triple R looked as good a place as any. The sign on the office window directed us to the bar, and our heads still cloudy from the night before, we noticed nothing that would indicate the triple A probably didn’t list the triple R in their guide for places to stay.

We were shown to our cabin, a walk from the bar along the pool. Looking back on it now I’m glad it was winter and the pool was empty of um, frolickers. The image of one guy sitting atop another guys shoulder tossing a beach ball was not one I want to have. At any rate, there we were, cabin #3, just relax for a moment, read the brochure and see what there is to do in Guerneville. WHAT THE HELL? – didn’t even finish reading the first paragraph of the brochure! Tossed-it over to my friend along with the keys to the car where our bags were still. “You go get them.”, “No, you.”, “No, you.” Shit, we’ll both go…don’t look up, don’t make eye contact. Just walk out, along the pool, past the bar, past the office, out the gate and to the car. With Buck Jr. holding his bag behind him pleading “protect me bum, mate”, something in black leather passed us but I only saw the leather pants and boots, my eyes focused on the ground, it was a wonder that either of us looked up to see which cabin number we were stopping at.

Actually a peaceful, restful stay. We didn’t return to the bar at the triple R, but instead headed to the bar at the Union Hotel in Occidental for drink and Italian food. I can’t recall if a condom on the pillow replaces a chocolate, and it’s a safe bet that I’ll never return, but all in all, at least that night, it was a restful stay. I give it a Three Star Triple A rating.

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Isla Vista

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Isla Vista is located adjacent to the University of California Santa Barbara [UCSB]. A one square mile town consisting primarily of apartments, a few businesses and a population of over 20,000. Isla Vista was considered by many to be second only to Berkely as a hotbed for political activism, and first came to national attention during the protests of the Vietnam War. The image above is a poster made from a photo of the burning of the Bank of America. Isla Vista first came to my attention as a teenager when I discovered that while only in junior high school, I could walk into a keg party, held nearly every weekend, at one of the frat houses. That eventually added up to spending a long, cold night on the beach without the luxury of a jacket, but theonly other option offered from the local police was to be taken in custody. They really didn’t want to bother with paperwork and told us to just leave Isla Vista. Without car, 2:00 in the morning…where else could we go?, except of course with the kind officers for a ride to juvenile hall. That ride would come a couple years later. For the next few years it was a regular hangout, playing pool late night, and hanging around the beach throughout the day.I lived in Isla Vista on three separate occasions, my first apartment out of high school, and two more times for summers when the town wasn’t so crowded and when the law changed allowing Isla Vista to sell beer and wine, and I was at an age to legally purchase it. Passed out on my dog was taken the summer after high school, and is a pretty accurate representation of what that summer was like. My buddy Hugh and I first moved to Isla Vista for the summer just before heading to college. Hugh worked at an electronics firm and I spent days playing pool at the UCSB Student Center with a transplant from Boston. We both were pretty good and soon found that hours of practicing straight pool daily was beginning to be less challenging. Moving our rack to the snooker table our aim had to be dead on, the table was both wider and longer and we were using oversized balls for the size of the snooker pockets. At first, for a few days that is, our shots rattled around the pockets but not dropping in. By day four we were on track. After a week of straight pool on a snooker table we were good, and after moving back, the tables looked like the little quarter a game tables found in bars. We were dead on and won a number of small bets with players who thought they were the next Fast Eddie. We took on and beat all comers. I never hustled pool, but I grew up with a table in the house since I was in the seventh grade and could usually hold a table at the bar until bored or blind. I can’t say the the same for hustling my friend Hugh when it came to chugging beers. Hugh’s weakness was not being able to back away from a dare, or the idea of losing in competition. The chug a beer contest started one night… hold the beer can upside down with mouth wide open and pull the pop tab. Glug, glug, glug – however, as simple as it sounds I never thought I could beat Hugh, nor did I ever once try. I simply reached down and grabbed an empty, there were plenty around, and out of the corner of my eye watched Hugh… just before he thought he crossed the finish line first, I crushed my empty can, filling Hugh with another 12 oz. of disappointment. The second chug was usually by my coaxing, but the third was definitely Hugh’s futile attempt to pull out a victory before staggering down the hall talking to himself. This continued for a couple months but there was change, Hugh was getting faster. I barely had time to reach down and grab an empty, he was really fast, really, really fast. I placed money on Hugh on more than one occasion and never did have to pay out.

I Madonnari

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Street painting, using chalk as the medium, is an Italian tradition dating to the 16th century. Called “Madonnari” because of the practice of reproducing the image of the Madonna (Our Lady). The Madonna was the most reproduced artwork. In Italy, the tradition lives on in the village of Grazie di Curtatone, where the International Street Painting Festival is held in August each year in front of the Catholic church. The early Italian street painters were vagabonds who would arrive in small towns and villages for Catholic religious festivals and transform the streets and public squares into temporary galleries for their ephemeral works of art. With the first rains of the season, their paintings would be gone. On the plaza of the old Santa Barbara Mission “I Madonnari” Italian Street Painting Festival takes place every year in May for three days.

After traveling to the festival in Italy, Kathy Koury produced the first-year event in 1987. In this year, the Santa Barbara Mission was celebrating its bicentennial. Father Virgil Cordano and the bicentennial committee members agreed to accept the street painting festival as a part of their celebration. From that time on, the festival has continued to grow and now is being replicated in other cities throughout the U.S.

Squares are drawn in a grid on the pavement in front of the Old Mission, dividing the plaza into 150 squares. The squares range in size from 4′ by 6′ to 12′ by 12′ and in price from $100 to $500, each one bearing the name of its sponsor, which can be a business, organization or individual. As the public watches, local artists then fill these pavement canvases with imagery, often elaborate compositions in unexpectedly vibrant colors.

In another part of the plaza, small squares will be sold for children to create their own street paintings alongside other activities for children. The response is ever growing with available squares usually sold out in March.

Tommy’s Joynt

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Tommy’s Joynt is still a great place to have a beer, or late night if you’re really hungry and want a sandwich, and a beer. Or if you are really hungry but would settle for just the beer.

 

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Hope Ranch

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Hope Ranch is a relatively private place to live, with lot sizes at nearly two acres minimum, and houses beginning at 3,000+ sq.ft. and up, and listings on the market between 4 million to 30+ million. Hope Ranch members are fortunate to have access to a golf course, country club, private tennis courts, stables, miles of horse trails and private beach. Hope Ranch Beach is only accessible from a gated entrance, or by walking along the beach from Hendry’s to the south, or from More Mesa bordering to the north. The Hope Ranch Beach poster shows the cliffs along More Mesa to the north. With hidden access points to get down to the beach from the cliff above, More Mesa soon became the nude beach of the area. There were only a few Hope Ranch homes that lay atop the cliffs, and only one, the last one, the furthest one north, had a view of that section of beach and the land on top of the ‘Mesa’ was [at that time] undeveloped. The dream job for the Santa Barbara gardener was to land a contract with the last Ranch home on the cliff, the one that bordered Mora Mesa. My friend was on a job at the very house I speak of. He was also a regular at More Mesa, so dropping his brush in a bucket of paint at the sound of the noontime bell wasn’t going to happen. The problem here is the size of the property. Nobody wanted to work in the front, can’t see the beach, in particular More Mesa beach from the front yard of a property that large. I can imagine the house with beautiful landscaping, manicured lawns, colorful flowerbeds…all in the back with a front yard full of weeds, uncut grass, and dead azeillas.

My friend described it to me this way…
All the work in the front had to be done early, although no one wanted to work in the front of the house at all. Try to do the front while it’s still overcast, before the sun breaks through, before the beach goers come out to sun. But no matter where a gardener was on the property at 11:59 am, you could bet the farm on where he’d be at 12:01 pm – plastered against the backyard wall, straining to look down at More Mesa beach. “When the clock struck noon, they’d head for the back. The lot was over 2 acres, but that just meant some had to run faster.
Twelve o’clock noon – a lone rake standing in the front yard begins to lean forward… out-of-breath Pedro has made it to the back fence where he’ll spend his lunch hour looking down at the sunbathers below… slowly, the rake falls forward and hits the ground.

Cajun Kitchen

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There are Cajun Kitchen’s aplenty:
Pearl’s Cajun Kitchen in Oklahoma City, Boudreaux’s Cajun Kitchens all over Houston, Floyd’s, also in Houston, Mama Lou’s in Albuquerque, Hackett’s in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Vickie’s Cajun Kitchen which isn’t actually a kitchen, but a list of cajun recipies given to Dianne’s Kitchen which isn’t a kitchen either, but an online post. Prudhomme’s Lost Cajun Kitchen, located at 50 Lancaster Avenue, Columbia, PA. If you still can’t find it, they are on the web at www.lostcajunkitchen.com New Orleans Cajun Kitchen in New Orleans, of course, New Orleans Cajun Kitchen in Houston (not related), Don’s in Alexandria, Virginia, Touchet’s Cajun Kitchen in Richmond, TX, Baby Kay’s Cajun Kitchen in Phoenix, AZ, Kenny’s in Arnaudville, LA, Lee’s in Arnaudville,
Tim’s in Hunstville, AL, Nubian Queen Lola’s Cajun Kitchen in Austin, McGowan’s, Big Daddy’s, Dave’s, Margie’s, DeAnna’s, Thibodeaux’s, Kyle’s, Hollier’s, Eula Maes, Crawdaddy’s, MJ’s, Larry’s,
…just to name a few.

For a couple years I thought this was the place west of the Mississippi to get a true bowl of gumbo. It’s still atop my list of places to eat in Santa Barbara, at least between 6:00am and 2:00pm, but my recommendation from the menu has changed to the ‘cajun scrambled’. Blame it on the ease of making gumbo using a Zatarain’s mix – but the end result is a roux mixed with the best of chicken, shrimp, and andouille that puts the Cajun Kitchen’s gumbo to shame.So a suggestion is to go with the Cajun Scrambled
[2 scrambled eggs, diced hot sausage, cheese, choice of toast & potatoes]

When in Santa Barbara the Cajun Kitchen can begin one’s day with a New Orleans breakfast and end the day with a dinner at the Palace Cafe, an upscale New Orleans restaurant that one should make reservations for.

Running Fence

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Expanding twenty-four and a half miles between Sonoma and Marin Counties, Running Fence was completed on September 10, 1976. The fence was an 18 feet high cable covered with over 2 million square feet of white nylon fabric which illuminated in the sunlight and seemed to absorb and reflect the sunsets.
As an art student at California State University, Sonoma, studying under William Morehouse, an offer to work on the fence as art credit was presented. The work day began early and the rewards really never were clear until many years later as I look back and realize I happened to be in the right place at the right time in order to get the opportunity to not only witness but participate in this event.

Dismantling the fence began just 14 days following it’s completion. All materials were given to the residents and landowners who allowed the fence to be constructed on their property.

Technical: Running Fence, 5.5 meters (eighteen feet) high, 40 kilometers (twenty-four and half miles) long, extending East-West near Freeway 101, north of San Francisco, on the private properties of fifty-nine ranchers, following rolling hills and dropping down to the Pacific Ocean at Bodega Bay, was completed on September 10, 1976.

The art project consisted of: forty-two months of collaborative efforts, the ranchers’ participation, eighteen public hearings, three sessions at the Superior Courts of California, the drafting of a four-hundred and fifty page Environmental Impact Report and the temporary use of hills, the sky and the Ocean.

All expenses for the temporary work of art were paid by Christo and Jeanne-Claude through the sale of studies, preparatory drawings and collages, scale models and original lithographs.

Running Fence was made of 200,000 square meters (2,222,222 square feet) of heavy woven white nylon fabric, hung from a steel cable strung between 2,050 steel poles (each: 6.4 meters / 21 feet long, 9 centimeters / 3 1/2 inches in diameter) embedded 1 meter (3 feet) into the ground, using no concrete and braced laterally with guy wires (145 kilometers (90 miles) of steel cable) and 14,000 earth anchors.

The top and bottom edges of the 2050 fabric panels were secured to the upper and lower cables by 350,000 hooks.

All parts of Running Fence’s structure were designed for complete removal and no visible evidence of Running Fence remains on the hills of Sonoma and Marin Counties.

As it had been agreed with the ranchers and with the County, State and Federal Agencies, the removal of Running Fence started fourteen days after its completion and all materials were given to the ranchers.

Running Fence crossed fourteen roads and the town of Valley Ford, leaving passage for cars, cattle and wildlife, and was designed to be viewed by following 65 kilometers (forty miles) of public roads, in Sonoma and Marin Counties.

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Hwy 666

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Born: 1926
Died: Summer 2003

If you’re familiar with the old blacktop two-lane, you know that U.S. Highway 666 ‘ Triple 6 ‘ connected a pawn-shop town to a Superfund site, that it ran through some of the most unforgiving terrain in three states, that it was the site of some of the wildest summer lightning storms and steering-wheel-gripping black-ice blizzards in the winter, and that the outlaw image of the highway was all wrapped up in its name. Highway 666 was the Devil’s Highway, the perfect setting for the making of modern-day legends. Highway 666 has other stories, local legends of outlaws and saints so tied to the road that they’ll go with it as it’s slowly nomenclaturally replaced by Highway 491. Triple-6 was a great setting for a good story because it ran with the devil. Or, to be more accurate, it had a reputation for running with the devil, for the Bible may refer to 666 as the “number of the beast,” but this highway didn’t have much inherently evil about it. It acquired its name not because of the land it crossed or the people who lived there, but because it was the sixth spur off of Highway 66. Whether it actually attracted good stories or just gave them life is hard to say, but it provided the raw setting for a rough assortment of local legends that became part of Four Corners lore.

It wasn’t stories about outlaws that were the downfall of 666, though. It wasn’t the real-life characters that gave the highway an identity that was its doom. It was fear, pure and simple. Highway 666 was killed (or at least its Official Highway System Designation was killed) by people who were afraid of a number and of being associated with that number — afraid evil would rub off on them or that other people would think it had.

Whatever happened to rugged individualism and the free and the brave? This is the Wild West after all, a region with a reputation for accommodating nomads, warriors, pioneers and miscreants — people for whom independence, self-reliance and freedom are vital. For centuries Westerners have survived dust storms and drought, forced marches and disease, fires and floods, snake bites and sun stroke, only to have their modern-day offspring recoil at the sight of a number.

Summerland

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Summerland was founded in 1889 by rancher Harry L. Williams. The Big Yellow House, obvious to any traveler on State Highway 101, was built in 1884 as his personal residence. By 1896 with the boom in oil, Summerland was quickly turned into an eyesore as drilling operations and oil derricks populated this beachside community. As the oil played out, and operations moved offshore, Summerland has once again returned to it’s former standing as a quaint beachside town. Now better known for it antique shops than anything else, Summerland represents to me two things: a good party, and a great breakfast. Both of these residing in the same location, nearly 10 years apart.


The restaurant pictured below, originally known as the Summerland Omlette Parlor, now doing business as the Summerland Beach Cafe, was originally a private residence. My last visit there, pre-restaurant days, was when I was just out of high school and that house was jammed packed full of party goers. Standing room only, with a waiting line to get in for a refill from the keg. Today, the keg has been replaced by a stove and 3 egg omlettes are the reason one may be waiting in line outside. Night is now morning, the reward has become food as opposed to drink, standing room only is now seating room only, but my guess is I’m surrounded by some of the same people who remember the place way back when.

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Washoe House

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The Washoe House proclaims to be “the oldest roadhouse in the state.” This could possibly be disputed, but by whom? The place has been around since 1859, so by now it’s at least earned the right not to be argued with. I came across the place just after moving up north to Petaluma to attend Sonoma State. With a pony-tail that reached the middle of my back, I headed for the bar, never knowing what might happen next, expect the worst, prepare for trouble, but survey the odds before reacting…Page three in my ‘rules of engagement’ state – never back down, but don’t be stupid either, live to fight another day…

It was mid-afternoon and there were few inside. A couple truckers, and a couple old farmers at the bar rolling dice. I sat on a barstool next to the fat one wearing a Ford cap, old t-shirt, suspenders, slight stink, and ordered myself a draft. Fat Ray, apparently tired of losing at dice to his buddy Marshall, started talking to me, possibly in an attempt to break his bad streak. From this farmer’s view, the county was growing too fast. In particular, the city of Petaluma had sprouted up on the north side of the river faster than corn in August, and Santa Rosa was getting too big for Ray to drive into. Having heard that, I envisioned Ray driving his Catepillar with the backhoe up at about 10 mph, and wasn’t yet aware of that the State had cut a path 75 feet wide, filled it with cement and named it Highway 101. Ray passed me the cup and sure as shit passed me his bad luck as well. Marshall beat me five straight throws and to show good sportsmanship I bought beers for the two, before heading home.

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