Templeton’s Galatea, which premiered at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park in September of 2021, is a rare theatrical foray into science fiction. It’s set aboard an earth-orbiting space station in the year 2167 where robot specialist Dr. Margaret Mailer is interviewing Seventy-One, a recently discovered “synthetic”. It is the last known survivor of the spaceship Galatea, a craft that mysteriously disappeared over one hundred years prior and whose wreckage had been discovered decades later.
Seventy-One’s memories of events are spotty at best. Whether those lapses of memory are genuine malfunctions or purposeful deceptions is what must be determined as answers are sought to the question “What happened to the Galatea?”
The script, which ATCA judges called “inventive” and “suspenseful”, was originally scheduled to premiere in March of 2020 but fell victim to pandemic-necessitated closures. It was previously recognized with an Honorable Mention by the 2020 Theatre Bay Area Will Glickman Award committee. That Award is usually presented to the Bay Area’s best new produced play, but eligibility was expanded to include plays whose productions were suspended due to the pandemic.
In 1977, ATCA began to honor new plays produced at regional theaters outside New York City. No play is eligible if it has gone on to a New York production within the award year. Since 2000, the award has been generously funded by the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust.
The five finalists were selected from eligible scripts recommended by ATCA members from around the country and evaluated by a committee of theater journalists.
The top award of $25,000 and two citations of $7,500 each, plus commemorative plaques, will be presented on April 9 at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa, CA. At $40,000, Steinberg/ATCA is the largest national new play award program of its kind.
The American Theatre Critics Association is the only national association of professional theater critics in the United States. Since the inception of its New Play Award, honorees have included Lanford Wilson, Marsha Norman, August Wilson, Arthur Miller, Lynn Nottage, Adrienne Kennedy, Donald Margulies, Moises Kaufman, Craig Lucas, Nilo Cruz, Lauren Yee, Horton Foote and Qui Nguyen. Last year’s honoree was Her Honor, Jane Byrne by J. Nicole Brooks.
Every day in the fog-caressed city of San Francisco, a half dozen souls are overwhelmed by the Big Sleep. But on Feb. 28, 2022 only one of the previous day’s dearly departed was granted a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle.
While middle class dead were remembered rosily in paid obituaries, wealthy investment banker Richard Charles Blum, 86, got a freebie hagiography. Education beat reporter Nanette Asimov breathlessly lauded the deceased financier as a “self made millionaire,” a “philanthropist,” a reform-minded University of California Regent, and, oh, yes, the husband of U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein.
According to Asimov, and similarly flattering obits in rich and powerful-fawning media, Blum was a brilliant businessman with no flaws as a human being; he was, in fact, a morally pure saint who brightened a world shared by rich and poor alike.
Please allow us to set the record straight.
Beginning in 2000, this reporter published numerous stories in SF Weekly, Bohemian, and other California newspapers exposing the many ethically corrupted money deals engineered by Blum as he manufactured for himself a lucrative career by leveraging his wife’s political power to profit from billions of dollars in government contracts awarded to companies controlled by himself.
My investigative stories on Blum have been lauded through the years with journalism awards from organizations such as Project Censored, Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters & Editors, California Newspaper Publishers Association. The scandalous findings detailing Blum-Feinstein conflicts of interest have been echoed in other media news columns for decades. Some of the reports have inspired government investigations of Blum’s operations, and feeble efforts by Feinstein to disassociate herself from her partner’s scores of interlocking businesses by claiming that she only has ownership of a small “blind trust.”
In fact, Feinstein has always owned exactly one half of Blum’s assets under California community property laws, period. And she has many times intervened in Congressional oversight of projects that have benefited her family. But such is the reverence in which corporate-enslaved politicians and the press that depends upon their favor holds the politically neoliberal, closet-neoconservative Feinstein, that Blum was allowed to continue his grifts in broad daylight until his San Francisco-based bank, Blum Capital Partners, busted flat a few years ago, taking down with it many millions of dollars in public funds.
Feinstein’s reputation has long been protected by political Teflon and willfully blind reporters in the face of decades of documented havoc caused to the public interest by her family businesses. And, horribly, as she continues to sink into a widely-recognized zombie state of piteous dementia, she remains a powerfully influential Senator wielding life and death responsibilities in an out-moded, obstructionist branch of government run by obvious psychopaths and narcissistic, geriatric basket cases. But I digress.
In addition to his not-so-mysterious way of attracting billions of dollars in government construction and real estate and military supply contracts, Blum’s other business ventures were based on “private equity,” which is a piratical method of investing which coldly destroys businesses, like PetSmart, for one example of a Blum takeover. The private equity way practiced by Blum Capital Partners is to buy cash flow-healthy companies by assuming massive bank debt to finance the aggressive, normally unwanted take-over. The new owner’s acquisition loans are off-loaded onto the books of the just-acquired firm. Typically, the private equity banditos loot the firm by selling off its productive assets to pay back the acquisition debt and to generate surplus cash which they siphon off for themselves. The asset-crippled firm goes bankrupt, the workers are fired, and people like Blum walk away with largely untaxed profits, casually stepping on the company’s corpse as they sniff out the next victim.
Here is a compendium of the Blum-Feinstein family deals which I exposed to public light during more than two decades of factually robust and unchallenged reporting.
“San Francisco International Airpork” (2000) revealed that construction companies partnered with Blum caused the budget for renovating the airport to unnecessarily balloon by a billion dollars which generated excess profits for Blum and his partners.
“Hawk Tale” (2005) The firm of Feinstein, Condoleeza Rice, Blum, & Bush—war made easy and profitable.
“MIG Attack” (2005) How Feinstein interfered in Indian casino siting legislation, while her husband builds Indian casinos.
“Senator Warbucks” (2007) A national journalism award-winning expose of how Feinstein used her chairpersonship of the Senate Military Construction subcommittee (MILCON) to steer billions of Iraq & Afghanistan war dollars to firms controlled by her husband.
“Feinstein Resigns” (2007) Sen. Feinstein suddenly resigns from MILCON in public blow back from the Bohemian’s revelation that Blum sells prosthetic limbs at huge mark-ups to Iraq and Afghanistan war wounded troops.
“Daddy Kleinbucks” (2007) Founder of the nonprofit investigative Sunlight Foundation, lawyer-investor Michael R. Klein has made curious investment choices with his business partner, Richard C. Blum. Klein was Feinstein’s closest legal and ethical advisor.
“Blum’s Plums” (2007) The first story about how Blum finagled University of California endowment funds to profit himself while he was a university Regent in charge of investments.
“The Investor’s Club” (2011) How the University of California Regents Spin Public Money into Private Profit and into the Pocket of Regent Richard C. Blum. An 8-month investigation crowd-funded by Spot.us and published in multiple newspapers revealed how Blum steered University of California funds into private equity investments, often controlled by him, and how the university lost vast sums of money that would have otherwise gone toward education.
“Going Postal” (2013) The husband of US Senator Dianne Feinstein has been selling post offices to his friends, cheap. The investigation resulted in an damning Inspector General investigation of Blum’s firm, and Blum resigning from the company involved. It is also a “best selling” book.
And the final report, “Blum and Doom” (2017) Feinstein’s hubby, and California pension system, take a hit in the downfall of ITT Educational Services as Blum goes broke.
Last June, according to the Securities & Exchange Commission, Blum Capital Partners was officially terminated after losing most of its capital on bad investments promoting for-profit colleges which it controlled. Unfortunately, Blum had lured tens of millions of dollars from California Public Employees Retirement Fund into these bad investments, while he was a highly paid investment manager for the public fund. Remarkably, Blum steered public investments into his failing for-profit educational company, ITT Educational, trying to prop up the value of his own investments. ITT Educational profited mightily by making federally guaranteed student loans for providing certifiably substandard educations. The company was forcibly liquidated by the US government for fraud and Blum’s investment bank went down, at the same time.
Let us now leave insincere plaudits for the dead aside by reversing the standard sanctimonious obituary tropes made by obsequious reporters to the rich and powerful whom they envy and bootlick.
We picked up the new copy of 50 Up. I guess this is supposed to be a celebration of achievement and fun for peeps over 50.
So, it opens with Daedalus Howell’s op-ed telling us older folks that we definitely should feel our age: You’re too old to be doing whatever you think it’s okay for you to do. Oh, and we’re no longer allowed to skateboard. Should we switch to shuffleboard so we don’t fall and hurt ourselves?
And he sneers at us for wearing hoodies and flip-flops. (I can see not wearing flip-flops while skateboarding, but does anyone do that?) I’d better run out to Target for a pink sweater with a teddy bear on it. I understand that it’s difficult for the younger folks to get a handle on what aging is like, and that it’s all too easy to let some contempt sneak in. But didn’t anyone else read over this?
In future, if you want to talk to people over 50, I suggest you get someone in the same age group to do it.
Susan Kuchinskas
El Cerrito
Editor’s note: Daedalus Howell is, in fact, turning 50 this year.
Thrifty Shopping
The other day I was on a quest for 2 pints of ice cream. That turned into a crazy insightful day.
I thought, “I’ll just pick it up at a local convenience store.” Big mistake. One local store in Cloverdale wanted $6.99 for each pint. I put it back and said sorry. The next store was even more; $7.99 for their pints. I said no and walked out. I tried CVS next and paid $10 for two pints.
Twenty dollars does not go that far in today’s economy. These days you definitely have to watch the ever-changing prices or get stung by high-price inflation.
The glorious photograph illustrating the delightful “Spotlight on Sausalito” article in the Feb. 16 Pacific Sun sure ain’t the Sausalito waterfront, despite the caption’s claim. That’s a picture of the gorgeous view from Fort Baker. I know because I’m a lucky guy: I grew up in Sausalito.
And a different Sausalito it was when I moved to Spencer Avenue in 1960 and enrolled in the fourth grade at Bayside School. Tourists packed the town only on the weekends. A stroll for a block along Bridgeway north from Princess would take a flâneur such as me past Ole’s Bakery, the Purity Market, the Gate Theater, the hardware store, the five & ten and the Rexall with the soda fountain. Tourists came for our village atmosphere and waterfront, not T-shirts, ice cream and glitzy galleries.
In fifth grade a couple of classmates and I decided to start a newspaper, The Sausalito Sun—a few years later, when the Pacific Sun launched, we always figured the founders stole our name. We prowled the streets looking for news and selling ads, two bucks for a full page. Sally Stanford advertised her Valhalla restaurant with us; I played Little League for the Giants she sponsored and the madam’s Rolls-Royce was our team’s car for opening day parades. The old Kingston Trio-owned Trident always took a full page—after high school I was employed for a brief stint as a member of the overnight kitchen cleanup crew. The mayor called our Sun the best newspaper in town, an easy call since at that time we were the only paper.
When I moved back to town after a short interlude studying at Berkeley—of course I dropped out for a spell, it was the ’60s!—I moved into the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Pullman business car parked at Tiki Junction. The Big G was our grocery store, before it became Mollie Stone’s, and across the street was the pungent distillery after which the Whiskey Springs housing development is named. Just before Bridgeway ends, Juanita held forth at her Galley on the Charles Van Damme, grounded at Gate Six.
So, with as much modesty as an adopted son can muster, I cover the Sausalito waterfront and can say with historical certainty that we don’t need our picturesque Fort Baker neighbor to play our double.
“Spiritual but not religious” is a cliche in common parlance, which means people parrot the phrase but are usually unable to explain what they mean by it. “Not religious” means, of course, not Christian, the dominant faith in the West for the past two millennia, for it’s been 140 years since Nietzsche declared that “God is dead,” meaning no educated person in the modern world can believe in Judeo-Christian theism. And so Christianity continues to turn from wine to water, thinned out in a stream that flows from the River Jordan to the sea of irrelevance.
So much for the religious part. As for “spritual,” invoking this seems to suggest, “I know there’s some kind of higher reality, but I don’t understand it and so drift with the times, focused on social values and material resources.” In other words, the very antithesis of spiritual.
The “spiritual not religious” catchphrase serves as a way of examining the four types of prayer, which take us from the most religious, in the formal sense, to the threshold of true spirituality, or awakening to that within us that is more than human.
The simplest form of prayer is devotion. Picture an elderly woman kneeling before the Virgin Mary, or a tribesperson adoring the statue of a deity. The experience is largely emotional, which for most people is as far as they can go, unable to invoke within them the powers the religious totem symbolizes. The next form is petition, in which one asks for something needed, followed by intervention, in which one asks on behalf of someone else. These acts can certainly have their effect, as research into the power of prayer has shown.
The most noble form of prayer, however, is called contemplation, and is a state in which, according to the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon in a video available on YouTube, the soul reflects upon its divine ground. This is less likely to be a prayer of short duration made with closed eyes, but rather the gradual sinking into a state of deep reflection reaching the innermost part of oneself. Often we experience this outdoors, feeling a sense of oneness with heaven and Earth, noting how everything is in its place, after its kind and performing its function. And at the center of it all is one’s own consciousness, powered by the divine spark of intelligence.
Not everyone is capable of metaphysical insight, but more could be if they took the time. Those who do can honestly say that while they may not be part of a formal religion, they have an inner orientation that can truly be called spiritual.
I’m standing in a Zome, in an empty lot behind a warehouse across the river from downtown Petaluma. The walls are all curves and flowing lines, and the sunlight coming in through the skylight, door and single window amply illuminates the interior of the spacious one-room dome-shaped structure. The diamond-shaped wooden wall panels fit together just so, like dragon scales climbing up the walls to meet around the single skylight, 8 feet above my head. I feel like I’m in a bonafide hippie house, circa 1970. My first thought, this would make a fantastic studio or office, is followed by, I want to live in one. Where’s the kitchen?
A Zome is a type of tiled dome—as visually striking on the outside as it is on the inside—that is a throwback to a more experimental design era, with a space-age twist: Zomes are built from state-of-the-art, earth-friendly materials in a 30,000-square-foot production facility. But the details are more complex.
Designed by Zomes company co-founders Shereef and Karim Bishay in response to regional wildfires, mold issues that make many dwellings uninhabitable and the increasing need for ADUs due to SB9 and other recently proposed California housing legislation, the domes are composed of an outer layer of interlocking bioceramic plates, behind which are sandwiched layers of structural wood and insulation, a wooden frame and interior wall panels, all intricately fastened together in such a way as to be watertight and airtight. Wiring, plumbing and heating/cooling ducts are hidden inside the walls. All components are assembled and built at the production facilities by a team of 30 employees. Final, on-site assembly takes 7–10 days.
VERSION 2.0 The Zomes build crew assembles the new-and-improved Zome model, which will be available for preview at the company’s new ‘Dynamic’ location on March 9. Photo by Mark Fernquest.
It was a Zomes Facebook ad that rekindled my longtime interest in local innovative architecture. With so many crises occurring in the world today—wildfires, black mold and the housing crisis notwithstanding—what better time for a roundup of local cutting-edge homes?
Zomes are, according to both the website and Sales Manager David Tunstall: waterproof, moldproof, rotproof, snowproof, fireproof, pestproof, leakproof, maintenance-free, moveable, patchable and paintable. Furthermore, their dome shape, combined with their thermal mass, gives them an insulation rating of R-24. With components and materials that are sourced locally and organically whenever possible, the structures are also ecologically sound and 90% recyclable. The magnesia and perlite used to make the bioceramic magnesium phosphate tiles themselves are sourced from Michigan and “next door,” respectively.
CRATED The exterior bioceramic tiles and the interior wall panels are pre-numbered and packed in crates for easy, on-site construction by the Zomes build crew. Photo by Mark Fernquest.
As it turns out, I’m not the only person who wants to live in a Zome with a kitchen. Co-founder Karim Bishay tells me that since his company was founded in November 2021, public response has been “very positive, we’ve had over 25 deposits in under 3 months of selling.” And kitchenettes are an option, as are bathrooms and sleeping lofts, with more furniture options on the way.
Currently available in one size that measures 19 feet wide and 14 feet tall, with 265 square feet of interior floor space, a larger model is on the drawing boards. In the meantime, an option for a Zome “connector,” which can join two units, will soon be available.
When asked just how unique Zomes really are, Bishay responds, “No one else is making polar zonohedron domes as far as we know, and there’s [only] one other company using magnesium phosphate cement for building.”
The model I’m standing in, Version 1.0, has since been improved upon in almost every way. Tunstall says its successor, Version 2.0, a much tighter iteration, will be available for preview at the company’s new “Dynamic” location on March 9. I’ve marked the date on my calendar.
Little House on the Trailer
Just up the road from the Zomes production plant, on Petaluma Boulevard North, sits another sign-of-the-times housing business, this one specializing in small homes of considerably more traditional design and construction. According to its website, “Little House on the Trailer (a partner company with Sonoma Manufactured Homes) builds Home Care Cottages and Small Homes up to 400 square feet. With a doctor’s note, they can be permitted much more easily than other Accessory Units. They are available as both HUD approved manufactured homes and RVIA certified Recreational Trailers.”
Larger than tiny homes, the wood-frame offerings are still unique due to their compact size. The company typically works with individual customers to design the small home—or ADU—they require.
The Little House on the Trailer business location is self-serve. Calling a phone number provides me with a key code that allows me access to the two on-site dwellings for self-tours, but the website also contains photos and a virtual tour and video of each of the nine models highlighted therein.
I am quite taken with the quaint-looking 393-square-foot “little house” on their lot. The wooden home can be towed to a more permanent location since it’s on wheels. Its economical rectangular blueprint includes a front deck, a small front room, a kitchen with an overhead loft, a bathroom and a bedroom, in that order. At $95,000, it seems reasonably priced given the current market.
Lloyd Kahn weighs in
No article on innovative architecture in the North Bay would be complete without input from Bolinas-based Lloyd Kahn, who first published the visually stunning book Shelter—an oversized compendium of organic, handbuilt architecture with over 1,000 photos—in 1973. Lloyd went on to publish numerous books on creative earth-conscious homes, construction and living—including Home Work: Handbuilt Shelter and Builders of the Pacific Coast—through his press, Shelter Publications, in the following decades.
“I don’t run across people building their own homes these days,” Lloyd says during our phone conversation. “Thirty people were building houses locally in the ’70s. No one’s doing that any more. Building codes are so expensive.”
When asked about his take on radical architectural trends in the brave year 2022, Lloyd offers cautionary advice to anyone contemplating building their own home: Stick with rectangles. “I want to get a house built and live in it and not spend an inordinate amount of time with a dome or a 7-sided house,” he says. “Stud frames are rectangular. Wood, brick, concrete blocks, these building materials are all rectangular. Any time you get away from a rectangle, you are costing yourself a lot more time and money.”
He does, however, add, “If you are a master builder, then you can build something that is very unusual.”
His advice is born from decades of personal experience researching and building experimental structures, including domes.
What he sees these days is many young people living on the road, often out of necessity due to high rent or untenable mortgage rates. Innovations in vehicle designs, such as Sprinter vans with their high ceilings, now allow a new generation of people to make their homes on wheels.
Fittingly, his next book, which is due for publication and release later this year, is titled Rolling Homes.
Ryan Dauss
Enter Ryan Dauss, 42, a West County contractor who recently handbuilt two “campers” that are eye-catching enough to merit mention.
Where shall I start? There’s “Betty,” the steampunk vardo with a vaguely nautical look, and there’s the “Transformer,” a copper-and-brass-sheathed camper shell on the back of his Toyota Tacoma with, again, a vaguely nautical look. Both campers have portholes and both are constructed from an array of salvaged and scavenged metals and woods, with meticulous attention to detail.
VARDO West County-builder Ryan Dauss handcrafted ‘Betty,’ this innovative and visually striking caravan, and the ‘Transformer,’ on the pickup truck in front of it, out of free and upcycled materials. Photo by Mark Fernquest.
While Betty is more of a tiny home on wheels—with a stove, sink, on-demand water heater, handmade composting toilet, indoor and outdoor showers, convertible dinette, master bed and tiny wood stove—the Transformer—with its interior colored lights, removable bed and faux-grass roof deck—makes the Toyota at once a stylish camper and a fully-functional work truck.
Both builds are works of such creative, one-off genius that I relish gawking at them as I pass them while running my daily errands to and from town.
CARAVAN CHIC Every aspect of Betty, inside and out, was designed and built with precise attention to function and detail. Photo by McKenzie Kimm Dauss.
Dauss “crash landed” in Sebastopol in 2010, while driving an—ahem!—RV from his hometown of South Bend, Ind., to Oregon. Soon thereafter he met the woman he’s now married to, McKenzie, a gourmet cook in her own right whose kitchen creations can be viewed via her Tik Tok handle @westcountygirl. The two have many stories to tell, and, with both builds nearing completion, I predict road trips in their near future.
For the last eight years, an inspiring art mural project created by Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity (AHO) has traveled throughout the Bay Area in schools, colleges, museums, businesses, organizations and faith communities.
Now that project finds a permanent home at College of Marin’s Kentfield campus. Created by the AHO’s Youth Leadership Team, the “Youth Homelessness to Hope Singing Tree” mural project features several large-scale panels representing a season, with the endangered oak tree serving as a metaphor for the kinds of crises facing the endangered youth that AHO serves.
Founded 18 years ago, AHO is an award-winning, nonprofit organization focused on serving non-system, at-risk, homeless, and sex-trafficked young people ranging in age from 16 to 25.
In 2012, AHO’s Youth Leadership Team engaged 30 schools and 1,200 other youth to create the murals with them to answer the driving question: What kind of world do youth want to live in? The murals include the themes of social justice, Black Lives Matter, climate change and also highlight visionaries the artists producing the murals felt embodied the values they want to see more of in the world.
With the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the art installation postponed its future touring schedule indefinitely. Ever resourceful, the AHO Youth Leadership Team decided it was time to find a permanent home for their project. The team selected College of Marin because of the alignment between the College’s values and AHO’s mission; both focusing on community partnerships, diversity, equity, inclusion and education.
“The Youth Team wanted to leave a legacy of AHO with COM as a permanent home for the murals because of our shared values,” AHO Founder and Executive Director Zara Babitzke, M.A., says in a statement. “AHO is transforming lives and building youth leaders and demonstrating the power of youth to transform their circumstances to become future leaders which is demonstrated in this mural project. College of Marin, named the number one community college in the state of California, like AHO, is also a life-changing institution.”
The Youth Homelessness to Hope Singing Tree murals are on display in the lower atrium of the College’s Academic Center at the Kentfield Campus.
“I am confident that our students will be inspired by the colorful, rich imagery reflected in the murals,” COM Superintendent/President Dr. David Wain Coon says in a statement. “College of Marin values its long-standing partnership with Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity and applauds its work on behalf of homeless teens and young adults.”
College of Marin’s Kentfield campus is located at 835 College Avenue, Kentfield. Find out more about Ambassadors of Hope and Opportunity at ahoproject.org.
Marin residents awoke to discover antisemitic flyers on their lawns, driveways and streets last week. Now, local law enforcement is struggling to determine whether any crimes have been committed.
The leaflets were distributed in Tiburon, Novato and Marin City under the cover of darkness in the early morning hours on Sunday, Feb. 20. The hate-filled materials were folded into clear plastic bags with rice, presumably added to prevent the packets from blowing away. Napa and other cities across the Bay Area and Southern California received similar flyers, making California one of at least eight states targeted within the last three months.
The propaganda blamed Jewish people for “the Covid agenda.” Some Marin neighborhoods received a second page, which stated, “Every single aspect of the Biden administration is Jewish.” Both flyers contained the website address of a small hate group based in Petaluma.
The Anti-Defamation League, a worldwide organization that fights antisemitism and discrimination, says the group behind the flyers is a loose network of individuals. While primarily directing its vitriol towards Jewish people, the group has also focused on the LGBTQ+ community and others.
“This stunt is the cowardly work of a group espousing white supremacist themes and Holocaust denial,” Teresa Drenick, the ADL deputy regional director of the Central Pacific Region, said. “It’s a fringe group with the aim to intimidate and sow fear in the Jewish community.”
The group’s leader, a failed actor and writer who lives in Petaluma, co-founded an antisemitic website that allows users to upload vile videos. His girlfriend was recently fired from her job as a yoga instructor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Tuesday, because the yoga studio owner said the woman seems to share the beliefs of her boyfriend and “assisted him in his business of hate.” The woman has denied sharing his ideology and said the couple has sought legal advice.
Hate speech is protected under the First Amendment, provided it does not incite criminal acts or contain violent threats. “Hate itself is not a crime,” according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
However, hate crimes, which have been on the rise over the last 12 years, are not protected. More than 8,200 hate crimes were reported to the FBI in 2020, although the agency said experts estimate the number is higher because data submission by local law enforcement is voluntary. The FBI defines a hate crime as a bias-motivated offense against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity.
In 2020, the ADL received more than 2,000 reports of antisemitic incidents throughout the United States, which ranks as the third-highest year on record since the organization began compiling the data in 1979.
The Petaluma-based hate group that disseminated the flyers around the country was responsible for at least 74 antisemitic propaganda incidents in 2021, according to the ADL. Stunts and schemes by the group, including hanging antisemitic banners from overpasses on busy freeways, are designed to draw attention.
“This group craves publicity,” Drenick said. “They have not, to our knowledge, resorted to violence.”
In Tiburon, 90 residents called police to report finding a plastic bag with an antisemitic flyer in their yard or driveway on Feb. 20. Rather than targeting specific addresses, the materials were randomly distributed at homes on Stewart Drive and Paradise Drive.
A resident who received the flyer has a camera pointed toward the street and captured video footage of a vehicle passing by during the 3am hour. Although the license plate cannot be seen, Tiburon police believe the antisemitic handbills were tossed from that car. With the time frame narrowed, license plate-reading cameras mounted at the town’s entry and exit points may assist police in identifying the suspect, especially with the light traffic early on a Sunday morning.
“We have some good possible leads here,” Laurie Nilsen, Tiburon police spokesperson, said. “Numerous officers are working on this around the clock. We’re investigating to see what crime may have occurred and talking to the district attorney’s office to see what, if any charges, could be filed. It’s tough. Where does freedom of speech end and a hate crime begin?”
In Novato, the leaflet distribution occurred in the unincorporated Wildhorse Valley neighborhood. The Marin County Sheriff’s Office is still investigating the incident, according to spokesperson Sgt. Brenton Schneider.
A Marin City resident posted on Nextdoor that he found his street littered with the plastic bags and antisemitic materials when he went outside on Feb. 20. The Sheriff’s Office has not received reports of the flyer drop in Marin City and encourages anyone with information to contact them.
A joint statement issued by the Marin County Police Chiefs’ Association and Marin County District Attorney’s Office on Feb. 24 said they are tracking the incidents. Unfortunately, Marin District Attorney Lori Frugoli doesn’t appear optimistic about filing charges against the people responsible for dispersing the propaganda on private and public property in Marin.
“This is infuriating and repugnant, and we reject this hateful behavior,” Frugoli said in the statement. “Such as they are, the messages in these flyers were intentionally designed and distributed in a manner that is protected as free speech under the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The hate group’s organizer is counting on Frugoli’s legal interpretation. He recently sent a message to followers that he is proud their flyer distribution was “completely SAFE & LEGAL,” according to J., the Jewish News of Northern California.
Marin’s Jewish community has been working with the district attorney and local law enforcement to ensure that they are aware of and take all reports of antisemitism seriously, according to Rabbi-Cantor Elana Rosen-Brown, of Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael.
Antisemitic incidents in the county have become all too frequent, with the ADL recording several in Marin on an annual basis. In addition to the flyers delivered to homes last week, other Marin cases have been covered by the media during the last 18 months.
A Nazi supporter slapped swastika stickers on property in downtown Fairfax. Jewish students at Redwood High School in Larkspur were threatened on social media by a person displaying a photo of a young male holding a bullet and wearing a helmet with a swastika.
Rosen-Brown said many people and organizations in Marin have joined the Jewish community to bring attention, awareness and education to the issue of antisemitism. They are committed to showing up for one another whenever instances of hate speech and hate crime occur.
“To be Jewish, sadly, has always meant to grapple with the understanding that there are people in the world who hate you,” Rosen-Brown said. “We internalize this in different ways. For me, I love Judaism, and encounters with hatred only enhance my love of Judaism and being Jewish.”
Reporter’s Note: After much debate, the Pacific Sun deliberately omitted the names of the antisemitic group and its leader. It is my belief that when the media identifies them, it helps fuel their mission by providing the publicity they desperately desire. As a Jewish person, I am opposed to leading lost souls to the doorsteps of hate.
Since the late ’80s, San Rafael’s Bedrock Music and Video is very likely the place where a generation of Marinites bought their first CDs, rented their “Thursday Rental Specials” and otherwise browsed away an afternoon on the Miracle Mile before decamping to Caffé Nuvo. And now it’s closing for good.
It’s another end to an era that already ended a long time ago before entertainment companies began chanting “merrily, merrily, merrily, film is but a stream.” To those last video-rental stores that dot the nation like a fading constellation of supernovas, it’s not “Neflix and chill” so much as “Netflix and kill.”
Streaming killed the video store
SALE Everything at Bedrock Music and Video is deeply discounted through its last days in March. Photo by Lukas Hess.
Streaming has long been the obvious nail in the coffin for video stores, and what stores remain have become mausoleums for the dead medium known as the Digital Video Disc. Which is a shame for a variety of reasons. Back in the ’80s when I was an aspiring auteur—seeing is believing: rent Pill Head, my 2019 paean to arty cinema, on Amazon—repertory houses like Petaluma’s erstwhile Plaza Theater were the only way to steep in the films of French New Wave, American indies and forgotten and/or forbidden classics. When those dimmed their lights for the last time it was up to video stores to fill the void, which they did with aplomb, especially during the “Golden Age” of DVDs, when outfits like the Criterion Collection began curating art house-worthy collections of must-see flicks. These films were often accompanied by “extras,” like directors’ commentaries and “making of” documentaries, that were tantamount to master classes in the art of cinema. For some of us, video stores were film school.
Bedrock of Ages
This is not a history of the store. I wasn’t even a customer until recently, and even then it was as an admitted culture vulture taking rueful pecks at the unicorn as it lay dying. Yes, I scavenged its treasures, but out of respect for the movies, the medium and the doleful merchant behind the counter.
According to the store’s website, founder Barry Baum launched Bedrock in 1988 as a rebuttal to the big-box chain stores of the era. By the ’90s, it had reached what we might call High Fidelity status, meaning that it became a haven for discerning music consumers, a la the store featured in Nick Hornby’s novel and the Stephen Frears film of the same name.
Unfortunately, Baum died of cancer in 1996, at which point his wife, Patti Baum, took the reins of the store and expanded the offerings to include in-store events. Nine years later, Marin County non-profit Four Winds West, a transitional program for at-risk young adults, took on the store as a means of “providing vocational training and experience as a bridge to employment in the community at large.” The organization shuttered two years ago, but the store persisted—until now.
At the behest of a kind employee, I was pointed in the direction of the store’s founder, or at least one of their survivors, to get a more comprehensive history from someone who might count as a primary source, but an email went unanswered. Suffice it to say, I gleaned a few facts visiting the store on multiple occasions such as A) Everything is on sale, often with huge discounts and B) the store will likely close permanently sometime in March 2022. All in, that means Bedrock lasted approximately 34 years—a feat for any small business, let alone one transacting physical media in a digital world.
Running a video store is difficult. I did it once, as a performance-art piece with my partner, conceptual artist Kary Hess. We recreated a video store in an apartment stairwell for a single evening—Arts Editor Charlie Swanson even wrote about it.
NOUVELLE VAGUE Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave breakthrough, ‘Breathless,’ once a 5-day rental—now mine. Photo by Daedalus Howell.
I was with Kary when I finally discovered Bedrock. We randomly visited it while trying to fill a recent Marin afternoon. Naturally, we gravitated towards the artier section of the store. There were the usual suspects—including the aforementioned French New Wave. I was acquainted with most of the auteurs through college classes that fixated on Francoise Truffaut and especially Jean-Luc Godard and their evolutionary jump from penning screeds at Cahiers Du Cinema to Jules and Jim and Breathless, respectively. Somehow, the film classes I took in the ’90s omitted Agnés Varda and her seminal works, Cleo 5 to 7 and her first film—which predates her male cohort’s efforts by six years—La Pointe Courte, which I had never seen. But there it was, nestled on the Criterion Collection rack at Bedrock.
We bought the DVD for two bucks, even though at that moment we didn’t own a DVD player. Why would we? The aughts-era promise of “convergence” happened nearly a decade ago. Now we subscribe to a half-dozen streaming services, from the obligatory Netflix and Disney+ to specialty streamers such as Shudder and an ever-rotating ensemble of week-long “Free Trials.” Yet, I bought a new DVD player via Amazon Prime which, ironically, is also where I often stream shows.
The most compelling argument for the conservation of DVDs is the fact that the versions of some films available solely via streaming are not their best versions. Case in point, Amadeus, Milos Forman’s masterpiece about the one-sided rivalry between Salieri and Mozart. The only version available to stream is the “Director’s Cut,” which, bless Forman’s dearly departed soul, is larded with useless scenes that bloat the film and cloud the narrative tension of the original theatrical release. Fortunately, that cut is available on DVD—a copy of which I seized upon at Bedrock and gladly paid two bucks to own. This isn’t the only film that didn’t leap the digital divide in its best form—in fact, some films failed to make the leap at all. Alan Rudolph’s tale of an expat American in 1920s Paris, The Moderns, for example, can’t be streamed anywhere. I now own it on disc.
Zombie media
I have a theory that media that is round and disk-shaped will always return. It’s primary shape, a circle, speaks to the cyclical nature of tastes and life in general. To alien eyes, stores like Bedrock might appear to peddle mere circles contained in squares. To weirdos like me, they are a reminder of Nietzsche’s adage, “Time is a flat circle.”
Those who don’t believe me or Friedrich might pause to consider that analog media, like vinyl records and even VHS tapes, are having a moment again. I suppose this technically makes formerly dead media “zombie media.” Digital content stored on physical media like CDs and DVDs, however, have yet to become fetish objects. One reason could be the alleged erosion of their data after a decade or so. Also, they’re too young a medium, relatively speaking, to inspire the nostalgic cache that, say, casettes tapes have recently acquired. CDs and DVDs are essentially twins and, thanks to the overly aggressive marketing efforts of AOL in the ’90s, their ubiquity made them as disposable as the very drink coasters they often became.
Also, at least with CDs, there is the sound-quality debate. Speaking of which, to anyone who ever wants to put me to sleep, just explain digital sampling rates versus unconsciously “felt” frequencies to me. None of this is relevant when it comes to DVDs, however, not least of which because the picture quality—especially for Blu Rays—is allegedly superior, or at least comparable, to streaming services.
All of this is moot to me. My TV is 4K, but my eyesight is less than “standard definition.” I can’t read the American Graffiti DVD box I just bought from Bedrock without squinting and holding it at arm’s length—and that’s with glasses on. Will that diminish my enjoyment of the movie? No. Do I know that parts of the film were shot in San Rafael, literally blocks from Bedrock Music and Video? Yes. Time is a flat circle. So are the Star Wars Blu Rays whose “extras” discs were lost a long time ago in a video store far, far away.
Interestingly, George Lucas once opined to this very newspaper that “People are learning their mythology from TV, which makes them very confused because it has no point of view, no sense of morality.” And all these years later, I’m loading one of his myths into an antiquated technology, like Princess Leia inserting the plans to the Death Star into R2-D2, so I can watch it on my TV.
After an extended look at the character arc of Luke Skywalker, we cap off our New Year’s series on rebirth by examining a female character introduced at the same time: Sandy from Grease, played by Olivia Newton-John.
No, I’m not kidding in juxtaposing the hero’s mythology of Star Wars with the pastiche that is Grease, which was made in 1978 and set in 1958. I saw both films as a kid, and they’re bound together in my personal reality forever, since here I am years later writing about them.
Before we get to “lousy with virginity” Sandy and her transformation into spandex and leather, let’s look at another character who dances her way from light to dark: Nina in Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, the 2010 psycholgical thriller set in the world of ballet.
Nina is a perfectionist ballerina who is cast, with reservations, as the lead in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, in which she must portray the dual role of the Swan Queen and its dark twin. The Mephistopheles-like artistic director—who seeks to unleash Nina’s seductive shadow—tells her, “The only person standing in your way is you. It’s time to let her go. Lose yourself.”
Nina does, but losing her carefully guarded ego results in destruction rather than deification, as she is unable to withstand the encounter with her shadow. The needed “ego death” of her immature personality in order to grow into wholeness is literalized, resulting in a tragic plunge into the hell-pit of perfectionism.
Sandy, in contrast, is also a shy girl on the brink of womanhood who believes she doesn’t have a shadow. But her romance with Danny brings out in her an added and unexpected depth as she absorbs his influence, just as he absorbs hers. And just look at the difference between the fates of the two women: the Swan Queen dives to her death, while Sandy sails up to heaven in a candy-apple hot rod. For Nina, the ego’s confrontation with its shadow brings dissolution by falling; for Sandy, it brings a happily-ever-after ending by rising.
This distinction is crucial in the spiritual journey: the ego must transcend itself by rising to a higher state in clarity and equilibrium, not by descending into a hallucinogenic underworld ruled by the demonic forces—such as greed, ambition or self-harming perfectionism—that fester there. Life, after all, is not a game of perfect.
Let us not mince words: there is a war for every soul between these two orientations—upward transcendence and down—waged every day in life. We must each set our course, and tread valiantly.
North Bay playwright and former Bohemian and Pacific Sun contributor David Templeton has been named as one of five finalists for the 2022 Harold and Mimi Steinberg/American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA) New Play Award and Citations. The award and citations recognize the playwrights of the best scripts that premiered professionally outside of New York City in 2021.
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Since the late ’80s, San Rafael's Bedrock Music and Video is very likely the place where a generation of Marinites bought their first CDs, rented their “Thursday Rental Specials” and otherwise browsed away an afternoon on the Miracle Mile before decamping to Caffé Nuvo. And now it’s closing for good.
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After an extended look at the character arc of Luke Skywalker, we cap off our New Year’s series on rebirth by examining a female character introduced at the same time: Sandy from Grease, played by Olivia Newton-John.
No, I’m not kidding in juxtaposing the hero’s mythology of Star Wars with the pastiche that is Grease, which was made in 1978...
