Updated adaptations of plays by long-dead famous authors are risky. Here are a couple of current examples that illustrate the pitfalls.
‘A Cajun Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Novato Theater Company)
Shakespeare’s tale of a pair of young couples who escape arranged marriages by running off to a nearby forest inhabited by mischievous fairies on a warm midsummer night has delighted audiences for centuries. It combines romance, sly observations about human nature, and fantasy in an irresistible package. Yet, delightful as they are, these contents are fragile. Except for the tradesmen’s scenes, the humor is subtle—more whimsy than broad comedy. Actors should be cast who are comfortable with Shakespearean speech and who have a reasonable resemblance to the characters they inhabit. The visual staging should capture the magic of nature under the soft light of a full moon. And, above all, it must have a light directorial touch.
Unfortunately, NTC’s new version doesn’t meet any of these requirements. With the script cut to a mere skeleton to accommodate time devoted to music, dance and general horsing around, there aren’t many clues about what is happening, let alone its subtleties. To make matters worse, with the exception of Laine Flores (Helena), Arden Kilzer (Hermia), Mark Ian Schwartz (Lysander) and a few others, many of the performers have problems with diction, and/or getting the rhythms (and their characters) right. This applies, for example, to scenes that feature Shakespeare’s clownish country folk—the so-called “rude mechanicals”—in which the inclusion of females undermines the enjoyment of watching a bunch of bumbling, uncultured guys trying to rehearse a wedding performance of Pyramus and Thisbe.
Director Clay David, whose adaptation this is, apparently thought a viney Louisiana bayou setting, some pseudo-Cajun accents, a couple of unrelated country western songs, a few dance steps, some raucous physicality, a dash of Zydeco, a pinch of voodoo and a closing shout of “Laissez les bon temps rouler!” would provide a refreshing change from the original. It might work for some. Not for me.
‘Little Erik’ (Aurora Theatre Company)
Mark Jackson, known in Bay Area theater circles for imaginative directing and adaptations, focuses on Henrik Ibsen’s Little Eyolf for the world premiere of his updated version. First produced in 1895, this late career work of the celebrated playwright caused something of a stir because of its graphic depiction of female sexuality and the introduction of a deus ex machina in the form of a mysterious character called the Rat Woman, who
Aurora Theatre Company’s ‘Little Erik’ is set in a contemporary Northern California coastal vacation house. Photo courtesy of Aurora Theatre Company.
had the power to lure those cute furry mammals (and unspecified others) to their deaths. Not everyone back then was impressed. William Heinemann, the London Times theater critic, reflected the consensus when he wrote that he couldn’t make out what Ibsen was trying to say because it was hidden in “a dreary desert of childish and pointless dialogue.” Given such a cool reception and the play’s brief running time (more like a long one-act than a full-length), it should not surprise anyone that Little Eyolf remains among the least produced works in its Norwegian author’s extensive canon.
In a program note and in recent media interviews, Jackson reveals that he was drawn to the project because Ibsen raises important issues, especially shifting gender roles, that still resonate today. Instead of a getaway on a Norwegian fjord in the 1890s, his setting is a contemporary Northern California coastal vacation house inhabited by Joie, a rich female CEO from the tech world (Marilee Talkington), her failed novelist husband Freddie (Joe Estlack), their crippled son Erik (Jack Wittmayer) and Freddie’s half-sister Andi (Mariah Castle). Bernie (Greg Ayers), the house’s architect who is romantically drawn to Andi, comes for a visit and—oh, yes—there are three brief but telling appearances by the ominous Rat Wife (Wilma Bonet).
Although adjusted for the 21st century, Jackson’s adaptation more or less tracks Ibsen’s original scenario and dialogue. The problem is that while the main issues remain unresolved, much of the melodramatic hyperbole now seem laughable. And that ending scene? Oh, my!
NOW PLAYING: A Cajun Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through February 21 at the Novato Theater Company, 5420 Nave Dr., Novato; 415/883-4498; novatotheatercompany.org. Little Erik runs through February 28 at the Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison, St., Berkeley; 510/843-4822; auroratheatre.org.
“What I want audiences to take away from The Danish Girl is the fact that this, above all else, was a great love story.”
The remarkably soft-spoken Tom Hooper, British director of numerous award-winning movies including Les Miserables and The King’s Speech, is addressing a roomful of reporters and photographers on the opening night of the Mill Valley Film Festival, where last October, his acclaimed film The Danish Girl screened to dazzled crowds.
Shortly before the screening, one of the first questions that Hooper receives is, to paraphrase it for brevity’s sake, why—of all possible subjects—did he choose to make a movie about Lili Elbe (born Einar Wegener), who, in 1930, was among the very first people to undergo transgender surgery?
The film, loosely based on Wegener’s life, is nominated for numerous Oscar awards, including Best Actor for Eddie Redmayne, who plays Wegener before and after her transformation, and Best Supporting Actress for Alicia Vikander, who plays Wegener’s artist wife Gerda Wegener.
“One of the reasons I wanted to do this,” Hooper says, so softly that reporters lean forward to hear him better, “was because the script captured the love story between these two people so well. It examines that very broad theme of what happens, in a marriage, when one of the partners changes. How do you manage that change? In a way, in this story, Lili’s change is partly made possible by the incredible, unconditional love that Gerda has for Lili. To me, it’s a celebration of how people can find their true selves when they are truly loved and truly seen for who they are.”
The film, while warmly received by critics, has been called out for the changes it makes to Wegener’s story, which did not have quite the same happy ending as in the film. Others have called into question Hooper’s decision to cast Redmayne—a “cisgengered” actor, defined as someone who identifies with their biological sex—when there might have been a historical opportunity to cast a real transgendered actress. Asked if he believes that there will come a time when trans actors will be playing trans roles more often, Hooper nods enthusiastically.
“Yes I do,” he says. “I believe transgendered actors should have access to both cisgendered roles and transgendered roles, and I also feel that goes both ways. The industry, both here in America and in the U.K., still has a long way to go to provide those opportunities, but I do think we are moving in that direction.”
Hooper admits that, while the casting of Redmayne had something to do with the star’s enormous popularity with audiences—and his having won an Oscar last year for his role as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything—there was another reason that he was eager to cast the appealingly chameleon-like actor.
“There’s just something in Eddie that he’s been working with for a long time, something that suggested he could do this,” Hooper says. “He’s played a number of ‘girl roles’ over the years. There was a famous production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night in 2002, directed by Mark Rylance, in which he played Viola, a woman who disguises herself as a man and then falls in love with her employer. So here was Eddie, a cisgendered man playing a cisgendered woman who pretends to be a cisgendered man, and he was brilliant. So we knew he could do it.”
Hooper adds that, since Lili initially appears as a man, and transitions rather late in the film, there were strategic reasons to cast a man in the role.
“For the majority of the movie, two thirds of it, Lili is pre-transition,” Hooper points out. “And using Eddie allowed us to do that first part of the film without a lot of complication and difficulty. In terms of Eddie’s transformation as an actor, during the making of the film, I think the most exciting thing was watching Eddie coming to grips with the idea that this wasn’t about imitating a woman, or learning to speak or behave and look like a woman, but to learn how to find and reveal his own latent femininity. For Eddie, it was ultimately more about revelation than transformation, which was a thought that became a kind of guiding principle for him throughout the making of the film.
“I think what’s interesting, as a theme in the film,” he goes on, “is the extent to which ideas of gender are often constructed for us, and even used against us, as a sort of act of power. For centuries, the female gender has been defined by men, men who wanted women to fit a very defined and specific role. In the 20th century, thank God, we began to see this incredible revolution, where that definition was finally beginning to be challenged.”
Hooper’s voice grows gradually louder—if never exactly loud—as he becomes more engaged in his answers. Asked what he hopes will be the legacy of Lili’s story—and The Danish Girl itself—he smiles and holds out his arms, as if to embrace whatever it is that is coming. “I think this story will open up a lot of important conversations about how gender is experienced, and how it’s constructed,” he says. “That’s a fundamental piece of being human, wanting to be seen as our true selves, as the person we know ourselves to be.
“Even now, sitting here, I’m doing it,” he says with a laugh. “I’m trying very hard to be seen, by all of you, as myself, and I’m not sure how well I’m accomplishing that, to tell the truth. We all feel, sometimes, that there’s a version of ourselves that is true, that’s who we are, and then there’s a version that’s who people see us to be—and that might not be quite so true. And then there’s this other person, who is the person we become when we engage in this ‘performance’ that is trying to be seen for who we are.
“A lot of us have blocks—shyness, insecurity, depression, addiction—that get in the way of showing our true selves,” Hooper concludes, rising to leave for the screening of the film. “I hope all of my films have the effect of making people think about the blocks we put in front of other people, and especially those we put in front of ourselves.”
About one-third of the earth’s greenhouse gas pollution can be linked to food, its production, processing, packaging, transport, storage and preparation.
As climate change becomes a mainstream concern, and people keep obsessing about food, it seems inevitable that a new flavor of diner would emerge, the name of which made the New York Times list of top new food words: “Climatarian.”
A climatarian is one whose diet choices are designed to help reverse climate change. This includes eating locally produced food (to reduce energy spent in transportation), choosing pork and poultry instead of beef and lamb (to limit gas emissions) and using every part of ingredients (apple cores, cheese rinds, etc.) to limit food waste.
Climatarians look at their food choices with a sense of duty similar to what many put toward recycling or riding a bike to work. While a low-carbon meal isn’t any more of a silver bullet against global warming than a recycled can, the power of many people beating a similar drum can have a big impact.
To be a smart climate player at the dining table, you need to know how and where something was produced. According to the food carbon emissions calculator CleanMetrics, a pound of “ration-fed beef”—that is, factory-farmed beef—is responsible for eight kilograms (kg) of carbon in the atmosphere, largely in the form of methane. This is an astounding amount when multiplied by the billions of pounds of beef consumed around the world. And in the case of beef, it doesn’t much matter where it was produced. The transport-related emissions for that pound of beef, if it were shipped 1,000 miles, would only be 0.07 kg of carbon.
Grass-fed beef emits a bit less, according to the calculator, releasing 7.58 kilos of carbon for every pound eaten (with the same transport emissions). This is less atmospheric carbon than factory-farmed beef creates but is still an astronomical, unsustainable amount. A pound of lentils, by comparison, releases 0.24 kg, while a pound of chicken releases 1.5 kg of carbon dioxide. Properly grazed ungulates like cattle can actually help the earth sequester carbon dioxide, as their manure encourages plant growth which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Still, it’s safe to assume the worst when buying beef of unknown provenance. Unfortunately for cheese and butter lovers, the condensed secretions of bovine mammary glands that they so cherish are responsible for a lot of carbon pollution.
While some have the fortune to obsess over their artisan, carbon-friendly lifestyles, the fact remains that most food is purchased at a supermarket or restaurant. So until climatarians can scan labels with their smartphones and keep track of personal carbon use, they will have to do it the old-fashioned way: With their brains, by digging for clues and stringing them together. But let’s face it: Since climatarianism is a bit of a nerdy pursuit, they should be OK with that.
It’s day six after opening and a gangly boy tiptoes through the door of The Forge Tattoo, Fairfax’s first-ever tattoo shop, with his passport in hand. “Hi, I’m 18—I swear,” he offers up, as if he’s about to be interrogated.
Sitting across the unfurnished shopand with one eyebrow raised, Josh Burks, The Forge’s tattooing apprentice, asks the barely legal adult if he’s interested in getting some work done.
“Yeah—my friend in Nashville, he got his knuckles done,” the boy explains. “They look really cool. I want to get mine, too.”
Sanitizing his tattooing station in the rear, shop co-founder Adam Roach interjects, “Do you have any other tattoos?”
“Uh, I’ve looked into it,” the boy begins to say before trailing off.
“If you don’t have full sleeves, we won’t tattoo your hands,” Roach says. “If you have full sleeves, you understand the social implications of what it’s like to live with tattoos.”
The boy manages to stutter out a few more questions before coming to terms with the fact that he just received a resounding, “No, we won’t tattoo your knuckles.”
“Well, that’s officially our first one,” Burks says with a laugh, “the first business we turned away.”
“His mom is so happy right now, and she doesn’t even know why,” Roach chimes in.
Open for Business
It’s because of four Fairfax residents—Adam Roach (41), Nate Gonzalez (41), Marcelo Díaz Sepúlveda (37) and Josh Burks (26)—that the little enclave at the base of Mt. Tam, known for its rich, eclectic history, finally received the final piece to its artistic, yet distinctive puzzle: A tattoo shop.
The shop remained a daydream until August of2013, when Gonzalez called Roach to float the idea of opening a shop in the Fairfax area. The two launched a respectful partnership—as artists and colleagues.
They began to look for locations, preferably in the town of Fairfax—although they did try San Anselmo and received a speedy, “No.” It took about a year to find the ideal spot—located on the main drag of Sir Francis Drake, in a building that formerly housed Purple Haze Smoke Shop and Fat Kat Surf Shop.
Despite its close location to San Francisco, a city that has more than 50 tattoo shops, Marin’s tattoo scene has managed to remain rather modest. With the addition of The Forge, there are now three tattoo destinations in the county. The two other shops, Spider Murphy’s and Lucky Drive, are both in San Rafael.
“I feel really close to this community,” says Roach, who has been tattooing for 24 years and living in Fairfax since 2009, about why Fairfax felt like the right place to open up shop. “It’s a very special place—it’s got its own identity and I felt that the shop would fit right in.”
The building lends itself to one of The Forge’s goals: To remain completely transparent. Enter the building, sandwiched between Quality Liquors and Barefoot Café, and two pillars—each adorned with an electric guitar made by a Fairfax resident—support the foundation for a wide-open space. No cubicles or pony rails to
The Forge Tattoo: Open for business at 1906 Sir Francis Drake Boulevard in downtown Fairfax. Photo by Molly Oleson.
be seen; just four tattooing stations surrounded by a collection of artwork—from old film noir movie posters to black and white photos of family members to paintings by local artists—that fills the walls from ground to ceiling. Near one of the front windows, a chess set made up of pieces from 12-gauge shotgun shells is displayed on a wooden table with assorted magazines and artist books.
“That was absolutely intentional,” Roach says of the openness of the space. “The energy that we wanted in here was us being able to talk to one another, bounce ideas off one another, and to let our clients enjoy themselves. It all goes into the tattoo; the whole experience goes right into it.”
Discussions with the landlord, the city of Fairfax, the Health Department, a petition and a Kickstarter campaign brought the daydream to fruition.
The only problem, after finding the storefront in August of 2015, was that there was another tattoo artist from the East Bay interested in opening a shop in the same space. “We went around town and grabbed over 400 signatures from town residents in a two-day time period,” says Burks, who also bartends at Peri’s Bar across the street from the shop, “to show that we had town support and that we are locals.”
The petition was a winning factor for their landlord, Majid Mahani—eager to help locals who were already so deeply intertwined and involved in the Fairfax community.
“We got a great amount of support from our landlord, who is an amazing guy;we really got extremely lucky with him, and also the city,” Roach adds. “They thought it was a good thing for this town to keep it sort of Fairfax-y, kind of funky.”
The group started to throw around ideas for a name. They settled on The Forge, a play on how tattoo artists refer to their machines as their “iron.” The shop has an anvil logo emphasizing this.
After securing the location to rent, they attended city council meetings to apply for a permit to operate, and they were met with little resistance.
“Fairfax embraces artists from all walks of life and these guys are artists,” says Fairfax Planning Division Principal PlannerLinda Neal, who was instrumental in the approval process and has been with the Town of Fairfax for29 years. “The more [artists] in town, the better the artistic fabric and diversity of Fairfax. They had great energy and were willing to complete their application as directed without arguing about whether the requirements were onerous or unfair.”
After receiving the OK from the town of Fairfax, the gaggle of guys still had another hurdle to face: Funds.
“When Nate had $16 in his account and I had $7,” Roach says with a laugh, “that was the day we realized we might need to go to Kickstarter for some help.”
The group launched the campaign in November of 2015, and set a goal of $10,000. The process of raising money came fullyloaded with anxiety—Kickstarter mandates that if the project does not meet the full goal, it won’t receive any funds. The campaign stayed stagnant for a few weeks, hovering around $3,500. With eight hours left on the night before the campaign was set to expire, they finally exceeded their goal—ending at $10,500.
“It was the biggest sense of relief,” Gonzalez says of finding that they had exceeded their Kickstarter goal. “We were so thankful—full of gratitude, and grateful for the town support.”
The Artistic Four
Opening a tattoo shop had been a dream for Roach since his sister showed him a little skeleton on her ribs. “[She] came home with a tattoo when I was 15, and that was it,” he says. Calling Central California home, he found his first job at Gold Coast Tattoo in Montereywhen he was 18. “I learned from Steve Hendricks—this guy is an old salty dog,” he says with a laugh, of his mentor. “He has the kind of classic, old-school teaching method—tried and true.”
Fort Ord, an old military base on the Monterey Bay, proved to be an ideal spot to begin the trade. “We would lock ’em in at midnight and tattoo them through the night,” Roach says. “We would do common military designs, but we would have lines out the door—it was a perfect environment to grow up tattooing.”
Roach’s tattooing took him all over the world—first to Madrid, Spain, where he spent three-and-a-half years tattooing, to San Francisco, then through Southeast Asia, Singapore, and eventually back to Spain—in Barcelona—this time, for a seven-year stint. “I decided to come back to the States because I missed it, and it felt exciting,” he says. “The States actually felt foreign.”
Traveling through half of the world’s continents allowed Roach to “bring in influences from all types of tattooing,” he says. “I like to be able to bounce in between different styles and genres of tattooing.” He calls traveling a “great enabler” and “mind-opening.”
It was his nine-month pit stop in San Francisco that led Roach tofellow traveler and future co-founder, Nate Gonzalez, in 1998, while working at tattoo shops in the Lower Haight and Richmond districts. They played in a band together, and fantasized about one day opening up a tattoo shop.
Gonzalez, a self-described “free spirit,” went from a one-year stay in San Francisco to living in the jungles of Ecuador—where he also tattooed, to becoming a recent Fairfax resident. “I moved here to build this shop,”
Marcelo Diaz Sepulveda tattoos a client at The Forge Tattoo. Photo by Molly Oleson.
says Gonzalez, who has now been tattooing for 20 years. “Believe it or not, the jungle grew old. There wasn’t enough to keep me there at this age—I’m not ready to slow down that much,” he adds with a laugh.
From age 16 to 31, Gonzalez moved at least once every year;he’s looking forward to settling down, especially in a town like Fairfax. “Everybody is so nice,” he says. “I love the area completely—I love how close we are to the woods, how healthy it is, and I can’t believe how friendly everyone is here. It blows my mind.”
Gonzalez has done his fair share of traveling, too—from bouncing around the U.S. (he held tattooing apprenticeships throughout California and in Hawaii)—to visitingEurope, Thailand and New Zealand.
“There are so many different styles,” he says, noting Thailand’s bamboo tattooing and the intricate design work of New Zealand’s Maori culture. “There’s always something to learn, especially in Thailand. I mean, my god, there’s so much ornamentation in the country it’s unreal.”
It’s the traveling and old school set of ethos that sets The Forge apart, Gonzalez says. Traditional values of the trade—including lengthy and detailed apprenticeships that teach prospects everything from needle-building to the difference between drawing a picture and drawing a tattoo, which requires specific angle and line work that translate to a curved surface on someone’s body—have been abandoned as the industry continues to grow. Respecting trade secrets and other shops’ territories have also been thrown to the wayside since reality TV shows like TLC’s Miami Ink, which follows Kat Von D and a cohort of tattoo artists based in Miami, hit the airwaves, bringing the once-stigmatized art form to the forefront of the social consciousness.
“F*** man, it completely changed the scene,” Gonzalez says of shows like Miami Ink. “There were shops popping up everywhere. Everyone was giving out information—the integrity of tattooing disappeared.
“Even though we’ve just opened our shop, we’ve been in the game so long,” he continues. “We could say that we are from the old school—I think our generation was the last to adhere to the old-school approach and ethics, and after us, shows [like Miami Ink] hit and at the turn of the century [tattooing] just blew up.”
Forge tattoo artist Marcelo Díaz Sepúlvedalearned the old-school trade nearly 2,000 miles to the south, in Jalisco, Mexico.
“I want the client to feel comfortable—to feel welcomed,” he says, which is part of his personal ethos. “That’s why we have an open floor [in the shop]. We want them to be able to see it from the beginning—their drawing, the setup and the breakdown. We want to be transparent.”
Transparency, you could say, is what led Chilean-born Díaz Sepúlveda to tattooing in the first place. A journalist trained at Universidad del Desarrollo, a university in Chile, Díaz Sepúlveda was writing a story aboutan up-and-coming tattoo shop in Jalisco, Mexico. Long conversations with members of the shop sparked an interest in tattooing, he says.
“Just like you right now,” he says smiling, pointing at me. “I got along with the guy super well, and I already had tattoos. We started hanging out and they saw my drawings and, long story short, he taught me. I started tattooing in Mexico—that was more than 18 years ago now.”
It’s been 14 years since he’s lived in the Fairfax area, where he met Roach, down at the Gestalt House.
“We had a mutual friend from Spain,” Díaz Sepúlveda says. “We got along really well and we both speak Spanish.” Another cornerstone that sets the shop apart, he says, is their bilingualism.
“Half of my clients are Latino, and we need to treat them well because they really love tattoos,” he says, jokingly. “You know some people go to other shops and they get put aside because they can’t explain their ideas, but we strive to be on the same level with everybody. That’s the cool thing about being bilingual.”
Shared interests, travels and culture sparked a friendship and Roach and Díaz Sepúlveda went on to tattoo together at the Blue Lotus, a former tattoo shop in San Rafael, before the owner decided to move the business to Petaluma and focus on piercings only. They had rooms next door to one another and were “always yelling back and forth trying to communicate while tattooing,” Díaz Sepúlveda says.
It was also Roach’s first tattooing job in Marin, which he acquired rather painlessly after the owner spotted the mural of an octopus he painted that adorns the inside wall of Sushi to Dai For in San Rafael. As fate
Adam Roach tattoos a man’s arm at The Forge Tattoo. Photo by Molly Oleson.
would have it, the Blue Lotus laid some serious groundwork for The Forge’s future—it’s also where Roachmet Burks.
“I fell in love with Adam’s style of tattooing—it has a solid traditional style of line work, incorporating New Age realism,” says Burks, who moved to West Marin from the Stockton area in 2007 to be near his sister and to pursue tattooing. “I immediately tried to get into his ear and, in the nicest way possible, received a f**k off,” he adds with a laugh.
So he started to save money and sit in Roach’s chair. The two developed a rapport, and Burks eventually earned himself a job as the Blue Lotus’ piercing apprentice. It shows—he sports 18 piercings.
After the Blue Lotus relocation, Roach concentrated on music—he’s the singer and guitarist in the gypsy-rock group Beso Negro, which has performed the past four years at Outside Lands and is currently working on a second studio album. But the three never lost touch.
“I stayed with Adam [and waited for the shop] because he’s one of the last bastions of how tattooing used to be,” Burks says. “[His style] is a solid mixture of old school and new school.”
A Matter of Ethics
The old-school ethics that the tattoo artists stand by include respecting the territory of other shops. In the industry, “opening up on another shop,” i.e., opening a shop in the same town as an existing tattoo shop, is widely frowned upon.
“I can tell you it’s nearly impossible to do something that we did,” Roach says, “which is to open a shop in a town that has never had a tattoo shop. Also, opening up basically nowhere near another tattoo shop to affect their business. You get a good tip of the hat from other tattooers for doing it clean like that. The fact that we got to open up completely on our own is pretty amazing. It doesn’t happen anymore.”
Precious information about the craft that was once considered highly coveted is much easier for the current generation of tattoo artists to access—thanks widely to the Internet.
“You don’t give out information on how it’s done so easily,” Gonzalez says. “I think that’s something that got lost [between generations of tattoo artists]. It’s a shame because it was a struggle for me to get information, and to this day I’m totally grateful that it was hard to get. It kind of weeds out the weak. These days people just go on the Internet and buy equipment and watch how-to videos.”
With the once-niche tattoo bubble expanding ever since the launch of shows like Miami Ink in 2005, and spinoff shows like LA Ink and NY Ink, it feels as if sporting a tattoo has become less of a stigma and more of an accessory.
“I kind of miss that,” Roach says of the stigmatization of tattoos. “I got into it because it was underground and counterculture. I’m happy that it’s become more mainstream because it is a business and we will thrive from that, but it is pretty saturated these days and I do sort of miss that it was considered a little bit rebellious to have a tattoo—it still is—but in the old days it was a bit different.”
Keeping in line with an old-school set of ethos, the tattoo artists were determined to open up a shop in Fairfax. “I wanted to be in downtown Fairfax,” Roach says. “I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I saw it happening here. We went for it, we didn’t take no for an answer, and we got it.”
But it wasn’t that simple.
“It was in shambles,” Díaz Sepúlveda says of the building. “We did everything from the ground up—every little thing! It took a lot of sweat, a lot of effort, a lot of frustration every day. Some days we were two steps forward and three steps back.”
In August 2015, the team found a “hole” with no walls and “ancient tile,” Roach recalls.
“We had to gut everything out and start everything from scratch: New plumbing, new electricity, we grinded the floor ourselves, grinded the concrete, sealed the concrete and polished it,” he says. “Everything from top to bottom has been done by us. By hand. For months. Day and night,” adding that the team couldn’t have done it without the help of an assortment of Fairfax friends.
“There were other spaces available but it didn’t feel right,” he says, adding that the group looked at nearly 15 different locations. “The ceilings were too low, or they were too small. We wanted a huge environment because we didn’t want any walls between us and the customers. We wanted everyone to see us hands-on.”
‘Miami Ink’ Moments
Twenty-three-year-old Kelsy Hatfield, of Novato, walks into the shop with four of her friends. She asks for a tattoo of four triangles, the first shaded, the rest simple line work. Not the most challenging piece Díaz Sepúlveda has been faced with, but later, as we sit in the back on a fold-out futon across from a dartboard, he tells me that he strives to treat all clients as equals.
“It’s important to represent yourself in a really good manner—you have to understand that the tattoo is really important [to the client],” he says, “and you have to really care about it.”
Hatfield was considered a “walk-in,” which means that she didn’t make an appointment prior to being tattooed. The shop welcomes both walk-ins and set appointments, but typically, as a custom shop, the client will come to the shop first and communicate the idea to the artist, Gonzalez says, and “ideally we set a time to look at a drawing that [the tattoo artist] spent time on.”
The artistic four, who merge their talents at The Forge Tattoo. Photo by Molly Oleson.
Once the sketch is approved by the client, the tattoo can take anywhere from 15 minutes to multiple four-hour sessions to complete, depending on the complexity of the design.
Since opening on January 2, business has been steady—even busy for both walk-ins and client appointments. Depending on the season, the workload is typically divided up into 70 percent custom-made pieces for clients, and 30 percent walk-ins. “Walk-ins increase during the summer,” Díaz Sepúlveda says.
Asking about the meaning behind the piece, for both walk-ins and clients, is something that he says he doesn’t typically do. “I try not to do it because normally if they really want to tell you, they will,” he says, adding that for most custom-designed pieces, he winds up learning the backstory through the collaborative design process. But his goal is to remain respectful. Not all tattoos have meanings, he adds—some people just like the artwork.
When I ask Gonzalez about his policy on inquiring about the meaning of the artwork, he smiles and laughs.
“I kind of call those Miami Ink moments, where people want to tell these emotional stories and they start crying,” he says. “I used to be totally compassionate about it and now, ever since those TV shows came out, it’s more and more frequent. It’s a running joke that I’m an underpaid therapist and overpaid artist,” he adds with a laugh.
Sarcasm aside, it’s clear that transitioning back and forth between roles doesn’t phase this group of guys. The passion, camaraderie and commitment to the art takes precedence, and is evident by how fervently they each speak of the trade and each other.
“I love those guys,” Roach says. “Their artwork is incredible—but more than the amazing art, as people, it just works. All of us together work very well. It’s great to be around worldly people and the way that they carry themselves you can tell that they’ve been around the world a little bit; they have a lot of respect.”
Forging Ahead
February 2 was the one-month anniversary of the shop’s opening, and business continues to boom. Roach says that they have finally arrived.
The destination is exactly where the four had hoped to land, and they are eager to grow with the community of Fairfax. Hopes and goals for the future range from possibly supporting a little league team to offering drawing or painting classes, muses Díaz Sepúlveda, who adds that he has two little ones of his own. “We hope to create a good environment for the community, and to be accepted,” he says.
As a first-time business owner, Roach does acknowledge that he and Gonzalez will have to balance the analytical and artistic sides of their brains, and with longtime businesses like the Sleeping Lady shuttering its doors in town, growing business and gaining clientele will remain a primary goal for the first year.
“Businesses are going to come and go,” Roach says. “It’s a little too early for us to say what will ultimately happen with us, but I believe we have a good product, the artwork speaks for itself and it’s honest work. We’re going to do the best we can.
“I think [the shop] is creating something,” he continues. “It’s keeping this town a little strange, a little uncertain, off-kilter, a little less mainstream. A little edgy—something a little edgy is perfect for this town. It’s always been a funky town with strange people doing strange things. Artwork, music, all these things—it’s got an amazing history of some badass motherf*****s—some serious rebels have been cruising in and out of this town for many, many years, and the shop just fits right into this place.”
The Forge Tattoo, 1906 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., Fairfax; 415/419-5362; theforgetattoo.com; 11am-8pm; Facebook: The Forge Tattoo; Se habla Español.
Good hair day
Barber Phil Mills offers old-fashioned cuts and shaves
“Long hair don’t care,” Phil Mills says with a laugh, describing his look of choice. He has self-described “Marsha Brady hair,” which is perfect for a full-time barber and part-time rocker.
The Arizona-born barber, who has been practicing for 17 years, is featured at The Forge—he’s available for cuts, trims and shaves daily. While he specializes in cuts for men (“high-fade pompadours, badass flat tops, specialized mohawks,” etc.), he adds that he will trim women’s hair, just no styled cuts or blow-dries.
“It was September when I signed the petition to help these guys get this place and I was talking with [The Forge tattooing apprentice] Josh and we decided that it would be a good fit,” Mills says. “Tattoo shops and
Barber Phil Mills stands at the ready with his vintage crushed-velvet chair. Photo by Molly Oleson.
barber shops went hand-in-hand back in the day.”
You can’t miss him in the shop—He has a crushed-velvet orange 1891 vintage barber chair that he uses for his cuts and shaves. “That’s part of the experience,” he says with a smile.
“I offer the old-fashioned barber experience,” Mills says. “I specialize in shaving first and foremost—that’s kind of a lost art. A lot of barbers around here don’t do it or won’t do it—that’s what sets me apart.”
Hours: 11am-8pm, flexible by appointment; $42/haircut; $32/shave.
Hero: For more than 60 years, the Marin Theatre transported patrons to new worlds and helped them escape reality for a couple of hours at a time. Now, Sausalito’s sole movie theatre is dark, possibly forever, unless a committee appointed by Mayor Jill Hoffman is able to showcase the charming Caledonia Street venue to entice a new operator to turn on the lights. It’s a big role for the group, as the building’s management company found no takers after it invited a variety of entertainment companies to stake their claim on the Sausalito street where locals roam, dine and shop. We’re hoping for a twist ending, because a shuttered movie theatre in a small town is a tear-jerker. Please support the committee and your local businesses.
Zero: Who stole the memorial altar for Steve Carter, the yoga instructor killed in a random shooting while walking in Marin County Open Space near Fairfax last October? Lokita Carter, Steve’s wife, erected a memorial plaque and altar at the site where he died. Though she had to remove the plaque due to open space regulations, the temporary altar remained—until it disappeared. Missing items include a statue of Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, and notes, photographs and other mementos. Thief, you have an out. “We hope that whoever that person is would recognize the hurt they caused Mrs. Carter and return the items to the Marin County Civic Center, Suite 260, no questions asked,” said Carl Somers, chief of planning for the Marin County Department of Parks and Open Space.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Bible’s Book of Exodus tells the story of the time Moses almost met God. “Show me your glory, please,” the prophet says to his deity, who’s hiding. “You cannot see my face,” God replies, “ … I will remove my hand and you will see my back … .” That’s good enough for Moses. He agrees. I hope that you, too, will be satisfied with a tantalizingly partial epiphany, Aries. I’m pretty sure that if you ask nicely, you can get a glimpse of a splendor that’s as meaningful to you as God was to Moses. It may only be the “back,” but that should still stir you and enrich you.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The archaic English word “quaintrelle” refers to a woman who treats her life as a work of art. She is passionate about cultivating beauty and pleasure and wit in everything she is and does. But she’s not a narcissistic socialite. She’s not a snooty slave to elitist notions of style. Her aim is higher and sweeter: To be an impeccable, well-crafted fount of inspiration and blessings. I propose that we resuscitate and tinker with this term, and make it available to you. In 2016, you Tauruses of all genders will be inclined to incorporate elements of the quaintrelle, and you will also be skilled at doing so. If you have not yet dived into this fun work, start now!
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Sufi teacher (and Gemini) Idries Shah offered this teaching: “When Fortune knocks, open the door, they say. But why should one make fortune knock, by keeping the door shut?” Let’s make this your featured meditation, Gemini. If there is anywhere in your life where proverbial doors are shut—either in the world outside of you or the world inside of you—unlock them and open them wide. Make it easy for Fortune to reach you.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Many Cancerians harbor a chronic ache of melancholy about what they’re missing. The unavailable experience in question could be an adventure that they wish they were having, an absent ally they long to be near or a goal they wish they had time to pursue. That’s the bad news. The good news is that you can harness the chronic ache. In fact, it’s your birthright as a Cancerian to do so. If you summon the willpower to pull yourself up out of the melancholy, you can turn its mild poison into a fuel that drives you to get at least some of what you’ve been missing. Now is a favorable time to do just that.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): How will the next chapter of your story unfold? I suspect there are two possible scenarios. In one version, the abundance of choices overwhelms you. You get bogged down in an exciting but debilitating muddle, and become frazzled, frenetic and overwrought. In the other possible scenario, you navigate your way through the lavish freedom with finesse. Your intuition reveals exactly how to make good use of the fertile contradictions. You’re crafty, adaptable and effective. So which way will you go? How will the tale unfold? I think it’s completely up to you. Blind fate will have little to do with it. For best results, all you have to do is stay in close touch with the shining vision of what you really want.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “To hell with my suffering,” wrote Arthur Rimbaud in his poem “May Banners.” I suggest you make that your mantra for now. Anytime you feel a sour thought impinging on your perceptions, say, “To hell with my suffering.” And then immediately follow it up with an expostulation from another Rimbaud poem, “It’s all too beautiful.” Be ruthless about this, Virgo. If you sense an imminent outbreak of pettiness, or if a critical voice in your head blurts out a curse, or if a pesky ghost nags you, simply say, “To hell with my suffering,” and then, “It’s all too beautiful.” In this way, you can take advantage of the fact that you now have more power over your emotional pain than usual.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “I like people who unbalance me,” says Irish writer Colum McCann. Normally I wouldn’t dream of encouraging you to make the same declaration, Libra. My instinct is to help you do everything necessary to maintain harmony. But now is one of those rare times when you can thrive on what happens when you become a bit tilted or uneven or irregular. That’s because the influences that unbalance you will be the same influences that tickle your fancy and charge your batteries and ring your bell and sizzle your bacon.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): The African Association was a 19th century British group dedicated to exploring West Africa. Its members hoped to remedy Europeans’ ignorance about the area’s geography. In one of the Association’s most ambitious projects, it commissioned an adventurer named Henry Nicholls to discover the origin and to chart the course of the legendary Niger River. Nicholls and his crew set out by ship in their quest, traveling north up a river that emptied into the Gulf of Guinea. They didn’t realize, and never figured out, that they were already on the Niger River. I’m wondering if there’s a comparable situation going on in your life, Scorpio. You may be looking for something that you have already found.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Richard P. Feynman was a brilliant physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1965 for his pioneering work in quantum electrodynamics. He also played the bongo drums and was a competent artist. But excessive pride was not a problem for him. “I’m smart enough to know that I’m dumb,” he testified. “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” I suggest that you adopt him as your role model for the next two weeks, Sagittarius. All of us need periodic reminders that we’ve got a lot to learn, and this is your time. Be extra vigilant in protecting yourself from your own misinformation and misdirection.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Food connoisseur Anthony Bourdain has a TV show that enables him to travel the globe indulging in his love of exotic cuisine. He takes his sensual delights seriously. In Charleston, South Carolina, he was ecstatic to experience the flavorful bliss of soft-shell crab with lemon pasta and shaved bottarga. “Frankly,” he told his dining companion, “I’d slit my best friend’s throat for this.” Bourdain was exaggerating for comic effect, but I’m concerned that you may actually feel that strongly about the gratifications that are almost within your grasp. I have no problem with you getting super-intense in pursuit of your enjoyment. But please stop short of taking extreme measures. You know why.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): You may sometimes be drawn to people or places or ideas long before they can give you their gifts. Although you sense their potential value, you might have to ripen before you’ll be ready to receive their full bounty. Here’s how author Elias Canetti expressed it: “There are books, that one has for twenty years without reading them, that one always keeps at hand … yet one carefully refrains from reading even a complete sentence. Then after twenty years, there comes a moment when suddenly, as though under a high compulsion, one cannot help taking in such a book from beginning to end, at one sitting: It is like a revelation.” I foresee a comparable transition happening for you, Aquarius.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): The Leaning Tower of Pisa is eight stories high, including its belfry, and tilts sideways at a four-degree angle. When builders started construction back in 1173, they laid a weak foundation in unstable soil, and the building has never stood straight since then. And yet it is the most lucrative tourist attraction in the city of Pisa, and one of the top 10 in Italy. Its flaw is the source of its fame and glory. What’s the equivalent in your world, Pisces? Now is a favorable time to take new or extra advantage of something that you consider imperfect or blemished.
Homework: Brag about your flaws, weaknesses and mistakes. Send your boast to Tr**********@gm***.com.
Q: I’m a woman who’s both loving and seriously hating Tinder. Guys on this app mostly want to hook up, and even those who say they want a relationship are flaky, often disappearing after a single date. Sure, this sometimes happens with guys I meet in real life, but not at the rate of my Tinder dates.—Annoyed
A: Welcome to the Hookupatorium!
Tinder takes all the wait and effort out of speed dating. No need to put on pants—or pull them up, if you’re on the john. You just “swipe right” on your phone to match with somebody—and maybe even swipe ’em right into your bed 20 minutes later. Plus it’s fun—less like a dating site than a video game. “Call of Booty,” anyone?
However, for anyone seeking “happily ever after” instead of “hookupily,” Tinder can pose a problem, and that problem is too much choice. But … choice is a good thing, right? The more the better! It’s the principle behind those “endless options!” deli menus—you know, the ones with a page count that makes you forget whether you’re supposed to decide what to have for lunch or whether Ayn Rand was a bad writer.
Unfortunately, our psychological operating system evolved in an environment where the level of choice was more like, “Sir, can I bring you the grubs or the grubs?” So research finds that we’re easily overwhelmed by a slew of options—often choosing poorly and being bummed about it afterward or feeling too snowed to choose at all. Social psychologist Barry Schwartz explains that these problems with choosing are about protecting ourselves from regret—the pain of blaming ourselves for making the wrong choice. But having a lot of options isn’t necessarily unmanageable—if we have enough information to differentiate between them and narrow the field. However, on Tinder, there’s minimal info—only age, location, pics and a few lines about a person—making it an endless swipestream of “she’s hot” and “she’s hot in a slightly different way.”
Also consider that Tinder is not designed to help you find love (that lasts for more than a few sweaty hours); Tinder is designed to keep you Tindering. The psychological hook is “intermittent reinforcement.” Predictable “rewards”—like if you swiped and always got a match—quickly give us the yawnies. But Tinder’s unpredictable rewards—the random ding! “It’s a match!”—turn you into a coke-seeking lab rat, relentlessly swiping for your next high.
You may decide to keep nibbling at Tinder’s mobile-global man buffet, but dates that come out of real-life meetings are probably more likely to lead to second dates, and maybe more. At a party, you’re, say, one of eight single women, five of whom a guy isn’t that attracted to and one of whom he broke up with last year. And finally, there’s how face-to-face meetings come with behavioral constraints that Tinder convos lack. You should find it’s the rare guy at the coffee shop who immediately follows up, “That a soy latte?” with a casual, “Wanna see my dick?”
Q: My girlfriend has been feeling neglected and keeps worrying that I’m mad at her. I love her, but I have big business problems now, and I don’t want to burden her with them. Also, since we have a good thing, doesn’t it make sense to focus on the stuff that’s a mess?—Startup Guy
A: Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to outsource your relationship to some guy in the Philippines: “Please stay on the line. Your feelings are very important to us … ”
Men and women tend to deal with crisis in different ways. Women manage their emotions by expressing them; men just hope theirs will go away. Evolutionary psychologists Leda Cosmides and John Tooby explain that men evolved to be the defenders of the species, and in battle, it would have put them at a disadvantage to show their feelings—especially those reflecting vulnerability, like, “Yikes, I’m totally out of my league!”
Being predisposed to bury your feelings in the backyard doesn’t mean that you should—assuming you don’t want your next startup to be a new relationship. This isn’t to say that you need to blather on about everything, Oprah’s-couch style. You just need to share the bad as well as the good, even just by texting, “Tough day, babe.” You might even put reminders on your phone to send brief sweet messages a few times daily. Maybe that seems dumb and unromantic. What’s dumber and more unromantic is adding breakup problems to your business problems because you didn’t put in 46 seconds a day telling a woman that she matters. Sure, misery reportedly “loves company,” but let’s not be hasty in filling the flower vases and putting out the good towels.
This week in the Pacific Sun, you’ll find our cover story, ‘Old fashioned love,’ about the rise–and fall–of newspaper personal ads. We also did a throwback to our personal ads for this special Love & Sex issue, so, if you’re looking for love, make sure to check out the personals section. On top of that, you’ll find a story about Super Bowl human trafficking hysteria, a piece on new desserts at Taste Kitchen & Table and a story by the Dirt Diva about a pesticide lawsuit. All that and more on stands and online today!
The film 45 Years is based on one of the stories in David Constantine’s book, Another Country, which takes its title from a famous quotation from Christopher Marlowe’s play, The Jew of Malta. Fending off a criminal charge of fornication, the villainous Barabas answers, “But that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead.” Director Andrew Haigh has two of the finest actors alive starring in his often touching but stiff story of dread surrounding a 45th anniversary party.
Geoff (Tom Courtenay) and Kate (Charlotte Rampling) are planning a public celebration of their marriage, but the Monday before the party brings startling news. The corpse of Katya, Geoff’s old love, has just been found in a Swiss ravine, in which she fell when Geoff and Katya were both climbing in the Alps in the 1970s. Moving from preoccupation to obsession, Geoff muses over Katya, and his silences and omissions torment his wife as the big event approaches.
While the material might be better off as theater, photographer Lol Crawley brings out painterly shots of the two actors and of the misty Norfolk countryside. What we’re seeing though, is two great actors banking their fires. Good news is still good news, no matter how long to arrive; it seems funny that Rampling, this magnificent actress of leonine carriage and hooded eyes, is finally being discovered by some film critics. Is she the kind of woman to be threatened by a 50-years-dead ghost? Courtenay, who could give you a King Lear you’d never forget, isn’t nearly as believable as a guy next door (note the way his voice rises to fill a room when he’s giving a toast to his wife). It’s only during a tipsy scene in which he’s complaining about a reunion at his workplace that he seems free at last of Haigh’s too-tight conception of old love.
Imagine that you’re walking along the Malecón, the scenic waterfront walkway that stretches for five miles along the seawall in Havana, Cuba. You can almost hear the sound of the waves hitting the beach, and in the background, the distant sounds of a swaying Latin melody backed by an Afro-Cuban beat. Well, the good news is that you don’t have to travel to Cuba—just head to the Sausalito Seahorse on Sunday night and dance to the sounds of Orquesta La Moderna Tradición.
The original group was founded in the early ’90s by Tregar Otton, a violinist, along with several other original members of the band, and Robert Borrell, a well-known Cuban instrumentalist and dancer from Havana, who had hundreds of dance students who needed a place to dance. At that time, the band played mostly danzón music, which was derived from the music brought to Cuba from Haiti in the late 1700s. Orquesta is one of the only bands in the world that still plays this kind of music.
Along with playing violin, Otton arranges the music and manages the band. He says that when Borrell left around 1995, he took the band in another direction. “Danzón is mostly instrumental,” Otton says by telephone from his home in Pacifica, “so we got some other Cubans in the group and changed the focus from mostly danzónes to include other types of Cuban music.”
Otton says that one of the things that makes them unique is the variety of music they play. “A lot of salsa bands—the tempos and style of music is real similar,” Otton says. “But you come hear us and we will play fast stuff and then we’ll throw in a danzón, which is slower and more elegant than a cha cha cha.”
Another thing that sets Orquesta apart is that they do a variation on the traditional salsa band instrumentation—conga drums, timbales, hand percussion, piano, bass, a rhythm section and vocalists. Otton says that most Cuban salsa bands use trumpets and brass, whereas Orquesta features two violins and a clarinet, giving them a much sweeter, mellower sound. “But the music does groove and does have a strong Afro-Cuban influence,” he adds.
Orquesta La Moderna Tradición plays at the Seahorse on Sunday, Feb. 9 (and the first Sunday of every month) from 5-10pm; $10; 305 Harbor View Drive, Sausalito; 415/331-2899.
By Charles Brousse
Updated adaptations of plays by long-dead famous authors are risky. Here are a couple of current examples that illustrate the pitfalls.
‘A Cajun Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Novato Theater Company)
Shakespeare’s tale of a pair of young couples who escape arranged marriages by running off to a nearby forest inhabited by mischievous fairies on a warm midsummer night has delighted...
By David Templeton
“What I want audiences to take away from The Danish Girl is the fact that this, above all else, was a great love story.”
The remarkably soft-spoken Tom Hooper, British director of numerous award-winning movies including Les Miserables and The King’s Speech, is addressing a roomful of reporters and photographers on the opening night of the Mill Valley...
By Ari LeVaux
About one-third of the earth’s greenhouse gas pollution can be linked to food, its production, processing, packaging, transport, storage and preparation.
As climate change becomes a mainstream concern, and people keep obsessing about food, it seems inevitable that a new flavor of diner would emerge, the name of which made the New York Times list of top new...
By Stephanie Powell
It’s day six after opening and a gangly boy tiptoes through the door of The Forge Tattoo, Fairfax’s first-ever tattoo shop, with his passport in hand. “Hi, I’m 18—I swear,” he offers up, as if he’s about to be interrogated.
Sitting across the unfurnished shop and with one eyebrow raised, Josh Burks, The Forge’s tattooing apprentice, asks...
By Nikki Silverstein
Hero: For more than 60 years, the Marin Theatre transported patrons to new worlds and helped them escape reality for a couple of hours at a time. Now, Sausalito’s sole movie theatre is dark, possibly forever, unless a committee appointed by Mayor Jill Hoffman is able to showcase the charming Caledonia Street venue to entice a new...
By Rob Brezsny
ARIES (March 21-April 19): The Bible’s Book of Exodus tells the story of the time Moses almost met God. “Show me your glory, please,” the prophet says to his deity, who’s hiding. “You cannot see my face,” God replies, “ … I will remove my hand and you will see my back … .” That’s good enough...
By Amy Alkon
Q: I’m a woman who’s both loving and seriously hating Tinder. Guys on this app mostly want to hook up, and even those who say they want a relationship are flaky, often disappearing after a single date. Sure, this sometimes happens with guys I meet in real life, but not at the rate of my Tinder dates.—Annoyed
A:...
This week in the Pacific Sun, you'll find our cover story, 'Old fashioned love,' about the rise--and fall--of newspaper personal ads. We also did a throwback to our personal ads for this special Love & Sex issue, so, if you're looking for love, make sure to check out the personals section. On top of that, you'll find a story...
By Richard von Busack
The film 45 Years is based on one of the stories in David Constantine’s book, Another Country, which takes its title from a famous quotation from Christopher Marlowe’s play, The Jew of Malta. Fending off a criminal charge of fornication, the villainous Barabas answers, “But that was in another country; and besides, the wench is dead.”...
By Lily O'Brien
Imagine that you’re walking along the Malecón, the scenic waterfront walkway that stretches for five miles along the seawall in Havana, Cuba. You can almost hear the sound of the waves hitting the beach, and in the background, the distant sounds of a swaying Latin melody backed by an Afro-Cuban beat. Well, the good news is that...
