Coachella Valley Independent July 2016

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT | JULY 2016

VOL. 4 | NO. 7

TRACKING

Fatal Encounters

The first comprehensive comprehensivedatabase databaseofofrecent recent California police-related California police-relateddeaths deathsisisnow nowcomplete. complete.

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BY JIMMY JIMMYBOEGLE BOEGLEPAGE PAGE

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 3

JULY 2016

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR Mailing address: 31855 Date Palm Drive, No. 3-263 Cathedral City, CA 92234 (760) 904-4208 www.cvindependent.com

Editor/Publisher Jimmy Boegle Assistant Editor Brian Blueskye cover/Cover Story design Mark Duebner Design Illustration by Josh Campbell Advertising Design Betty Jo Boegle Contributors Gustavo Arellano, Max Cannon, Kevin Fitzgerald, Bill Frost, Bonnie Gilgallon, Bob Grimm, Valerie-Jean (VJ) Hume, Brane Jevric, Keith Knight, Marylee Pangman, Erin Peters, Dan Perkins, Sean Planck, Guillermo Prieto, Anita Rufus, Jen Sorenson, Christine Soto, Robert Victor

The Coachella Valley Independent print edition is published every month. All content is ©2016 and may not be published or reprinted in any form without the written permission of the publisher. The Independent is available free of charge throughout the Coachella Valley, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased for $1 by calling (760) 904-4208. The Independent may be distributed only by the Independent’s authorized distributors.

The Independent is a proud member and/or supporter of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, Get Tested Coachella Valley, the Local Independent Online News Publishers, the Desert Business Association, the LGBT Community Center of the Desert, and the Desert Ad Fed.

I never thought I’d hear the leader of the free world extolling the virtues of the gay nightclub.

Yet there he was, President Barack Obama, doing just that, on Sunday, June 12, as we all reeled in shock at the news that an idiot had just killed 49 men and women at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.

“The shooter targeted a nightclub where people came together to be with friends, to dance and to sing, and to live,” Obama said. “The place where they were attacked is more than a nightclub—it is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.

“Wow,” I thought to myself when I heard the president’s remarks. “He really gets it.”

Visions nightclub in Reno, Nev., was my place of solidarity and empowerment at a time when I really needed it. It was in the late ’90s; I had just graduated from college and moved back to my hometown after breaking up with my fiancée. I was coming to terms with the fact that I was gay—a fact that would not sit well with many of my friends who, like me, were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka Mormon).

I was not out to anyone but a handful of friends. Heck, I was barely out to myself. But every Saturday night, those friends and I could be found at Visions, chatting, flirting and accepting ourselves. Inside this gay nightclub, I was authentic—and I was safe.

I’ve come a long way in the two decades or so since then. So, too, has society. However, for me and many, many others—both gay and straight—bars and nightclubs are still places to come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.

The Independent and Brian Blueskye organized nine concerts last year to both promote local musicians and raise money for the LGBT Community Center of the Desert’s Food Bank. We also assembled a fundraising concert to help out Chris and George Zander after they were senselessly attacked. My softball team and I have hosted two “Thirst for Life” fundraisers on behalf of the Desert AIDS Project.

All of those took place at Chill Bar Palm Springs and the Scorpion Room nightclub.

It is a place of solidarity and empowerment where people have come together to raise awareness, to speak their minds, and to advocate for their civil rights.

Welcome to the July 2016 print edition of the Coachella Valley Independent.

—Jimmy Boegle, jboegle@cvindependent.com CVIndependent.com

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 5

JULY 2016

OPINION OPINION

KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS T

BY ANITA RUFUS

hose of a certain age will remember Ish Kabibble, the zany cornet player with the strange haircut who played with bandleader Kay Kyser in the 1940s and 1950s, appearing on radio, television and the big screen.

Kabibble was born Merwyn Bogue in 1908 in Pennsylvania. According to his daughter Janet Arnot, a Palm Desert resident, he originally studied piano, but didn’t like it—however, he liked the sound of the trumpet. Bogue got one when he was 12, and learned on his own how to play “God Bless America.” Hanging around speakeasy clubs, Bogue fell in love with Dixieland jazz.

While in his third year of pre-law studies at West Virginia University, Bogue was playing with small bands. At a dance in 1931, bandleader Hal Kemp asked from the stage, “Is there a trumpet player in the audience?” Bogue sat in, and within months, he heard from Kay Kyser, an old friend of Kemp; he asked Bogue to try out for first he was playing. He saw her in the audience chair in Kyser’s band. Musician friends told and said it was love at first sight. They started him he had to know how to triple-tongue; he dating, but her father was upset that she was learned, practiced and played without a hitch. involved with someone in show business. She Bogue got the job. snuck out to see dad secretly, a daring thing to “He got this telegram,” says Arnot, “saying, do at 17.”

‘No whisky, no mustache, clean cut.’”

They married a few years later. He had a gig His father agreed he could drop out of in San Francisco that would pay no money, school and pursue music, but he had to but would provide food and lodging and get promise he would someday complete his them to California. He played at small places degree—a promise he finally kept at age 70. along the way, and by the time they arrived, he One of the comedic songs in the Kyser had 17 cents in his pocket—and some Lorna repertoire was a song, “Isch Gabibble,” taken Doone cookies. from a mock-Yiddish expression meaning, “They had to wait for another band member “What, me worry?” (Yes, it’s the same slogan to show up to get enough for the toll to get adopted by Mad Magazine.) When Kyser across the bridge,” says Arnot. “They stayed became host of the popular ’30s radio program married for over 60 years, dying within eight Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge, Bogue days of each other in 1994, and every year on portrayed a silly character called Ish Kabibble, their anniversary, he always gave her a box of called down from the bandstand to join Kyser Lorna Doones.” on the stage as a comic sidekick. Bogue wore Arnot is the youngest of Bogue’s three his dark hair with funny bangs, and dressed children. like a bumpkin. He would tell funny jokes and “I was really too young to experience much poems, and is known by music-lovers of the of his time with Kyser,” she says. “After Kyser time for his chant, “boop boop dittem dattem retired, dad teamed up with Mike Douglas whattem chu,” in the band’s hit “Three Little (before he became a big talk-show host) doing Fishies,” which topped Billboard’s pop chart in something like a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis 1939. act. They had summer bookings all over the In spite of the funny persona, Bogue was U.S., so we traveled in the back seat of a Ford a standout soloist with Kyser’s band for woodie station wagon. For us kids, it was an nearly 20 years, and he served as the business adventure. manager for the orchestra.

“In 1955, after he and Douglas split, he One of Ish Kabibble’s poems flows easily started a six-piece Dixieland group called The from Arnot: Shy Guys. He was often gone five months at I sneezed a sneeze into the air. a time, but whenever he was home, we were It fell to earth I know not where. his priority. He was easy-going, caring, kind, But you shoulda seen the looks on those a devoted father and husband. Mom was a In whose vicinity I snoze. trouper, but it was hard.”

As for family life, “Dad met my mom (Janet When Arnot was 12, her dad was booked to Meade), when she was 17, and he was 21,” says play throughout Nevada.

Arnot. “She was with a date at a dance where “I was already enrolled in school. Mom said

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Palm Desert resident Janet Arnot remembers her father, humorist and musician Ish Kabibble we were selling our house, putting stuff in storage, and going to be with my dad,” she said.

“I remember once he was playing the lounge at the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas. Kids couldn’t go in there, but sometimes, they would let us go behind the curtain. I would peek through a rip and watch his show. I especially remember one night after the show, we went to a restaurant with the rest of the band, and dad let me order a bowl of chili. Imagine, chili at 2 a.m.!

“That tour ended in Lake Tahoe, and mom decided she wanted to travel with dad, so we stayed with friends and went to school there,” says Arnot. “At 16, I was acting up so they sent me back. My dad greeted me with, ‘Whatever happened up there, you’re forgiven for being a troublemaker ... but you’re grounded!’ He was so trusting. I realized he deserved someone who would respect him. I turned over a new leaf.”

When Bogue was drafted in 1944, no less than Gen. Douglas MacArthur tapped him to join Kyser in entertaining the troops.

“He always felt a little guilty,” says Arnot, “because other guys were getting killed, and he was playing. But he brought so much joy to the troops.”

As for Arnot’s life: After a brief stint as a nun, she married, raised three daughters, and is now the grandmother of eight. Arnot was the attendance clerk at Nellie Coffman School for nine years. Her parents were desert residents when they passed away.

“My dad was always happy when he could make people smile,” she recalls. “He was so compassionate. When I was 12, in my third junior high school, I remember crying to him that I didn’t have any friends. ‘I will always be your friend,’ he said. And he was.”

Anita Rufus is also known as “The Lovable Liberal,” and her radio show airs Sundays from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on KNews Radio 94.3 FM. Email her at Anita@LovableLiberal.com. Know Your Neighbors appears every other Wednesday at CVIndependent.com.

Ish Kabibble

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OPINION OPINION

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THE POTTED DESERT GARDEN

All good gardeners know: Rules are meant to be broken

BY MARYLEE PANGMAN

G

ardeners are typically rule-breakers. We don’t always follow instructions; we try the untried; we seek out plants that we are told will not make it in the desert.

Desert transplants and snowbirds often yearn for the gardens we had “back home,” leading us to try to replicate our favorites. This has led to many dead tulips and fuchsia plants. I am sure some of you are reading and saying, “I have them in my Palm Springs garden!” If so, you are an exceptional gardener, likely with the perfect location and conditions for these plants that love water, humidity and non-scorching temperatures.

There are constant gray areas within the rules of gardening in the desert. For example: I teach beginning gardeners to place plants with the same light, sun and water requirements together in the same pot. Ornamentals, succulents and drought-tolerant plants all have their place in our gardens … happily segregated. However, there have been times when I’ve needed to try rule-breaking combinations for special conditions.

My first rule in desert container gardening is that bigger pots are usually better: When choosing a container for anything other than

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cacti, an 18-inch internal diameter is the smallest you’ll want to have. This size or larger provides enough soil to hold moisture longer than a couple of hours and gives roots added insulation from the direct heat of the sun.

Even an 18-inch pot in all-day-sun is too small.

To repeat: The bigger, the better, I always say, especially when gardening in low-desert regions such as the Coachella Valley.

However … one of my former commercial clients was a restaurant with a railing around

Red yucca helped Marylee break her own rules in order to make a restaurant client happy.

the outside dining patio. This area was within a brick-floor courtyard, surrounded by brick buildings. In the summer, the patio was drenched in sun for eight or more hours.

Needless to say … it was hot! We changed the existing 4-by-6-by-30-inch plastic window boxes to the largest I could get, which were 12-by-13-by-40. I knew this was smaller than what my rules dictate, but the chef was determined to keep the window-box effect.

We succeeded easily during the winter with typical winter flowers for desert pots—but in the summer, the plants struggled. I looked for a solution that allowed both a permanent or perennial tall plant and surrounding annual color. I decided to give red yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora) a try over a few years to see if it would hold up with the higher water content needed by the annuals. Long story short: It worked very well, as you can see from the accompanying photo. The Yucca grew nicely and never experienced any root rot from the plentiful water.

I still used medium-water annuals during both the winter and summer. Once well-grown, we could usually reduce the watering during the hottest months to once daily in the early morning. If we had to water them again later in the day, we applied a very short period on the timer (3 to 4 minutes). The plants were, of course, on a dedicated irrigation pot line.

Winter plantings were always watered only in the mornings.

I am also a fan of the gopher plant (Euphorbia rigida), another succulent which can

handle the additional water you will need when combining with perennials. For added height, consider including a lady slipper (Pedilanthus macrocarpus) to the back of your combination planting.

Do not let your pots go empty all summer.

Happy gardening!

Your July To-Do List 1. Avoid pruning plants now that the desert has heated up. You can deadhead your spent flowers, but pruning leads to sunburn by exposing previously shaded stems.

2. Increase the watering frequency to be sure your pots don’t dry out. If your ornamental plants are wilting in the afternoon heat, first check to see if the soil is moist. If this is the case, mist the plants with cooler water from the hose. This will NOT burn them as long as you let the hot water run out first.

3. Keep up with biweekly applications of a water-soluble fertilizer. Be sure the soil is already damp before applying.

4. Garden and water early in the morning.

Marylee Pangman is the founder and former owner of The Contained Gardener in Tucson, Ariz. She has become known as the desert’s potted garden expert. Marylee’s book, Getting Potted in the Desert, is now available. Buy it online at potteddesert.com. Email her with comments and questions at marylee@potteddesert.com. Follow the Potted Desert at facebook.com/potteddesert.

The Potted Desert Garden appears the first Tuesday of the month at CVIndependent.com.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 7

JULY 2016

OPINION OPINION

ASK A MEXICAN!

Are Mexican men attracted to Asian women?

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DEAR MEXICAN: I’m an Asian female, and for some time now, I’ve been fascinated by Mexican culture. I find Mexican males to be very attractive. Their food, language and music are just amazing! How much of a chance do I have dating a Mexican hombre if I’m Asian?

Multiple appointments allowed.

Muchacha China Curiosa DEAR CHINITA: Dios mío, are you in luck!

Mexican society loves their Asian women—it’s the job-stealing men we can’t stand.

The beautiful, colorful flowing dress Mexican women wear when dancing baile folklorico is generally called the china poblana, in remembrance of an apocryphal Indian slave from the 17th century. To dress as a china in Mexican popular parlance of the late 1800s meant to dress like a lower-class mujer for the purposes of becoming alluring, like the characterization of the gypsy woman or mulatta in American culture. And even in the present day, we romanticize Asian mujeres, but without the dragon-lady bad vibes gabachos throw in their hot pot of racial desires.

In other words, not only do you have beaucoup chances of dating a Mexican; you’re going to have to beat them back with a bamboo stick. Only drawback? Whether you’re Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, Burmese or from Macao, you will always, always remain a chinita bonita to your man’s aunts—just ask my ex.

DEAR MEXICAN: I have a Mexican friend who is a roofer. He and his crew are very efficient and do excellent work. I pay them the fairmarket price for their labor—the same money I would pay gabacho roofers if they weren’t all fucked up on crystal meth, Wild Turkey, shitty relationships with skanky-ass whores, etc.

My gabacho contractor friends mock me and call me a dumbass for this, but believe it or not, exploiting el cheapo immigrant labor just ain’t my bag. It’s very lonely being me.

My question is: Do you, as a Mexican, or taco bender, or pepper belly, think I’m a dumbass?

Roofer Who Doesn’t Use Roofies to Nail Rucas DEAR JEFE: Dumb ass, you? Can you get me a job, and hire my 15 cousins también?

The problem of Mexican workers in los Estados Unidos getting paid less than their gabacho counterparts has existed since forever, so for you—a gabacho—to not only pay fair wage to Mexicans, but do it in the realm of

construction (a 2005 study published by the National Association of Home Builders found that Mexicans not only occupied the lower rungs of the construction industry, but bore the brunt of lower-wage jobs as a result), qualifies usted for folk sainthood status in some rancho in Guanajuato.

DEAR MEXICAN: Maybe your column can address the question of why Mexicans allow so many of their small children to become obese. As a mother of three, I find this to be a heart-rending circumstance. I know healthy food is more expensive, but the long-term medical situation (which maybe is not known/ appreciated within their community) for their children is obviously grave. You could do a public service in your column.

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Grieving Over Ruined Dinner Angst DEAR GORDA: Mexicans allow their kids to get fat for the same reason gabacho and negrito parents do—a lack of exercise, education and healthy eating.

I don’t mean to sound flippant or apologetic for my raza, but black and white kids ain’t exactly Kate Mosses in the world of childhood obesity. According to a 2002 Centers for Disease Control survey done by its National Center for Health Statistics, nearly 40 percent of MexicanAmerican kiddies ages 6 to 11 are overweight, and 23.7 percent are obese, compared with 35.9/19.5 of negritos and 26.2/11.8 of gabachos in their respective categories.

My public service? Parents: Instead of serving your niños eight Christmas tamales this season, make do with seis, and hold back on the second helping of pozole.

Catch the Mexican every Wednesday at CVIndependent.com. Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net; be his fan on Facebook; follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano; or follow him on Instagram @gustavo_arellano!

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OPINION OPINION

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SAFE AND EQUAL

LGBT-rights organization Equality California has decided to fight gun violence

BY DARRELL L. TUCCI

G

un safety is, and has always been, an LGBT-rights issue.

Granted, some of the most prominent cases of anti-LGBT hate crimes have not involved guns; the deaths of Matthew Shepard and Sakia Gunn were not due to firearms. Even so, the LGBT community is plagued by gun violence.

On May 13, 1988, Rebecca Wight and Claudia Brenner were shot while hiking the Appalachian Trail, because their murderer was enraged by their lesbianism. Wight died from her wounds.

On Oct. 15, 1999, Sissy “Charles” Boden was shot dead in Savannah, Ga., for being gay.

On July 23, 2003, Nireah Johnson and Brandie Coleman were shot to death in Indianapolis after their assailant learned Nireah was transgender.

On Feb. 12, 2008, 15-year-old Lawrence “Larry” King was shot twice by a classmate in Oxnard because of his sexual orientation. He later died.

Gun safety has always been an issue with the LGBT community. According to FBI data, nearly 21 percent of all hate crimes reported in the U.S. have been due to the victims’ real or perceived sexual orientation. However, our

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major LGBT organizations historically have not taken a significant stand on the controversial issue of gun violence.

But on June 12, 2016, 49 individuals died because of their sexual orientation, or because of their support of the LGBT community, at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla. This was a pivotal moment: A community has had enough—a community that is well-organized due to decades of fighting for civil and human rights. Our right to live without fear of dying

at the hands of gun violence is now being fully embraced and is considered of paramount importance. Make no mistake: These are not special rights. These are not gay rights.

These are human rights—and now this is our fight.

On Saturday, June 18, Equality California (EQCA) launched its new #SafeAndEqual campaign, not only to raise awareness that gun violence is an LGBT issue, but to declare that gun safety is an LGBT right and now a major policy priority. EQCA has signed on to numerous statewide bills and is proud to join other organizations, like the Human Rights Campaign, on federal efforts that will prohibit military-style assault weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines; close gun-show and Internet-sales loopholes on background checks; and strengthen background checks and waiting periods to keep guns out of dangerous hands. EQCA will bring the full force of our lobbying efforts to pass them.

This is deeply personal. Pulse nightclub could easily have been Hunters or Chill Bar on Arenas, or Micky’s in West Hollywood. Those 49 people are sons and daughters, siblings, parents and young people with what should have been very bright futures. Most of them were LGBT people. They could have been me and you and 47 people we know here in the Coachella Valley. It’s difficult to remember in such an affirming community as Palm Springs, but the more visible we are as an LGBT community, the more vulnerable to violence and hatred we become.

As EQCA’s executive director, Rick Zbur, said: “Ending gun violence is also an LGBT issue, because LGBT people are disproportionately impacted by gun violence.

Transgender women face epidemic rates of murder and violent crime. Hate crimes are on the rise throughout the United States, and members of communities of color suffer the highest rates of gun violence. In the weeks and months ahead, Equality California will relentlessly work in Washington, D.C., and in Sacramento, and mobilize our 800,000 members and the LGBT community to support legislation to keep our community—and everyone—safe.”

We all cope with tragedies differently. After the Orlando shooting, some of us attended vigils that doubled as rallies. Many of us were angry or sad. Many of us cried … a lot. I am a person of faith, and I’ve prayed for those who have passed and hold them in my thoughts every day. However, my tears and prayers alone will not change the culture in which we live.

They will not bring 49 dear souls back to us.

They will not remove killing machines from the hands of dangerous people.

However, 800,000 Californians, organized in lockstep with millions of others across this country pushing for real reform, will make a difference. It will require all of us to do our part and work together, but we can and will become #SafeAndEqual. I encourage you to start by adding your name at eqca.org/safe.

Darrell L. Tucci is a Palm Springs resident and a board member of Equality California.

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JULY 2016

NEWS

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RATES ON

THE RISE

The Coachella Valley Water District decides to charge residents more; is the Desert Water Agency next?

BY KEVIN FITZGERALD

S

o far this year in the Coachella Valley, water-rate increases have gone into effect in both the Mission Springs Water District (encompassing Desert Hot Springs and northern Palm Springs) and the Myoma Dunes Water Company territory of Bermuda Dunes.

In both cases, mandatory public meetings were held—and citizens came out to protest what they saw as unfair increases.

On Tuesday, June 14, the latest domino to fall was the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD), which provides water to most of the valley from portions of Cathedral City eastward. Its board of directors was holding one final public meeting on whether to approve the controversial rateincrease plans it had been proposing for more than three months. Various local media and an overflow crowd of more than 300 customers showed up for the meeting, held under the watchful gaze of armed members of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.

As expected, the board approved the first step in a five-step rate increase plan … sort of: The members voted for a rate increase in volumetric charges, effective July 1, as well as a 44 percent increase in fixed-cost charges for customers effective from July through September, with a reduction to 22 percent beginning in October.

Or did they? Heather Engel, the CVWD director of conservation and communication, told the Independent after the vote that the increase would not be quite as steep.

“For our (single-family residential) customers, their fixed charge was going to go up (on July 1) from $7 to $11.30, but now, it will be $9.26 (a roughly 32 percent increase) as of Oct. 1” rather than July 1, she said.

She said it’s possible the board could further lessen that fixed-charge increase between now and October.

“It will be revisited (in September) to see if it can be adjusted down further,” she said.

As for the volumetric portion of the customer bills, the proposed increases were indeed adopted as proposed. (To review the final approved water rates, visit www.cvwd.org/ ratechanges.)

With all of the local water districts, the rate-increase rationale begins with the revenue shortfall caused by successful conservation efforts. Another undeniable factor is the cost of maintaining and upgrading the existing water-management and delivery infrastructure.

But the wild card in each agency’s deck is the State Water Resources Control Board’s new Chromium 6 abatement regulations. After initially fighting the state-regulation terms that the agency viewed as onerous, the CVWD

has now decided to move forward aggressively with plans to create and maintain a massive treatment infrastructure—at an estimated minimum development cost of $250 million, with ongoing annual maintenance costs of $8 million.

At least one local lawmaker thinks the CVWD should be pushing back against the state a little more.

“If I was in the CVWD’s shoes, I’d say let’s hold off a little bit,” said Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia. “Let’s maybe spend some money on doing some designing and some engineering, but let’s hold off a little bit to see if there’s any change (in the current regulations).”

Garcia said it’s indeed possible that those Chromium 6 regulations could be changed.

“Last year, we were successful in passing Senate Bill 385, which I co-authored. …

The bill gave (affected) agencies a five-year variance to comply with the new standard,” Garcia said. “That meant three things from our perspective: (We can) continue to gather scientific information that would either support or invalidate the (Chromium 6) standard … and possibly challenge that standard; give agencies the time needed to plan, design and build the infrastructure needed to meet the standards; and allow time for specific legal challenges already under way to proceed and potentially change the direction or outcome of the new standards. …

But (the CVWD is) moving steadfast, perhaps because they feel there might not be any changes, and I respect that outlook and the direction they are going in.”

Garcia said it’s also possible the CVWD could

More than 300 people showed up to the CVWD's June 14 meeting, at which the board voted to increase water rates. KEVIN FITZGERALD

get financial help from the state.

“Another area we’re looking at is money made available in the water bond, Proposition 1. Specifically, it allocated $260 million for water grants and loans for public utilities, and for addressing infrastructure needs and what have you. These dollars were originally meant for smaller utilities, but we’re trying to see if utilities with a larger footprint could potentially be eligible.”

On a related front, during the June 14 meeting, board member Peter Nelson expressed a desire for the CVWD to join a lawsuit against the California State Water Resources Control Board, being led by the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, and the Solano County Taxpayers Association. It questions the need for the stringent drinking-water regulation of Chromium 6. The CVWD board has scheduled a closed-session discussion of this possibility for July.

Ashley Metzger, the manager of conservation and outreach at the Desert Water Agency, which serves much of Palm Springs and Cathedral City, defended the CVWD’s efforts.

“CVWD fought this (Chromium 6 regulation) tooth and nail,” she said. “They really put up a strong campaign against this standard being set so low.”

Metzger also offered a reminder for all local water-agency customers: “One thing that people often forget is we’re all public agencies.

We represent them. We’re not for-profit. We’re different from Edison and SoCalGas, which are private companies. Everything we do is with our customers in mind.”

Is a water-rate increase coming to the DWA? “We are doing a rate study right now,” Metzger said. “A whole host of factors will be evaluated. It’s a very comprehensive process.

We expect to see the results sometime in late summer 2016.”

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JULY 2016

NEWS

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‘WE STAND TOGETHER’ J

After the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, residents assemble to mourn and love

By brian blueskye

ust after 2 a.m. on Sunday, June 12, Omar Mateen walked into Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., and started firing at the 320 or so people who were still in the club after the bartenders announced last call. In the three terrible hours that followed, 49 people, plus the shooter, lost their lives.

The country woke up to this horrifying news on that Sunday morning, and the LGBT Community Center of the Desert quickly assembled a vigil to be held that evening on Arenas Road in downtown Palm Springs.

Mike Thompson, the Center’s chief executive officer, explained how the vigil came together.

“It was really kind of a matter of minutes,” Thompson told the Independent. “A few people already coordinated some activities, so it was immediately getting together with them and organizing the community organizers. It was great to have something to rally around, and the support has been tremendous.”

Thompson said on that Sunday that he was heartened to see how many similar vigils and events had already been scheduled in solidarity with Orlando.

“I’m on a list with a bunch of other community centers, and it’s been phenomenal to see the kind of support that’s being shown.

There are 152 events scheduled over the next couple of days in 32 states, including San Juan, Puerto Rico and in Mexico City. In a 12-hour period of time, what’s been able to come together when communities mobilize—it’s pretty fantastic.”

He said it was important for the vigil to be held on Arenas—the epicenter of gay nightlife in the Coachella Valley.

“Because this event in Orlando happened in a gay bar, and we had our own tragedy with George Zander on Arenas back in November, it was important for us as a community to gather on this street and show our solidarity.

This is significant on so many levels for this community.”

Richard Noble, who walked across America with the rainbow flag to promote LGBT civil rights, was present holding a sign that said: “Enough Gun Violence.”

Mr. Palm Springs Leather 2016, Christopher Durbin, said he felt sadness, followed by anger, when he heard about what is now the deadliest mass shooting ever in the United States.

“Enough is enough,” he said. “We’ve had many incidents like these of gun violence in the past, and nothing is being done. Maybe with the largest and most severe one in American history, something will be done.”

Durbin said the vigil offered inspiration on what was otherwise a dark day.

“I am so filled with pride and joy right now.

This incredible turnout happened in a matter of a few hours,” he said. “It is heartwarming to see, and it is incredible to see what can be CVIndependent.com

done so quickly in our beautiful town of Palm Springs.”

Just before the vigil started, the Palm Springs Gay Men’s Chorus gave a beautiful performance of “God Bless America,” which resulted in some people choking back tears during the moment of silence that Thompson led.

Congressman Raul Ruiz then spoke at length about the need for better gun-control laws.

“This is a time when we reaffirm our commitment to defeat terrorism around the international community,” Ruiz told the audience to applause.

At that moment, a man screamed, “Raul!

What are you going to tell the NRA when you get back to Washington?”

Ruiz’s response: “I’m going to tell them to stop their bullshit!” he said to thunderous applause.

Ruiz ended his speech on a high note.

“I want to say that I stand with you; I mourn with you; and I dream of an equal America that demonstrates its greatness through the equality of its values, and I will always march with you,” Ruiz said.

When Palm Springs Mayor Robert Moon spoke, he emphasized that safety was a priority.

“I want to assure you as your mayor that the city of Palm Springs and your Palm Springs City Council recognizes public safety is the No. 1 responsibility of our city and our City Council,” Moon said.

Moon added a call for solidarity.

“We must put a stop to this violence and tragic loss of life,” he said. “We must continue to work together, to support one another, and not give up the fight for equality for every person in the United States—regardless of their gender, their gender identity, their age, their religion or their sexual orientation. Let’s keep fighting until we win this battle.”

The first of three religious leaders to speak

Hundreds of people assembled on Arenas Road for the Sunday, June 12, vigil. Speakers included Rep. Raul Ruiz, who called for stricter gun control. brian blueskye

was Rabbi David Lazar, of Temple Isaiah.

“Look where you are standing, because you’re standing on holy ground,” Lazar told the crowd. “We are sanctifying this ground, this street, this row of clubs by being here and saying and doing and just being here. A place where other people come to be together to hold hands and celebrate—that place was defiled. While we can’t go to Orlando right now to do what we’re doing, we symbolically do it here.”

Imam Reymundo Nour from the Islamic Society of Palm Springs spoke out in support of the LGBT community.

“The Islamic Society of Palm Springs wants you to know that we stand with other Islamic organizations, civic leaders, human rights organizations, the clergy and the LGBT community,” Nour said. “We stand together in condemning this senseless act of violence.”

Imam Nour reminded attendees what happened to the Islamic Society of Palm Springs back in December—an attack which made national headlines.

“Our mosque was firebombed by an individual who had similar hate sentiments,” he said. “The LGBT community stood behind us, so we’re here to stand behind you today.

We pray for the victims and their loved ones, and we urge the residents of our valley, we urge the citizens of our nation, to stand with them in their time of need as they stood with us in ours, and consistently stand with us in our time of need against bigotry, hatred and discrimination.”

Kevin Johnson, of Bloom in the Desert Ministries, referenced the jigsaw-puzzle pattern on the stole he was wearing.

“It is a time for drawing together, and we are doing that,” he said. “It is also a time when we are called to action. The ordination stole I am wearing right now is rainbow-colored puzzle pieces. I wear it because it represents the intersection of oppressions … in the LGBT community. Let’s eliminate the lines. … Like jigsaw puzzles, our communities are connected to one another, and we can live, support and work for one another.”

Johnson said it was important to speak out against violence and referenced the old ACT UP slogan, “Silence = Death.”

“Thoughts and prayers are fine, but they are not enough,” Johnson said. “Ending this madness will take votes, and I encourage everyone of good faith to cast votes to elect leaders and pass laws to bring sensible gun laws into our communities.”

Lisa Middleton, a transgender woman who is a member of the Palm Springs Planning Commission and a former board member at the LGBT Community Center of the Desert, choked up when she first started speaking.

“We remember Harvey Milk; we remember Matthew Shepard; and we remember Brandon Teena,” Middleton said. “We did not need another reminder, but now we have Orlando.

“I have news for the haters: You are going to lose! There are more of us than there are of them. We are stronger than they are; we are better organized; and we have a pulse. … They have tried to stop us before, put us in jail for who we loved, fired us when we came out, tried to stop us from getting married—and it didn’t work out too well for them. We are stronger; we are together; and this is our town and our country. It is our time.”

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 11

JULY 2016

NEWS

HOT CAR!

A Palm Springs woman’s Honda is stolen three different times in eight months

T

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his one may just be eligible for Guinness World Records: Palm Springs resident Tracy McKain has been a victim of vehicle-related thefts four times in the 3 1/2 years she has lived at her current residence.

In fact, her latest vehicle, a 1999 Honda Civic, has been swiped three times since last October. During the most recent theft, in May, the car was taken even though half of the steering wheel had been cut off during the previous theft.

The police report reveals that the car didn’t even have license plates.

“And no gas, nor lights, either!” McKain said.

Yet her Honda was again stolen at night, and somehow driven to Desert Hot Springs, where police found it abandoned.

For 3 1/2 years, McKain has rented a studio in a small Stevens Road condo complex not far from downtown Palm Springs. Her front window is about 50 feet away from her designated parking spot. She used to drive a Ford truck, until its wheels where stolen in the middle of the night in that same spot.

After that, she was only able to afford a used late-model Honda. (It’s worth noting that the Honda Civic is the second-most-stolen car in the country, right behind the Honda Accord, according to the National Insurance Crime Bureau.)

“I’m on state disabilities due to a work injury,” she said. “I’m not working at this time.”

The police reports indicate McKain’s Honda was first stolen from the parking lot at her Stevens Road residence last October. She remembered walking out of her home—and realizing her car was gone.

“I was standing in my empty parking spot, and I just burst into tears,” she recalls.

Eighteen hours later, the police found the car in an empty field in Desert Hot Springs.

To protect her car, McKain got “The Club” anti-theft device and placed it on the steering wheel. Nonetheless, six months later, the Honda was stolen again.

“I was sad and wondering: How did they take ‘The Club’ off?” she said.

She got her question answered when the car was found—still running—seven hours later: It was missing half of its steering wheel, as well as the stereo and part of the dashboard.

Less than a month later, the same Honda— despite the crippled steering wheel and the

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(760) 325-4800 353 S. Palm Canyon Drive | Palm Springs Tracy McKain’s 1999 Honda Civic was stolen three times in eight months. The final theft happened even though the car was missing half of its steering wheel. brane jevric

missing stereo—was stolen yet again.

Sgt. William Hutchinson, spokesman for Palm Springs Police Department, confirmed these vehicle-theft reports, and explained what happens after a stolen-vehicle report is filed.

“We take a report and enter that information into a statewide database,” he said. “… Property detectives may potentially receive the case, or the Riverside County autotheft task force may take the case.”

Hutchinson said no suspects have been identified regarding the thefts of McKain’s car. He added that it would be helpful for the condo complex to install security cameras.

Cindy Anderson, the property manager for the condo complex where the thefts took place, did not respond to an interview request regarding camera placement. Instead, she forwarded it to the homeowners association board.

Lee Bothe manages Community Association Financial Services, a company which works with the property. She agreed that cameras are an inexpensive way to safeguard cars and HOAs. “With all the affordable technology of today, all that’s needed are cameras and a DVR in a box locked up at the HOA,” Bothe said.

As for McKain, she has bought yet another car, her third since moving to the condo complex. She is keeping her fingers crossed that the HOA will install cameras and motiondetecting lights.

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12 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

JULY 2016

NEWS

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/NEWS

JULY ASTRONOMY

Looking for planets?

Then at theMid-Twilight skies in Planets and Bright Starslook in Evening For evening—and July, 2016 the sleep in!

This sky chart is drawn for latitude 34 degrees north, but may be used in southern U.S. and northern Mexico.

A

By Robert Victor

ll three bright outer planets remain prominent in the evening sky this July.

At dusk, find bright Jupiter in the west-southwest to west, apricot-colored Mars in the southern sky, and Saturn not far to the left of Mars. Venus passed behind the sun in early June, but by mid-July, it emerges into our early evening sky very low in the west-northwest bright twilight glow, 20 minutes after sunset. Look from a place with a view unobstructed by mountains, and use binoculars to help you spot Venus in bright twilight in its first weeks. Binoculars will reveal Mercury near Venus from mid-July until late August. That’ll bring the total to all five bright planets visible simultaneously!

Attend a star party hosted by one of the local astronomy clubs for telescopic views of Jupiter’s cloud belts and four largest moons; Saturn’s spectacular rings and largest moon, Titan; the south polar cap and other markings on Mars; and many deep-sky wonders beyond the solar system, in our Milky Way galaxy, and beyond!

Our chart depicting the sky at evening midmarks the start of a new month, ending the twilight in July follows positions of naked-eye fasting month of Ramadan. planets and stars of first magnitude or brighter Thursday, July 7: Regulus, heart of Leo, in the sky when the sun is 9 degrees below the appears closely north of the crescent moon. horizon, roughly 45 minutes after sunset.

July 8 and 9: Jupiter is closely to the upper On this map, you’ll find bright Jupiter left of the moon on Friday, then not-so-closely starting well up, a little south of due west, at to the lower right of the moon on Saturday. dusk in early July 2016, with faint Regulus, Monday, July 11: The moon is near firstheart of Leo, preceding it as they sink toward the quarter phase. Look for the star Spica, the spike western horizon over the course of the month. of wheat in the hand of Virgo, a few degrees Mars starts a little east of due south at dusk north of the moon. in early July. Note the shape of the triangle it July 13 and 14: Mars is widely to the lower forms with Saturn to its left, and the twinkling left of the gibbous moon on Wednesday, and star Antares, heart of the Scorpion, below not-so-widely to the lower right on Thursday.

Saturn. The triangle will shrink in coming weeks.

Friday, July 15: Saturn is closely below the The Summer Triangle of Vega, Deneb, and moon. Note Antares, heart of Scorpius, the Altair ascends the eastern sky at dusk in July.

Scorpion, below Saturn.

Its brightest star, blue-white Vega, marks the top Saturday, July 16: A close pairing of Mercuryof the triangle. Two other bright stars, golden Venus in bright twilight is described above.

Arcturus and blue-white Spica, are high in the Tuesday, July 19: The moon passes full southwest quarter of the sky. phase shortly before 4 p.m., and rises in the Mercury and Venus first appear on our east-southeast at 7:45 p.m., or 10 minutes evening mid-twilight chart in late July, but if you before sunset in Palm Springs. Because of our observe earlier in twilight, and use binoculars, surrounding mountains, you must wait several you can catch their closest pairing very low in minutes until the moon’s disk begins to appear. the west-northwest on July 16, as Mercury Watch for the moonrise on subsequent (magnitude -1.0) passes just 0.5 degrees north evenings: Wednesday, July 20, at 8:30 p.m.; (to the upper right) of Venus (mag. -3.9). (You’ll Thursday, July 21, at 9:12 p.m.; Friday, July 22, need a viewing site where mountains don’t block at 9:52 p.m.; Saturday, July 23, at 10:31 p.m.; your view!) On the previous evening, July 15, Sunday, July 24, at 11:10 p.m., nearly due east; you can spot Mercury 0.8 degrees to the right of and Monday, July 25, at 11:49 p.m. You’ll notice Venus, with the two setting at about the same the moon rising farther north each night until time. On following evenings, Mercury shifts night of July 30-31, when it will rise in the eastto the upper right of Venus, and then above it, northeast at 3:31 a.m. on Sunday, July 31. and then toward Venus’ upper left, with their Early in July, before the moon gets bright, separation widening. and again beginning around July 22 or 23— Follow the moon: On Tuesday, July 5, see when the waning moon after full starts rising the first crescent moon, age 40.5 hours after late in the evening—go to a dark location after new, half an hour after sunset. Binoculars give nightfall, and enjoy spectacular views of the fine views of this thin moon very low in the summer Milky Way. Follow its path from the west-northwest, provided mountains don’t “W” of Cassiopeia low in the north-northeast, obstruct your view. Sighting of this crescent through the Summer Triangle along the CVIndependent.com

July's evening sky chart.

ROBERT D. MILLER

N

Deneb

Pollux 22

29 Venus

Mercury Vega

E

29

Altair

Regulus Arcturus

1

8

15

W 22

29

Jupiter

Spica Saturn 1 8

15 22 29 1

Antares

Evening occurs the Swan, Northern Cross, ormid-twilight neck of Cygnus, when Sun is 9° below horizon. then down toward the Teapot of Sagittarius to July 1: 46 minutes after sunset. the left of Scorpius in the sky. From 15: 45 " southern " " 31: 44Triangle " " and " southward, within the Summer look for the long Great Rift, where the river of the Milky Way is divided into two streams by clouds of obscuring interstellar dust in the foreground, blocking the light of the stars beyond. A pair of binoculars will easily resolve the Cygnus Star Cloud into multitudes of stars!

Predawn sky: There are no morning planets visible to the unaided eye in July. But cooler mornings make for more comfortable sky viewing. As dawn begins to brighten, we find the Summer Triangle well up in the western sky, getting lower as the month progresses.

Fomalhaut, mouth of the Southern Fish, is in south to south-southwest, and Capella, the Mother Goat star, is ascending in the northeast. To Capella’s lower right, we find ruddy Aldebaran, eye of Taurus the Bull. Before

8 15 22 29 Mars

S

Projection the sky brightens, lookStereographic above Aldebaran for the Map by Robert D. Miller beautiful Pleiades star cluster (the Seven Sisters), a wonderful target for binoculars!

Late in July, the two brightest stars of Orion the Hunter rise into view: reddish Betelgeuse with blue-white Rigel to its right. Between them lies the Hunter’s belt of three stars in a line.

The Astronomical Society of the Desert hosts monthly star parties at Sawmill Trailhead (elevation 4,000 feet). For dates, with directions to the site, visit the Society’s website at www. astrorx.org. Sky’s the Limit Observatory in Twentynine Palms offers star parties most Saturdays, except when the moon is close to full.

For details, visit www.skysthelimit29.org.

Robert C. Victor was a staff astronomer at Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University. He is now retired and enjoys providing skywatching opportunities for school children in and around Palm Springs.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 13

JULY 2016

TRACKING

BY JIMMY BOEGLE

The first comprehensive database of recent California police-related deaths is now complete

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he numbers of police-related deaths in the United States, as documented by Fatal Encounters, have been eerily similar in recent years.

2015: 1,356. 2014: 1,323. 2013: 1,330.

However, this statistical fluke is not what’s newsworthy: What is newsworthy is the fact that we now actually have a database of police-related deaths.

That’s right: Before Fatal Encounters came along, there was not a comprehensive database of all of the people in the United States who died during encounters with law enforcement.

By the time the Fatal Encounters effort is complete, it will include a database going back to the year 2000. As of this writing, the Fatal Encounters team has already “finished” 27 states—including California, which was finished in May. Data for the last 3 1/2 years is complete nationwide The numbers and details contained in the Fatal Encounters database can be chilling. In 2015, of the 1,356 people who died during law-enforcement encounters in the nation, 263 of them were in the state of California. Going back to 2000, at least 48 people have died during law-enforcement efforts in the Coachella Valley alone. (See the list on Page 15.)

Fatal Encounters is the brainchild of D. Brian Burghart, the longtime editor of the Reno News & Review, the alternative newsweekly in Reno, Nev. (Burghart has been a friend and colleague of mine for 20 years—going all the way back to my internship at the News & Review during the summer of 1996.)

At FatalEncounters.org, Burghart explained how the project came to be.

“May 18, 2012: I was on my way home from work when I noticed a bunch of cop cars down by the Truckee River,” Burghart writes. “… It turned out the police had pulled over a stolen car, and they’d shot and killed the driver. (Jace Herndon, 41, we found out later.) Honestly—and not because I’m one of those hard-boiled, cynical types—I wasn’t particularly surprised or offended. Criminals often come to a bad end.

“But again, I’m an editor, so I noticed when a gaping hole appeared in every single news story I read about the incident. There was no context. I kept looking for a sentence that said something like, ‘This was x person killed by police in Washoe County this year.’

“But it was never there.”

It was never there, Burghart learned, because no such database exists. Therefore, Burghart (who stepped down from the Reno News & Review earlier this year) decided to create one— using Google, news coverage, existing databases and public-records requests—going all the way back to the start of the century.

It’s safe to say Burghart had no idea what he was getting into. However, after a grant or two, a successful crowd-sourcing funding effort, tons of media coverage and a whole lot of work

by Burghart and his volunteer-and-paid team, Burghart’s goal is in sight.

“When we say (a state or year) is complete, we’ve exhausted all the means at our disposal—but there are always law students that will bring one that never made the press,” Burghart told me.

“Even when we get everything that we can find, I know we’re still missing stuff,” Burghart said. “… It’s just because of the peculiar ways the media choose to report this stuff. You’d think that they would say, ‘An officer shot and killed somebody’—something simple—but instead, they say, ‘An officer-involved shooting occurred.

It’s crazy.”

Still, Burghart said, he’s happy with how accurate and comprehensive the database seems to be.

“I have yet to have a journalist … point out one we missed,” he said. “We’ve had grad students, not members of our team, who did an analysis using public-records requests and found that we were at 100 percent. While I know it’s not true (that we’re at 100 percent), that’s what they found.”

Burghart said his team has faced a lot of challenges finding information, especially the older info.

“We think of the Internet in 2000 as a mature thing,” he said. “But until 2005 to 2006, a lot of stuff—basically, until the advent of the cloud storage—just got purged from files. People regularly purged their older stuff, because data storage was expensive.”

Fatal Encounters—due to the extra attention given to police-related killings in places like Ferguson, Mo., in recent years—has received a lot of media coverage. This attention helped attract people like Carla DeCeros to the Fatal Encounters effort. She’s the person who is responsible for compiling a lion’s share of the California database.

“I was already researching this topic before linking up with Fatal Encounters,” DeCeros said via email. “My reasons for doing so were probably similar to those of Brian and others continued on next page CVIndependent.com

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JULY 2016

TRACKING Fatal Encounters continued from Page 13 who’ve done this sort of work. Mainly, I wanted answers, but they just didn’t exist.

“To get answers, I realized I’d have to take several steps back and do a lot of info-gathering.

Fortunately, there were others—past and present—who’d done at least some of the work already. What I was doing was building on these earlier efforts, connecting them and filling in the blanks.”

All of this, however, leads to a big question: Why hadn’t someone, like the government, been keeping track of these fatal encounters?

Burghart said he has several theories.

“It’s usually just incompetence, to be honest,” he said. “Many people that I’ve talked to over the years want to find a conspiracy, but I really believe that it’s mostly government incompetence.”

California’s government has done better than most at gathering data. The state Office of the Attorney General’s “Open Justice” website offers data on deaths in custody and arrestrelated deaths between 2005 and 2014. Over that period, the state database includes about 1,200 arrest-related deaths.

Over that same time period, Burghart said, Fatal Encounters has counted twice the number of deaths.

“The government tracks everything that it thinks matters. That suggests to me that the government does not believe that these deaths matter,” he said. “If a low-tech guy like me could do this, then the FBI—with millions of dollars to apply to it and super high-tech knowledge— could do it in an hour.”

of fatal encounters cases—specifically, unarmed people who were killed in 2015.

“What we found was that about 7 percent were unjustified,” he said. “… If I tell you that there are 153 people who were killed by police, and they were unarmed, how many would you think would be unjustified? (Law enforcement officers) would probably tell you two or three.

If you ask an activist the same thing, they’d probably tell you 30 or 40. They’re both wrong.

That’s important. I thank (Fatal Encounters) for the ability to actually do that analysis.

“The biggest predictor (of fatal encounters with police) is poverty, not race—but the biggest predictor of poverty turns out to be race,” Selby said. “That’s not a police problem; that’s an American societal problem.

That’s a federal, state and local policy problem.”

Selby has uncovered some fascinating data trends: “If you take a look at just people who are suffering from mental illness—either diagnosed or apparent—disability, and drug addiction, or some combination of those three, that’s 52 percent of the people who died last year” during encounters with law enforcement.

Thanks to this information, Selby pointed to several programs that he thinks should be emulated around the country.

“No one is bringing attention to the fact that Richmond, Calif., and Albany, N.Y., and Chicago are doing these wonderful interventionbased programs on gun violence, where they identify—through social networks and other means—people at risk of being involved in gun violence, and speak to them and ask them to attend meetings. They’re cutting down their murder rate, and they’re cutting down their gun-violence rate.”

Selby also said society needs to do a better job of dealing with mental illness. Some Fatal Encounters data analyses have indicated that 25 to 30 percent of people who are killed by law enforcement are suffering from mental illness.

“Why are we not moving to do better intervention-based programs instead of waiting until there’s a mental-health crisis, and instead of waiting until somebody’s lost their noodle?”

Selby asked.

The government tracks everything that it thinks matters. That suggests to me that the government does not believe that these deaths matter.

N

ow that there is a comprehensive database of police-involved killings that is available to all, the real work can begin: People can examine the details, crunch the numbers and figure out how to perhaps decrease the alarming number of deaths.

That’s where Nick Selby comes in. He’s a law-enforcement officer as well as a consultant, writer and speaker on law-enforcement data and technology. He’s also the CEO and co-founder of StreetCred Software, Inc. “Fatal Encounters is quite simply the database that is the most complete, the most accurate, and the most contextually complete,” Selby said. “By that, what I mean is in addition to things like name, and time, and gender, we also get some indication of what the person was doing at the time the police showed up, which is really important.”

Using Fatal Encounters data, Selby has come to some conclusions that may have major public-policy implications. He looked at a subset CVIndependent.com

I

n the months and years to come, Fatal Encounters’ data, once complete, will no doubt lead to other conclusions that could help inform public policy. Burghart said that he had been hoping to finish the databases of the other 23 states by the end of the year.

“Well, that was the plan earlier this year, before the whole Guardian and Washington Post thing happened,” he said.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 15

JULY 2016

COACHELLA VALLEY Fatal Encounters since 2000 Stephan McEwan, 33, April 13, 2000, Palm Springs.

McEwan was killed after his motorcycle crashed into a van while leading police on a brief pursuit.

Jesus-Pena “Jesse” Herrara, 32, Feb. 1, 2002, Indio. District Attorney Investigator Dan Riter shot Herrara in the head at close range.

Raymond Deleon, 36, Dec. 26, 2002, Desert Hot Springs. Two officers shot and killed Deleon; officers said Deleon tried to hit them with his car and wouldn’t show his hands.

Antonio Gastelum Sanchez, 34, Jan. 23, 2003, La Quinta. Sanchez died after struggling with deputies.

Kevin W. Diabo, 24, May 13, 2003, La Quinta.

Deputy Robert Burbach shot and killed Diabo after Diabo killed Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Bruce Lee and swung a baton at Burbach.

Name withheld by police, June 16, 2003, Thousand Palms. A female passenger in an uninvolved car was killed by a car fleeing deputies.

Michael Sanchez, 26, and Delonn Arenas, Nov. 21, 2003, Desert Hot Springs. Arenas died after a car fleeing deputies struck the Honda in which Arenas was riding. The passenger in the fleeing car, Sanchez, reportedly died of cardiac arrest after a foot chase and struggle with deputies.

Omar Mendiola, 22, Feb. 17, 2004, Thermal. A California Highway Patrol officer shot and killed Mendiola after an altercation on the Torres-Martinez Indian Reservation.

Lawrence Christopher Phillips, 26, Sept. 2, 2004, Palm Springs. Officer Don Benstead shot Phillips when he pulled a gun on the officer’s partner.

Scott R. Neth, 35, Jan. 16, 2005, Thousand Palms.

Neth died when he crashed his vehicle while fleeing the CHP. Rodolfo Inzunza-Sanchez, 23, March 5, 2005, Thousand Palms. Deputies shot Inzunza-Sanchez when he allegedly refused to drop a handgun and a knife.

Israel Ruiz Hernandez, 30, June 10, 2005, La Quinta. Two deputies shot and killed Hernandez when he allegedly pointed a gun after they confronted him behind Big 5 Sporting Goods Julio Cesar Prado-Franco, 18, June 12, 2005, Indio.

Prado-Franco was killed when he lost control

of his SUV and slammed into a pole while fleeing police.

while he was in the midst of a delusional episode inside a gated community.

Joel Soto Campaña, 35, Aug. 11, 2005, Indio. An officer shot and killed Campaña when he allegedly physically confronted the officer, who was responding to a report of a domestic disturbance.

Jesus Juan “Chapo” Hernandez-Cazares, 21, Sept.

19, 2010, Cathedral City. An officer shot Hernandez-Cazares twice during a confrontation.

Fred Ray Bradley Jr., 29, Nov. 15, 2005, Palm Springs.

Bradley was killed in a car crash during a brief police chase.

Merle Vernon Houston, 40, Jan. 5, 2006, Palm Springs. Police shot Houston when he grabbed an officer’s gun during a confrontation in front of Walmart.

Carlos Romero-Avena, 34, March 24, 2006, Coachella. A CHP officer shot and killed Romero-Avena when he took the officer’s baton after a pursuit.

Leonel Lopez Ramirez, 35, Aug. 1, 2006, Indio/Coachella. Deputies shot Ramirez when he threatened them with a replica firearm and a paintball gun.

Thomas Sharp, 49, Nov. 4, 2006, Cathedral City.

Sharp reportedly shot himself during a police standoff.

Jorge Alberto Martinez, 64, March 19, 2007, Thermal.

Martinez was killed in a head-on collision with Deputy Manuel Viegas, who was also killed.

Roberto Perez, 25, April 11, 2007, Indio. Two officers shot Perez after they responded to a family dispute in Indio.

Sergio “Checko” Lopez, 48, Oct. 2, 2007, Desert Hot Springs. Sgt. Robert Ritchie shot Lopez, who residents of a nearby homeless camp said was known as “Checko,” four times when Lopez continued to come toward the officer.

Nino Joseph Garcia Jr., 24, Jan. 15, 2008, Palm Springs. Police shot and killed Garcia when he pulled a weapon on officers.

Alexis Melendrez-Acosta, 18, May 30, 2008, Desert Hot Springs. CHP officers shot Melendrez-Acosta when he shot at them during a pursuit.

Gregory Fisher, 56, June 3, 2009, Rancho Mirage.

Fisher was a passenger killed in a crash during a highspeed chase.

Robert Albert Appel, 48, May 14, 2010, Palm Desert.

Appel died after struggling with deputies Martin Alfaro, Robert Garcia, Sean Dusek and Edward Chacon

Burghart is referring to the fact that both the Guardian and the Washington Post have created their own databases of law-enforcement-related deaths. In fact, the Post earlier this year won a Pulitzer Prize for its database—after getting the idea from Fatal Encounters, a fact that Burghart documented in an excellent piece at Gawker.com on April 26. (While the Post tipped its figurative hat to Fatal Encounters when it started its efforts, credit was nowhere to be found when the Pulitzer was awarded. In fact, both the Post and the Pulitzer citation made claims about the Post’s database being the “first” and “only” one to accomplish certain things that Fatal Encounters had accomplished well before.)

Neither the Guardian nor Post databases are going back in time to collect anywhere near 17 years of data like Fatal Encounters is, and Burghart said it’s been harder to attract help to Fatal Encounters since the Post won the award.

John Howe Jr., 57, Dec. 27, 2010, Desert Hot Springs.

Howe, a pedestrian, was struck and killed by a police car.

Francisco Gabriel Durazo, 31, April 17, 2011, Palm Springs. Police had been chasing Durazo for a parole violation; police said he also led them on a chase March 18 in a stolen vehicle. Police and Durazo exchanged shots, and officers unleashed police dog Ike on Durazo, but he shot the dog to death before being killed himself.

Ricardo Avila, 37, June 11, 2011, Indio. Avila was a passenger who died on June 20 from injuries sustained when he jumped from a stolen sedan during a pursuit.

William Scott Routh, 47, Aug. 20, 2011, Cathedral City. Routh began experiencing labored breathing and later died after he struggled with officers.

Pascual Manuel Mata, 59, Oct. 21, 2011, Coachella.

SWAT officer Gustavo “Gus” Araiza shot Mata when he opened fire on officers during a 25-hour standoff.

Frank Tanuvasa, 20, Feb. 23, 2012, Palm Desert. Tanuvasa was seen running away from an apartment complex where a burglary was reported. Tanuvasa was shot following a fight with a sheriff’s deputy.

Robert Shirar, 32, May 21, 2012, Indio. After crashing his vehicle on Interstate 10, Shirar threatened investigating CHP officers. They shot and killed him.

Karl Watson, 47, June 25, 2012, Indio. Police shot and killed Watson as he reportedly beat an officer who arrived at the scene after Watson murdered his ex-girlfriend.

Joshua Sznaider, 27, Oct. 6, 2012, Palm Springs.

Police were called out at 7 a.m. as Sznaider created a neighborhood disturbance. He was Tasered twice and put in a chokehold as he resisted arrest. He died four days later of cardiac arrest.

Allan DeVillena II, 22, Nov. 10, 2012, Palm Springs.

Officers fatally shot DeVillena after the unarmed Marine allegedly drunkenly drove his car at the officers.

Despite conflicting witness statements, the district attorney declined to file charges against the officers.

Alejandro Rendon, 23, Feb. 14, 2013, Indio. Rendon was shot by Indio Officer Alex Franco after he and his partner attempted to stop the suspect while he was riding his bicycle. Franco claimed the suspect was facing him down over the hood of the police vehicle and could have been armed. Experts later testified that Rendon’s wounds showed he was shot from behind and below. The family of Rendon was awarded $1.9 million.

Ernest Foster, 37, July 4, 2013, Indio. Foster was shot and killed by an Indio police officer; authorities said he was armed, and when police confronted him, he ran away. A pursuit on foot led to a confrontation, when the officer opened fire.

Eulizez Rodriguez, 24, Aug. 22, 2013, Desert Hot Springs. Rodriguez was killed after officers pursued him for driving a stolen car. After a short foot chase, an officer shot Rodriguez after he pulled out a gun.

Luis Morin, 39, Jan. 27, 2014, Coachella. Morin, wanted on two nonviolent felony warrants, was visiting relatives. When Morin and his relatives returned home from dinner, a deputy attempted to arrest the unarmed Morin; a scuffle ensued, ending with the deputy shooting Morin. A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed against Riverside County.

Jesus Zuriel Orduno Luviano, 20, Nov. 2, 2014, Indio. The California Highway Patrol attempted to pull over a drunk driver. When the suspect didn’t stop, Indio police joined the chase. Luviano exited the vehicle, allegedly with a shotgun, and was shot.

Omar Rodriguez, 35, Dec. 25, 2014, Coachella.

A deputy was in the area responding to a report of a “suspicious person.” Rodriguez allegedly tried to take the deputy’s baton, and was shot and killed.

Dario Colin, 33, Feb. 6, 2015, Palm Desert. Colin was killed in a crash while fleeing the CHP. Samuel Villarreal, 18, Oct. 14, 2015, Indio. Officers were investigating an auto theft and attempted to stop Villarreal after he drove a stolen car into a parking lot. Police opened fire after Villarreal allegedly backed his car into a police cruiser.

Dominic Hutchinson, 30, Oct. 24, 2015, Cathedral City. Hutchinson was shot by officers responding to a domestic disturbance.

Juan Perez, 38, Dec. 5, 2015, Indio. Police, investigating a stolen golf cart, approached Perez, and shots were exchanged. Perez was shot and killed.

Source: Fatal Encounters

“It undermines the idea that this is needed, because people now believe that the media’s on top of it—although I can tell you by looking that they’re not,” Burghart said When Fatal Encounters is complete, most likely next year, the database will include details on more well more than 20,000 police-related deaths. What’s next?

“When we have a comprehensive database going back to Jan. 1, 2000,—I’ll make a decision then,” he said. “We’ve actually been asked by people in other countries to help them set up something.

“I have a lot of ideas. There are a lot of databases that should exist in this country to show the numbers behind things. There should be a database of people who die in prison and in jail. That doesn’t exist. … It’s mind-boggling that these aren’t tracked.”

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 17

JULY 2016

CVI SPOTLIGHT: JULY 2016 Bringing the Funny: Joshua Tree Is the New Home of an Improv/Comedy Fest

J

oshua Tree is known for eclectic festivals.

The high-desert community hosts gatherings centering on everything from yoga to UFOs to music.

Now Joshua Tree can add improv/comedy to that list.

The Joshua Tree International Improv/ Comedy Festival will take place Friday through Sunday, July 8-10, at the Hi-Desert Cultural Center. The performer list includes both local names and people from recognizable comedy institutions including Second City and Last Comic Standing.

Jeanette Knight, the director of the festival, said that although the venue is new (to the event), the festival itself is not.

“It’s the first one in Joshua Tree,” Knight said. “The first one was actually called the Coachella Valley Improv/Comedy Festival, and that was in 2014. There was a change in management at our (original) venue, the Indio Performing Arts Center (IPAC). They didn’t really support the idea or the festival, and the Hi-Desert Cultural Center found out that we needed a new home.

Knight, who was the artistic coordinator at IPAC, said the first festival was an amazing experience.

“There are improv/comedy festivals held throughout the world, and I … had the idea to do an improv festival,” she said.

Knight said she’s encouraged about the buzz the 2016 edition of the festival is receiving.

“We’ve already sold tickets, so we’re very optimistic. We’re hoping for a great turnout.

We sold quite a few early-bird tickets during early June,” she said. “We have performers coming from as far away as New York and Chicago. We really want the community

to turn up and support them. We have a selection company that viewed video submissions and determined the best. We had 70 submissions, and there are 38 performers.

These are the best, and they’re up-andcoming.

“Some of them, like (Los Angeles comedy group) the Fireturtles—I’ve become a fan of them after I found all these videos they have on YouTube. They have hundreds of thousands of views.”

Tom Dreesen, a well-known actor and standup comic, is coming to the festival to share a very important message.

“He opened for Frank Sinatra for 14 years,” Knight said. “He also used to perform on The Late Show With David Letterman and also guest-hosted for him. He’s actually donating his time to us. He has a real important message to get out: He’s doing an hourlong seminar for us on Sunday. He’s had a lot of friends who are standup comics, and a couple of them committed suicide. Not to make it sound like his seminar is going to be depressing, but it is about standup comedy and enjoying the journey. It’s open to performers and the general public. It’s for anyone who wants to learn how to enjoy life a lot more.”

The festival should not be considered “fun for the whole family.”

“Some material might be R-rated and not suitable for children,” Knight said. “Parents these days are pretty diverse with what they want to expose their kids to, but we’re not encouraging kids to come, because we don’t want to make them feel uncomfortable. On the other hand, with these different tickets, you can come and go as you please. … With improv comedy, you don’t really know where

Tom Dreesen

the story is going to go.”

What can attendees expect?

“Expect to have a lot of fun,” Knight said. “The audience will also be voting on the overall winner. The overall winner, the top-scoring sketch group, improv group or standup comic, will be offered a paid engagement to return as part of the Hi-Desert Cultural Center’s next season.

That’s what they’re competing for. The

audience will have a little say.”

The Joshua Tree International Improv/Comedy Festival takes place Friday, June 8, through Sunday, June 10, at the Hi-Desert Cultural Center, 61231 Highway 62, in Joshua Tree. Tickets are $45 for a one-day pass, or $120 for an all-access pass. For tickets or more information, visit jtimprovfestival.org.

—Brian Blueskye

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By Shonda Chase, RN Co-owner and aesthetic director of Revive Wellness Centers Palm Springs and the South Bay area of Los Angeles

C

E

KYLIE JENNER’S LIP SECRETS

FIRST P

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Revive your best life Visit our new location (Adjacent to El Paseo)

Shop our collection of new and donated items. Featuring Mode. Affordable new furniture that fits your lifestyle.

Donating, volunteering or shopping at Revivals helps Desert AIDS Project build a healthy community.

Last month, we showed how radio-frequency treatments can improve all types of scars, including acne and stretch marks. This month’s secrets are all about Kylie Jenner’s lips—and your lips, since so many women are getting their lips injected right now.

Secret No. 1: Women and teens who get lips like Kylie’s can really experience a boost of self-confidence. However, Kylie’s lip augmentation isn’t permanent. She will need to get them re-injected every year or so to keep them “luscious.” This is a good thing—because you don’t want anything that’s permanent injected into your lips. (Watch any episode of Botched for proof.)

Secret No. 2: Kylie’s lips weren’t filled just for volume. The technique used on her lips was a “rolling out technique”: Her injector used an advanced technique with dermal filler to roll her lips up and out to get that look. Only experienced and advanced injectors can safely and predictably create the “Kylie” result for their patients.

Secret No. 3: Kylie’s lips look great on Kylie. They might not look great on you. Kylie has mild gull-wing shaped lips.

What if your lips are tubular, like Angelina’s? You will want an advanced injector who has injected lips on 100 or more different types of patients—someone who knows how to not overdo them. Expect to pay more for that experience and safety. When it comes to lips, you really do get what you pay for.

Next month, we’re going to share new secrets about Revive’s new FDA research study project that provides feminine rejuvenation without surgery, discomfort or downtime. Until then, keep the secret.

Kylie’s lips, before and after lip injections.

Read the entire article at www.revivecenter.com/blog.

Email your individual appearance and aging questions to Ms. Chase at Shonda@revivecenter.com.

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 19

JULY 2016

ARTS & CULTURE

Enjoy $4 cocktails & desserts this summer!

HOT SOUNDS

Coachella Valley Rep adds jazz to its summer lineup

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CV Rep’s Summer Jazz Series takes place at 69930 Highway 111, No. 116, in Rancho Mirage.

Tickets are $30 for each show plus a post-show reception sponsored by Gelson’s Market. For tickets or more information, call 760-296-2966, or visit cvrep.org.

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We are part of a

the

the

the

the

the

NEIGHBOR mosaic that makes up STUDENT our vibrant PAINTER desert community. CASHIER NURSE TEACHER the

audience, yet I’m always striving for intimacy.”

Celona said he has “absolutely” achieved the goals he set for himself when he founded CV Rep back in 2008. He predicts that by this coming October, the theater’s season-ticket subscriber base will reach 1,400. CV Rep is also the only Equity theater in the valley.

Next season’s CV Rep lineup will feature guest directors, larger casts and extended runs—each show will be performed for a full four weeks.

As for rumors that CV Rep is moving to a new location, Celona would only confirm that the theater will definitely be in its current location, inside The Atrium in Rancho Mirage, during the upcoming season. (Watch for news regarding the theater’s future.)

What makes CV Rep different from other live theaters in the valley?

“I try to choose plays that will challenge the audience—educational, thought-provoking fare that is not being offered elsewhere locally,” Celona said. His goal is to tap the passions of audience members, and perhaps have them look at a play’s subject matter from a different angle.

Both Celona and Saitta hope the Summer Jazz Series will be a rousing success. If it is, Celona said he’ll bring in similar artists throughout the season in between plays.

The series kicked off with the Sherry Williams Quartet in June. The lineup for the rest of the summer: • Peter Sprague and Leonard Patton: 7 p.m., Thursday, July 21.

• Josh Nelson: 7 p.m., Friday, July 22.

• Carl Saunders and his quartet: 7 p.m., Saturday, July 23.

• Jennifer Leitham Trio: 7 p.m., Thursday through Saturday, Aug. 25-27.

CENTER

the

he Coachella Valley Repertory Theatre has built an excellent reputation as a place to see thought-provoking theater since it was founded in 2008.

But this summer, as CV Rep takes its annual seasonal break from plays, founder and artistic director Ron Celona decided to try something new: a summer jazz series, in association with world-class bassist Bill Saitta.

It all began when Saitta was hired as part of the band for CV Rep’s production of A Class Act early this year. (Ron first met Saitta through a common friend, Yve Evans, herself an amazing local jazz musician.) One day during rehearsals, as the story goes, Saitta suggested a summer jazz series.

Celona had already incorporated cabaret shows into the theater’s summer offerings, but CV Rep was looking for a way to increase revenues to cover rent for recently acquired additional space.

Thus, the Summer Jazz Series was born.

The two men hammered out the details during several brainstorming lunches. The concept was inspired by Fitz’s Jazz Café at the McCallum Theatre, which is curated by local musician and longtime radio personality Jimi “Fitz” Fitzgerald. This prompted Celona to tell Saitta: “I want you to be my Fitz!”

Celona said his appreciation of jazz—one of his favorite singers is Dinah Washington— began as a child. His father played the tenor saxophone, but gave it up to get a “regular” job to support his family. Celona himself—a talented singer, actor, dancer and director— studied piano briefly as a child.

“It didn’t stick,” he said.

Saitta began playing piano at the age of 7 and added the Fender bass at age 14. He studied bass and guitar with Carol Kaye and earned a degree in instrumental performance from the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

During the season, Saitta is featured every Tuesday night at Backstreet Bistro in Palm Desert, jamming with great talents like Yve Evans, Doug MacDonald and Deanna Bogart.

He’s also the staff bassist for the Jazz in the Pines Festival in Idyllwild every August.

Saitta will be featured on bass throughout the jazz series, with Tim Pleasant on drums.

Saitta compared the process of collaboration between singers and musicians to that of an a capella group.

“Everybody’s pitching in and contributing to the harmonic sound,” Saitta said. “The conversation should reach out into the

Carl Saunders

GE

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By Bonnie Gilgallon

the heart of our community

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JULY 2016

FOOD & DRINK

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/FOOD-DRINK

the

BEER GODDESS

By Erin Peters

T

he temperatures are absolutely scorching. Pool parties, mercifully, are everywhere.

Yep. Summer has arrived with full force in the Coachella Valley.

If you’re thirsty, you may want to check out what’s happening at Coachella Valley Brewing Co. We decided to check in with CVB—one of the three fantastic breweries that call the valley home—and we learned they’re brewing up a storm in Thousand Palms, with 25 to 30 rotating beers on tap. That’s a lot of great local beer.

I spoke with Chris Anderson, head brewmaster and part owner of CVB. He told me that the latest release is the return of Dubbel Date—this time, made with medjool dates. These larger dates are sweet and regarded by many as the “best” variety of dates.

“We used to make that year-round,” Anderson said. “It’s always been kind of a popular beer here (at the CVB taproom), but for whatever reason, from a distribution standpoint, it never really took off for us. But it sells really well here, so we serve it maybe once or twice a year.

“This is probably the most excellent batch Mayahuel (pronounced ma-jewel), the Aztec ever made. We used 100 percent medjools this goddess of agave, is making a comeback, of time. That’s the only thing we really changed, sorts: That is also the name of a gorgeous beer other than beefing up the malt.” brewed with agave nectar, and then aged in The popular Harvester IPA is coming back barrels. It’s sweet, funky and full of flavor. and is perfect for the hot weather. It’s big on “It’s a Belgian tripel with Fairchild grapefruit with sharp flavors and some citrus tangerines and Persian limes, and then notes, and is very balanced. we’ll use 100 percent organic blue Weber’s

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An update on the goings-on at Coachella Valley Brewing Co.

agave nectar, as well as Belgian candy sugar,” Anderson said. “So it’s a real special beer. Then we age it in bourbon barrels—typically. But this year, we took a different spin on it and aged it in mescal barrels from Mexico. So it’s a little bit earthier and a little more smoky. …

We’re pretty happy with it.”

Anderson added that the Mayahuel spent 16 months in those mescal barrels.

As for perfect-for-summer sours, Anderson said CVB is offering its Biere de Tarte, as well as its sour wheat beer Berlinerweisse. Also: The brewery’s 4 percent alcohol by volume Boys of Summer boysenberry sour is coming out in the middle of July.

Anderson recently took a trip down to San Diego, the Mecca of craft beer in Southern California. He visited Societe and Council breweries for their anniversary parties.

“It’s a labor of love. They have a little threebarrel system, roughly one-seventh the size of ours, right?” he said of Council. “And then they’re doing so much production. They had three little satellite spaces, and they’re loading each batch of beer into this little transport vessel that you have to clean and sanitize, and backing it down through this little industrial

park over six different speed bumps to get into their facility.”

Back in the Coachella Valley, Anderson said that summer is one the best times of year for CVB, despite the heat.

“We’re one of those breweries where summer is our chance to have fun and show off,” he said.

“Expect to see the tap list pretty well full, just like it is right now, with 20 or 30 beers on tap.

We’ll keep releasing bottles every month.”

I noted that the brewery is offering some pretty heavy beers, too.

“Yeah, big beers that nobody’s releasing in the summer time—like 20 percenters,” Anderson said, referring to the alcohol by volume. “This year, Black Widow will be close to 20 percent.”

Coachella Valley Brewing brewed approximately 2,500 barrels in 2015 and is on pace to brew 4,000 to 5,000 barrels this year.

The beers are currently selling in California, Arizona and Nevada. When I asked him whether CVB could expand to more states, Anderson said he’d instead like to grow more awareness in his own backyard—the Coachella Valley and Southern California, that is.

Stay cool, and drink local!

Coachella Valley Brewing usually has 25-30 of its beers on tap. erin peters

JULY 2016

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 21

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FOOD & DRINK INDY ENDORSEMENT This month’s recommended meals have a seafood theme!

By Jimmy Boegle WHAT The Happy Hour Mussels/Clams Steamer Combo in White Wine Broth WHERE Trilussa Ristorante, 68718 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Cathedral City HOW MUCH $10 CONTACT 760-328-2300; trilussarestaurant.com WHY It’s all about the broth.

When I ordered from the bartender while sitting at the bar at Trilussa, I said: “I’d like the mussels and clams combo steamers in the white-wine broth, please.”

However, if I were being completely honest and accurate, I would have said: “I’d like the white-wine broth, and a whole bunch of bread so I can sop it all up, please. You can bring mussels and clams, too, but they’re incidental.”

I mean no disrespect to the bivalves in this dish; they’re perfectly acceptable, and in fact, I’ll acknowledge that their presence adds a bit of seafood flavor to the broth. But, really, this dish is about the wine, the butter, the garlic and the seasonings that constitute the yummy, yummy liquid.

This broth is just one of many reasons you should check out the happy hour at Trilussa, which is available at the bar every day between 4 and 7 p.m. (FYI: Sister-restaurant Sammy G’s, in downtown Palm Springs, also offers a similar happy hour menu—including steamers with delicious broth—through the day until 8 p.m.) Add in glasses of house wine for $4, beer for $3 (domestic) or $4 (imported), well drinks for $5, and all sorts of other food bargains ranging from New Zealand lamb chops ($12) to personal pizzas ($8-$10), and the result is one the valley’s top happy hours.

It’s also worth noting that Trilussa is nice.

Ample windows provide the space with a lot of natural lighting, and the décor is classy without being pretentious.

In summary … Trilussa’s happy hour is scrumptious, inexpensive and comfortably lovely. Give it a try.

CVIndependent.com

WHAT The Chile Relleno de Camaron WHERE Felipe’s Fine Mexican Food, 400 S. El Cielo Road, Palm Springs HOW MUCH $13.50 CONTACT 760-318-9277 WHY It’s creamy, spicy deliciousness.

I do not care for Yelp. The quality of reviews is suspect, at best, and many businesses accuse the website of what amounts to extortion: Yelp’s advertisers get preferential treatment when it comes to highlighting good reviews, and burying the bad ones, according to several lawsuits (which Yelp has disputed). Blech.

Still, Yelp has its useful qualities. I disregard the negative reviews (you never know what motives the reviewers have) but use the positive ones to research oft-raved-about items at unfamiliar places. I also check Yelp on occasion to find out about newly opened restaurants.

In this vein, I must tip my figurative hat to Yelp for letting me know about Felipe’s, which opened around the first of the year in the space that previously housed El Cielo Bakery. Even though I’ve driven past the strip mall that Felipe’s calls home many dozens of times since the first of the year, the restaurant escaped my notice until I stumbled across its Yelp listing.

The five-star cumulative rating of Felipe’s caught my eye—as did the frequent raves about the chile relleno with shrimp.

So off I went to Felipe’s during a recent lunch. While the menu offers a wide variety of intriguing breakfast, lunch and dinner fare, my mind was set on the chile relleno de camaron. I sat at the small bar area during my lunch, and was waited on with care by Felipe himself.

Now I know what all those citizen reviewers are raving about: The dish was fantastic. The perfectly prepared peppers and the ample shrimp were brought together by the creamy chipotle sauce—it was flavorful, with just enough spice. I debated picking up the square plate and licking up every last bit of that sauce.

I didn’t, but I sure was tempted. If you try this dish, you may be tempted to do so as well.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 23

JULY 2016

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/FOOD-DRINK

FREsh gRound . handcRaFtEd

Restaurant NEWS BITES

By Jimmy Boegle RANCHO MIRAGE RESTAURANTS TEAM UP FOR A ‘TASTE OF SUMMER’ Enjoy inexpensive yet yummy drinks and desserts? If so, then you may find yourself spending a fair amount of time in Rancho Mirage over the next couple of months.

The city, its chamber of commerce and its restaurant association have teamed up to create “Taste of Summer Rancho Mirage.” Here’s how it works: For $10, you can purchase a wristband at the Rancho Mirage Chamber of Commerce (71905 Highway 111, Suite H). All of that wristband money will go to various charities.

With the wristband, you can enjoy $4 cocktails at participating restaurants from Friday, July 8, through Sunday, July 17. Then come Friday, Aug. 5, through Sunday, Aug. 14, your wristband will get you $4 desserts at participating places.

Participants include Burgers and Beer, Babe’s Bar-B-Que and Brewhouse, bb’s at The River, Brandini Toffee, Catalan, Fleming’s, Gioia, Johnny Rockets, Las Casuelas Nuevas, Maracas, Norma’s Italian Kitchen, The Slice, Omni Rancho Las Palmas Resort and Spa, The Ritz-Carlton Rancho Mirage and The Westin Mission Hills Golf Resort and Spa. Sounds like a pretty cool deal! Head over to www.tasteofsummerranchomirage.com to learn more.

MEBAR AT MORONGO ELEVATES THE SELFIE We’re not sure if this is really cool … or a sign that our civilization is descending into narcissistic chaos.

The new MEBar at the Morongo Casino Resort Spa will offer cocktails and craft beers “in a uniquely interactive environment where guests can share selfies and musings on the high-definition, socialmedia-linked monitors that pack the new lounge,” according to a news release.

Depending on your perspective, the news release then gets either more amazing … or more horrifying: “The MEBar’s monitors are linked to Twitter. Anyone tagging a tweet with #MEBar or #Morongo can see their posts appear around the bar and across the Internet in near-real time. …The sleek new MEBar features iconic fire-red stone walls, 15 LED TVs, a custom mural framing the outside, and a menu of camera-ready concoctions, perfect for snapping and sharing.”

If this sounds appealing, grab your smartphone, and head up Interstate 10 to 49500 Seminole Drive, in Cabazon. MEBar is open from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. every day. Learn more at www.morongocasinoresort. com/entertainment/mebar.

IN BRIEF Chop House Palm Springs, the lovely steakhouse at 262 S. Palm Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs, served its last meals on Sunday, June 12. So, too, did Grind Brgr Bar, which occupied the second floor of the space. When the restaurant’s Facebook page announced the closing, the post noted that owner Kaiser Restaurant Group was “actively negotiating for a new location, so stay tuned for information and updates.” Then the Chop House Facebook page disappeared. We’re not taking that as a good sign. In any case, the old Chop House space will not be vacant for long: The Broken Yolk Café—a chain restaurant with about a dozen and a half locations, primarily in Southern California (including one at 78430 Highway 111 in La Quinta)—has announced it’s moving in. … Woody’s, the popular burger joint at 317 N. Indian Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs, has closed. But never fear: Woody’s has been merged with The Palm House Restaurant, its sister business, at 450 S. Palm Canyon Drive. Watch palmhousepalmsprings.com for details. … After a stint at The Atrium shopping center in Rancho Mirage, Livreri’s—a name familiar to longtime valley residents who enjoy Italian fare—has returned to Palm Springs. Livreri’s of Palm Springs is now located at 2330 N. Palm Canyon Drive. Get more info at www.facebook.com/livrerisbellanapoliattheatrium. ... Congrats to the El Mexicali Café, located at 82720 Indio Blvd., in Indio, for being named Small Business of the Year for California’s 56th Assembly District. Get more info by calling 760-347-1280 or visiting elmexicalicafe.com. … The long-awaited restaurant at the Caliente Tropics, located at 411 E. Palm Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs, is finally here. The Congo Room and Reef Bar is open seven days a week and offers chef Richard Perez’s creations for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Get more info by calling 760-327-1391 or visiting www. calientetropics.com/restaurant-bar-lounge. ... Gone too soon is Serious Food and Drink. However, a new restaurant has already taken over the space at 415 N. Palm Canyon Drive: Welcome Watercress Vietnamese Bistro, a Redlands favorite, to its Coachella Valley location. … Coming soon to downtown Palm Springs’ La Plaza, in the space most recently occupied by Fresh Juice Bar: Raw Remedy Organic Juice and Raw Food Bar. Watch www.facebook.com/rawremedyjuicebar for updates. ... The building that was once home to Dickie O’Neals, at 2155 N. Palm Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs, has been purchased—and a liquor-license notice on a window hints that something may be opening there in the near-to-intermediate future. The license applicant: Brooklyn Café Inc. Watch this space for news as it develops. … Café Palette, a restaurant that offered pizzas and other fare—along with a decidedly LGBT vibe—at 315 E. Arenas Road, in Palm Springs, has closed its doors for good.

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A chat with Lisa Tussing, sommelier at Morgan’s in the Desert

By christine soto

L

isa Tussing, a Southern California native, got her start in wine while attending college in Arizona. She started out like many of us do—drinking wine from Trader Joe’s, where she worked during college.

From there, she moved on to fine dining, at places like John Howie Steak in Bellevue, Wash., and the historic Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix. In 2014, Tussing was the youngest woman in Arizona to hold a Level 2 sommelier certification. A chance meeting with La Quinta Resort and Club general manager John Healy at the Biltmore (which is owned by the same company as the La Quinta Resort) brought Tussing to the desert last year.

Tussing and I chatted in the dining room of Morgan’s over a bottle of Los Bermejos Malvasia Seco.

When did you first start getting into wine?

When I worked at Trader Joe’s. I got a job there when I was 22, and worked there for three years while I was going to Arizona State. I’m the biggest Trader Joe’s cheerleader: I had a great work experience. Everyone loves being there; they pay well; they feed you; they encourage you; they let you take ownership and make you feel empowered with your guests. I started working in the wine department a little bit, and my friends and I started to taste our way through the wine selection. By 23, I had drank my way

through the wine program! From there, I kind of started taking it over. I started making the orders and became the go-to wine person. People would laugh at me and say, “You’re not even old enough to drink, are you?”

What’s the best part of your job?

At Morgan’s, we do these “festivals” menus.

Every two weeks, depending on what is in season and what’s local, we do a different threecourse menu. We do this all summer. … We do wine pairings with the menus, too! It is really

fun to work with my chef (Jimmy Schmidt); he gives me an idea of where to start, then we’ll sit down together and bring new wines in and make the perfect little pairing.

I also love it when guests bring in wine and share some with me. Some of the best wines I’ve ever had are wines guests bring in.

What are you loving on your list right now?

The Bonny Doon “(I Am Not Drinking Any) $%&*#!” Merlot is a fun, inexpensive wine. I love the name, and it has a really fun story behind it.

Another of my favorites on the list is Trefethen Dragon’s Tooth. The Dragon’s Tooth is a malbec blend out of Napa Valley which Janet Trefethen makes that is a winery- and wine-club-only wine, but I managed to convince them to let me put it on the list. … I also like the Tamarack Cellars rosé that I pour by the glass. Last summer, I went wine-tasting in Walla Walla, and after a week of tasting syrahs and merlots and these giant cabs and Washington reds, my palate was blown, but we went to Tamarack last-minute, because my chef’s friends said how amazing it was. I drank this rosé there, and it was like the wine gods were shining a light on me.

What’s your sommelier strategy?

It’s all about your guest and knowing what they’re looking for. My strategy is to approach a table and get a feel for them and what they’re trying to accomplish with their meal. I ask what they’re having for dinner, what they normally like to drink, and how much they want to spend.

I also ask if they want to go more traditional or do something fun. With all that info, I can pick out the perfect bottle on my list for their occasion. My strategy is not limited to wine: I have no ego once service starts. I’ll bus your table; I’ll run food and seat people. Once service starts, it’s all about the guests.

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Lisa Tussing

How often do people want fun versus traditional?

A lot more than you’d think, actually! A lot of guests will come in here with their minds made up. They might say, “I really like The Prisoner,” and I’ll ask why, and they’ll say, “I really like the fruit and texture, and it is really mellow.” I’ll say, “If you really like that wine, definitely get it! But if you want to try something a little different tonight, go with this B Cellars Sangiovese out of Napa Valley.” It’s all about reading the table.

What are you drinking right now?

Vodka. (Laughs.) When I go out, I drink cosmos and beer, like hefeweizen and lager. When I’m

at home, I drink bubbles. I also love any white that doesn’t touch oak: torrontés, vinho verde, albariño and New Zealand sauv blanc.

Your desert island wine?

Well, I’d do a breakfast, a lunch and a dinner wine: Bollinger (Champagne) for breakfast, torrontés for lunch, and Jones Family Vineyards Cabernet for dinner. I remember the first time I had that wine. A guest brought it in, and I thought, “Why don’t all red wines taste like this?”

Favorite food pairing?

I love a good oyster/champagne combo, or oyster/rosé. I love our oysters here; they are one of the most refreshing things I’ve ever tasted—a raw oyster topped with tangerine and Eroica Riesling granita; poached ginger; and tangerine salsa. It’s one of the chef’s signature dishes.

Favorite wine book?

All the study books are good, like Windows on the World and The World Atlas of Wine, but I read a book one time that really inspired me: Cheryl Ladd’s Token Chick: A Woman’s Guide to Golfing With the Boys. It’s about golf, but (I) kind of tied wine into it. She was the first woman on the celebrity pro-am. It’s not technically about wine, but it’s about being a woman in a man’s world, so I relate to her.

Where do you like to go out in the desert?

I stay in La Quinta a lot. There is a restaurant up the street called Casa Mendoza; I try to stop in there on my days off. (The restaurant has) killer margaritas, and the owner is always there; he’s really friendly. The food and service are great. I send a lot of people there.

Your favorite thing to do in the desert?

Golf at the Arnold Palmer Private Course at PGA West. Right now, the bighorn (sheep) are out on the course! It’s a sight to see. I don’t mind the heat. I don’t drink on the course—just water and Gatorade, so I sweat it out. It’s cleansing.

Palm Springs native Christine Soto is a co-owner of Dead or Alive wine bar in Palm Springs. She can be reached at christine.soto@gmail.com.

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Justin Ledesma’s Latest Iteration of Sunday Funeral: It’s a Three-Piece Rock Band the blueskye report, july 2016: Kenny Rogers, Maxwell, and lots of stuff in between! the lucky 13: the sweat act's troy whitford tries not to "should" people THE LUCKY 13: desert rock radio's terry mcguinness doesn't care for bro-country

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GET YOUR MIND INTO THE GUTTER

Gutter Candy keeps on bringing the fun with great covers and clever originals

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Gutter Candy keeps on bringing the fun, including a monthly gig at Tryst

By Brian Blueskye

ost cover bands can be boring and repetitive.

Then there’s Gutter Candy The band that used to be known as Shawn Mafia and the 10 Cent Thrills renamed itself Gutter Candy in 2014 and is as hilarious and fun to watch as ever.

During a recent phone interview, high desert singer-songwriter Shawn Mafia, aka Jersey Dagger (aka Shawn O’Connor), talked about the name change.

“Basically, I went by that moniker of Shawn Mafia for a decade,” O’Connor said. “I decided to go in a different direction. I lost a few members of the band, and I wanted to give it a new identity. I have a schizophrenic nature, anyway, when it comes to art and creativity, and I thought I’d just become a totally different dude and go by Jersey Dagger.”

When O’Connor was performing as Shawn Mafia, his material was completely different than that of today’s Gutter Candy. However, he isn’t afraid to revisit his old material from time to time.

“I played a Shawn Mafia show a few weeks ago in the high desert and brought it back to me, with the acoustic guitar—(keeping it) singer-songwriter oriented, and doing all that material,” he said. “It’s night or day now, and I keep the personas separate.”

Gutter Candy performs some originals, including “God Doesn’t Like Me Very Much” and “Adult Movies on DVD,” along with a slew of glam-metal and punk-rock covers.

“Growing up through the late ’80s and early ’90s, in junior high and high school, we listened to all the punk-rock stuff, all the underground stuff, and because of the MTV generation, you were basically exposed to all the Sunset Strip glam metal,” O’Connor said.

“Just to be cool, we professed to like the punkrock stuff, but we secretly liked Motley Crue, Poison and Guns N Roses. … (I knew) some of the members of Gutter Candy back then, and we always wanted to have a band that sort of crossed the lines between Sunset Strip hard rock and punk rock, stealing from both. That was sort of the genesis for Gutter Candy.”

O’Connor explained where he got the new name. “I added the words ‘Gutter’ and ‘Candy’ and put them together, and it sort of solidified what we were: ‘Candy’ being that glam-rock and Sunset Strip-rock element, and ‘Gutter’ being the more punk-rock vibe.

I thought it fit and sounded good. Music is so segmented and rigid, and actors can play different roles in different movies, so why can’t musicians have different personas and do different genres? I figured, ‘What the hell? I’ll just go out and do it and see what happens.’”

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O’Connor explained that the band members don’t always agree on the covers they perform.

“I want to do Rancid. We haven’t had a Rancid song in our setlist yet—maybe ‘Time Bomb’ or ‘Ruby Soho,’” he said. Lixxx Candy, our guitar player, wants to do Van Halen’s ‘Panama,’ but Sin Balls, our drummer, doesn’t want to. There’s all this conflict over what to cover and what not to cover.

“We do have one Van Halen song we do, and Lixxx has a real hard-on for Van Halen, so there might be another.”

Late last year, Gutter Candy released a fivesong EP, Come Guzzling.

“We’ve actually got a couple of new originals that haven’t been recorded,” O’Connor said. “We definitely want to get those recorded and add to what we did for our last EP, Come Guzzling, and we want to do an official full LP. Whether or not that happens, we’ll see. It all comes down to money.”

Gutter Candy plays the second Saturday of the month as part of a residency at Tryst in Palm Springs.

“Those live shows at Tryst are a lot of fun. At the last one we did, there were a lot of people who showed up throughout the whole night. The later it goes, the more drunk people and homeless people stumble in,” O’Connor said. “(We have in our audience a range from) homeless guys to hot younger girls who dig the ’80s and ’90s covers we do.

There was this new wave guy who came with this girl. I don’t want to say she’s a midget, but she’s definitely a small girl, and they stayed through the whole three hours and were totally digging it.

“We’re all about those shows at CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City back in the ’70s and

then the Sunset Strip in the late ’80s. It’s all about that vibe, living in that moment—and nothing is out of bounds at a Gutter Candy show.”

Gutter Candy not too long ago played a memorable show in Banning.

“We did some shows at a place called Boondocks, and the owner there is a crazy motherfucker named Diego, who is actually a pretty cool dude,” O’Connor said. “We were playing there last February outside, and he had these outside heaters, and the crowd was really digging it. It got so amped up during our song ‘God Don’t Like Me Very Much’ that people started smashing the heaters on the ground and jumping up and down on them.

Our bass player almost got hit by one.”

Of course, Gutter Candy continues to evolve. After bassist Big Dave Johnson left the band, O’Conner recruited an old

friend who goes by the name D.D. Gunz. The band also recently added a surprising new element—a second guitarist, Shawn Smash.

“I’ve known D.D. since high school, and we go way back, and back when there wasn’t any Internet in the pre-cell phone days, we’d hitchhike to L.A. to go see shows,” O’Connor said. “We finally had a chance to get together on this project. We added our second guitar player, Shawn Smash, and he’s the lead guitar player of Total Chaos.

“A long time ago, D.D. and I moved to Texas. We packed up my Ford Fiesta with a P.A. system and went to Houston, and that’s where we met Shawn Smash. Shawn moved to Palm Desert awhile back, and we recruited him for Gutter Candy.”

For more information on Gutter Candy, visit www.guttercandyrules.com.

Gutter Candy

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The Blueskye REPORT juLY 2016

By Brian Blueskye

Justin Ledesma’s latest iteration of Sunday Funeral: It’s a three-piece rock band

T

By Brian Blueskye

he band Sunday Funeral has seen numerous members come and go since 2007—and frontman Justin Ledesma is the only member who has been a part of it all along.

Earlier this year, Sunday Funeral parted ways with guitarist and vocalist Brian Frang, and is now performing as a trio, with new bassist Andrea Taboada, and drummer Grant Gruenberg.

The list of Sunday Funeral’s former members is impressive, including Dali’s Llama drummer Craig Brown, Flusters drummer Daniel Perry, singer/songwriter John Robbins, and many others.

So what is it that makes Ledesma keep forging ahead with Sunday Funeral?

“Not wanting to see it fall apart, I suppose,” Ledesma said during a recent interview at the band’s practice space. “I started it and have tried to keep everybody. But people shift in and out, and people change.”

It was hard for Ledesma to remember how many members have come through Sunday Funeral through its various iterations. enjoying the band as it stands now.

“Originally, we started as a trio,” he said. “(This) month, I will have been in the band “We’ve been a three-piece, a four-piece, a fivefor a year now,” Taboada said. “I was the last piece, and a six-piece.” one to join the band after Grant joined. I had According to Ledesma, Sunday Funeral never heard the music until I started playing currently has 3 1/2 members … sort of, if one with them, but I clicked with Justin’s guitarincludes keyboardist Jason Obando. playing. There have been times I don’t click “I still consider Jason semi-in,” Ledesma with guitarists I’ve played with, or I don’t like said. “The next time we need a keyboard part, my bass lines. I like Justin’s style.”

I’ll probably hit him up.”

Gruenberg came to Sunday Funeral after Not surprisingly, each of Sunday Funeral’s stints in several other bands. albums has a different sound.

“I was talking to John Robbins, and he and “Yeah, it’s a pretty eclectic mix,” he said.

I were trying to do something at the time that Gruenberg said the band is running a lot fell through,” Gruenberg said. “I went over to more smoothly than it had before. his apartment, and Brian was his roommate at “The communication is a lot easier now,” the time, and Brian introduced me to some of Gruenberg said. “We don’t have to go behind each other’s backs to talk about one person because one person is upset.”

Sunday Funeral Ledesma explained why the band decided to part ways with Brian Frang.

“With Brian, it was differences in opinion when it came to style,” Ledesma said. “He’s doing his own thing now and writing his own songs, and I think he’s getting a group together.

He lives with me, and we’re roommates, and we’re still like brothers. It was a little weird when it happened, though, but it is what it is.”

Sunday Funeral has been through various ups and downs; for starters, Ledesma was in a nearfatal car accident and endured a bitter divorce.

On the up side, Ledesma looks back with great joy on one event: a live show with the Valley Strings Community Orchestra, in 2014.

“That was so much fun,” Ledesma said. “I don’t know how many people it was, but 40 or 50 people were playing something that I wrote.

It was like, ‘Wow! I don’t know if I deserve it, but they’re doing it!’”

Taboada and Gruenberg both say they’re

the music, and I was like, ‘OK, I can do this.’

That fell through for two or three months, and then they hit me up, asking me to come over.

I came over; I jammed a bit; and I was a little rusty, given it had been four or five years since I last played. But I liked the music, and I was happy.”

The members of Sunday Funeral are hoping to record a demo showing off a new, tighter sound.

“It would just be four songs for the time being,” Taboada said. “The only recordings Grant and I are on are the live videos on Facebook and YouTube. It’d be nice to have something that the three of us recorded.”

The band members played for me a cover of a Great Depression-era song they’ve been working into their routine. Ledesma said he’d like to include it on the demo, too.

“I was thinking about a cover of ‘Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?’ because that’s the direction I’m trying to take things in, and go down that path a little bit,” Ledesma said. “I like to think our direction now is more builtupon. I like parts of ’30s and ’40s culture, and it’s something I have passion for. I figured I’d try to work it in.”

For more information on Sunday Funeral, visit Kal David www.sundayfuneral.com.

Armenchik

July is going to be hot—but never fear, because there are some great air-conditioned events going on.

Fantasy Springs Resort Casino is again the place to be in July. At 8 p.m., Saturday, July 2, get some advice on how to know when to hold them, and know when to fold them, when Kenny Rogers performs. The popcountry icon has sold more than 120 million albums! Tickets are $29 to $69. At 8 p.m., Saturday, July 9, pop-star Kesha will be stopping in. Since 2010, Kesha has taken the music world by storm—although many still don’t know what to make of her. After a nasty court battle with producer Dr. Luke, she’s returning to live performances and seems to be heading down a different creative path. Tickets are $39 to $79. At 8 p.m., Friday, July 29, get out your dancing shoes, because Earth, Wind and Fire is coming back to town. It’s been a rough year for the group due to the death of founding member Maurice White, but the band is still in demand and continues to dazzle audiences.

Tickets are $49 to $79. Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, 84245 Indio Springs Parkway, Indio; 760-342-5000; www.fantasyspringsresort.com.

Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa has several intriguing events in July. At 8 p.m., Saturday, July 16, standup comedian Brian Regan will perform. Regan, who is known to refrain from using profanity, is quite popular across all age groups and has been going strong since the ’90s. Tickets are $55 to $85. There’s another event worth mentioning if you are a fan of world music: At 6:30 p.m., Saturday, July 30, there will be a show by Armenian singer Armenchik.

Born in Armenia and raised in Los Angeles, Armenchik showed a natural talent for singing at a young age and has performed all around the world. Tickets are $60 to $150.

The Show at Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa, 32250 Bob Hope Drive, Rancho Mirage; 888continued on next page

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Maxwell

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Spotlight 29 is going to heat up at 8 p.m., Friday, July 22, when Maxwell stops by.

In 1996, Maxwell released Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite, which is said to have changed R&B forever. Maxwell’s singing ability is right up there with that of Marvin Gaye; it’s no wonder that Urban Hang Suite was a hit, even though Maxwell did it without much commercial support. In fact, the album went on to sell 2 million copies. If there is one show you shouldn’t miss in July, this is the one. Tickets are $71 to $111. Spotlight 29 Casino, 46200 Harrison Place, Coachella; 760775-5566; www.spotlight29.com.

Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace has a solid schedule through July. Ted Quinn, the longtime host of the free open-mic nights on Mondays, has stepped down. During July, Pappy’s is bringing in a series of guest hosts: Jesika Von Rabbit on July 4; Leslie Mariah Andrews of the Small Wonder Experience on July 11; Bella Dawn on July 18; and Lee Joseph on July 25. In other news: At 9 p.m., Sunday, July 10, the group Imarhan will be

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performing. Imarhan performs Tuareg music, which has a soulful and groovy rhythm.

Sadam, Imarhan’s frontman, is the cousin of Eyadou Ag Leche, of Tinariwen, who also helped write some of the music for Imarhan’s self-titled debut album. Tickets are $15 to $17. At 8:30 p.m., Saturday, July 16, the queen of the high desert, Jesika Von Rabbit, will take the stage. Also on the bill: Death Valley Girls. Hopefully this performance will mark the return of Von Rabbit’s dancing man, Larry Van Horn, who recently told me he suffered a leg injury, but is getting back into the groove. Last but certainly not least, at 8 p.m., Saturday, July 30, The Evangenitals will be coming back yet again for a guaranteed great time. The show is free! Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, 53688 Pioneertown Road, Pioneertown; 760365-5956; www.pappyandharriets.com.

The Coachella Valley Art Scene is teaming up with the Ultrastar Mary Pickford Theatre in Cathedral City for the second summer in a row. Each Friday, a local band will play from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. On Friday, July 1, Giselle Woo will be performing. On Friday, July 8, David Morales from EeVaan Tre and the Show will take the stage; on Friday, July 15, The Flusters are the act; on Friday, July 22, EeVaan Tre himself will be performing, and on Friday, July 29, Madison Ebersole will perform. Admission is free. Ultrastar Mary Pickford Theater, 36850 Pickfair St., Cathedral City; 760-328-7100; www.ultrastarmovies.com.

Copa Palm Springs will be hosting comedian and actor Leslie Jordan again at 8 p.m., Friday, July 1; 8 p.m., Saturday, July 2; and 7:30 p.m., Sunday, July 3. He’ll be performing his one man show, Straight Outta Chattanooga. Tickets are $25 to $45. Copa, 244 E. Amado Road, Palm Springs; 760-3223554; www.coparoomtickets.com.

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LUCKY 13 Get to know an excellent drummer and a High Desert Radio host

By Brian Blueskye

NAME Troy Whitford GROUP The Sweat Act MORE INFO Whitford is best known as the drummer for the Sweat Act, but he also plays for local supergroup 5th Town. Whitford tells us the Sweat Act is planning a live recording of all the band’s songs. Visit www.thesweatact.com or www.facebook.com/TheSweatAct.

all the bands trying to copy that crap. It makes me laugh and puke at the same time.

What musical act, current or defunct, would you most like to see perform live?

Frank Zappa, hands down.

What’s your favorite musical guilty pleasure?

Lorde. That’s my girl! Don’t tell anyone.

What was the first concert you attended?

The Vans Warped Tour at the Pond in Anaheim.

What’s your favorite music venue?

The Viper Room (in West Hollywood).

What was the first album you owned?

The Offspring, Smash.

What’s the one song lyric you can’t get out of your head?

“When I go driving, I get drunk,” from the Sweat Act, “I Go Driving.”

What bands are you listening to right now?

The Flatliners, Authority Zero, No Use for a Name, Choking Victim, Leftover Crack, Lagwagon, Descendents, Talking Heads, Tower of Power, SNFU, Rise Against, Propagandhi, NOFX, Pink Floyd, OFF!, No Cash, and J Dilla.

What artist, genre or musical trend does everyone love, but you don’t get New-era disco, like Franz Ferdinand stuff, and Troy Whitford

What band or artist changed your life? How? Reel Big Fish. They taught me not to take things so seriously, and that if you’re drinking, and you know that you’re my friend, then I should probably consider having a beer. Woo hoo!

You have one question to ask one musician.

What’s the question, and who are you asking?

I would ask Dick Lucas (Subhumans): What’s his reason for existence, and does he believe in anything? Does his lifestyle contradict the words he writes in the songs he sings?

What song would you like played at your funeral?

Lagwagon, “Owen Meaney.”

Figurative gun to your head, what is your favorite album of all time?

Tower of Power, Back to Oakland.

Terry McGuinness

What song should everyone listen to right now?

I try not to “should” people.

NAME Terry McGuinness MORE INFO McGuinness is a well-known high-desert music figure. After being on the air with Radio Free Joshua Tree, which recently called it quits, McGuinness is now part of the new Internet-radio venture Desert Rock Radio.

He’s thrown some great shows at the Palms Restaurant in Twentynine Palms that have included Rikk Agnew and Jello Biafra. For more info, visit www.desertrockradio.com or www. facebook.com/desertrockradio.

What was the first concert you attended?

Kiss/Styx during the Kiss Alive! tour, 1975, in Jacksonville, Fla. What was the first album you owned?

I actually bought three albums that day: Black Sabbath, Masters of Reality; ZZ Top, Tres Hombres; and Deep Purple, Made in Japan.

What bands are you listening to right now?

Baptists from Vancouver, B.C., and Obliterations from Los Angeles.

What artist, genre or musical trend does everyone love, but you don’t get?

Bro-Country.

like the Hood Bar and Pizza because of their booking policy, and the Redwood Bar in Los Angeles for the ambience.

What’s the one song lyric you can’t get out of your head?

It’s not a song, but a commercial jingle from the ’70s: “Feeling 7Up, I’m feeling 7Up.” What band or artist changed your life? How? Probably the Ramones. I remember going to buy Rocket to Russia when it was first released, and the record-store clerk refused to sell it to me. I finally convinced him, got it home, and threw it on the turntable. It had me from the very first bar of “Cretin Hop.” Also: Lipstick Killers by the New York Dolls was a big influence.

You have one question to ask one musician.

What’s the question, and who are you asking?

“Hey, Lemmy, what’s up with the mole?”

What musical act, current or defunct, would you most like to see perform live?

I really regret that I never got around to seeing David Bowie live.

What song would you like played at your funeral?

I’m going to be cremated, so probably “Burn the Flames” by Roky Erickson. But that’s already been done in the movies (The Return of the Living Dead) so I’ll have to think more on it.

What’s your favorite musical guilty pleasure?

I don’t feel guilty about anything I listen to, but I guess Okinawan folk music, or good opera.

Figurative gun to your head, what is your favorite album of all time?

The album I go back to the most is Motörhead, All the Aces.

What’s your favorite music venue?

I’ve never cared for large venues or festivals. I like Café NELA in Highland Park (Los Angeles).

It has a great community vibe there. Dave Travis has done a great job with that place. I also

What song should everyone listen to right now?

Everyone needs to go out and discover something new. I’m currently listening to “Clam Stamps and “Hot Dog Slaps” by Blasting Echo.

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30 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

JULY 2016

CANNABIS IN THE CV

COACHELLA CHRONIC!

A large-scale Coachella-branded cannabis production facility is coming to the East Valley

W

BY SEAN PLANCK

hile Desert Pot Springs is garnering national attention with its charge into the cannabis industry, the other end of the valley is starting to steal a little of that green spotlight: Irvine-based Cultivation Technologies has plans to open an 88,000-square-foot cannabis-production compound in Coachella.

“We saw an opportunity in the city of Coachella—an agricultural community desperately in need of economic development,” said Justin Beck, the president of Cultivation Technologies, to the OC Weekly. “After much discussion, the city said they wanted to participate, but essentially didn’t know where to start. So we helped them create an ordinance that fully aligns with (California’s Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, three bills which became law last year) in advance of its final implementation. We now have six acres of real estate in Coachella that we’re dedicating to the legal cultivation of marijuana for our Coachella-branded cannabis.”

Yes, Cultivation Technologies is naming its product after the city where it will be produced—a city which also shares its name with that really big music festival.

The Coachella-branded operation will be unique in the fact that it will include every part of the production process, including cultivation, manufacturing, on-site lab testing and

distribution. The company also plans to work with other local growers to produce extracts.

“We will also act as a third-party service provider of extracts from local producers of cannabis. We’ll also then test, distribute and transport it from our site,” said Beck.

Richard Probst, the chief operating officer of Cultivation Technologies, boasted in a news release that the Coachella operation will be unparalleled.

“Our first six acres could rank among the most state-of-the-art cannabis facilities in the world,” he said. “With our proprietary LED technology and vertical grow systems, we believe our brand will resonate with patients who want the highest quality medicine available in California.”

The city of Coachella’s cannabis green zone is the area east of Dillon Road along Avenue 48, an area that is also the city’s auto-wreckage zone.

While Desert Hot Springs is rising to fame for allowing large-scale cultivation, Coachella has gone much further by allowing not only cultivation, but also permitting extract and edible manufacturing and distribution.

The six-acre facility is scheduled to open in November of this year.

Cannabis Tax Increase Dead—for Now Introduced by Marin state Sen. Mike McGuire, Senate Bill 987 would have tacked an astronomical 15 percent “user fee” onto all retail cannabis purchases in California.

(McGuire also introduced SB 643, one of last year’s three aforementioned regulatory bills that made up the Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act.) Americans for Safe Access voiced strong opposition, arguing that the bill unfairly targets cannabis patients. “We do not assess ‘user fees’ on insulin, heart medications or chemotherapy,” read a recent newsletter sent by the group.

“Imposing additional tax will be bad for public safety,” said Don Duncan, ASA’s California director. “Inflating the cost of legal medical cannabis will force some patients to buy less-expensive cannabis from the unregulated illicit market—where there are no safety standards or oversight. That is the opposite of what regulations are supposed to accomplish.”

In response to pressure from the ASA and other patient advocates, lawmakers amended the bill, dropping the rate from 15 percent to 10 percent, and adding an exemption for

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patients with a state medical cannabis ID card who can prove their income is less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Those changes would have indeed reduced the impact on lower-income patients, but the fee still would have taken unjust advantage of many.

The bill passed in the Senate. However, all of this became moot—for now—on June 20, when the bill was defeated by a 5-4 vote in the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee.

Whew!

Where Is It Legal to Smoke in California?

I overheard a conversation between two people in a bar the other night about how great it is that cannabis is finally becoming legal and more socially accepted. But they also touched on a subject on which I was not clear on myself: Where, exactly, am I allowed to smoke my medication in California?

It seems people smoke everywhere these days, but what’s legal? Surely these bar patrons and I couldn’t be the only tokers in Cali wondering about this. Therefore, I did some research.

As with any law, it’s more about what you can’t do. According to SB420, Section 11362.79., medical cannabis users can light up anywhere but these places: • Any place where smoking is prohibited by law.

• In or within 1,000 feet of the grounds of a school, recreation center, or youth center, unless the medical use occurs within a residence.

• On a school bus.

• While in a motor vehicle that is being operated.

• While operating a boat.

The bill also states: “Except as authorized by law, every person who possesses not more than 28.5 grams of marijuana is guilty of an infraction punishable by a fine not more than $100.”

I haven’t smoked on a school bus since high school anyway. I can feel my prohibition-era paranoia easing already.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 31

JULY 2016

OPINION COMICS & JONESIN’ CROSSWORD

Across 1 ___ of Maine (toothpaste brand) 5 Name associated with a philosophical “razor” 10 Some insurance options, for short 14 Stonestreet of Modern Family 15 Star Trek character that speaks Swahili 16 Little green guy of film 17 Maitre d’ handout 18 Get red, maybe 19 Google co-founder Sergey 20 Alternative rock band formed in 1984 that’s called Honolulu, Austin and Chicago home 23 Treatment facility 24 “Rikki-Tikki-___” (Kipling short story) 25 Auth. submissions 28 Colonial critters?

31 Punk rocker with the backup band The Pharmacists 35 Scratcher’s target 37 Bovine Old Testament idol 39 Headwear banned by

the NFL in 2001 41 “La ___” (Debussy opus) 42 Actor Killam of both Mad TV and SNL 43 Races, like the heart 46 Hourly wage 47 ___ fugit 48 Olympic skating medalist Michelle 50 “Feed me kitten food!”

51 Barks like a fox 53 Ornamental carp 55 Schoolroom furniture with a surface shaped like a “7” 63 River into which Ali threw his gold medal 64 Lost spectacularly, in slang 65 “... hit me like ___ of bricks” 66 Recurring Seinfeld character from Pakistan 67 Center square occupant Paul 68 Tony of Veep 69 Czech Republic river 70 Freight hauler 71 “Ye ___ Curiosity Shoppe”

Down 1 Fill-in at the office 2 Cookie sometimes eaten inside-out 3 iPod Nano precursor 4 Gulf War missiles 5 The Little Rascals, alternately 6 Motherboard component 7 “We’ll tak a ___ kindness yet”: Burns 8 “___ you just the cutest thing ever?”

9 Formal order 10 Prius, e.g.

11 Memento ___ 12 Norse counterpart of Ares 13 Ratted 21 ___-Locka (city near Miami) 22 Track meet component 25 In the ___ of (surrounded by) 26 Add fuel to 27 See-through scenery piece 29 Grant’s landmark 30 Aerodynamic 32 West Coast NFLer as of 2016

33 Bring bliss to 34 Humans ___ York (photo/interview site) 36 Time to drink cheap 38 Old West challenge 40 Astronaut’s pressurized garb 44 Blacktop makeup 45 Rest for a while 49 Head bob 52 Attendant of Bacchus 54 State where Wayward Pines is set 55 Cop or call lead-in 56 “If ___ $1000000” (Barenaked Ladies song) 57 Dig 58 “99 Luftballons” singer 59 Actress Conn of Grease 60 “Too many more to mention” abbr.

61 Gavel-banging word 62 Meniscus location ©2016 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@ jonesincrosswords.com) Find the answers in the “about” section of CVIndependent.com!

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32 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

JULY 2016

Deals available ONLY in the Independent Market as of July 1:

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