Coachella Valley Independent September 2018

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT | SEPTEMBER 2018

VOL. 6 | NO. 9

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SEPTEMBER 2018

Arts Best Art Gallery Best Indoor Venue Best Outdoor Venue Best Local Arts Group/ Organization Best Local Band Best Local DJ Best Local Musician (Individual) Best Local Visual Artist Best Movie Theater Best Museum Best Producing Theater Company

Voting is now under way in the Coachella Valley Independent’s fifth annual Best of Coachella Valley poll!

Voting in this readers’ poll, to determine the best of the valley’s best, will take place in two rounds: • The First Round of voting will take place online at CVIndependent.com through Friday, Sept. 14. This round consists of fill-in-the-blank voting. The voting is up to our readers, and our readers alone—there are no pre-determined “finalists” or candidates.

• The top three to five vote-getters in each category will move on to the Final Round of voting, which will run online at CVIndependent.com from Tuesday, Sept. 25, through Monday, Oct. 29.

• The winners and other results will be announced at CVIndependent.com on Monday, Nov. 26, and in the special Best of Coachella Valley section in the Independent’s December 2018 print edition.

CVIndependent.com

Life in the Valley Best Local Activist/Advocacy Group/Charity Best Gym Best Yoga Studio Best Bowling Alley Best Sex Toy Shop Best Auto Repair Best Car Wash Best Plant Nursery Best Pet Supplies Best Annual Charity Event Best Place to Gamble Best Local TV News Best Local TV News Personality Best Radio Station Best Local Radio Personality Best Bookstore Best Retail Music/Video Store Best Comics/Games Shop Best Hotel Pool Best Urgent Care Best Indoor Fun/Activity Valley Professionals Best Doctor Best Eye Doctor Best Dentist/Orthodontist Best Plastic Surgeon Best Attorney Best Air Conditioner Repair Best Personal Trainer Best Chiropractor Best Personal Trainer Best Real Estate Agent Best Electrician Best Public Servant Fashion and Style Best Clothing Store (Locally Owned) Best Resale/Vintage Clothing Best Furniture Store Best Antiques/Collectables Store

Best Jeweler/Jewelry Store Best Hair Salon Best Spa in a Resort/Hotel Best Day Spa (Non-Resort/ Hotel) Best Florist Best Tattoo Parlor Best Eyeglass/Optical Retailer Outside!

Best Public Garden Best Place for Bicycling Best Recreation Area Best Hike Best Park Best Outdoor/Camping Gear Store Best Bike Shop Best Sporting Goods Best Public Golf Course For the Kids Best Playground Best Place to Buy Toys Best Kids’ Clothing Store Best Restaurant for Kids Best Place for Family Fun Best Place for a Birthday Party Food and Restaurants Best Casual Eats Best Caterer Best Diner Best Organic Food Store Best Delicatessen Best Custom Cakes Best Desserts Best Ice Cream/Shakes Best Date Shake Best Frozen Yogurt Best Bakery Best Barbecue Best Burger Best Veggie Burger Best Sandwich Best Pizza Best Wings Best Bagels Best Smoothies Best Buffet Best Local Coffee Roaster Best Coffee Shop Best Tea Best Breakfast Best California Cuisine Best Brunch Best Chinese Best Greek Best French Best Indian Best Italian Best Japanese

VOTE NOW AT CVINDEPENDENT.COM

Best Korean Best Sushi Best Seafood Best Steaks/Steakhouse Best Thai Best Vietnamese Best Vegetarian/Vegan Best Upscale Restaurant Best Outdoor Seating Best Late-Night Restaurant Best Mexican Best Salsa Best Burrito Spirits and Nightlife Best Beer Selection Best Local Brewery Best Place to Play Pool/ Billiards Best Cocktail Menu Best Craft Cocktails Best Gay/Lesbian Bar/Club Best Happy Hour Best Dive Bar Best Margarita Best Martini Best Nightclub Best Sports Bar Best Wine Bar Best Wine/Liquor Store Best Bar Ambiance Rules: • Only one vote per person, per round, please! We’re watching IP addresses, so be honest.

• Ballots without a full name AND a working email address will be thrown out and not counted.

• If you do not have an opinion in a certain category, leave it blank!

• Stuffing the ballot box is a no-no. Interested parties can engage in simple campaigning—like putting up signs, linking to the ballot or using social media to encourage fans/customers to vote—but anything beyond simple campaigning is a no-no. Any businesses, groups or individuals suspected of stuffing the ballot box may be disqualified, at the discretion of the Independent publisher.

• If you have questions, call 760-904-4208, or email jboegle@cvindependent.com

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 3

SEPTEMBER 2018

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

Anger and divisiveness are the enemy—not the free press

A couple of weeks ago, my husband, Garrett, decided to get more active on Facebook. One of his motivations was a realization that our friends are, for the most part, like-minded—Democrats, fairly liberal, etc.

He decided to send friend requests to anyone with 50 or more mutual friends—people with whom he likely had something in common, but didn’t necessarily already know.

Editor/Publisher His Facebook friends list grew by Jimmy Boegle hundreds over the next few days … and this led to some interesting things. A few of his new “friends” instantly hit on him.

Assistant Editor He had a couple of nice conversations Brian Blueskye with people regarding their common connections. And he discovered that some coveR and feature design of his new Facebook friends were rather fervent Trump supporters.

Mark Duebner Design For some people—many people, actually—this would have led to an Contributors instant click of the “unfriend” link. I’ve Stephen Berger, Max Cannon, Aaron seen a lot of my liberal friends brag with glee after unfriending Trump supporters Cantu, Kevin Carlow, Ben Christopher, who had chosen to speak out on Charles Drabkin, Katie Finn, Kevin Facebook; I’ve even heard some talk about Fitzgerald, Bill Frost, Bonnie Gilgallon, unfriending people who merely clicked “like” on Trump’s page, even though Bob Grimm, Michael Grimm, Dwight people “like” Facebook pages for a lot of Hendricks, Valerie-Jean (VJ) Hume, different reasons.

Brane Jevric, Keith Knight, Brett However, Garrett’s goal was not to Newton, Dan Perkins, Guillermo Prieto, simply become “friends” with yet more people who shared his opinions—so Anita Rufus, Jen Sorenson, Robert rather than clicking “unfriend,” he decided Victor to engage.

I asked Garrett what he has learned so The Coachella Valley Independent far from his Trump-supporting friends.

His rather depressing response: “They’re print edition is published every month. self-isolating and aren’t interested in All content is ©2018 and may not be other opinions.” published or reprinted in any form In other words, they’re just like our liberal friends. without the written permission of the There’s a lesson to be learned here: We publisher. The Independent is available should all be a little more like Garrett, free of charge throughout the Coachella and reach out more to our neighbors Valley, limited to one copy per reader. who may not agree with us. After all, we need to share our roads, our stores, Additional copies may be purchased our cities, our planet; shouldn’t we at for $1 by calling (760) 904-4208. The least make an effort to understand each Independent may be distributed only by other? As Garrett said to one of the the Independent’s authorized distributors. Trump supporters (who, alas, went on to unfriend him): “If we can’t communicate The Independent is a proud member and/or supporter with each other, democracy doesn’t work.” of the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, I am going to repeat that, because it’s CalMatters, Get Tested Coachella Valley, the Local important: If we can’t communicate with Independent Online News Publishers, the Desert each other, democracy doesn’t work.

Business Association, the LGBT Community Center of The Independent is joining hundreds of the Desert, and the Desert Ad Fed. newspapers and news websites around the country in publishing editorials calling on President Donald Trump to stop his nearconstant attacks on the freedom of the press. Since before he took office, Trump continued on next page COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ANSON STEVENS-BOLLEN

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A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR continued from Page 3

has repeatedly, and angrily, denounced the news media as a whole—even, as I recently mentioned in this space, going so far to refer to the media as “enemy of the people.”

I could go into details here about how this rhetoric is right out of the authoritarianism playbook. I could elaborate on how the news media is not one big, cohesive entity, but instead, many hundreds of publications with all sorts of different editorial philosophies and viewpoints, ranging from sharply liberal to staunchly conservative. I could go on and on … but I won’t. I’ll just again repeat Garrett’s words: If we can’t communicate with each other, democracy doesn’t work.

The nation’s free, unrestricted press is one of the ways we communicate with each other—and the unwarranted, unspecific and potentially dangerous verbal attacks by the president on the free press must stop.

We all need to do better. As

citizens, we need to do a better job of understanding other. As newspapers, we need to make sure we’re being as diverse as possible—inclusive of all valid viewpoints and concerns. Our public officials need to do a better job of representing their constituents—all of them—and being leaders.

Of course, leadership starts at the top, and in the United States, that means it starts with the president of the United States.

No matter what your politics are, I hope we can all agree: Journalists are not the enemy. Because if we can’t communicate with each other, democracy doesn’t work.

—Jimmy Boegle This piece ran on Aug. 16 as part of a nationwide editorial effort by more than 300 newspapers and news websites.

To read more of these editorials, visit apps.bostonglobe.com/opinion/ graphics/2018/08/freepress.

SUPPORT ETHICAL LOCAL MEDIA. OUR DEMOCRACY DEPENDS ON IT. We don’t charge for our content, online or in print; it’s free and open to all, and always will be. That said … great stories and coverage cost money to produce, edit and publish. If you have a buck or two to spare, please consider becoming a Supporter of the Independent. Any amount is appreciated!

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 5

SEPTEMBER 2018

OPINION OPINION

KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS O

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/OPINION

Meet Jeanie Ribeiro, an independent woman in every sense of the word

BY ANITA RUFUS

ur families influence who we become—and like many women who came of age in the ’60s and ’70s, the conflict between the politics of the era and what she saw in her own home shaped Jeanie Ribeiro’s life.

Ribeiro, 76, was born and raised in Onset, a village that calls itself “the gateway to Cape Cod,” about an hour outside of Boston. “It’s not far from where the Kennedys have their enclave. We used to say we were on the poor side of the bridge,” she laughs. “But we were only about two blocks from the beach. As a kid, I could go to the back bay all by myself and just hang out.”

Ribeiro and her siblings—two sisters and a brother—lived around lots of family. “We had aunts and uncles and cousins from my when they lowered him to kiss her in her mother’s family all around us, and my father’s coffin. Can you imagine? His primary focus family lived only about 20 minutes away,” she was taking care of and protecting his family, says. but he was something of a playboy. In fact, I Ribeiro’s forebears emigrated from Cape met a young woman who was actually a child Verde, an island nation off the northwest of my dad. coast of Africa, in the early 1900s, when the “Dad got abusive toward my mom, and she islands suffered a severe drought and famine. threatened to leave him several times. I just The islands were colonized by the Portuguese, know that she never had the chance to live and were a pivotal location in the early slave the life she might have wanted. I learned that trade. It was also a haven for Jews and others independence meant being happy by doing who were victims of the Portuguese-Spanish what you want to do.

Inquisition. The population, with a mixture “To this day, I always go everywhere alone. of European, Moorish, Arab and African Of course I have friends, but they know not to backgrounds, developed its own unique Creole put any demands on me. I never wanted to be culture and language. tied down to anyone. I do things when I want “When I was young, a lot of the kids I to. Even when I had boyfriends, I never lived went to school with came from immigrant with them. I didn’t want anyone taking over families,” says Ribeiro. “Everybody seemed my world the way my dad had with my mom.” to have grandparents, or even parents, who Ribeiro prides herself on being selfspoke a language other than English. … educated and a voracious reader. After she There were so many backgrounds in our own graduated from high school, she wanted a way family. We were black and Portuguese. My out of the small town where she was raised. grandpa was a citizen of Portugal. One of my “There were maybe 2,000 people in the whole grandmothers was English. I always used to area, and there weren’t a lot of opportunities ask, ‘What are we?’” for women, especially women of color,” she Ribeiro is described by everyone who said. “I had a friend who had a management knows her as fiercely independent. job at the telephone company in Boston.

“I always felt as if I were an only child, even When I went in for that interview, I knew from about the age of 2,” she says. “I really they would give me the job. They needed liked being on my own. My mom instilled younger people. I may have been the first in me a desire to be independent. She was woman of color they had hired.” in a traditional-role marriage with my dad.

Ribeiro came to California in 1975. “I had She had a beautiful voice, and people always a cousin in Los Angeles, and we roomed said she was as pretty as Lena Horne. I don’t together for a while. I realized I didn’t want remember my dad ever being really kind to to live right in the city. I found a job in Santa my mother. I remember when all she wanted Monica and a place where I could walk to was to get a job, and he absolutely forbade it. work.”

“My dad was a hard-working man who Ribeiro later moved up to Big Bear was basically living the American dream. His Lake and loved it. “It was the air up there, mother had died when he was very young, especially after being in Los Angeles,” she and the only memory of her that he had was said. “I’m totally an outdoor person. I skied,

Jeanie Ribeiro.

biked and hiked. In fact, it’s because the air was so clean that I stopped smoking!

“Fun to me means getting up early to walk, reading two or three books at a time, and going to cultural events, the museum, art exhibits. And when you go places alone, you meet interesting people. Conversations don’t happen easily when you’re already with someone else.

“I moved down to the desert because I’m starting to age, and I wanted to be closer to medical facilities. I love living my life here in my own way.”

Ribeiro realizes the women of her generation fought to avoid living their lives in the same roles as their parents. “Men are attracted to my independence—but then I can’t be what they mean by ‘wife,’” she says.

“Between the propaganda (of feminism) in the 1960s, and my mom’s marriage, the message that came through to me was that unless you find the right fit, you don’t have to be married. I’ve been asked, ‘Are you a

lesbian?’ since I’ve never married. I’m not, but my response is, ‘Sex is sex. If you love someone, what difference does it make?’

“I think I was born with a positive attitude.

I’ve always been focused on what’s happening right now. People who glorify the past are boring. Sure, we have memories, but I’m always open to the next new thing coming down the road. Right now, I’m joyful, happy and healthy, and I’m free to do anything I want.”

Thanks to the lessons of her own family and of the changing cultural norms for women in her generation, Jeanie Ribiero lives her life to the fullest.

Anita Rufus is also known as “The Lovable Liberal.” Her show That’s Life airs weekdays from 11 a.m. to noon on iHubradio, while The Lovable Liberal airs from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturdays.

Email her at Anita@LovableLiberal.com. Know Your Neighbors appears every other Wednesday at CVIndependent.com.

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SEPTEMBER 2018

NEWS AT RISK FOR A CURABLE DISEASE T

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/NEWS

The Desert AIDS Project wants baby boomers to know: You may have hepatitis C—and not know it

by brian blueskye

he Desert AIDS Project wants to let Coachella Valley residents know about the dangers of hepatitis C—especially baby boomers, who may have been carrying the now-curable disease unknowingly for decades.

Jose De La Cruz is a community health educator for DAP. He explained why people from one particular demographic—those born between 1945 and 1965—are especially at risk for the potentially fatal disease, which can cause liver failure and liver cancer.

“The test (for hepatitis C) didn’t really become available until 1991 or 1992,” De La Cruz said.

“So you’re talking about anybody (being at risk) who received a blood transfusion before then. … You also have people who were going off to the Vietnam War; there were casualties, and universal precaution wasn’t even developed yet. There was the revolution of IV drug users during the 1960s. Before HIV came around, a lot of tattoo parlors didn’t have too many health departments going in to inspect them, (nor did) piercing parlors. There are a lot of factors that add to this, and because it takes such a long time for the symptoms to develop, because the liver can regenerate itself, you have people who could have been infected for 30 to 40 years, while no symptoms have developed yet.”

Hepatitis C can now be cured—but because of the high cost of these new drugs, some insurance companies are not willing to pay for them until serious liver damage has occurred.

“With hepatitis C, one of the things you want to be able to do is get yourself a good doctor, because a lot of the time, the insurance companies will make you wait until you’re at Stage 2 of liver damage,” De La Cruz said. “But you have some great doctors who will notice how much damage you have to your liver, and if you’re developing symptoms already. If you’re developing symptoms, that could be a reason to get you on treatment now instead of seeing how much damage of the liver you have.”

The cost per dose of these hepatitis C drugs is astronomical—potentially approaching $90,000 for a 12-week regimen—and the drugs are newly available to some lowerincome Californians thanks to the state recently allocating $176 million for treatment.

“The medication is pretty expensive—it’s $1,050 per pill for Sovaldi—and the thing is … how many people can (an untreated person with hepatitis C) infect?” De La Cruz said.

“Now you’re looking at even more infections.

One person you allow to keep living with hepatitis C, not curing them—how many more people could this person infect, and how much more money is it going to cost? … It’s almost like HIV back in the ’80s, when the numbers started to multiply more and more due to a lack of education and lack of knowledge.”

There is another group De La Cruz and other health educators are trying to reach: people who know they have hepatitis C, but who have previously declined treatment due to questionable effectiveness and serious side effects.

“There are a lot of people who know they are infected and didn’t want to go through the treatment,” he said. “It’s because of not knowing that … doctors now have Sovaldi, and this medication can cure them. Many are under the assumption that it’s still interferon and ribavirin treatments, and there are horror

stories they’ve heard about the interferon. It’s now my job to go out there and educate them, saying, ‘No, now there is a cure; you don’t have to live with hepatitis C anymore. Now, you don’t have to go through the regimen (lasting) six months to a year. Now, it’s just eight to 12 weeks and not just clearing 35 to 40 percent (effectiveness); now it’s 96 to 98 percent.’

Those are the things we’re trying to pass on to the public.”

When I asked how effective the publicawareness campaign has been, De La Cruz said it’s been positive—although it’s always a challenge to convince some people they’re at risk.

“Because of the high-risk population I work with in the recovery centers, the homeless shelters and the county jails—to me, it’s very positive,” he said. … “I try to go to the senior population, because of the baby boomers. …

Many of them don’t know they are infected

with hepatitis C and have passed it on to their loved ones.

“In the east valley, there isn’t a lot of knowledge about HIV and how it’s transmitted, and lots of times, you find people out there with HIV, and they’re in the hospital because they didn’t think they were at risk, and many years had gone by with symptoms developing.

It’s also happening with hepatitis C. Now their livers are failing; now their skin is yellow; now they are tired and exhausted. … (Some people think), ‘You have no risk for hepatitis C if you’re a woman, you’re married, you have kids, you have a job, you don’t do any drugs, and you don’t do any of this or that.’ But people forget about the partners they’ve had, or something that might have happened 20 years ago that was just one time.”

For more information, call the Desert AIDS Project at 760-276-5097.

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 9

SEPTEMBER 2018

NEWS

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/NEWS

THE NEXT GENERATION R

by brane jevric

eid Milanovich, son of the late, legendary Agua Caliente Tribal Chairman Richard Milanovich, is in his fifth year as a tribal councilmember.

The young Milanovich, 34, has the same disarming smile and green eyes as his father.

He also inherited good looks and a political wit from the man who led the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians for 28 years, up until his death in 2012.

During a recent 90-minute chat, we started off by discussing the construction of the Agua Caliente Cultural Center in downtown Palm Springs; it’s set to open at Tahquitz Canyon Way and Indian Canyon Drive in 2020.

“There’s going to be the museum and the spa, and each building will be about 45,000 square feet,” Milanovich said. “In between the buildings, there will be a pathway, and that walkway will symbolize our Indian Canyons.

We want to give the public the feeling that they will be actually walking through our canyons.

There will be the native palm trees there, too.”

The 5.8-acre project is being designed by JCJ Architecture.

“It’s all going to be world-class and the best of the best,” Milanovich said with a broad smile—just like the smile his father had when he didn’t want to reveal too much. “Let’s just say you’ll get to bathe in our very own natural mineral spring water that’s north of 12,000 years old.”

There’s a reason the museum is going to be built on that particular site, in what used to be called Section 14: In the 1960s, a shameful decision was made by the city to bulldoze the dwellings there, many occupied by tribal members.

“The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., is going to show an exhibit from the Agua Caliente Museum titled Section 14 in February next year,”

A rendering of the new Agua Caliente Cultural Center.

Milanovich said. “Millions of people visit D.C. each year, and many of them will be able to see the exhibit and get a pretty good summary of the Section 14 tragedy.”

Coincidentally, it was at an event held at Section 14 many years ago that Reid Milanovich first became aware of his father’s status.

“One of my earliest memories of my father being chairman was (him) unveiling the statue of women holding baskets,” he said. “I was about 6 or 7, and I saw my father talking to a TV reporter, and that blew my mind. I was born in 1983, and my father became the chairman in 1984, so my entire life until his passing, he was our tribal chairman.”

Reid Milanovich was only 30 when he was elected to the five-member tribal council. This leads to an obvious question: Will he one day be chairman?

“My agenda is to serve the tribe as best as I can, in whatever capacity, and … to continue my father’s legacy,” he said.

How does it affect the young Milanovich to walk in the footsteps of his renowned father?

“It inspires me, definitely,” he said. “But I never felt any pressure to be like my dad.

The tribal members never expected me to do

A chat with Reid Milanovich, Agua Caliente tribal councilmember and son of the longtime chairman

anything that he did. They all see me as my own person. Everyone’s given me a fair shot in laying my own foundation and being who I am. My dad taught me well. He raised me to do what I think is right.”

After graduating from California Baptist University with a degree in political science, Milanovich served on the tribe’s Scholarship Committee.

“We offer some educational opportunities to our younger tribal members, so that they always have options to go to the school they want to. Hopefully, they’ll take advantage of it,” he said. “Going to college really prepared me for my next chapter—and that was to move out here and get more involved with the tribe.”

As for the under-construction Cultural Center: Many people were surprised that the Agua Caliente tribe did not decide to first build a new hotel. Milanovich said he also felt surprised, but for a different reason—that people thought the tribe would think about business and profit ahead of its heritage.

“To me, personally, this is a project that’s been a long time coming, and it is very important to me and the entire tribal membership to be able to showcase our culture and our history,” he said. “I mean, it’s been decades and decades of waiting to be able to do something like this.”

Milanovich fondly recalls occasions when, during rare moments of leisure, his father would take him to the places where their forebears lived long before there was the city of Palm Springs.

“He would often take us to the Indian Canyons at night,” Milanovich said. “We would stop by KFC and grab some chicken, coleslaw and biscuits, and have a night picnic in the canyons, and he would talk about the history of each canyon. He would discuss different leaders that were before him. He always talked about Lawrence Pierce, (current) Chairman Jeff Grubbe’s grandfather, and, of course, Grandma Laverne. He talked about the people who made a lot of harsh sacrifices to get the tribe where it is now.”

History is important to the Milanovich family, Reid said—but one can’t dwell on it.

“My father often talked about the recent history and some of the tragedies of Section 14,” Milanovich said. “He really did not want to talk bad about what happened, but he wanted us to know that this is history, and this is what happened, and don’t ever forget it. …

Remember it, but work together to be able to move forward.”

Brane Jevric poses with Reid Milanovich.

The Milanovich family, beyond its Native American side, has a lot of international flavor: Richard’s father, Steve, was of Serbian and Yugoslavian origin, while Reid’s mom, Melissa, hails from Sweden.

Milanovich also talked about the female presence in tribal affairs. While there are no women on the current Tribal Council, an allfemale council once led the tribe. Milanovich showed me a painting on the wall of his office depicting the five women on that council.

“This is Grandma Laverne,” he said proudly, pointing at his father’s mother.

Richard Milanovich often talked about his daughter, Tristan, and said he thought she would get involved with tribal affairs someday.

Her brother says his younger sister does have political ambitions.

“I think, at some point in the future, Tristan wants to get involved with the tribe,” Reid Milanovich said. “I think she is a natural leader, and I think she can do a lot of good for this tribe. Right now, she is in Europe, enjoying being a Renaissance woman as far as traveling the world.”

It was Tristan who introduced her brother to his now-longtime girlfriend, Odessa Nikolic, a renowned fashion stylist.

“Odessa is also Serbian,” he said. “… She has a career out in L.A., and she is doing very well.

Hopefully we can both call Palm Springs home one day.”

As we ended the interview, I noticed a folded-up flag resting in a glass box just above Milanovich’s desk.

“That’s the flag that was over my father’s casket,” he said.

CVIndependent.com

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SEPTEMBER 2018

NEWS

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/NEWS

SENATE SHOWDOWN B

Jeff Stone and Joy Silver face off for the right to represent California’s 28th District

By brian blueskye

efore responsible Riverside County voters go to the polls on Nov. 6, not only will they need to determine which candidates are the most qualified; they’ll need to examine candidates’ statements and positions to determine what is based on fact—and what is not.

This brings us to the race for California’s 28th Senate District—which includes the entire Coachella Valley—where incumbent Republican State Sen. Jeff Stone is running for a second term against Democratic challenger Joy Silver.

Silver is the underdog. In the June primary election, Stone received 56 percent of the vote, compared to 34.7 percent for Silver—a margin of more than 34,000 votes. (A third candidate, Anna Nevenic, a Democrat, received 9.3 percent.)

Joy Silver.

Jeff Stone.

We asked each candidate why he or she thought constituents should vote for them.

“Probably because I have a proven track record of being an elected official,” said Stone during a recent phone interview. “I’m completing my 26th year (of holding elected office). You never really forget who your boss is, and that’s your constituents, so you have to make sure that you’re always doing things in their best interests.

“Whether I was on the city council (of Temecula), or the board of supervisors (of Riverside County) or now in the California state government, whenever I meet with a governing body, I always feel like I’ve got my constituents sitting on my shoulder, and I ask myself, ‘Is this something they would like or not like?’

Certainly, coming to the state Senate has been a much more challenging experience, because you have a third dimension, which is not one that we had at a local level too much, and that’s partisanship. The partisanship is something you can cut with a knife.”

Silver is a small-business owner who built a successful career as a health clinic executive, senior housing developer and business consultant.

“I think it’s important for people to know that I’m not a career politician,” Silver said.

“I’m an outsider who will bring real change to Sacramento, and that will include standing up to those policies coming out of Washington when they hurt all Californians. I want to bring my experience to work on our local priorities, and to fight for the values of our Riverside County constituents … all of us.”

The Independent asked what their priorities would be if elected to the four-year term.

“I carry some very basic fundamentals with me in being an elected official,” Stone said. “One is that government has limited responsibilities, mostly ensuring that our citizens are safe and healthy; and for those who don’t have financial resources, we need to make sure that we help them, especially those who want to help themselves.

population, the key there was for independent ambulatory surgical centers to participate in group purchases of items, and that helped us turn around and provide needed goods to the population that we were serving. I think that would be one of the ways to contain costs in a larger venue like our state.”

Stone—who ran unsuccessfully for Congress against Dr. Raul Ruiz in 2016—said the business climate is a top concern.

“I’ve been an active opponent to taxation since I started my political endeavors in 1992, and I’ve never voted for a tax,” Stone said.

“We need to do a better job of keeping jobs in California. We’re seeing a flight of the middle class out of the state. We see the price of homes out of the reach of middle-class Californians.

Look at the flight out of San Francisco—the liberal experiment that goes on (there) where you have ‘shooting galleries,’ which are places to shoot heroin. And you see the homeless population exponentially increasing there with people bagging feces on the street, and hypodermic needles all over the place. … Even the property values here in Sacramento have been climbing like crazy. Why? Because the people in the Bay Area are trying to escape all this horrific policy that has reduced the quality of life of the people living in those areas.”

The Independent asked both candidates what solutions they would propose to combat the proliferation of wildfires in our state.

“We have to take into consideration that the dryness is part of that issue,” Silver said. “I know that in Idyllwild, they’ve had a plan, and because that plan was in place with various stop-gap measures and ways to coordinate with local fire departments at different points in time, they were able to contain the smaller fires that were initiated by embers. I think that Northern California (communities) could benefit from a plan such as the one in Idyllwild, because they knew how to control and contain. Aside from that, we’re going to have to look at climate and environmental issues to see how we can bring down the heat

factor. We have to look at how we can work with a clean-energy economy to do that.”

Stone pointed out that he’s on a committee of lawmakers looking into the spate of fires.

“This has been the worst fire season that we’ve had, and it’s attributable, in some sense, to climate change, but it’s also due to our radical environmental policies that don’t allow us to go in and thin forests and get rid of the 129 million dead or dying trees in the state of California, all in the name of ‘environmental stewardship,’” he said. The estimate on the dead-tree population came from the U.S. Forest Service in December 2017.

“But at the same time as environmentalists have prohibited us from going in to clear brush and trees, look at how many acres now have been completely erased from California’s landscape,” Stone continued. “How many endangered species and animals have perished in all of these fires that maybe we could have prevented? Certainly we couldn’t have prevented those involving arson, which includes two (recent) fires in my district, the Cranston Fire and the Holy Fire. But in other areas of the state, we could have prevented some of these fires potentially, or at least (lessened) the magnitude of the fires had we cleared the brush.”

The facts don’t necessarily support Stone’s position—particularly his placement of blame on environmentalists for the fires. According to an article from Aug. 7 in The Sacramento Bee, “As of 2015, through the national forests, national parks, Bureau of Land Management, and others, the federal government manages more than 40 percent of California’s total (forest) acreage. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, by comparison, manages a little more than 30 percent. The Trump administration’s own budget request for the current fiscal year and the coming one proposed slashing tens of millions of dollars from the Department of Interior and U.S. Forest Service budgets dedicated to the kind of tree clearing and other forest management work experts say is needed.”

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“We’ve seen public safety deteriorate with all these terrible initiatives like Prop 47 (which reduced penalties for some crimes, passed in 2014), Prop 57 (passed in 2016, it incentivizes prison inmates to take responsibility for their own rehabilitation, among other things) and AB 109 (passed in 2011 in response to a U.S. Supreme Court order to reduce California prison populations, it transferred certain nonviolent offenders from the state prison system to county-level supervision). These public-safety experiments have come at the cost of a lot of lives and the demise of many businesses.”

Statistics, however, don’t support Stone’s claims. A June 21 report from the Public Policy Institute of California indicates property-crime rates have decreased slightly since 2011, when the first of these laws was enacted. While violent-crime rates have increased slightly in that time frame, they are still about 50 percent less than year 2000 levels.

Silver said her priorities would include job creation, universal healthcare for all California residents, developing a clean energy economy, career/vocational training, the expansion of affordable housing, and advocacy for immigrant communities.

We asked if universal health care was a realistic goal.

“I do think it is an achievable goal, and with my expertise in the provision of healthcare services, I think I can help move that concept into a place (where) it can work,” she said.

“We do have a large economy. Certainly, there are smaller economies in the world that are providing health care for their people, and I think that with the right plan, we can make it happen here for Californians.”

The ever-increasing cost of many prescription drugs is another concern she hopes to address.

“I feel that there needs to be a particular focus on the ability to do group purchases,” Silver said. “Certainly, I’m not the first one to come up with that. When I did work in the health-care business, and we did provide service to a mostly Medicaid patient

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 11

SEPTEMBER 2018

NEWS ANALYZING PROP 8 ARGUMENTS C

By ben christopher, calmatters

alifornia Republicans say that drivers can have smoother roads, more reliable public transit— and lower taxes.

In November, voters will get the chance to repeal a recent increase in the state gas tax and assorted vehicle fees. That tax hike—an extra 12 cents per gallon of gasoline, 20 cents per gallon of diesel, and two new vehicle registration fees—was signed into state law last year, part of a Democratic-led transportation package that directs an extra $5 billion per year toward the state’s dilapidated roads and highways.

Making voters pay more at the pump is a tough political sell, but Democrats and other defenders of the law argue that our infrastructure is long overdue for an upgrade.

The gas tax hadn’t been increased in more than 20 years, while the cost of highway construction has tripled. You can’t get something for nothing, they say.

Not so, say supporters of the repeal, Proposition 6. Chief among them is John Cox, the Republican running to be California’s next governor.

“The Democrats decided to do the easy thing in their view, and that is just keep sticking their hands in the pockets of Californians,” he said, “instead of doing the hard work, which would have been standing up to the donors, standing up to the special interests, and using our money effectively and wisely.”

California, he added, “spends multiples of what other states spend on a mile of road.” In trying to sell voters on Prop. 6, which would also require voter approval for all future drivingrelated tax hikes, supporters like Cox make the following arguments: • California transportation spending is out of whack compared to most other states.

• Bloated transportation agencies, publicsector unions and red tape are to blame for those higher costs.

• Political leaders could cut that wasteful spending—saving taxpayers billions and rendering higher taxes unnecessary—if only

Carl DeMaio, chairman of Reform California; John Cox, GOP candidate for governor; and Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, campaign against the gas tax at the state Capitol. BEN CHRISTOPHER/CALMATTERS

they had the will and the courage.

These add up to a potentially enticing argument. The question is: Should voters believe it? Prop. 6 skeptics are right to say that repealing the new taxes and fees will necessarily mean cutting back on something. Supporters have so far been a little vague on what that something is. Wasteful spending or vital public services? It’s entirely in the eye of the taxpayer.

The Cost of a California Highway When asked for evidence that California can’t manage its transportation budget, the Cox campaign points to a recent report published by the libertarian Reason Foundation. According to its findings, the state government spends more than $471,000 per mile of road that it maintains. That’s nearly triple the national average of about $178,000.

Given that our roads are in such rough shape, and California also has among the highest gas taxes in the country, one might reasonably wonder whether drivers and taxpayers here are getting a raw deal.

The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) argues that the report inflates the state’s true costs by measuring each state’s highway system simply by totaling its length.

According to Caltrans, California highways have an average width of more than 3.4 lanes, compared to a national average of 2.4, which makes the same length of highway more expensive to maintain. In effect, the report treats a two-lane highway in Oklahoma the same as an equally long stretch of California’s Interstate 405—all 14 lanes of it.

It’s difficult to compare these things between states. Different state agencies are responsible for different aspects of the highway system, subject to different rules, and operate in vastly different climates, terrains and economies.

“More than 40 percent of the nation’s freight is moved through California, which has three of the nation’s top five busiest ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland,” a spokesperson for Caltrans said in an email. That extra wear and tear adds to the state’s overall maintenance tab.

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Is the Republican story about repealing the gas-tax hike too good to be true?

What Drives the Cost?

Baruch Feigenbaum, author of the Reason report, agrees there are many reasons California roads might cost more—some within the state’s control, and some not.

Falling into the latter category: It’s more expensive to build and maintain roads in high-density urban areas, and California has some of the biggest in the country. The Sierra Nevada and a constantly eroding coastline require challenging and expensive engineering.

And, yes, this is California, where wages and land values make everything cost more, transportation related or not.

“Obviously, it’s going to be more expensive to build a mile of roadway in California with labor than it is in Mississippi, regardless of some of the union issues,” said Feigenbaum.

But the high cost of labor is exacerbated by the higher levels of unionization in California, he said. Likewise, the state has tighter environmental regulations than most, which can saddle projects with delays and extra costs.

But where some see inefficiency, others see the preservation of the state’s most cherished values. And for every propeller of higher costs, there is a powerful constituency ready to defend it.

“One of the things that Californians love, that is part of our birthright, is our beautiful state with our beautiful environment,” said Russell Snyder, executive director of the California Asphalt Pavement Association, a trade group that represents road pavers and asphalt producers, and which opposes Prop.

6. “Environmental rules are easy to demonize, but they’re there for a reason.”

Other factors pushing up costs are less obvious, though no less fiercely guarded. In California, much of the major road work is done during off hours to limit the impact on commuters, said Margot Yapp, vice president at Nichols Consulting Engineers, a firm that works on transportation projects across the American West.

“Go travel in the summer in any other state, and construction—even on the interstate— happens in the daytime,” she said. “As soon as you do pavings at night, every (cost) goes up—I would say, easily, by 30 percent,” said Yapp.

Can We Cut the Fat? Carl DeMaio is a conservative talk-radio host who chairs the political action committee pushing for the repeal. He plans to file papers for a 2020 ballot measure, which he says would recoup the state’s budgetary losses from

passing Prop 6 … without raising taxes.

The details have yet to be hashed out, but DeMaio proposes three savings: Dedicate all gas-tax revenue solely to road maintenance and improvement (right now, some goes to publictransportation projects and debt repayments); divert all car-sales-tax revenue to state transportation (now that money is treated like other sales tax and goes to general government expenses); and enact “efficiency reforms,” such as mandating that Caltrans employ more independent contractors.

But many state finance experts say finding savings is not that easy.

“It’s nonsense to the suggest that’s just money that’s laying there not being used,” said Michael Coleman, fiscal policy advisor to the League of California Cities, which opposes Prop 6. “If you’re going to be honest with the proposal, then you have to look at what the consequences of this are.”

A little more than half of sales-tax revenue from auto purchases goes to the state’s general fund, for example. If voters decide to divert that money to highway repairs, what could lawmakers cut to make up the difference?

Past ballot measures have placed spending requirements on K-12 education and budget reserves. Court orders and federal funding requirements put more restrictions on many health and social programs and corrections spending. Left on the chopping block are higher education, parks and recreation, and unprotected social welfare programs.

The remaining sales-tax money that goes to cities and counties—a little less than half of the total haul—mostly goes toward local law enforcement and emergency services, jails, welfare payments and local transportation.

As for the savings that DeMaio proposes to unearth by forcing state agencies to rely more on contractors, the state’s nonpartisan fiscal analyst is skeptical.

“When we’ve looked at the cost of contract versus state staff, we haven’t really been able to identify significant differences between the two,” said Paul Golaszewski, a transportation expert with the Legislative Analyst’s Office.

But DeMaio dismisses the idea that there isn’t at least $5 billion to be found somewhere in the state’s $139 billion general fund.

“I don’t think any voter out there is going to accept the notion that government is in prime efficient condition and can’t figure out how to do more with less,” he said.

CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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SEPTEMBER 2018

NEWS

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SEPTEMBER ASTRONOMY F

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

N

By Robert Victor

our planets are still visible at dusk, until Venus departs in early October. Venus is very low in the west-southwest, with Jupiter in the southwest, and Mars in the south-southeast, standing out in brilliance. As Earth recedes from Mars, the red planet slips to third place in brightness, after Venus and Jupiter. Saturn, in the south, ranks sixth, a little fainter than the stars Arcturus in the west, and Vega just north of overhead.

Other bright stars: Spica is 1.3 degrees to the upper right of Venus on Sept. 1 and sinks into bright twilight to the lower right of Venus by midmonth. Use binoculars to keep seeing Spica for a while longer. Antares is below a line joining Jupiter and Saturn. Altair and Deneb complete the Summer Triangle with Vega.

Follow the moon from a thin crescent low in shrunken in its late spring season, and dark the west on Sept. 10, to full, low south of east, surface features, such as Syrtis Major, provided on Sept. 24. Watch the moon pass four planets that Martian dust storms don’t obscure our and two first-magnitude stars Sept. 11-20. view. Visit the Sky Calendar extra content page If you have access to a telescope, set it up, at abramsplanetarium.org/msta to read the and share views of these showpiece planets!

Chinese legend about the Territory of Dogs, For the best results, begin your observations and for details on observing Mars close up, no later than a half-hour after sunset, to catch explanations of the graphs of planet rising/ Venus low in west-southwest before it drops setting times, the evening and morning twilight even lower, and conclude with Mars, climbing charts, January’s total lunar eclipse, and more. in the south-southeast. Observe the planets in Autumn begins on Saturday, Sept. 22, at 6:54 order from west to east, allowing you time to p.m., as the sun passes directly over Earth’s savor close-ups of each: equator. On Monday, Sept. 24, the full harvest 1. See Venus as a crescent, 40 percent full moon rises just 4 degrees south of due east at on Sept. 1, narrowing to 17 percent on the 6:52 p.m., within a quarter-hour after sunset.

30th. Venus reaches peak brilliance late in the The moon rises in twilight on next two nights month, and the crescent becomes ever more in Palm Springs, at 7:24 p.m. on Sept. 25, and at impressive: On Sept. 1, the disk is 30 arcseconds 7:57 p.m. on Sept. 26. Rising later and farther across—1/120 of a degree, big enough for a north each evening, by Sept. 29, the moon 32-power telescope to make it appear as large rises in the east-northeast at 9:53 p.m., and as the moon with the unaided eye—and grows two nights later, on Oct. 1, the northernmost in apparent size by more than 50 percent by moonrise occurs at 11:35 p.m. month’s end, as Venus decreases its distance The best dates for the early-evening viewing from Earth by more than a third. To reduce the of the Milky Way at the end of evening twilight, planet’s glare against a darkened sky, look in with little or no moonlight, are through Sept. daylight, or soon after sunset, and even 7- or 11, and Sept. 28-Oct. 11. From a dark location, 8-power binoculars will reveal the crescent! follow the Milky Way band from the “cloud of 2. Just 23 to 14 degrees to the upper left of steam” (Greater Sagittarius Star Cloud) just Venus, find Jupiter. A telescope may show up to above the spout of the Teapot, through the four of its bright moons, discovered by Galileo.

Cygnus Star Cloud along the neck of the Swan 3. Next, 45 to 41 degrees to the upper left within the Summer Triangle, and beyond. of Jupiter, find Saturn. A telescope shows its Viewed through binoculars, the Cygnus Star rings now tipped nearly 27 degrees into our Cloud, part of our own spiral arm, easily view—this year’s best view, and the best until resolves into stars.

2032—and Saturn’s largest satellite, Titan, in September in morning mid-twilight: Early a 16-day orbit nine times farther out than the this month, bright Mercury is still visible low rings’ outer edge, in the same plane. in the east to east-northeast, getting lower each 4. Finally, 27 to 33 degrees to the lower left morning as it heads toward the far side of the or left of Saturn, find Mars. After nightfall, sun, while faint Regulus, heart of Leo, emerges binoculars show an attractive, compact, 2-by-1 higher daily, owing to Earth’s revolution around degree, kite-shaped asterism of four stars, the the sun. Mercury and Regulus appear closest, “Territory of Dogs,” just west of Mars, in the 1.2 degrees apart, on Sept. 6. Binoculars will same field. Through a telescope, the red planet come in handy for seeing the pair in same field may still show a tiny remnant of the south low in twilight. The old crescent moon appears polar cap of frozen carbon dioxide, greatly near Regulus on Sept. 8.

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As autumn arrives, we can still

Planets and Bright Stars in Evening Mid-Twilight enjoy fantastic views of2018 five planets For September,

September's evening sky chart.

ROBERT D. MILLER

Deneb Vega

E

W

Arcturus Altair Spica Jupiter 1 8 15 22 29 Mars Fomalhaut

1

Evening mid-twilight occurs

15 8

29

Saturn 1 8 15 22 29

22

Stars: Beginning brightest when Sunwith is 9o the below horizon. star, Sept.

1: 41 minutes sunset.around Sirius, in the southeast, go after clockwise 15: 40 "to Procyon, " " the “Winter Hexagon” Pollux, 30: 39 " " " Castor, Capella, Aldebaran, Rigel and back to Sirius. (If you count the Twin stars Pollux and Castor as one vertex of the polygon, then it’s a Hexagon, with Betelgeuse inside.) Regulus in Leo is chasing the Hexagon across the sky. The only other bright star up in morning twilight, in the northwest, is Deneb.

Follow the waning moon in the morning sky Sept. 1-8. Watch it leapfrog over the Hyades cluster and Aldebaran Sept. 2-3, and pass 10 degrees south (to the lower right) of Pollux on Sept. 6, and 1.4 degrees north (to the upper left) of Regulus on Sept. 8. Bright Mercury is 4.5 degrees to the lower left of the moonRegulus pair that morning. The moon begins another pass through the morning sky on Sept.

24, with the not-quite-full moon setting just south of west. On the morning of Sept. 30, the

1 8 15 22 29 Venus

Antares

S

Stereographic Projection

70 percent waning gibbous degrees Map bymoon Robert is D.3Miller east of Aldebaran. Binoculars will easily show the bright star in the same field, and some stars of the Hyades cluster.

The website of the Astronomical Society of the Desert at www.astrorx.org has a listing of our evening star parties at two locations.

Sawmill Trailhead, our high-altitude site (elevation 4,000 feet), will have star parties starting at dusk on Saturday, Sept. 8 and Oct. 6.

Monthly star parties resume on Saturday, Oct. 13, at the Visitor Center of the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, on Highway 74, within 4 miles south of Highway 111 in Palm Desert.

Robert C. Victor was a staff astronomer at Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University. He is now retired and enjoys providing sky watching opportunities for a variety of groups in the Coachella Valley.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 13

SEPTEMBER 2018

Editor’s note: When Aaron Cantú arrived last year at his new job at the Santa Fe Reporter—an alternative newspaper like the Coachella Valley Independent—he came with the baggage of a recent arrest. Two months earlier, he’d spent a night in jail with hundreds of others, detained during protests on Inauguration Day in Washington, D.C. His actions consisted simply of walking, wearing black and being a witness to history as a freelance journalist. Yet a few months later, federal prosecutors slammed him with eight felony charges, including conspiracy to riot and property damage—despite no clear evidence of such crimes.

After nearly 18 months, the feds dropped the charges. Cantú is finally able to publicly reflect on the ordeal.

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or more than a year, federal prosecutors and agents have perused my digital communications, tried to hack my cell phone, and possibly collected my social media records. The chill of seeing the state in possession of your private political discussions is difficult to convey.

I’m not being paranoid; this really happened. The feds invaded my life in pursuit of their own conspiracy theory about a raucous protest in Washington, D.C., that resulted in eight felony charges against hundreds, myself included.

The overwhelming sense of being watched has abated some since the charges were dropped, but I’m sure people within the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia—the local arm of the Trump Administration’s Justice Department—will read every word of this essay, with an eye for anything they can use to re-file criminal charges against me or the 186 people still living under a five-year statute of limitations.

A few weeks after my arrest in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2017 (aka J20), I accepted some painful advice: Don’t criticize the Trump administration publicly. At that point, I was hoping for my charges to get dropped before my eventual indictment in May. The inability to speak freely on social media and in the publications for which I wrote drained my confidence; I still reflexively self-censor, often deleting tweets for no real reason. Even though my charges have gone away, writing this is hard. This pounding in my chest, this trembling hand, this sour stomach and sweaty tunnel vision are what it feels like to have your freedom of speech curtailed by the state.

I went to D.C. with several other journalists to report on Trump’s ascent, following a year of bubbling anti-fascism protests against his campaign. I currently enjoy the haven of a newspaper willing to hire lawyers who bite back, but in January 2017, I was a freelancer using vacation days from my full-time job to go witness history. This was a completely uncharted assignment: How violent could this get? Would American jackboots try to stomp me in the streets? In the end, it

didn’t matter whether I presented myself as a journalist on J20, or that I only carried a sandwich and a notebook; white supremacists wound up messing with me anyway for more than a year afterward by working with authorities to prosecute and harass me.

After 18 months, the actual memories of the half-hour march leading up to my arrest have mixed with dreams and nightmares of the day, as well as descriptions in multiple indictments, trial transcripts and media reports.

My mind’s eye remembers a dark funhouse of corporate buildings and unusually waifish, Jack Skellington-esque riot cops hemming me into a larger group. Everything looks gray and morose; it may have rained a bit. Police relentlessly deployed sting-ball grenades and pepper spray; the final tally was at least 70 grenades thrown at people blocks away from where Donald John Trump was sworn in as the 45th U.S. president.

Creaks and shatters created by objects smashing glass, including the insured windows of a Bank of America branch and a Starbucks, are more memorable than any destruction my eyes may have seen. Very, very loud police sirens, punctuated by grenade explosions and screaming, overwhelm everything else.

“The inappropriate and extensive use of less lethal munitions suggests the need for increased supervision of officers during mass demonstrations,” said a recent report from the staid Police Foundation, a nonprofit which evaluated the Metropolitan Police Department’s conduct at Inauguration Day protests.

Impossible to forget are the feelings throughout the march: The whole-body nerve rush when I first saw a huge mass of marching people extending at least a whole city block; the panicked run as the sting-ball grenades burst near my feet; the euphoria of an ungovernable moment, however frightening and unpredictable, that disrupted the lawful monotony binding our violently unequal social system together; and the shock when I checked my phone from inside the mass arrest and saw that protests in D.C. had overtaken Trump’s inaugural speech as the top headline on CNN.com. If protesters weren’t able to stop the actual inauguration, they still marred it in history.

When the first six of more than 200 defendants went to trial last November, prosecutors used expressions of apparent excitement, wonder or awe during the march as evidence of a conspiracy to riot. “I’m fucking blissed out,” photojournalist and acquitted defendant Alexei Wood announced in a stream from the march that day. The feds later tried to use it against him in court. In an identical indictment filed against all defendants, prosecutors also used randomly shouted phrases like, “Fuck it up,” “Fuck capitalism,” and, “Whose streets? Our streets!” to transform an adrenal impulse into a criminal agreement among riotous co-conspirators.

The thought that I might be seriously screwed first occurred to me inside the police wagon transporting us to be processed. I sat cramped and bound, along with nine other people, in one of a half-mile’s worth of law-enforcement vehicles flashing various hues of light, as if carrying highpriority enemies of the state.

I knew then we weren’t going to get off with a simple citation, and that I was probably going to have to tell my mom. I didn’t expect, however, that I would be charged with eight felonies for the act of attending and reporting on a confrontational protest, or that I would be facing a combined 80 years in prison for these charges.

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onths later, I not only considered my own future, but the far-reaching political implications of these cases: Why did the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia find it appropriate to hang virtual life sentences over the heads of 214 people after an indiscriminate mass arrest? How could they have so shamelessly gleaned evidence from far-right groups like Project Veritas, a discredited organization known for making deceptive gotcha videos, as well as the paramilitary group the Oath Keepers, and still feel like they had a legitimate case? Where was the motivation—the conspiracy—to pursue these cases coming from? continued on next page CVIndependent.com

14 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

SEPTEMBER 2018

with the racist pro-Trump digital underbelly, and used them to undermine his testimony at trial.

According to a recent filing from former defendants, the withheld videos “cut against the theory that the … meeting was an exclusive, secretive meeting to plan unlawful conduct.” The ’60s-era stereotype of violent leftists whispering clandestine plans was part of the narrative prosecutors tried to create, and they went as far as lying in open court to preserve it.

This isn’t the first time authorities in D.C. have hunted for clues of a conspiracy post-riot. After the city’s black residents rose up following the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968, resulting in $27 million ($193.4 million today) in damage, the feds wanted to know who, if anybody, had orchestrated the chaos, and whether similar uprisings in more than 100 cities had been part of a revolutionary conspiracy to overthrow the white American system.

Stokely Carmichael, then the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, emerged as a primary suspect. Shortly after King’s murder, Carmichael told a radio host from Havana, Cuba, that it was “crystal clear the United States of America must fall in order for humanity to live, and we are going to give our lives for that cause.” But no conspiracy indictment was ever filed against Carmichael, or anybody else.

The fact that conspiracy charges were filed for so many in the J20 case after a mere $100,000 in damage illustrates how much prosecutorial aggression has advanced in the last half-century.

Protesters gather the morning of Trump's inauguration in Logan Circle, Washington, D.C. Credit: Mobilus In Mobili/Public Domain continued from Page 13 Mass arrests at protests have happened plenty of times in cities across the country, including D.C. in 2002, when hundreds at a World Bank protest were arrested and later lavished with civil settlement money. What appeared new in the J20 case was the attempt to color protesters’ actions as part of a pre-planned conspiracy between strangers to cause mayhem.

By wrapping up distinct actions like allegedly breaking windows, chanting and lighting fireworks at a protest into a single conspiracy, it all became one threatening, anti-social act against society, apparently menacing enough to warrant decades in prison. The motive to bust a conspiracy also explains the Justice Department’s initial demand last summer to review 1.3 million IP addresses of people who visited DisruptJ20.org, a website used to organize loosely affiliated masses of protests that took place at the inauguration. Despite an outcry from the media and civil rights groups, the court eventually granted much of the prosecutors’ request—yet they could find no actual conspiracy.

This data-vacuuming extended to the cellphones that all arrestees were carrying that day. The Metropolitan Police Department used technology from an Israeli security firm called Cellebrite to extract information from all confiscated phones that weren’t sufficiently encrypted. After one anonymous defendant’s phone was raided, the defendant received an 8,000-page dossier containing years of personal data, including “intimate emails to and from my friends and lovers through more than a decade, (late) night political debates over chat apps that helped shape my values and convictions,” and more. The horror of a hostile state downloading a record of your developing identity, reaching back into your early teen years, is a possibility unique to millennials and later generations that grew up on the internet.

To my knowledge, the feds were never able to crack into my phone, thanks to strong encryption—though they made it clear that they were specifically interested in me, declaring in one motion last October that they were undertaking “additional efforts” to get my data. But I was sufficiently terrified by other fishing expeditions, including subpoenas issued to Apple, Facebook and possibly Twitter for communications between and among co-defendants. I never received a notice from any of these companies that my accounts had been subpoenaed—though, apparently, they do not have to notify you, and can even be gagged from doing so—but others did, and I still treat my online presence as if it’s bugged.

All this reaching by the prosecutor’s office turned out to be for naught. Although Assistant U.S. Attorney Rizwan Qureshi mumbled to an unbelieving D.C. jury at the second trial of defendants that there had been a conspiracy to “destroy your city,” this was never proven. That trial in May ended in acquittals and mistrials, after the first resulted in total acquittals last December. The pair of failures set the stage for the eventual collapse of the case in its entirety, letting the few dozen remaining defendants go free.

The second trial took place at the D.C. Superior Court, where, in another room, a chief judge determined that Assistant U.S. Attorney Jennifer Kerkhoff had intentionally misled the court about the existence of nearly 70 videos recorded by Project Veritas operatives at protest-planning meetings ahead of the inauguration. The operatives handed over the surreptitiously recorded videos to a D.C. police detective, Greggory Pemberton, who would spend an entire year investigating the J20 case.

Defense counsel later discovered personal tweets sent out by Pemberton indicating his sympathies CVIndependent.com

S

ome in radical circles have called attention to the white privilege of the J20 defendants, arguing that by virtue of their whiteness (or, for the minority of nonwhite defendants, their proximity to that pool of privilege), defendants had access to platforms, sympathy, support networks and resources that most low-income and non-white defendants lack, and that these advantages were hugely responsible for our success. I mostly agree.

It is also true that the entire legal premise underpinning the multiple felony charges filed against each of us was steeped in the United States’ centuries-long defense of white supremacy. The anti-rioting statute under which we were charged—which calls for a maximum sentence of 10 years if convicted for rioting where serious injury or at least $5,000 in property damage occurs—was passed in 1967 by Congress in the wake of black urban uprisings in that decade. Prosecutors used the new statute against black D.C. residents the following year.

But the connection goes deeper.

The unifying legal theory of our prosecution was that we engaged in a conspiracy, and were therefore each equally liable for all property destruction or injury that occurred that day. This theory of liability stems from a mid-20th-century Supreme Court decision in a moonshining and tax-evasion case, but conspiracy law’s modern origins extend to the founding of this country and beyond as a legal weapon of colonialism and counterinsurgency, primarily against black revolt in the founding of the American state.

At the end of the 1600s, as the population of enslaved Africans in America grew, “the more encompassing category of ‘whiteness’ ascended,” writes Gerald Horne in Counter-Revolution of 1776, where Horne argues that the Anglo-Saxon settlers’ war for independence entrenched slavery.

By 1680, one colonial legislature had drafted a bill “to prevent Negroes’ insurrection,” and this was followed by a torrent of similar anti-conspiracy legislation in the colonies over the next several decades in response to planned and executed rebellions by African people and their sometimesallies: European servants and Native Americans resisting invasion.

One of the most famous pre-1776 conspiracies was the New York Conspiracy of 1741, in which prosecutors accused black enslaved people and poor whites of conspiring to burn the city and overthrow the colonial governor. The colony’s narrative, as established by a fire-breathing judge named Daniel Horsmanden, was that a multiracial group held secret meetings at a white-owned tavern for months before setting fire to the governor’s home, a church and horse stables in wealthy white neighborhoods. Four white and 30 black people were sentenced to death for their alleged role in the plot, and an additional 70 enslaved Africans were exiled from the colony.

At the New York Conspiracy trial, which took on the sort of puritanical zeal legible in the J20 case, the prosecution coerced witnesses into affirming the judge’s racist belief that the “conspiracy was of deeper design” and “more dangerous (a) Contrivance than the Salves (sic) themselves were capable of.” The most serious transgression, in the law’s eyes, was the conspiracy of comradeship between whites and blacks against colonial rule. After all, it had only been a few decades since “whites had achieved a sense of race solidarity at the expense of blacks” in some of the colonies around 1700, according to contemporary historian T.H. Breen.

Elite settlers threatened by the growing population of Africans saw the creation of pan-European solidarity (i.e., “whiteness”) in the colonies as necessary to gird against constant rebellions. Key to the eventual supremacy of the concept of whiteness, Horne writes, was that it not be interrogated too hard, lest “the loose threads of class hierarchy that this racial category otherwise obscured” unravel and ruin the entire colonial project.

This gets to the heart of the matter: In order for the colonies to overcome endless conspiracies to revolt by people they kidnapped, enslaved, exploited and colonized, its ruling elite had to create their own conspiracy—the institutionalization of “whiteness”—in defense of its power.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 15

SEPTEMBER 2018

Nationally Recognized Journalism The limo fire, which became a symbol of resistance, happened after most of the arrests.

Credit: Mobilus In Mobili/Public Domain

Solar Q&A

The Bill of Rights would later implicitly enshrine the three points of power in the new nation, including whiteness, property ownership (wealth) and cis-hetero maleness, consolidating ruling class power through the law. Writing for the Harvard Law Review nearly a century ago, Francis B. Sayre wrote that American courts often use conspiracy law as a cudgel, “especially during times of reaction, to punish, as criminal, associations for which the time being are unpopular or stir up prejudices the social class insolar, which but the judges have for theand mostifpart bred.” system, youbeen lease, the company I know of I should explore It’s more just prejudice: Today, U.S. eliteyou reaffirms power through law, war,your trade leaseits from takes it, lowering I’ve beenthan procrastinating.

Whatthe will and politics daily, in take a coordinated the statuspayment. quo in all Solar its structural inequality. companies also motivate me to the nexteffort step?to preservemonthly This and concentrated is its own kind of conspiracy, onein which allows state to have some panels stock nowthe that were Theextreme best motivation shouldpower be the persecute it considers illegal.

There herecomponents to chronicle the ways panels in which hereroom before and/or savingsothers you can expect with solar.

Inisn’t enough conspiracy been usedbit since 17th centurywere to criminalize of nonwhite people, subject toassociations the new tariff—so that exchangelaw forhas just a little of the your time, laborers, immigrants, protesters, revolutionaries and others, nor consider nuanced exceptions, such you can reduce your average electric bill means you have great pricing right now. as mafia prosecutions that rope police and politicians into criminal rackets. anywhere from 25-50 percent—and just But fundamentally, the difference between a legitimate and illegitimate conspiracy comes down Wow. How much time are we talking? that money in your pocket each tokeep power.

Give a call, prosecution and we’ll look at your month.

Then you can take your time It’s ironic that some top Trump cronies involved in theRenova J20 conspiracy are themselves while on the and give deciding to dohigh-profile with the savings! caught up inwhat their own conspiracy cases,roof though notyou’re necessarily as phone defendants. you an initial If example, you For Roger Stone, the long-ago Nixon staffer and more recently a top campaign adviser evaluation. to Trump, sent far-right spies to inauguration protesters’ planning meetings todecide his friend as far back Assuming forward asmove December 2016. Stone was referenced in a July federal indictment against a dozen Russian intelligence military officials as a “senior member of (Trump’s) campaign” in direct contact with things look quickly, your Russian good, a site systemhackers can betargeting the 2016 presidential election.

Another is Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the top officialsurvey overseeing the J20 at your up and running conspiracy prosecution.

In March 2016, Sessions was beckoned in an email sent to Trump campaign home will before the huge advisor Rickbills Dearborn from Republican activist Paul Erickson, who wanted to arrange a meeting collect detailed summer between Trump and Vladimir Putin.

A criminal complaint unsealed in July claims Erickson was information hit. If you lease, manipulated by a Russian state operative named Maria Butina to gain access to top Republicans. In about roof you’ll enjoy another twist, the J20 defendants may have been saved by prosecutors out of the U.S. Attorney’s dimensions, no money Office in D.C. turning their attention to Butina’s conspiracy prosecution. tiltinand down; free To this day, neither Sessions nor any prosecutor from the U.S. Attorney’s Office D.C. shade, have as well as a few installation; spoken publicly about J20. While prosecutors don’t often comment publicly on their cases, items, and, with especially when they lose, this could have been the perfect chance for this Justiceother Department likeitsthe condition your electric panel.

SunPower, fixed toRenova trumpetand its law-and-order bona payments fides, which makes silence striking.ofInstead, prosecutors We can also getpresidency—which on the phone with you for 20their years, which means showed asses in court, justas aselectric the authoritarian-leaning Trump includes andsupremacy, SCE to get pastonusage; that,the prices go up, the Russiacontinue meddlingtocases, theyour overtsavings embrace of white theyour attacks the press, ultranationalism and everything else—is showing the country’swith ass tothe thesite world right now. combined survey, will will increase as well!

The power structures animating U.S. life are themselves thetoresult of along-running conspiracies, allow us create precise, customized and to update Horne’s analysis,Anything the American project is being intensely in thiscosts proposal that will interrogated show you exact OK—pretty good points. else? moment.

History shows that when a state’s ability to present itself as a stable force for social order and savings.

Yep! The full 30 percent Federal Tax wanes, illegal conspiracies beginuntil to sprout.

That’s not what the J20toprotests, That’shappened it! If youatdecide move but it Credit is still in full effect the end would be ahistorical to think ityou wouldn’t happen somewhere that atakes journalist be forward,else—or installation onlywouldn’t 2-3 days, of 2019.

If you purchase, receive there to cover it.

the Tax Credit to lower the cost of your

Some of the nation’s top arts coverage Association of Alternative Newsmedia Award for arts feature, third place, 2015

Some of the nation’s top opinion writing Association of Alternative Newsmedia Award for column writing, first place, 2017

Some of the nation’s top news reporting Association of Alternative Newsmedia Award for beat reporting, third place, 2018 COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

depending on the size of your system.

Thank you to my legaladvertisement team, the tireless J20 defendant to support Paid brought younetwork, by my family, my partner and the Santa Fe Reporter for their support.

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16 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

SEPTEMBER 2018

CVI SPOTLIGHT: SEPTEMBER 2018 LGBT on the Big Screen: Cinema Diverse Offers Films Over Two Weekends

L

ong before newsfeeds, Facebook, 24-hour news networks and even beepers, people got their information from things like news magazines. It may sound like crazy talk, but it’s true.

One of these news magazines—one which has played a vital role in the LGBT community—is The Advocate. It was started as a newsletter by an activist group following a police raid on a Los Angeles gay bar, the Black Cat Tavern, on Jan. 1, 1967—a couple of years before the Stonewall riots in New York City. The newsletter covered the demonstrations against police brutality; later that year, the newsletter was transformed into a newspaper.

The history of The Advocate since those first days is the subject of a new documentary—and it’s one of the highlights of Cinema Diverse, the local LGBT film festival, which will take place at the Camelot Theatres at the Palm Springs Cultural Center Sept. 20-23, with a “bonus weekend” taking place at Mary Pickford Is D’Place in Cathedral City the following weekend.

“This year, Cinema Diverse is opening with A Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate Celebrates 50 Years,” said Michael Green, the Cinema Diverse festival director and the executive director of the Palm Springs Cultural Center. “This is going to be a really cool story to share with the audience on opening night. It is a retrospective of the 50 years from the start of the magazine up to the current day.

“It’s a huge historic piece and important.

Laverne Cox is narrating it, and the music is provided by Melissa Etheridge. … It covers

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the pre-Stonewall era from the Los Angeles perspective, the AIDS crisis, marriage equality and up to present day. It’s even more powerful to those of us who have lived in the Palm Springs area during that time and have seen the changes that have occurred.”

A Long Road to Freedom is just one of the documentaries included in the Cinema Diverse schedule. “There’s a huge variety of documentaries this year. We have a film about gay comics and another about gay (erotic) comic-book illustrators and so many more,” Green said.

Cinema Diverse, of course, has offerings going beyond documentaries.

“We have several great musicals this year,” Green said. “They cover a variety of subjects, both as feature films and as shorts. Musicals are great. Even though the characters may have troubles throughout, the endings are usually very uplifting. We also have horror films this year; you could classify them as thriller-type films that are pretty good.”

Why is it important to include films like thrillers/horror movies in an LGBT film festival?

“Movies focused on LGBTQ characters … the audience can relate to,” Green said. “We are also screening Devil’s Path, a real psychological thriller by Matthew Montgomery, a popular LGBTQ actor. People who are familiar with him will be really excited to see it.

“As always, we have some really good foreign films, like A Moment in the Reeds, from Finland. It’s a fun and beautiful story.”

Movies by local filmmakers are a key part of Cinema Diverse.

A scene from A Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate Celebrates 50 Years.

“We have a local film (producer) named Marc Smolowitz. His most recent film is called 50 Years of Fabulous. It’s all about the Imperial Council from its inception and over the last 50 years,” Green said; the Imperial Court System is a series of organizations that raise money for charitable causes. “Again, it’s a historical film that touches Palm Springs and a story that’s close to home to anyone who is familiar with the Imperial Court System. … Since Marc is local, this makes the film even more special.”

One of the films Green is most excited about is 1985, based on a renowned short film with the same name.

“It’s about the very beginning of the AIDS crisis and a young, closeted guy who goes home to Texas,” Green said. “It’s a very

poignant film. It’s filmed largely in black and white. It’s a very powerful.” Gotham’s Cory Michael Smith is the star.

“As in previous years, there will be a lot of filmmakers and actors here to represent their films. There are more films this year than previously, both features and shorts,” Green said.

Cinema Diverse takes place Thursday, Sept. 20, through Sunday, Sept. 23, and Friday and Saturday, Sept. 28 and 29. Individual screenings are $13.25, while an all-festival pass costs $159.

For tickets and more information, including a festival schedule, visit palmspringsculturalcenter.org, and click on the Cinema Diverse icon.

—Dwight Hendricks

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 17

SEPTEMBER 2018

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18 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

SEPTEMBER 2018

TEN TIPS TO LOOK 10 YEARS YOUNGER FOR $10,000

MAKE THE EASY CHOICE

THE #1 CHOICE COMFORT AIR

L

By Shonda Chase, FNP Co-owner, Artistic Director and Advanced Aesethetic Injector at Revive Wellness Centers in Palm Springs and Torrance, and Medweight, Lasers and Wellness Center in Irvine

SAVE UP TO

ast month, I shared three new treatments that safely help your body rejuvenate itself without surgery or down�me. This month, I’m going to share 10 secrets on how to look 10 years younger—also without surgery or down�me.

I’m always amazed at a pa�ent’s results a�er I inject just one to four syringes of dermal filler. That teaspoon of “magic” changes the way light reflects off their faces and transforms them to look years younger.

A�er I treat them, it’s also clear to me they need to update their appearance. Their current look might have fit their age, but no longer enhances their younger-looking selves. So here are 10 �ps to look younger. Six �ps are medical treatments, and four �ps are non-medical, but also make a big difference. I listed what we would charge, which leaves you $1,500 for your hair, makeup and clothes—s�ll keeping the total at $10,000.

1. Keep up with your Botox to look younger and happier; 10 units per decade of age is the average star�ng point, so about 30 units while you’re in your 30s, and about 50 units in your 50s: $450 average.

2. Get a Voluma Li� to help restore a heart shape to your face: $1,600-$2,400.

3. Get a lip enhancement: $750.

4. Get Cutera’s Secret micro-needling radio-frequency treatments to make your skin younger; three Tx’s, four to six weeks apart: $2,400.

5. Get PICO Genesis laser treatments to make your skin brighter: three Tx’s, four to six weeks apart: $2,400.

6. Treat your leg veins: $900.

7. Lose 10 pounds (for most), or gain 10 pounds (for the few): Free.

8. Wear sun block every day: Priceless.

9. Get a more youthful hairstyle, color and makeup: $800.

10. Update your wardrobe with a couple of fresh accent pieces: $700.

Those are this month’s 10 secrets to help you look up to 10 years younger for $10,000 or less. Next month, I’ll share some secrets about what people say … and what they really mean. Un�l then, keep the secrets.

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 19

SEPTEMBER 2018

ARTS & CULTURE

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THE PS ART MUSEUM AT 80 T

By stephen berger

he Palm Springs Art Museum is celebrating its 80th anniversary with an exhibition of 80 works of art recently added to its permanent collection. The exhibit showcases the wideranging collections the museum has acquired over the years since its founding as the oneroom Palm Springs Desert Museum in La Plaza in 1938.

Back in those days, the museum focused on Native American artifacts, natural science and the local environment. After moving among transition into an art museum. several downtown locations, the museum Today, the natural science and environment opened a 10,000-square-foot location in section of the museum has evolved into a 1958—with galleries to display art, marking its separate public entity, The Living Desert Zoo

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The Palm Springs Art Museum celebrates a milestone anniversary with an exhibit of new acquisitions

and Gardens. The museum now has a satellite location in Palm Desert, and also operates the Architecture and Design Center, located in a classic mid-century building originally designed by E. Stewart Williams in 1961, on Palm Canyon Drive a few blocks from the museum and performance center.

I recently visited the main museum to view the Eighty @ Eighty exhibit—and I found it well worth a trip out in triple-digit temperatures.

The 80 works on display, all either donated to or purchased by the museum within the last five years, offer a great overview of the museum’s diverse collections.

In the central court, a playful standing mobile by Alexander Calder, “The Lizard,” 1968, is interestingly juxtaposed, with a contemporary assemblage of a shopping cart containing a hydraulic lift: “Shopper Hopper,” 2016, by Rubin Ortiz-Torres. The shopping cart symbolizes the working-class Latino, as well as the homeless, while the hydraulic lift is a common feature in upgraded lowrider cars.

Around the corner, a large abstract painting, “Untitled (P1304),” 2013, by Penelope Krebs, uses wide vertical stripes in different shades of blue to create a work that is both soothing and cooling—like stepping out of the hot sun and into the shade.

For Tom Fruin’s “Flag: Farragut Houses,” 2013, the artist stitched together drug bags that he collected over a six-month period from a housing project in Brooklyn. The resulting quilt-like sculpture is a testament to the perils of life today.

At the other end of the spectrum, Japanese artist Mineo Mizuno’s “Teardrop Winter #27A,” 2009, is a study in serenity and balance.

The nearly 5-foot-tall ceramic sculpture, in the shape of an elongated drop of water, changes shades gently, from white at the top to deep blue at its base.

One of the most evocative pieces is “Hand With Spot G,” 2001 by Douglas Gordon. The artist super-enlarges an instant photograph of his left hand. From a distance, I thought the dark spot in the center was a depiction of stigmata. However, upon reading the notes, I learned the image is taken from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. In the book, a black spot is the mark of death.

The exhibit is dominated by large-scale abstract paintings. There are also examples of 19th-century California landscapes, Native American ceramics, 20th-century photography, modernist chairs and a wide range of

contemporary art.

“This recent-acquisitions exhibition was fun to organize in that it allows us to share stories about our collection through unexpected juxtapositions,” said Mara Gladstone, associate curator of the Palm Springs Museum of Art, in a statement. “Alongside our important Alexander Calder mobile is an interactive shopping cart sculpture by Ruben OrtizTorres. A muscular bronze by Jacques Lipchitz parallels a similarly powerful female figure

by Alison Saar, and a glass house by Mildred Howard is adjacent to mid-century modern design by Verner Panton and an assemblage of kitchenware by Subodh Gupta. Many of these treasures haven’t been displayed before, and this installation showcases the historical strength of our collection and the exciting direction in which it is moving.”

There’s time to experience this wonderfully eclectic exhibition before it ends on Sept. 16.

Eighty @ Eighty: Recent Gifts to the Permanent Collection is on display through Sunday, Sept. 16, at the Palm Springs Art Museum, 101 Museum Drive, in Palm Springs. Admission costs vary. For more information, call 760-322-4800, or visit www.psmuseum.org.

“Teardrop Winter #27A,” 2009, by Mineo Mizuno.

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20 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

SEPTEMBER 2018

FOOD & DRINK

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DESERT CICERONE I

Should you care that your favorite brewery sold out? Yes, you should

BY brett Newton

t’s not easy to know exactly where your money is going when you buy something. Some large corporations take great care to intentionally obscure this knowledge, at least when looking at products superficially. You might despise a certain large conglomerate, and vow to boycott it … only to later find out that the paper towels you bought are made by a company that is wholly owned by that same conglomerate.

For decades in the craft-beer world, we didn’t have this problem: If you liked the beer you were drinking, you could find out who made it by three-tier system was born: Alcoholic-beverage looking at the label—and that was that. Well, makers would sell their products to consumers the craft-beer market steadily grew … until the through a distributor that acts as a middle man. big boys in the industry could no longer stand Benefits and drawbacks to this system by and watch its massive market share erode. have popped up in the ensuing years. One The plan was simple: Buy up craft breweries the biggest benefits is to smaller breweries: around the country.

They have the possibility of getting their beer “What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. into other markets relatively easily, thanks Not a single thing … at least not from a business to a distributor’s expanded network. This and legal perspective. Lagunitas Brewing could allow a brewery to gain fans in places it Company, the renowned brewer in Petaluma, previously might have never been known. sold half of the company to Heineken in 2015, There is a dark side: AB InBev and Molson and then sold the remaining half in 2017—yet Coors have become the equivalent to The the beer’s quality remains just as good as ever, Empire in the Star Wars movies when it and consumer costs have gone down. What comes to craft beer. AB InBev is the massive could be wrong with that? multinational conglomerate and parent The short answer: Plenty. As for the longer company to all of the Anheuser Busch and answer, we’ll come back to this later, because SABMiller beers, as well as many other brands. now I have to try to make a relatively dry (Yes, that nasty yellow stuff is owned by foreign concept somewhat interesting: the three-tier corporations. Don’t ever be fooled by the system for alcohol in the U.S. At least it has ridiculous beer commercials pasting American an interesting origin, in the shadows of the flags on everything.) Molson Coors is at least Prohibition era and the Roaring ‘20s. In that half-American, and I think you can guess decade, saloons popped up to serve the sinfully which half. The company’s M.O. seems to be thirsty public, and many of them were “tied combining marketing and packaging efforts, houses,” meaning an alcoholic-beverage supplier as well as streamlining processes within the would pay a saloon to exclusively carry their company. This allows them to produce the exact products. Upon Prohibition’s merciful appeal, same product, no matter where you’ll find it in federal and state legislators saw the problem the world. It’s a feat of engineering, really, and with this and sought to institute a system something to be admired for what it is worth to protect the consumer from tied houses, (and it’s worth billions for them), but what encouraging free-market activity. Thus, the about the … uh ... taste?

Now we come to “branches”: Large breweries own distribution affiliates in select markets.

While legal, it is plain to see the problem with this setup: These distribution affiliates can strong-arm local businesses into essentially becoming tied houses. “Oh, you’d like to carry (fill in the blank) brewery’s beers? They’re not in our portfolio, I’m afraid. And if you do carry them, we’ll pull all of (our popular but bland) brewery’s beers. If you want craft beer, though, you’re in luck! We have some in our portfolio.

So what if we stomped on the quality of their beers in an attempt to make them more cheaply and more efficiently (with the exception of Lagunitas/Heineken … for now)?”

These conglomerates count on your ignorance of the origins of the beer you’re drinking. This isn’t anything to be ashamed of, by the way: Beer aisles are an absolute labyrinth, and nobody should be expected to stand around Googling who owns what. However … did you know that Los Angeles’ Golden Road Brewing is owned by AB InBev? Don’t be surprised; AB InBev owns at least 400 beer brands.

This mess inevitably spreads to the shelves.

It’s why you might see packages of varying sizes and shapes of Budweiser, Bud Light, Coors, Miller Lite, etc. More shelf space equals more eyes on brands, which equals more sales. It has a distinct, anti-free-market whiff, doesn’t it?

At this point, a craft-beer fan needs to make up his or her mind. The Brewers Association recently created the Independent Craft Brewers

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Seal, which qualified breweries can apply to their labels. (Note, however, that the seal is not yet being used industry-wide, so if a beer does not have the seal, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s being produced by a brewery owned by one of the large conglomerates.)

Since we’re in Southern California, I’ll mention a couple breweries that have sold out.

AB InBev owns Golden Road Brewing and 10 Barrel Brewing. The latter is out of Oregon, but opened a large restaurant and taproom in downtown San Diego—something that was a topic of great contention in a county with 150plus breweries. If you’re in San Diego and find your way to 10 Barrel, you’ve really overlooked some amazing, independent brewers within a stone’s throw (no pun intended).

Constellation Brands owns San Diego’s Ballast Point Brewing. This buyout was a big deal in the industry when it occurred in 2015 due to the $1 billion price tag. At least Constellation is an American company; it also owns Corona, Modelo, Pacifico and many other brands. However, there are so many true craft breweries within a very short distance.

Go forth; stay vigilant; and drink wisely!

Brett Newton is a certified cicerone (like a sommelier for beer) and homebrewer who has mostly lived in the Coachella Valley since 1988. He currently works at the Coachella Valley Brewing Co. taproom in Thousand Palms. He can be reached at desertcicerone@gmail.com.

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 21

SEPTEMBER 2018

FOOD & DRINK

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VINE SOCIAL

Is aging wines becoming a thing of the past? The answer: Well, sort of ...

JASON DAVID HAIR STUDIO

By Katie finn

LOVE YOUR HAIR

Dear Katie: I just found a bottle of 2004 Fetzer chardonnay in my hall closet. It was on the floor hidden under a down comforter. Is it still good? Sincerely, Thirsty in La Quinta Dear Thirsty: No. Sincerely, Katie

the bottle—but if I was going to taste this wine, Country Club and Cook Street crafted byPalm two people of undisputed genius and De sert

integrity, now was the time. his answer might seem obvious to a lot To my amazement, the cork came out almost 760-340-5959 of people—obvious because the idea is entirely in one piece and was completely that chardonnay doesn’t age well. Obvious soaked through. Immediately, I could smell because Fetzer is an inexpensive brand. Obvious www.jasondavidhairstudio.net musky leather and sweet cigar. There was an because it’s been housed in a sweatbox. Maybe earthy spiciness to it and even a little dried obvious to some because it’s from California, cranberry. It was alive! I actually shrieked out and the common perception is that only wines loud as if the wine glass I was holding was from Europe age well. a winning lottery ticket. This 40-year-old But … what if it isn’t so obvious? What if the California zinfandel was not just drinkable—it scenario was a 1998 Caymus Special Selection? was delicious. Imagine that.

What if the bottle wasn’t in your sweltering hall My dear friends gifted me a magnum of closet, but rather in a temperature-controlled 1978 Niebaum-Coppola Rubicon. This was wine fridge or cellar? the inaugural vintage of this wine under the I recently celebrated a milestone birthday. expertise of the great André Tchelistcheff.

Thus, it was a perfect excuse to uncork some Otherwise known as “The Maestro,” this man is bottles from the year of my birth and discover considered the founding father of Napa, and his what aged better: Me, or the wine? passion and knowledge is unrivaled.

I’ve had a bottle of 1978 Kalin Cellars Pulling the cork from this bottle gave me zinfandel in my possession for a long time—so chills. I was about to experience history. Before long, in fact, that I can’t remember who gave tour buses, phony castles and bachelorette it to me. Nothing in my cellar filled me with parties made their mark on Napa, it was a place as much joy as this bottle. I thought this wine of great destiny and unfettered hope. The dream would always remain uncorked and in my of potential greatness was now in my glass, and collection. Maybe with a little “do not disturb” it did not disappoint. Truffles and mint and sign on it. I figured I would keep it as a fun wine licorice leaped from the glass. I was in heaven. relic that made my collection legit. Because I was I was 2-for-2. 1978 was a very good year. not the original owner, I had no idea how this At a party the other night, one of my friends bottle was treated before I started lovingly caring was telling me that she had recently gone to for it. There was a significant amount of ullage dinner with her husband to celebrate their (fancy speak for wine evaporation), and the mold anniversary. They decided to open a bottle of was creeping out from under the foil. After a lot 2005 Far Niente cabernet—the year they got of thought, I decided that I could always keep married—to commemorate the occasion. To

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as our cocktail. So most winemakers follow consumer demand and create fruity, ripe, highalcohol wines that are meant to be consumed right now. Any cellaring that needs to be done has most likely already been done by the winery before the wine is ever released to the market.

So what does this all mean? In short, we can’t have it both ways. That full-bodied wine that’s ready to pair with your steak tonight is not going to blow your hair back in 13 years, let alone 40. All those beautiful up-in-your-face fruit flavors that come jumping out of that inky liquid are going to be the first thing to dissipate as the wine matures. Without the preservative power of enough acid or tannin (and a few other nerdy factors) that will help the wine soften gradually and allow the flavors to meld together, that high-octane juice is going to fall flat on its face. Or worse, it will become an expensive bottle of vinegar.

This is not to say that Napa isn’t producing age-worthy wines—it is! They are just not the norm anymore, and that means the consumer needs to do a little homework before buying.

Katie Finn is a certified sommelier and certified specialist of wine with more than 15 years in the wine industry. She can be reached at katiefinnwine@gmail.com.

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their shock and sadness, they discovered the wine was far past its prime—an undrinkable waste of money.

The question was, of course: Why? Convention says that wine gets better with time, and this was an expensive bottle from a very reputable producer. They had handled the bottle appropriately, and it really wasn’t that old.

How could my 40-year-old wines kick the flavor pants off the 13-year-old?

Should we add wine to the list of things no longer allowed to age gracefully?

Winemaking has changed. When California began its wine career, the idea was to emulate Bordeaux as much as possible. The first step in doing so meant picking the grapes earlier.

An earlier harvest means grapes with higher acid and lower sugar, which translates to loweralcohol wines. These are going to be wines with a beautiful garnet or ruby color. These are wines that have flavors and aromas like violets, cedar and plums. These are wines that are meant to be aged.

More often than not, when you pull the cork on a cabernet from California nowadays, you will be met with an opaque, inky, almost black wine. These will be wines that are rich and opulent on your palate. Flavors like blackberries, black cherries, vanilla and licorice will jump up and smack you in the face. The wines will most likely have an alcohol percentage of at least 14.5.

These are wines that you want to drink sooner than later.

Winemaking has evolved over the last 40 years because consumers needs have changed.

Their palates have changed. We buy a wine at 11 a.m. in order to have something to drink that night with dinner. We are a Jack-and-Coke, gin-and-tonic culture that learned to embrace wine—as long as it packed the same punch

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Our intrepid imbiber counts the daiquiri as one of his favorite drinks—and perhaps you should, too

By Kevin Carlow

ne of the most common questions I get behind the bar—after, “What’s your favorite thing to make?” (answer: money, duh)—is, ‘What is your favorite cocktail?” This seems like an innocuous-enough question, but to answer it honestly and frankly is difficult.

What defines someone’s favorite cocktail? Is it the cocktail one drinks the most often? Is icecold vodka with cheese-stuffed olives really anyone’s favorite cocktail, or just a “go-to” to help someone unwind after a long day? By that logic, my favorite cocktail is a boilermaker. A beer and a shot is hardly a cocktail in any modern sense of the word, however, unless you do it the way we occasionally do after work—that is, taking a slim shot-glass of bourbon, and dropping it into half a glass of pilsner. It’s a powerful way to end a shift.

That’s not what anyone wants to hear, though. I generally respond immediately by saying it’s the daiquiri, since it’s the cocktail I drink the most frequently, and certainly one of my all-time favorites.

Depending on my audience, I sometimes hear their respect for me and my bartending abilities crash to the floor like a tray of drinks. One of the customers (a lady, usually) will emphasize what they’re all thinking: “A daiquiri? Really?!”

Yes, really.

To some people, a daiquiri is something consumed from a foam cup or tacky plastic “yard” on Bourbon Street, the Vegas Strip or anywhere else it is socially acceptable to consume frozen, sweetened stock-car fuel.

Others will know better, and for the rest of you … well, it’s time to enjoy one of life’s true pleasures.

Dale DeGroff resurrected the term “mixologist” to separate what he was doing from the beer-and-highball jockey down the street (but please don’t ever call me a mixologist; even DeGroff now regrets bringing the term into modern parlance).

Similarly, I wish I had a simple way of letting people know that the daiquiri I consume is a far different animal than what they expect.

Classic daiquiri, real daiquiri, fresh lime and sugar daiquiri—none of these seem to quite do the trick. So usually, I just use my old “Try it; if you don’t like it, I’ll drink it” routine. I rarely get to drink it.

This is a drink with a long and storied history. The conventional story—the one Bacardí rum promotes—has to do with a mining venture in Southeastern Cuba at the turn of the 20th century. A mine engineer named Jennings Cox was entertaining friends when he ran out of gin. Believing, incorrectly, that alcohol and citrus prevented malaria (and perhaps other tropical diseases), he substituted Cuban rum. Another engineer, named Pagliuchi, claimed to have come up with CVIndependent.com

the name by referencing the local place name.

The story continues that Admiral Lucius W. Johnson brought the drink to the Army and Navy Club in Washington, D.C., and it spread throughout the nation from there. The same club even has a room named after the drink.

(There is another drink named after the club, but that is for another time.)

Other sources differ slightly on the naming, including Basil Woon’s When it’s Cocktail Time in Cuba, which I first learned about in an article on the Difford’s Guide website. To paraphrase, Woon states that the mine’s engineers were enjoying the new cocktail at the bar at Santiago’s Venus Hotel when Cox himself named it. Difford also references a drink called the “canchanchara,” a sort of rum punch with lemon and honey, as a possible predecessor of the daiquiri.

It seems unlikely to me that this mining engineer was the first one to combine rum, lime, sugar and ice. Aside from the “canchanchara,” a drink about which I must admit my previous ignorance, I was certainly aware of “grog.” Not to be confused with Trader Vic’s better-known Navy Grog (a heady mixture of three rums, including an over-proof rum, lime, grapefruit and allspice), grog was a mixture of diluted rum, water and lime consumed by British sailors. Admiral Edward “Old Grog” Vernon, in the mid-18th century, gave strict orders that all rum rations should be mixed with water. He did allow for sugar and lime to be added, if the sailor had the funds for such purchases. Sounds like a daiquiri, no? In fairness, some sailors were drinking rum and water, and it was still “grog” … and it’s probably fair to assume nobody had ice. It became a staple of the British Navy.

Back to the daiquiri: Cox certainly had plenty of documentation, including both witnesses and the handwritten recipe in his journal (from Bacardí by way of The Alcohol Professor website:) 6 lemons 6 teaspoons of sugar

The daiquiri at Bootlegger Tiki. KEVIN CARLOW

6 cups of Bacardí rum 2 cups of mineral water crushed ice Well, it sure sounds like a party, but it doesn’t really sound like a daiquiri. Picking up on the drink where David Wondrich does in Imbibe!—at the Army and Navy Club, and then onto Hugo Ensslin, who has the drink as “The Cuban Cocktail” in his Recipes for Mixed Drinks from 1917—we get this recipe: 1 jigger of Bacardí rum 2 dashes of gum syrup Juice of half a lime OK, now this sounds like a daiquiri! It’s a bit on the dry and boozy side, and the gum is unnecessary … but we’re nearly there. I also agree with Wondrich that the Bacardí rum we know in the U.S. is not best for a daiquiri; it doesn’t have enough body or funk. I am fond of saying that the only way to get two bartenders to agree on the best rum for a daiquiri is to shoot one; I, in the absence of true Cuban rum, prefer Wray and Nephew, a Jamaican over-proof white rum with lots of funk. One of those babies is sure to get your night going. Rums from Panama and

Nicaragua are great daiquiri rums, too, and many swear by the rich demerara rums of South America or the agricoles of former French Colonies, or … well you get the idea.

As far as the recipe goes, the most common one is certainly: 2 ounces of the rum of your choice 1 ounce of fresh lime juice 3/4 ounce of simple syrup (1:1) Shake, up in a coupe I actually prefer a half-ounce of simple syrup, and I am not alone. At home, I use a teaspoon of superfine sugar, and it’s divine—a much racier drink without the polymerized simple mouth feel. This is one drink that can be made beautifully at home by nearly anyone; in fact, it may be better to make at home: Squeezing limes à la minute is much better for the finished product. Most bars can’t juice on the spot, for logistical reasons, and the superfresh lime offers a noticeable flavor difference.

As my bar manager said when it was 115 outside with humidity creeping up into the 30s: “It’s daiquiri weather.” Sure enough.

Kevin Carlow is a bartender at Truss and Twine, and can be reached at krcarlow@gmail.com.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 23

SEPTEMBER 2018

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Solar Q&A

What are the important terms I should know when shopping for solar?

It’s really smart to educate yourself a bit before starting—because then you can better understand how to evaluate the proposals you are receiving from different companies. Here are a couple of the most common terms to get you started: Kilowatt Hour (kWh): A kilowatt equals 1,000 watts of power. It’s a unit that the utility uses to measure how much energy you are using. When going solar, it’s important to understand how many kWh’s you use on a monthly and annual basis. This information will help your consultant size your system properly. Building a system that doesn’t cover your annual usage will make you susceptible to rate increases and time period shifts. It’s also important to understand total system size. For instance, if you are considering 360-watt solar panels, in an hour, each one would produce 360 watts of power with full sun. You can multiply the wattage of each panel by the number of panels to get a total. Then you can compare different wattage panels to understand the total energy each proposal will yield.

Your energy consultant will look at how much total energy you used for the past 12 months, and that, combined with your optimum roof areas, will help him or her determine how many solar panels you need to offset that much power. With lower-wattage panels, you’ll need more of them to produce the same amount of energy as a premium panel like those from SunPower.

Inverter/Microinverter: The energy that solar panels produce is DC power. But since our homes run on AC power, the current must be “inverted.”

Originally, this was done by stringing seven or eight solar panels together and running the wires to an inverter mounted in or near the garage. Now, many of the newer style panels, like those from SunPower, have the inverter built in. The advantage of this is that the entire system is under a longer warranty, whereas before, the panels might have a 25-year warranty, with the inverter at only 10. Additionally, because each panels operates independently, there is much more flexibility with panel placement, so you can have the optimum layout.

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FOOD & DRINK INDY ENDORSEMENT

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Enjoy great classic delicious Italian food with flair as Johnny’s sons, grandsons and nephews continue the family tradition, perfectly executing the family recipes and delighting celebrities and locals with a dining experience that is amazing.

Frank Sinatra himself was a regular at this Italian restaurant, where the chairman’s two favorite dishes – the Steak Sinatra and Linguini Clams are still on the menu.

This month, we enjoy poké for lunch, and Italian ice for dessert

By Jimmy Boegle

WHAT The Italian ice WHERE Vinny’s Italian Ice and Frozen Custard, 190 N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs HOW MUCH $7 as shown CONTACT 760-904-4625; vinnysitalianice.com WHY It’s a tasty, cooling treat.

By this time of year, even the heartiest desertdwellers are simply done with the oppressive heat.

We all have our tricks for dealing with the 110-degree-plus temps, ranging from 24-hour pool access to constant near-nudity to diets consisting of nothing but cold alcoholic beverages.

Well, my friends, I recently discovered another helpful tool in the battle with the summer sizzle: the Italian ice at Vinny’s, in downtown Palm Springs.

Italian ice is apparently more of an East Coast thing—I haven’t lived farther east than Tucson, Ariz., so I wouldn’t know—that’s akin to sorbet, in that it doesn’t contain any milk, dairy or egg. As a result, it’s less creamy, but healthier—and it’s really, really cold.

On a recent trip to Vinny’s—which also serves house-made custard and gelato, for those of you who like your cold treats with a little more heft—I got a medium-sized cup, which included three scoops. I decided to mix it up with three decidedly different flavors: vanilla, mango and pecan pie. All three scoops were delicious and oh-so-refreshing; the tastiest was the mango, although the pecan pie was the most interesting.

If I have one complaint … it’s that Vinny’s offerings are rather pricey. I get it; it takes time and money to take quality ingredients and turn them into great, house-made products; it also costs money to pay for rent, employees, air conditioning, etc. However, I also understand that when cash is tight, it might make more sense to go to the store and spend $3 to $5 on a quart and a half of ice cream.

When money’s not an issue, and the heat is an issue, I can promise you: I’ll be at Vinny’s enjoying some cold, delicious Italian ice.

patio dining | full bar | bar menu private dining | groups Open for Dinner Nightly at 5 p.m.

(Closed Sundays) Reservations can be made through our website on OpenTable.

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WHAT The three-scoop bowl WHERE Haus of Poké, 111 N. Palm Canyon Drive, No. 160, Palm Springs; also at 42500 Bob Hope Drive, No. 3, Rancho Mirage HOW MUCH $11.49 CONTACT 760-537-1173 (Palm Springs); 760636-1892 (Rancho Mirage); hausofpoke.com WHY It’s make-your-own bliss—if careful.

Sometimes, when we’re given too many options in life, we make mistakes.

Such was the case for me on a recent lunch visit to the new downtown Palm Springs House of Poké. I knew I wanted a nice, healthyish bowl of fish yumminess; however, I didn’t think much about the specific form that yumminess would take.

When I walked in and looked at all of the choices … it was almost overwhelming. How many scoops … with a choice of nine proteins?

Which of the five base ingredients? Which of six mix-ins? Which of 10 sauces? Which of more than a dozen toppings?

Not sure about all this, I just winged it: I decided on three scoops, split between ahi tuna and yellowtail. (Shrimp and octopus were also strong candidates. The tofu and the beets? Not so much.) I went with just one mix-in, the green onions. I got two sauces—eel sauce and ponzu—and two toppings: crab meat and crispy garlic, with pickled ginger on the side.

I paid for my order, sat down, and eagerly dove in. And I didn’t like it.

There was nothing wrong with the ingredients; they were great, in fact. The problem was that I came up with a concoction that did not work with my palate at that time.

The eel sauce overwhelmed the fish and the crab, and conflicted with the crispy garlic; there was not enough ponzu sauce to keep the rice moist, in part because I said I only wanted a “medium” amount of the sauces combined.

I decided to go back for lunch the next day—after giving more thought to things.

This time, I got salad and chips as my base, ahi tuna as my protein, green onions as my mix-in, mustard ponzu as my one sauce, and crab meat as my only topping.

It was amazing. It was so good, in fact, that I had to talk myself out of going to Haus of Poké for lunch a third day in a row.

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Restaurant NEWS BITES

By Jimmy Boegle FIND FOOD BANK CELEBRATES 35 YEARS OF FEEDING COACHELLA VALLEY RESIDENTS IN NEED The statistics are staggering: Each month, FIND Food Bank—which supports the communities of the Coachella Valley, high desert and Salton Sea area—helps more than 85,000 people, both directly and through its partner agencies. In a year’s time, more than 10 million pounds of food will be given to those in need—more than half of that fresh fruit and vegetables.

The cynical among us right now might be thinking: “That’s great. But this is a restaurantnews column. What does this have to do with restaurant news?”

My retort: Those of us fortunate enough to eat at restaurants on occasion need to realize that a whole bunch of our neighbors need our help to get food on the table, period.

To that end, FIND is celebrating its 35 years of existence during September—which is also Hunger Action Month at FIND and all Feeding America-affiliated food banks—with an ambitious goal: FIND’s management is hoping 3,500 people will donate $35 to mark the Indiobased food bank’s 35 years of service.

Debbie Espinosa, FIND’s president and CEO, said she, her staff and volunteers are proud of what they’ve accomplished over 35 years.

“The accomplishment is amazing,” she said, “from starting with basic food rescue out of a blue Pinto, and turning it into a food bank that serves the Coachella Valley and beyond.”

Help out, if you can, with that $35 or more. Get details at www.findfoodbank.org.

IN BRIEF Gyoro Gyoro Izakaya Japonaise, the sprawling restaurant located 105 S. Palm Canyon Drive, in downtown Palm Springs, has closed for good. File this one under “wasted opportunity”: The restaurant, owned by now-in-bankruptcy Ramla USA Inc., could not take advantage of a relative dearth of Japanese restaurants in the west valley. While Gyoro Gyoro was a gorgeous restaurant with at-times great food, it seemed mismanaged, including a notorious closure following a bad health inspection, and a lack of community involvement. However, the news is not all bad: The family that owns L’Olivo Italian Restaurant, located at 333 N. Palm Canyon Drive, has already snapped up the location. Watch this space to see how that turns out. … Toucans Tiki Lounge, the popular gay bar located at 2100 N. Palm Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs, has been purchased by managers who are part of Foundation 10 Creative, the company that owns restaurants including Birba, Cheeky’s and Mr. Lyons Steakhouse.

Dave Morgan, of Reaction Marketing and Promotions, is also involved. The new owners are saying Toucans will remain a gay bar focused on entertainment. Let’s see how this goes. ...

Newish to Rancho Mirage, at 42452 Bob Hope Drive: Hielo Sno, a shaved-ice/snow-cone joint.

Learn more at hielosno.business.site. … Donald “Lucky” Callender has purchased Babe’s BBQ and Brewhouse, located in Rancho Mirage’s The River at 71800 Highway 111, from the trust fund set up by his father, Donald W. Callender, the man who started both Babe’s and the Marie Callender’s chain. We hear changes are already taking place. … Celebrate Mexican Independence Day, if you’re so inclined, on Sunday, Sept. 16, with $16 tequila flights and live music at Las Casuelas Terraza, located at 222 S. Palm Canyon Drive, in downtown Palm Springs. Watch www.lascasuelas.com for more details. … On Saturday, Sept. 15, The Saguaro, at 1800 E. Palm Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs, will hold its Beats and Brews Fest.

For $45, sample beers and tequilas from well more than two dozen companies, and enjoy great music from bands including The Flusters, Spankshaft and Plastic Ruby. Get more details at thesaguaro.com/palm-springs. … Coming soon to Palm Desert: The Vine Wine Bar, at 78468 Country Club Drive. Watch www.thevinewinebar.com/palm-desert-ca for details. Oh, by the way, it’s right next door to a new IW Coffee location! … Bit o’ Country, the diner at 418 S. Indian Canyon Drive, in Palm Springs, has reopened. It has new owners and has been tidied up a bit, but we’re hearing the greasy-spoon food and vibe remain (and we mean that in a good way). … There is good news and bad news from Bootlegger Tiki, the craft-cocktail joint at 1101 N. Palm Canyon Drive, in downtown Palm Springs. The good: The Tales of the Cocktail Foundation honored the bar with one of its Spirited Awards, for having one of the 10 Best Bar Teams in the western U.S. The bad: The leader of that team since the bar’s opening, Chad Austin, has departed Bootlegger and the Coachella Valley for greener pastures. Congrats to Bootlegger, and best wishes to Chad!

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30 31 35 36

Three local musicians have left their old bands behind to form Karr Hip-hop duo Off Kilter gets ready to make its mark on the local music scene Derek Jordan Gregg brings a folk-music sound to his solo gigs the lucky 13: Meet the frontman of When Tides Turn, and the guitarist for Mega Sun

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A near-death health crisis helps Mike Scheidt create Yob’s new album

METAL WITH MEANING

33 photo by jimmy HUBBARD

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MUSIC

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CONTINUOUSLY CREATING T

By Brian Blueskye

hree fine musicians, formerly members of well-liked local bands, have joined forces to create something new.

Karr features drummer Russel Waldron (formerly of Spankshaft), guitarist and vocalist Paul Karr (Unheard) and bassist Andy Gorrill (Machin’, Warsaw Poland Brothers), and the group will be making its low-desert debut—and playing its second show, period—at The Hood Bar and Pizza on Saturday, Sept. 1.

During a recent interview in Yucca Valley, Waldron said he was looking to play music again after leaving Spankshaft—and found chemistry ‘Totally interested!’ He came over, and after the with Gorrill and Karr. first practice, Paul said, ‘He’s in!’ We’ve been “I consider it like the band Chickenfoot of practicing two to three times a week.” the desert,” Waldron said. “We all come from For Paul Karr, the band marks a return to these big bands of the desert—Warsaw Poland the rock world.

Brothers, Spankshaft and Unheard—and we “I’ve been doing acoustic sets here and there, decided to go our separate ways from them. As but nothing in rock for several years,” Karr far as Spankshaft goes, I still love those guys said. “I didn’t really think I was going to do it like brothers, but it was time for a change. again; my first intention was to get together “Me and Paul (Karr), who is my brotherwith other guys and do stuff acoustically. That in-law, got together. I jammed with everyone didn’t happen. I put an ad out on Craigslist, I could in the desert, but with Paul, it just and it was while Russel was still in Spankshaft. clicked, and it felt like a heroin feeling. … After I got all these replies and booked all these three practices, I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is practices. But Russel said, ‘Hey, let’s get where I belong.’ It’s been awesome, and it’s a together!’ So I canceled all those. … I had been huge breath of fresh air. playing mostly benefit stuff because my mom “We were on the prowl for a bass player, is involved in a lot of charities.” and I’ve played with 90 percent of the bands Gorrill said that while being part of Machin’ in the valley, and I never thought about was fun, he and frontman David Macias didn’t hitting up Andy Gorrill; I always thought he always see eye to eye. was busy. I remember he texted me saying, “I definitely had different life goals,” Gorrill

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said. “David (Macias) wanted to go one way, and it was different than what I was up for doing. … I played ball for a long time, but it got to a point where I needed to do me. It left a sour taste in my mouth, but it was good for me, because it let me not have to worry about shows, not worry about gigging, and it let me sit in my garage and play what I wanted to play, which was loud rock ’n’ roll. … In this band, it’s, ‘Let’s try this,’ or, ‘Let’s try that,’ instead of, ‘Learn how to play it is this way!’ There’s a lot of freedom now, and we’re not focused on perfection. Music should be fun, and when it becomes a job, the fun starts to peter out.”

Waldron said he understands it’s not easy to run a successful band.

“You have to keep the momentum going,” Waldron said. “You have to keep up with your publicity and all that. It can become a second job, but as long as it’s fun, and I’m happy like I’ve been, and it stays this way, I could play music for the next 20 years with these guys.

It’s super-fun, and it’s exciting, and we’re just going to grow. It’s not perfect right now by any means, but it’s pretty damn awesome.”

Only a short demo for Karr has been released so far, but all three members agreed that coming from different music backgrounds was a positive.

“Genre-wise, I came from a ska band,” Waldron said. “We did a lot of ska, reggae and pop-punk. I’m still a huge reggae and ska fan at heart, so I’m going to bring a lot of those roots with me. It’s really cool to blend these different backgrounds together and see how it goes. I bring a lot of my roots with me, but playing

Karr.

CVIndependent.com

Three local musicians have left their old bands behind to form Karr with Paul and Andy’s different styles brings a lot of new stuff out of me I didn’t know I had.”

Karr said the creative atmosphere works well for him.

“Way back in the day in my band, it was way more catchy and riff-driven. As time went on, it became harder and harder, and it felt like it was becoming depressing metal,” Karr said. “But for me now, I’ll bring something in, and I never leave bummed out, because we’re continuously creating. I feel like they’re more open to working on a song and giving it their best shot.”

Gorrill said Machin’ should not define him as a musician.

“In Machin’, there was the cumbia, the ska and the gypsy jazz—which was all cool. It’s great to have that background, but it’s not what I listen to when I’m at home,” he said.

“I’m listening to Foo Fighters and stuff like that, so it’s nice to be in a guitar band.”

There’s no doubt that Karr will offer some surprises during the show at The Hood.

“We have some studio time … and we’ve been putting it off, because we’ve been working on our set, but we want to go in there and get some records done hopefully by the end of the year. Everybody has been seeing our posters everywhere, and we have no music to show them yet—so the only way you’re going to hear us is to come to the show.”

Karr will perform with Sunday Funeral and Sticky Doll at 9 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 1, at The Hood Bar and Pizza, 74360 Highway 111, in Palm Desert.

Admission is free. For more information, visit www.karrband.com.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 31

SEPTEMBER 2018

MUSIC SKILLED ON THE MIC O

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/MUSIC

Hip-hop duo Off Kilter gets ready to make its mark on the local music scene

By Brian Blueskye

utside of some exposure at open-mic performances, local hip-hop duo of Off Kilter is largely unknown. However, that’s about to change.

Burny and TLick, originally from Northern California, are transplants to the desert who have great samples and mad skills on the mic. See for yourself when they play at The Hood Bar and Pizza on Friday, Sept. 28, as part of the CV Independent Presents show with Kosha Dillz.

Burny was the first to relocate to the desert, in October 2017, with TLick following in April 2018.

“Part of my family moved out here about Their beats are smooth with a nice groove two years ago. I was still up in San Jose with to them. my dad, and then my dad and I came down “We make our own beats,” TLick said. “I’m here,” Burny said. “Then (TLick) moved really funk-inspired, and I like things that down here and stayed on my couch until we have good rhythm. I like funky bass lines and upgraded our spot.” music from the ’70s, soul, funk and classic TLick said he moved to the Coachella Valley rock. I like things that groove, and a lot of the because of Burny. modern hip-hop doesn’t really do it for me, “I was up in the Bay Area making music, because it doesn’t have that soul feel to it that but (Burny) and I were doing it remotely. We I’m attracted to. So what I’m trying to do is decided we wanted to take it seriously, so I fuse what I like into something that sounds moved down here and moved in with him,” he modern, but also make that sound that I like said. and I’m inspired by.”

Since that move, they’ve been slowly T Lick said the band’s name comes from one building a following at open-mic nights at The of the first songs the duo recorded.

Hood, Plan B and Big Rock Pub. “We recorded this song called ‘Forever Off “It feels like our sound is a little more fresh Kilter,’ which was before we came up with the down here, and we’ve been getting a positive name,” TLick said. “We were trying to come response,” TLick said. “Obviously, we didn’t up with a name for our duo and said a lot of know anybody, so we’ve been going to the names back and forth. Burny called me one day open mics and trying to meet people, which and said, ‘Hey, I got a name: Off Kilter.’ We sort has been going pretty well for us. We also just of realized that describes us very well. We fell did a show in Hollywood thanks to our friend in love with that name. who has been helping us get shows around “The more we say it, the more we like it.

Los Angeles. We’re trying to seize every opportunity that we can.”

The style Burny and TLick have is unique, as are their styles of delivery. Burny is gifted with the ability to rap at a fast speed.

“I grew up listening to classic rock and alternative,” Burny said. “Then I heard Eminem and Tech N9ne, guys who were lyrically gifted, as well as gifted with their flow.

I heard it; it caught my ear, and I just wanted to repeat it. I would read their lyrics, because they rap so fast, and I thought, ‘I want to do that!’ I would do that with other people’s songs, and I wanted to start doing that with my own.”

TLick said he’s had a passion for writing since he was a child.

“I’m really into language, so the reason I was attracted to hip-hop is because it’s an art form dedicated entirely to language,” TLick said.

“How can you use your language to express an idea, and how creatively can you do it to make yourself stand out? It’s everything I’m Off Kilter. brian blueskye interested in, in a nutshell.”

Every day, I still think it’s cool. It’s such a tight name, and it’s the fusion of the funky older sounds and grooves on the production and the really rapid-fire style that we do. It’s not what you hear a lot in 2018.”

The show with Kosha Dillz will be the first local show with a full set.

“I’m looking forward to people being there to see us do a hip-hop show as opposed to seeing us on a Wednesday night at open mic because they wanted to go to The Hood,” Burny said. “They’ll be able to see our abilities.

“We get a good response at open mics, but … when you do an actual show, (attendees) know what they are going to see. So we actually have an opportunity to gain some fans, because the people there that night will be into the actual music that we’re making. I’ve done a lot of open mics in the Bay Area, and I know how they work: They’re very hit or miss. Oftentimes, you perform late in the night, and people are tired of watching 20 acts before you, or they aren’t into the type of music that you’re doing, so they aren’t really going to become fans. It’s more for practice and to stay sharp, so when we get a show, we’re prepared.”

Off Kilter will perform with The Bermuda and Kosha Dillz at 9 p.m., Friday, Sep. 28, at The Hood Bar and Pizza, 74360 Highway 111, in Palm Desert. Admission is free. For more information on Off Kilter, visit www. offkiltermusic.net.

The Blueskye REPORT SEPTEMBER 2018

By Brian Blueskye

TLC

The kids are back in school. The days are getting shorter. It’ll officially be fall this month. And while the temps are still hot, so are the events.

Fantasy Springs Resort Casino is hosting some shows that are out of this world. At 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 8, country singer Martina McBride will be stopping by. She’s a powerhouse in modern country music.

She’s sold 18 million records, with 20 Top 10 singles, and six No. 1 hits. You don’t want to miss this one. Tickets are $49 to $79. At 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 15, it’ll feel like the ’90s again when TLC and En Vogue perform.

Both of these all-women R&B groups were pretty spectacular back in their day. TLC has sold 70 million records and was one of the most recognizable music groups of the ’90s. One of my guilty pleasures is the song “No Scrubs”; yes, I know all the words and will sing along when it comes on the radio.

En Vogue was another ’90s great; “Free Your Mind” was a great jam. The group just released its first album in 14 years, scoring them a hit song. Wow! Tickets are $49 to $89.

Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, 84245 Indio Springs Parkway, Indio; 760-342-5000; www. fantasyspringsresort.com.

Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa goes into September with a great schedule. First, do you love Prince? If so, you’re in luck! At 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 1, Purple Reign: The Prince Tribute Show will be come to The Show. I watched this band’s sound check when the group was performing at the Rock Yard at Fantasy Springs—and was blown away by how good the band sounded. The group goes all out and even includes songs from Morris Day and the Time. Tickets are $20 to $35. At 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 28, classic-rock iconic band Styx will be performing. While Styx has received a lot of crap from critics, the band is beloved by a fan base of dedicated die-hards, and is one of the most successful touring bands in America. Tickets are $55 to $85. At 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 29, enjoy An Evening continued on Page 34 CVIndependent.com

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COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 33

SEPTEMBER 2018

MUSIC

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/MUSIC

METAL WITH MEANING I

By Brian Blueskye

n 2017, Yob frontman Mike Scheidt almost died from diverticulitis and a staph infection.

However, the extreme trauma led to something good: While confined to his hospital bed, he penned most of the music on the metal group’s new album Our Raw Heart.

Scheidt has recovered—Yob will be stopping by Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace on Saturday, Sept. 8.

During a recent phone interview with “My sigmoid colon ruptured, and I almost Scheidt, he talked about his nearly fatal bout died from it on multiple occasions,” Scheidt with diverticulitis in early 2017. said. “I had two surgeries and was able

Yob. JAMES REXROAD

A near-death health crisis helps Mike Scheidt create Yob’s new album

to survive it with my bandmates, and we received a lot of help from our family and friends worldwide. I was already working on an album prior to getting sick, and then after getting sick, that album … came into better focus, and I was able to finish it up.”

Personal material, however, is nothing new to Scheidt and Yob. “This is stuff I’ve been writing about since our demo in the late ’90s,” he said. “I’d say over the past couple of decades, I was getting better at it, but I’m not sure, given I’m not very objective about those things. …

From day one in Yob, I’ve written songs that come from Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Peruvian Shamanism and stuff inspired by Emerson and Blake. It’s always had a spiritual bent, but it’s always been from the perspective of an imperfect perspective—meaning not trying to sell anything to anybody, and actually being on a path and working through things in the mud that would be considered lofty, or things that have a shiny spiritual quality. … It’s not about trying to paint a pretty picture, but trying to get to a more empowered, aware and better place to live.”

Scheidt said he’s more mindful of his health these days.

“I have to follow a healthy routine, but I’m doing well,” he said. “I don’t know what recovery looks like. I’m not the same as I was.

In some ways, I’m stronger; in some ways, I require some maintenance. But it’s a small complaint to have, if there is one. It forces me to have consistently healthy habits, and I can stand to have that anyway. I carry around a little bit of uncertainty, because I know things can go off the rails. But that was no different than before. It informs of truths that were already there; it’s just that I have gotten up close and personal to those truths, and they have a bit of a different meaning to me.”

After traveling around the world, Scheidt said he has realized it’s important to share with others.

“What I find is that sense of kinship with people where maybe we haven’t met before, but we have similar albums in our collections that we’ve listened to for decades,” he said.

“We share that love, and certainly our experiences in music and culture are no doubt informed by where we came from. … (No matter) where we were born, what kind of religion or politics or upbringing in general, we can both still say that we love Melvins or King Crimson. That love is an identical love.

“… It’s interesting to go to places where scenes are insulated, but it’s rabid and fanatical in the love of music in general.

The couple of times we’ve played in Athens, people lose their minds and go bananas.

I’ve had those experiences in Norway, Sweden, Slovakia, Croatia and certainly in the United States. There’s something about music in general that’s not about any kind of boundaries of country.”

Scheidt said he wants people to hear his music—no matter how they get it.

“For me when I was growing up, it wasn’t easy to hear music. If you could buy music, cool,” he said. “But there was tape-trading.

It was literal tape-trading: people recording albums onto tape, making their own compilations, and trading them around with each other. They’d send tapes via U.S. mail, send tapes to Europe, and get tapes sent back from Europe through pen pals before the internet. I think there are some places where that’s still very much true, like South America. … If they’re selling the stuff online, we kind of say, ‘Eh, please don’t do that,’ but if people can’t get the stuff and make it for themselves, we’re supportive of that. That’s a time-honored tradition that I grew up with.

With the internet, any album you want is at your fingertips, but at the same time, it’s still about community, word of mouth and people turning each other on to different music.”

Scheidt said he tries to keep up his new, healthier lifestyle while he’s on tour. “(There’s) a lot of reading, some meditation, some push-ups, and we occasionally get to places early so we can see the lay of the land,” he said. “None of us live very hard on tour, so it’s not like we’re spending a lot of time recuperating from the night before; we’re all pretty much healthoriented. We party some, but we take the show very seriously, and that requires having some balance on the road so every show can be as good as it can be.”

What was the last book Scheidt read?

“A Book of Longing, which is Leonard Cohen’s book of poetry that he wrote when he was in the Zen Buddhist monastery.”

Yob will perform with Acid King and CHRCH at 9 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 8, at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, 53668 Pioneertown Road, in Pioneertown. Tickets are $20. For more information, call 760-365-5956, or visit www. pappyandharriets.com.

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With Mel Brooks. The man himself will reflect on his life and his career as an actor, writer, producer and director. At 92 years old, with works such as Blazing Saddles, Spaceballs and The Producers to his credit, he’ll have quite a bit to talk about. Tickets are $75 to $145. Agua Caliente Casino Resort Spa, 32250 Bob Hope Drive, Rancho Mirage; 888-999-1995; www. hotwatercasino.com.

If you love Latin music, Spotlight 29 Casino has you covered. At 8:30 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 6, Mexican-American singer Marisela will be performing. Before Selena took Latin music by storm, there was Marisela. A native of Los Angeles, she released her first album when she was just 18 and has been going ever since. She’s a popular performer in Mexico and is also a hit in America with Latin-music lovers. Tickets are $50 to $100. At 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 15, norteño legend Ramon Ayala will take the stage. He’s considered the “King of the Accordion” and is a legendary Mexican musician; he has four Grammy Awards, too. Tickets are $40 to $60. Spotlight 29 Casino, 46200 Harrison Place, Coachella; 760-775-5566; www.spotlight29.com.

Morongo Casino Resort Spa is getting back into the swing of things. At 9 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 6, and 9 p.m., Friday, Sept. 7, that reliable all-male revue is coming back to town—Australia’s Thunder From Down Under. I’ve run out of things to say about them, so I’ll just tell you to look them up online and check out the pictures of them.

If you like … go. Tickets are $25. At 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 28, get ready to journey back to the ’80s … because this lineup is the most ’80s thing I’ve ever seen: Boy George and Culture Club, the B-52s and the Thompson Twins’ Tom Bailey will be performing. Yeah, that’s quite a lineup. Tickets are $79 to $149, and as of our deadline, they were looking pretty scarce. Morongo Casino Resort Spa, 49500 Seminole Drive, Cabazon; 800-252-4499; www. morongocasinoresort.com.

Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace has had an amazing summer, and the September schedule continues the trend.

At 8 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 6, desert-rock legend Sean Wheeler will be playing with his band Reluctant Messengers. Wheeler released his solo album Sand in My Blood in 2017. While it doesn’t have the over-the-top, crazy-fun sound of Throw Rag, it does have his impressive takes on country, folk, gospel and soul. Admission is free. At 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 7, Joshua Tree’s own Gene Evaro Jr. will be performing an outdoor show. He has traveled across the country and opened for acts such as Blues Traveler; it’s only a matter of time before he catches his big break. He’s a talented musician and a gifted songwriter.

Tickets are $15 to $20. At 8 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 27, The Breeders will arrive. It’s a

The Breeders

band that features Kim Deal of Pixies; the group released great music back in the ’90s that was not wildly successful commercially, though it earned acclaim and praise. As of deadline, tickets were still available, but that’s most likely to change. Tickets are $35.

Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, 53688 Pioneertown Road, Pioneertown; 760-365-5956; www.pappyandharriets.com.

The Purple Room Palm Springs is back from its summer hiatus. At 7 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 2, The Judy Show will return to its weekly slot.

It’s a fabulous show starring Judy Garland impersonator and Purple Room proprietor Michael Holmes. Tickets are $25 to $30. At 6 p.m., Friday, Sept. 7, get out the thick black glasses for the Buddy Holly Tribute with Southbound and Company. This show has been popping up on occasion, and I’ve always been interested in going to check it out as a Buddy Holly fan. Maybe I will this time! Tickets are $25 to $30. At 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 29, actress and singer Renee Olstead will take the stage. Olstead has had an impressive career in film, television and music. Her musical abilities caught the attention of producer/ composer David Foster, who opened the door to her musical career. Tickets are $35 to $40.

Michael Holmes’ Purple Room, 1900 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs; 760-322-4422; www.purpleroompalmsprings.com.

The Copa Palm Springs kicks off September with a special show: At 8 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 1, country music performer Ty Herndon will return to the Copa stage. Herndon’s country music career includes 17 singles on the Billboard chart, including three songs that reached No. 1. A career slump and problems with drugs and alcohol followed, before he came out as gay in 2014. Fortunately, he’s back to performing and releasing albums again. Tickets are $25 to $35. Copa Palm Springs, 244 E. Amado Road, Palm Springs; 760866-0021; www.copapalmsprings.com.

The Ace Hotel Palm Springs has a great September schedule, but one event stands out: At 8 p.m., Friday, Sept. 21, British psychedelic-pop legends The Zombies will perform an acoustic set, and founding members Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone will do an interview during a live taping of the podcast The Trap Set with Joe Wong. Tickets are $30 to $75. Ace Hotel and Swim Club, 701 E. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs; 760-3259900; www.acehotel.com/palmsprings.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 35

SEPTEMBER 2018

MUSIC

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/MUSIC

BEYOND THE HIVE T

By Brian Blueskye

here are only a few local musicians who are able to make a living via music—and that rather short list includes Derek Jordan Gregg.

The Hive Minds frontman plays gigs throughout the valley in hotels and restaurants, and that inspired him to make his first batch of solo recordings while The Hive Minds was on a short hiatus.

During a recent interview in La Quinta, Gregg said his solo material has more of a folk sound.

“I think when I play by myself, I’ve always gravitated toward that sound,” Gregg said. “I’ve always been a fan of Bob Dylan since I started Hive Minds sound, but it would mess with the writing songs. It’s not necessarily a new cohesiveness of the album, because you’d have endeavor, but Hive Minds wasn’t the place for really mellow, slow and depressing indie rock.” me to let this stuff out, and we were doing so Gregg plays solo in a wide variety of venues, much that that was where my creative energy some of them rather challenging—ranging went. It’s something I’ve always loved, and it’s from clubs to restaurants to hotels. a lot easier to do by yourself.

“It takes a lot of energy just to come into “The big difference between this and the these shows with a positive outlook and never Hive Minds stuff is the lyrics are so much more look at it like a job. I’ve been in those headpersonal. I didn’t worry about any of the songs spaces where I’m like, ‘Ugh! Time to go to a being upbeat or catchy, and they all cut really gig!’ and I have to snap myself out of it,” he deep. They’re the heaviest lyrics I’ve written in said. “I do a fair amount of covers, and I make my life.” those covers my own, but the minute that it Gregg said these songs would probably not go starts to feel like a job to me, I’ll quit, and I’ll along with the Hive Minds’ indie-rock sound. go wash dishes. I’d rather wash dishes and hate “I think that Sean (Poe) and Sam (Gonzales) it than hate playing music. really like my folk stuff,” Gregg said. “I have a “Where I’m at now, it doesn’t hinder my whole catalog of folk material, but I’m really creative process. I play a ton, and I’ll even more protective of these songs. If I did put create stuff on the spot at these gigs. If I get these in a band, I wouldn’t want to play them into a negative head space or a depression and as a trio; I would want a huge Americana start to look at this as work, I either need to band. I don’t know if that would change the learn a lot more stuff and make it my own, or trajectory of the Hive Minds songs or the I need to start doing more original music at

Derek Jordan Gregg brings a folk-music sound to his solo gigs

these shows. That’s the tightrope that I walk.”

He even went so far as saying that a scene in the movie Fight Club—during which Edward Norton goes into a meditation and sees a penguin that says the word “Slide”—inspires his views on being a musician.

“I almost want to get that tattooed on my arm,” he said. “I think that it’s more about the place that he goes, and it’s like when you’re spacing out at work, and it takes you out of the moment. You’re pissing on the moment if you’re just chugging through your chords and letting the words come out.”

He’s recently been using a looper during his shows.

“When I bought it, it was supposed to be for me to practice at home with. Once I got it out of the box and started dicking around with it, I used it for the show I had that night,” he said.

“I don’t think I have as good of chops as Calvin Williams—who plays with Eevaan Tre—Bobby Nichols or Kal David, but my rhythm (is just as good). It’s all about rhythm, which has never

been an issue for me. I play with a really simple looper. I’ve never been much of a guitar nerd, which is why the folk music thing works for me.”

The Hive Minds have had some local success, including a few high-profile shows, but Gregg expressed humility regarding the band.

“When we first started, Patrick Mitchem was on bass, and then we went to being an acoustic duo with Sean and I, and then playing with Sam Gonzales … playing TED talks, and playing the Bernie Sanders rally,” he said. “It’s almost like it doesn’t feel like it’s happened.

I don’t know if that’s how people feel when they do something they’re really proud of. …

I’ve always believed if you’re living in the past, you’re living on memories or anxiety. If you’re living in the future, you’re existing in your imagination. But now that I’m thinking back on it, it is pretty crazy.”

For more information on Derek Jordan Gregg and the Hive Minds, visit www.facebook.com/ thehiveminds.

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Thriving lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, living authentically in supportive, inclusive communities.

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SEPTEMBER 2018

MUSIC

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the

LUCKY 13

Meet the frontman of metal group When Tides Turn, and the guitarist for rock-power trio Mega Sun

By Brian Blueskye Jacob Garcia.

BRIAN BLUESKYE

NAME Jacob Garcia GROUP When Tides Turn MORE INFO If you haven’t yet caught a set

by When Tides Turn, you’re missing out: The band beautifully mixes together the melodic and aggressive sides of metal. Catch the group at 8 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 13, at Kilo’s Cantina in Thousand Palms, performing along with Annabelle Asylum, Instigator, Ormus and Decapitate the Kause. For more information, visit www.facebook.com/whentidesturn. When Tides Turn frontman Jacob Garcia was kind enough to answer the Lucky 13.

What was the first concert you attended?

In college, I got to see Head Automatica play.

It was a super-small little plaza show; that was really cool. Then (UC-Santa Barbara music festival) Extravaganza came, and I saw Saosin; that was awesome. It was my first pit experience, too. I took a hit to the gut, and that kept me out for the rest of the song.

What was the first album you owned?

I remember having NSYNC’s No Strings Attached when I was a kid. First album I bought? I’m having a hard time remembering because of how many I burnt instead of buying. It might have been Nickelback’s Silver Side Up. Say what you want about them, but “How You Remind Me” was my JAM! What bands are you listening to right now?

A lot of Vitalism, Oceans Ate Alaska, Veil of Maya, Autonomist, and Angel Vivaldi. My guitarist got me into the Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, too. … I’ve also been revisiting Last Winter recently.

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

That one’s hard, because I try to see what a person may like in something, and sometimes you just have to understand that some songs/ genres aren’t going to appeal to you, because you’re not part of the aimed demographic.

If I had to pick something, I guess the whole (concept of) “selling out.” Everyone wants to be able to make a living off what they make, and if I have to make some changes for that to happen, I’m in.

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

Killswitch Engage while Howard Jones was the singer. I love Jesse Leach just as much, but I never saw Howard, and I wish I had.

What’s your favorite musical guilty pleasure?

I don’t feel bad listening to it, but early 2000s R&B and hip hop could be a guilty pleasure, I guess.

What’s your favorite music venue?

It’s a tie between Glass House and the Observatory—and, of course, The Hood Bar and Pizza!

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

That changes every 60 seconds. … But yesterday, it was, “They say what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger. It’s killing me, killing me. There’s no one to keep me strong,” from Shields’ “It’s Killing Me.” Shields was going for catchy, and it worked!

What band or artist changed your life?

The whole singing and screaming in a song changed my life, because I keep finding new inspirations and aspects to improve myself. I’d say A Dozen Furies was a solid benchmark of: “I wanna be able to sing and scream like THAT GUY.” You have one question to ask one musician. What’s the question, and who are you asking?

I’d ask Jake (Luhrs) of August Burns Red to explain what he was inspired by and listening to, and what he had in mind when he went in

to record Messengers. He’s got this amazing range in screaming, and I’d like to know who and what made him decide what he does in that album.

What song would you like played at your funeral?

“Dearly Beloved” by Yoko Shimomura.

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

In Love and Death by The Used. It’s one of the few albums I can listen to from beginning to end.

What song should everyone listen to right now?

“Keep on Running” by Gabriel GarzónMontano.

NAME Chris Rivera GROUP Mega Sun MORE INFO Mega Sun’s lineup includes three very talented musicians—and if any one thing stands out, it’s Chris Rivera’s guitar work. A recording from Mega Sun is currently in the works with producer Mike Doling (of the band Snot), and the band is currently raising funds to finish it; find details at www.gofundme. com/mega-sun-recording.

What was the first concert you attended?

Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil Tour.

What was the first album you owned?

KISS, Alive.

What bands are you listening to right now?

Gojira, Desert Rhythm Project, Twelve Foot Ninja, Black Pussy, Atala, and Throw the Goat.

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

I can usually find something I dig in all music, to be honest. But if I had to choose one, I guess I’d have to say new country music. I just prefer the old stuff.

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

AC/DC with Bon Scott.

Chris Rivera.

BRIAN BLUESKYE

What’s your favorite musical guilty pleasure?

Old Elton John.

What’s your favorite music venue?

The Showbox in Seattle.

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

“Momma just killed a man, put a gun against his head,” Queen, “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

What band or artist changed your life?

Stevie Ray Vaughan. He just had it, man. It came straight from the heart. He made me realize you get what put in; there’s no cheating the guitar.

You have one question to ask one musician. What’s the question, and who are you asking?

I’d like to ask Gary Moore how to play guitar.

What song would you like played at your funeral?

James Taylor, “Fire and Rain.”

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

Rush, 2112.

What song should everyone listen to right now?

“Snooze Button” by Snot.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 37

SEPTEMBER 2018

CANNABIS IN THE CV

NOW HIRING F

BY CHARLES DRABKIN

inding work in the Coachella Valley is not an easy task—unless you’re looking for a lowpaying job without much opportunity for advancement.

Even people with a lot of skills and great work histories have trouble finding satisfying work. I have heard of people with doctorates in Spanish taking jobs as housekeepers just to pay the bills. I came out of the service industry, and taught in the culinary program at a community college for 13 years; I mistakenly assumed my skills would be in high demand when I came to the desert. Instead, I have had to hustle to find meaningful employment.

This is why the jobs the thriving cannabis industry is bringing to the Coachella Valley are needed and welcome.

On Indeed.com alone, at last check, there were 11 local marijuana-industry positions paying $50,000 a year or more listed. It’s estimated that there are approximately 123,000 full-time jobs in the legal cannabis industry in the U.S., with more than a third of those jobs located here in California—and research firm BDS Analytics estimates that number will double in three years.

With all this talk of a “Green Rush,” it is easy to see how people might be drawn to the possibility of stock options and the chance to help build a company—and industry—from the ground floor. However, there are some things to consider when applying for work in the marijuana industry.

First and foremost: Not everyone will be supportive of your new career choice. After 50 years of prohibition, people have built up a lot

of prejudices. I have heard stories about people being told they’re destroying the possibility of future careers outside of the industry, and/ or throwing away their current potential.

Hopefully, here in California, that will not be the case—but these prejudices do exist and need to be considered. Before I started writing this column for the Independent, I had to take into consideration what friends, family and future employers would think once a Google search of my name turned up regular articles about cannabis.

Since the industry is so new and under development, you should do some research to make sure the company you are applying with is state-licensed. The Bureau of Cannabis Control is working hard to make sure nonlicensed companies are either brought into compliance with state law—or put out of business.

Furthermore, make sure you understand the rules and regulations of the industry—and

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/NEWS

The cannabis industry is bringing welcome jobs to the Coachella Valley—but they aren’t for everyone there are a lot of them. Not only are there a bunch of currently changing state laws; every city has its own set of rules. Knowing the rules will give you a leg up on the competition and show your future employer you’re serious and not just looking for some discount smokes. By the way, it is currently not legal for cannabis companies to give away any product samples.

Budtenders are supposed to be paying the same price for the merchandise as any consumer.

As with any job, networking is key.

Attending conferences like the recent Palm Springs Cannabis Film Festival and Summit is a way to get yourself noticed; so, too, are job fairs. Locally, the Coachella Valley Cannabis Alliance Network (coachellavalleycan. org) has a monthly networking dinner the first Monday of every month. If you find a company you would like to work for, try to make a connection. If you are looking to be a

budtender, go into the dispensary and talk to the current budtenders to make sure it’s a place you would like to work. Alternately, reach out via LinkedIn for an informational interview— or to just take someone out for coffee.

Additionally, research the types of jobs that interest you and for which you think you would be qualified. Just because you love smoking pot, that doesn’t mean you are ready to be the CFO of a cannabis company.

Finally—and I would think that this goes without saying, but friends in the industry tell me otherwise—do NOT show up to a job interview stoned. No employer is going to hire someone who comes to an interview impaired.

When it comes to jobs, the cannabis industry is really no different than any other, aside from the rapid rate of expansion and its quickly changing rules and regulations. The industry is becoming less Cheech and Chong and more Harvard Business School every day.

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SEPTEMBER 2018

OPINION SAVAGE LOVE

CVINDEPENDENT.COM/OPINION

OFF THE PILL

My libido increased dramatically after I went off birth control; is this normal?

BY DAN SAVAGE

I

’m a 27-year-old woman living on the East Coast. I’ve been sexually active and on birth control since I was 16—almost always on the pill. I recently switched to the NuvaRing, to which I had a bad reaction: I had no libido at all and extreme mood swings/bouts of depression I could not live with. My boyfriend and I decided it would be a good idea to go off hormonal birth control for a while, just to see what would happen. We’ve been together for almost four years, so we agreed condoms would be fine, and I would try the route of no more supplemental hormones.

I stopped a couple of months ago, and it’s been a mix of good and bad. The good is that my moods are more even. Another good thing is I feel like I’m having a sexual awakening: My libido came back! But the bad thing is … my libido came back in a way I wasn’t expecting. My sexual appetite is insane. I want to have sex with everyone—men, women, friends, colleagues, acquaintances! My boyfriend has been amazing through all of this. He’s agreed to let us open up our relationship under specific terms.

I agree with the terms we placed, but I still feel like my urges are going to get me in trouble. I know not to have sex with friends and colleagues, but a lot of situations come up that make it hard to resist— especially when alcohol is involved. I don’t think I’ll actually act on my urges.

My question is one you get a lot: Is this normal?

Can removing a cocktail of hormones from my life really change me this much? I used to want sex, but now I WANT SEX. I want a lot of it, and it’s overwhelming. I don’t want to blame it all on the birth control, but I can’t help but feel it to be true, since it was the only variable in my life that changed in the last couple of months.

I want to be faithful to my boyfriend, who has been great and understanding—allowing us to open our relationship to casual encounters with strangers. (Also: No friends, no one we both know, DADT, and no intimacy with anyone—it must be purely sexual/physical.) But I’m feeling sexual connections to so many more people now, and often to people I’ve known for a while. I see this all as mostly positive, but the adjustment has been difficult to wrap my head around.

Suddenly Horny And Going Gaga Isn’t Normal “I’m so glad to hear this woman sees the increase in her libido as positive,” said Dr. Meredith Chivers, an associate professor of psychology at Queen’s University, a world-renowned sex researcher, and—I’m proud to say—a frequent guest expert around here. “At the same time, I understand how overwhelming these urges can

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feel, especially when they are new.”

Luckily for you, SHAGGIN, you’re with someone who’s secure enough to let you feel the fuck out these new feelings. Whether or not you act on them is one thing—DADT agreement or no DADT agreement—but not having to pretend you aren’t suddenly interested in fucking men, women, friends, colleagues and acquaintances is a real gift.

Another example of your good luck? Dr. Chivers is about to give you the Actual Science download on hormonal birth control—with qualifications about what we know, what we don’t know, and areas that require more research!

“It’s difficult to say what is and isn’t normal when it comes to the effects of hormonal contraception (HC) on women’s sexual interest,” said Dr. Chivers. “To my knowledge, researchers have not specifically examined the question of what happens to women’s sex drives after stopping HC.” But lots of women have stopped using hormonal contraception for the exact same reason you did, SHAGGIN: worries about how it might be affecting their libido—and there is some indirect evidence that HC can negatively impact a woman’s desire for sex.

“The NuvaRing is a combined hormonal contraceptive containing synthetic estrogens and progestins (the same as many birth control pills),” said Dr. Chivers. “HC, like the NuvaRing works, in part, by raising and stabilizing progesterone levels throughout the menstrual cycle, which helps to prevent ovulation and implantation.”

And it’s those stabilized progesterone levels that could be the culprit.

“Progesterone is one of the hormones involved in the menstrual cycle and pregnancy; levels are highest in the week before menstruation (called the luteal phase) and are also high during pregnancy,” said Dr. Chivers.

“A recent, large-scale study reported that women with higher progesterone—women who weren’t using HC—had lower sexual interest, on average. Because using HC is associated with reductions in sexual interest, we could predict that stopping HC, and thus progesterone levels returning to more typical lower levels, could be associated with increases in sexual motivation.”

Since you definitely experienced an increase in sexual desire after you removed your NuvaRing and started using condoms, SHAGGIN, Dr. Chivers was comfortable saying … that you definitely experienced an increase in sexual desire, and that might be related to going off HC.

“Given that she has been using some form of HC since she became sexually active, my guess is that she’s never had the chance to experience her sexuality while naturally cycling,” said Dr. Chivers. “Part of her process could be learning about her unmedicated hormonal cycle, her sexuality, and the variations in her sex drive. For example, does her sexual interest fluctuate over her cycle? She might want to consider collecting some data with a cycle-tracker app. Flo, Clue and Period Tracker are among those that my women sex-researcher/educator colleagues recommend. This might help her notice patterns in her libido, attractions, and sexual pleasure—and help her to develop strategies to manage, and perhaps even capitalize on her sexual desires.”

As for your boyfriend, SHAGGIN, and your desire to be faithful to him: So long as you honor the terms of your openness agreement, you are being faithful to him. But check in with him more than once before you fuck someone who isn’t him. Because when a partner agrees to open the relationship but then places a long list of restrictions on who you can fuck—a list that excludes most of the people you wanna fuck— that can be a sign your partner doesn’t actually want to open the relationship.

To learn more about Dr. Chivers’ research, visit the SageLab website (queensu.ca/ psychology/sexuality-and-gender-lab).

I’m part of a nonhierarchical polycule. In a few months, one of my girlfriends will be marrying her fiancée. I’ll be attending as a guest with my other girlfriend. What are the guidelines or expectations for purchasing a gift for your girlfriend’s wedding?

Wedding Etiquette Dilemma Get the couple something nice, something you can afford, maybe something from their gift registry. Or give them a card with a check in it.

In short, WED, wedding-gift guidelines are the same for people in nonhierarchical polycules as they are for love-muggle monocules. I’m not slamming the poly thing for overprocessing and overthinking—most people process (aka communicate) too little, and it’s often better to overthink than to under-think or not-think— but not everything needs to be dumped into the poly processor and pureed.

Congrats to your girlfriend (the one who’s getting married) and her fiancée!

Read Savage Love every Wednesday at CVIndependent.com; mail@savagelove.net; @ fakedansavage on Twitter; ITMFA.org.

COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT // 39

SEPTEMBER 2018

OPINION COMICS & JONESIN’ CROSSWORD

“The Long Name”—ooh, 40 Amorphous amount someone’s in trouble (and an Arrested Development Across character) 1 Chunks of history 41 Light bulb measure, 5 Decaf brand formally?

10 Lumberyard tools 42 Zero, on some fields 14 Turn into a puddle 43 “It’s hard to be 15 “Fuzzy Wuzzy was humble when you’re ___ ...” as great as I am” 16 Preserve, as meat boxer 17 Cupcake decorator 44 Beer named for a 18 Show with skits Dutch river 19 Remote Control host 45 Religious offshoot Ken (or German for 46 It’s six of one ... and “upper”) six of the other 20 IRS collection, 48 Bunches formally?

50 36-Down’s Family 22 Poke ingredient, 54 Piece of Necco candy often 58 Desert of Mongolia 23 Saved by the Bell 60 Zany, formally? character Jessie 63 Practical 24 Acid-base indicator applications 26 Formal attire 64 Love on the Loire 29 Actor Rob, or either 65 Mine vein candidate named 66 Quartet member Ron who competed 67 George Eliot’s ___ in a 2018 Kansas Marner congressional 68 City near Tulsa primary 69 The Facts of Life 32 ___ of Laura Mars actress Mindy 35 Coif 70 Ibsen heroine Gabler 39 George Gershwin’s 71 Brown and Rather, brother for two

Down 1 Gives off 2 Newscast summary 3 Echo responder?

4 Orchestral section 5 Dress in Delhi 6 His mother raised Cain 7 On the Beach author Shute 8 Hawaii’s “Garden Isle” 9 Fail to exist 10 RBG’s group, for short 11 Mass transit vehicle, formally?

12 Small songbird 13 It comes twice after “Que” in a song 21 Herd comment 25 “I want catnip” 27 “Careless Whisper” group (yeah, that’s the sax solo playing in your mind right now) 28 D.C. diamond denizens 30 Cartman, to his mom 31 Truffle fries topper 32 Victorian expletive 33 Hashtag acronym popularized by a Drake song 34 Casual “industry,” formally?

36 50-Across “Cousin” 37 Comedian/actress Butcher of Take My Wife 38 Inspiron computer maker 41 Harry Potter accessory 45 Stopped suddenly, as an engine 47 He held over 1,000 patents 49 Be shy 51 Overrun (with) 52 First Lady of the ’50s 53 Castigate 55 “Criminal” singer Apple 56 “There’s no ___ sight!”

57 Orchestra needs 58 Nacho topper, slangily 59 1952 Olympics host 61 College courtyard 62 “Major” constellation ©2018 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@ jonesincrosswords.com) Find the answers in the “About” section of CVIndependent.com!

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40 \\ COACHELLA VALLEY INDEPENDENT

SEPTEMBER 2018

Deals available ONLY in the Independent Market as of Sept. 1:

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Limited quantities available. Look for more deals to be added during the month!

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