THE MAGAZINE OF OAKLAND, BERKELEY AND THE WORLD THAT REVOLVES AROUND US
November December 2020
East Bay Theater Thrives Charlie Chaplin in Niles ’Tis The Celestial Season Holiday Gift Guide
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THE MAGAZINE OF OAKLAND, BERKELEY AND THE WORLD THAT REVOLVES AROUND US
Inspiration & Gifts for the Holidays Brighten the season with flowers, artisan gifts and sustainable tabletop decor from our boutiques, shops and galleries. Find clothing and jewelry from local designers, shoes and bags, books and cards, sweet children's gifts, and everything for your furry friends. We are open for in-store shopping, or you can shop online or by phone!
Refresh for Mind & Body Treat yourself to a fresh look for the holidays! We have world class stylists offering hair and nail services safely indoors and out. And sign up for a virtual classes with passionate teachers - learn the basics or take your home cooking to the next level, take a yoga class (some in the park!) or develop your creative writing skills.
Connect Through Food Grab some take-out with a friend to enjoy in our parklets and or gather your whole group for a patio or streetside dining experience. From farm-to-table, modern jewish soul food, to rustic Sicilian. Come celebrate in the fall weather! Our sidewalk cafes are also open, too!
FROM THE EDITOR
In the Stars P6
Choose from the finest ingredients for your holiday celebrations at your favorite neighborhood butchers, bakeries & food shops. Or stroll the weekly outdoor all-organic Farmers Market on Thursdays (3-7pm, Rain or Shine!) for the freshest produce, locally caught fish, food stuffs and baked goods.
Chabot Space & Science Center P32
DELIVERED
Tilden’s Tiny Post Office P8
TOP SHOPS
Temescal Alley P38
TRAMP
Charlie Chaplin in Niles P14
ONSTAGE
East Bay Theater Thrives P22
EAT
Tamales Time P42 TWEET
Twitter's for the Birds P47
GIVE
Ultimate Indie Gift Guide P26
PUBLISHER
CONTRIBUTORS
SENIOR DESIGNER
Rosemary Olson
Katherine Butler Katrina Fadrilan Amy Glynn Kary Hess D. Scot Miller Casey O’Brien Jonah Raskin Charlie Swanson Kelly Vance
Jackie Mujica
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Karen Klaber
EDITOR Daedalus Howell
DESIGN DIRECTOR Kara Brown
COPY EDITOR
Forage for Your Feasts
SPACE CASE
Mark Fernquest
ADVERTISING DIRECTORS Lori Lieneke Lisa Santos
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PRODUCTION OPERATIONS MANAGER
Danielle McCoy Ben Grambergu Mercedes Murolo Lynda Rael
Sean George
CEO/EXECUTIVE EDITOR Dan Pulcrano
ON THE COVER Illustration by Orion Letizi. Logo calligraphy: Mark Davis
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Star Crossed East Bay holiday love
need to live here?” The answers are “Mute,” “Click” and “Yes.” Why “Yes” you ask? Because, if you’re reading this, the fact is, you have stayed. You’ve braved BY Daedalus Howell the tyranny of unnatural natural disasters and pace: the final frontier”—or so to hazard a guess that social upheaval whilst it seemed, until the pandemic it’s, um, winter. With peering over an N95 mask hit. Now everything old is new that, and a shot of because, let’s face it, you again. Take, for example, this issue’s Baileys—Boom!—the love it here. You love the ZOOM IN Charles J. Burckhalter, interview with Benjamin Burress, a holidays arrive. East Bay and all it still has astronomer and long-ago staff astronomer at the Chabot Space & Who among us hasn’t observatory director, peers to offer, which is a lot. through a telescope dubbed Science Center, which was conducted secretly thought that Sure, times are strange “Rachel,” circa 1915. entirely on Zoom. Honestly, who ever a Zoom Thanksgiving and uncertain, but hasn’t heard of Zoom before last March? (or Zoomsgiving, if you that always been part of What I didn’t tell Burress is that will) would be a better way to manage the East Bay experience? As poet e.e. our interview helped me with my the crypto-fascist political rants of cummings might have said, anyone can homework for a community college Uncle Al, since we’d be able to mute live “in a pretty how town,” but not you. astronomy class which I’m also taking him? Who among us hasn’t thought You live here, where it’s still a little wild on Zoom. Clearly, Zoom is the final about hitting “Place Your Order” on a and weird (and still a smidge cheaper frontier. What does this portend? handful of Amazon Gift Cards so our than San Francisco). No matter what Well, let me tell ya—since there are ungrateful brethren could do their own this season brings, you know it’s at least now two major asterisms dominating damn holiday shopping? Who among going to be interesting as, together, the night sky—the Winter Triangle us hasn’t looked toward our smokey, we boldly go where no one has gone and the Winter Hexagon—I’m going orange skies and thought, “Do I really before. — Daedalus Howell, Editor
S
“
Jeffrey Edalatpour’s writing about arts, food and culture has appeared in KQED Arts, Metro Silicon Valley, Interview Magazine, Berkeleyside.com, The Rumpus and SF Weekly.
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Editor Daedalus Howell is the writerdirector of the feature film Pill Head and is the editor of the North Bay Bohemian and the Marin Pacific Sun. Chelsea Kurnick writes journalism and poetry. She is on the Board of Directors of Positive Images LGBTQIA+ Center. Kurnick received a 2019 Discovered Award from Creative Sonoma.
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
Christine H. Lee is the author of the memoir Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember and the host of Frontyard Politics, a podcast that examines the world through the lens of urban farming and agriculture. Illustrator Orion Letizi lives in Berkeley with his partner, author Christine Lee (see above), four chickens and two beehives.
Casey O’Brien is an award-winning journalist with a focus on justice, equity and sustainability. She has been published in the Revelator, Sierra Magazine and Prism/The Daily Kos. Sara Ost is a writer and editor who founded a media startup in a recession (and lived) and now splits her time between California and the Pacific Northwest.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CHABOT SPACE & SCIENCE CENTER
Michael Covino, onetime film reviewer for the East Bay Express, is the author of three books, including the novel The Negative.
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Time IT’S A SMALL WORLD The Tiny Tilden Post Office delivers wonder and whimsy.
Warp My love letter to Berkeley
BY Christine Hyung-Oak Lee
L
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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
PHOTOS BY LEA REDMOND
ocated in the hollow of a tree along the banks of a stream at the Curran Trailhead in Tilden Park, the fairy post office, otherwise known as the Tiny Tilden Post Office, is an intersection of wonder and whimsy that attracts children and grownup hikers alike. It is a miniature post office, about two feet high and one foot wide. It is populated with tiny things. Tiny figurines. Tiny letters. It is an impeccable diorama. When I reach my hand into it, I feel like King Kong.
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SMALL PACKAGES Good things arrive at the thriving miniature destination.
«
Lea Redmond of Leafcutter Designs installed the post office as an experiment in December 2013, expecting it would be taken apart by passersby or ravaged by the weather. When she returned to the site a few months after creation, she discovered the post office had expanded; over the months eagle-eyed hikers had left notes and furnished the post office beyond its original design. Instead of perishing, it flourished in the stewardship of others. This intersection of whimsy and compassion is why I live in Berkeley. When my mother and I came to tour UC Berkeley in my junior year of high school over 30 years ago, we decided to see the view from the top of the Campanile and made our way up the slope from Sproul Plaza. And then
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a homeless person stepped onto the elevator with us as the doors closed. My mother took steps to shield me from what was invisible or frankly, banned, in my suburban LA upbringing. Literal steps. She put her body between me and the person muttering to himself. That she took steps to protect me was touching. But that there was something against which to protect me, that this new world of living beyond tradition and the possibility of colorfast experiences was within my grasp, exhilarated me. I wanted to see the world beyond manicured lawns and color-coordinated flower beds alongside the patriarchy-informed life checklist of: go to college, go to medical school, get married and have children before the age of 30. My mother didn’t feel such protective need at Stanford, where the red and white petunias quilted the campus in perfect, half-square triangles. Where the grass looked like a golf course. Where I saw zero litter. Which to many, of course, is a draw. I made up my mind then to attend Berkeley, no matter what. I emerged with an education beyond my parent’s parameters. I’ve lived in Berkeley for 30 years now. Being a Berkeley college student and being a longtime Berkeley resident are certainly different things and oftentimes at odds, according to NextDoor and myriad sources. But living in the same town where I went to college feels like living in a time warp; while there have been changes and new buildings have gone up on campus, I only need visit Sproul Plaza or sit on the steps of Wheeler to transport myself to
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
early adulthood. To disappear. To feel forever young. There are perfect times and places to which we transport—those perfect moments. Nostalgia is forever present here. The roof of Griffiths Hall in the Unit 2 residence hall where I stayed up until dawn speaking with who I thought then was a long-lasting love. The second story of a home on Harper Street where I kissed a woman who told me I was good enough. The slope of Rose Street at Shattuck and feeling the first rush of my beating heart as I bicycled to campus in the morning. Or the time my then-husband broke my heart and so I slid down the concrete slide in Codornices Park in pursuit of five seconds of unfettered joy. I am raising a daughter in Berkeley. Per the course with humans, her brain rebooted at the age of five and rendered all her concrete memories from early childhood to motes of dust and a lifelong mood. But now that she’s a big kid, her brain has equipped her to remember and curate her memories. She has had an obsession with fairies and tiny things since she could speak. A visit to the fairy post office was inevitable. It had been in existence three years by then, and it looked like the cutout of a dollhouse, except in a tree. There were tiny action figures alongside tea cups and scribbled notes alongside the more permanent mailbox and furniture. My daughter was mesmerized. She lived in the world of imagination then; I believed that when she said she saw fairies, she truly saw them, so vivid and detailed were her tellings. The fairy post office was real for both me and for
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POSTAL ROUTE A map to Tiny Tilden Post Office.
« her, an intersection of imagination.
We returned home to retrieve tiny things. And returned to leave them. Over the years, she has written missives to the tooth fairy and left them there as commemorations for each of her teeth. Once, she left an actual tooth. Another friend said she saw the tooth. My daughter keeps a box of things to take to the post office—a ladybugsized ladybug figurine, a tiny ice cream cone, the smallest of seashells—in anticipation of future visits. I didn’t have much wonder in my childhood. I had a good childhood, but imagination was not a large part of my upbringing by immigrant parents. It was dotted by racism and expectations. The town in which I spent the majority of my childhood was a sundown town; we were one of the first non-whites to purchase a home. I did not know this while growing up, of course. But I grew to expect stares and pointed fingers in a town ironically named Arcadia. I attended potlucks ready to explain the food (mandu,
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japchae) that my mother had prepared. I had to tell people that I knew what ravioli was, and that Asians did eat ravioli. I had to learn that I was Asian and not Oriental. Later, I learned to curse those who called me “chink” from their vehicles as I walked home from middle school. And to understand that the spray-painted Nazi symbols would be quietly painted over by high school staff, with nary a word to address the hate symbol. Let’s talk about community here— the sense of safety that community can provide beyond the confines of our homes. To know that we can go to a store on a daily basis without being called a racial epithet. To understand that even the most conservative of Berkeley residents consider social justice in a way that no one in my childhood communities ever did. At the tiny post office, there are no rules posted. It is up to those who visit to exhibit their sense of community and respect. The unspoken policy is that you can
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
take what’s there, but it’s expected you replenish the furnishings of the fairy post office. When I get discouraged with the world, I visit the fairy post office and know that people do care. They are taking care of things. Things aren’t pillaged. The objects in the fairy post office are ephemeral, much like memory. They change according to the imagination and generosity of its visitors. But the tone and the mood remains. A sense of community. Of delight. What strikes me most about the fairy post office is its permanence. It has stood the test of time and still exists today, nearly seven years later, unlike the handmade Hogwarts sign by the Ashby Avenue exit off of Highway 80 East, which I had hoped would remain longer than the few months it did exist in 2011. In its permanence, too, the tiny post office has propagated hope and possibility. My daughter and her friends think there are fairy houses and fairy post offices in every park they visit. They seek them out. They find them. And only children can see them; they are invisible to me. The hope for hidden treasure spreads. I know that one day, she may no longer believe in fairies. That this miniature post office will become a source of amusement rather than a literal portal of imagination. But it existed and on its vacated foundation will spring something founded on the idea of community and imagination. And I know she will search the hollows of trees for the rest of her life. ❤
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GOOD COMPANY Charlie Chaplin (center left) and the talent of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company.
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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
Tramp East Bay
Charlie Chaplin took over Niles and then the world By Michael Covino
I PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE NILES ESSANAY SILENT FILM MUSEUM
n 1869 Niles was a sleepy agricultural town situated some 20 miles south of Oakland and 20 miles north of San Jose, almost in the shadow of Mission Peak. Then the train arrived, and Niles became one of the last links in the transcontinental railroad connecting the East and the West coasts. Surveyors had concluded that picturesque Niles Canyon offered the best route through the East Bay Hills and into the San Francisco Bay Area, so it was through there that the first Central Pacific railroad rolled into the Bay Area on Sept. 6, 1869. Some 43 years later, in 1912, Gilbert “Bronco Billy” Anderson, cowboy star and director, decamped the train into Niles, the junction point linking
Oakland, Stockton and Sacramento. Anderson liked what he saw—the rushing stream and steep ravines of Niles Canyon nestled among the wooded hills of the Diablo Range—and decided Niles would be home to the western division of the Essanay Film Manufacturing Company of Chicago (yes, the filmmakers didn’t direct films, they manufactured them). Earlier, Anderson had worked with Thomas Edison at his movie studio in New York, including on the early Western, The Great Train Robbery, shot in New Jersey, in which he played a small role. But Anderson thought if he was going to make Westerns, they ought to be made in the West. Plus, he thought the scenery in Niles was superior to that of Los Angeles, where many smaller
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE
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ACTION Essanay's stars in 1915 (from left) Francis X. Bushman, Charlie Chaplin and studio co-owner and actor Broncho Billy Anderson.
« film companies were also setting
up shop. So it was in Niles in 1913 that Essanay built 10 modest cottages for their actors on 2nd Street, between F and G streets, and constructed an unassuming studio nearby. And it was here that Anderson would set the pace and define the Western genre for years to come. He made some 375 Bronco Billy Westerns—serial Westerns shot on location, for the most part in Niles, and usually 12 to 14 minutes long—and they made him one of the earliest movie millionaires, “the millionaire cowboy,” as well as America’s first true movie star. But he did something else, something prescient that put Niles and Essanay on the map. In 1914, for a lot of money, he lured young comic actor Charlie Chaplin away from Mack Sennett and Keystone Studios in Los Angeles. So it was that almost overnight sleepy Niles found itself on the cutting
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edge of 20th century popular culture, with money pouring into the local businesses. Not just Bronco Billy and Chaplin, but Ben Turpin, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, Zasu Pitts and Ethel Clayton all passed through Niles in those heady early years. By then Chaplin had made about 35 films for Keystone, including an early feature. He was already immensely popular and earning $100 a week plus bonuses. Anderson had been bowled over by Chaplin’s balletic grace and precise timing, even when he appeared to be stumbling about drunk. He offered Chaplin a then-astonishing $1,250 a week, with a $10,000 signing bonus. Plus, Chaplin would get to write and direct his own films. Not only was Sennett unhappy with this; Anderson’s partner in Chicago, the studio’s chief financier George K. Spoor who hadn’t even heard of Chaplin, fled the
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
Windy City before Chaplin arrived to collect his bonus. Which left Chaplin wondering if he’d ever see the money. In his autobiography, Chaplin describes cutting his last Keystone film in Los Angeles, then traveling north with Anderson, who he liked, to San Francisco. From there they drove to Niles where he said, when he saw the small studio, “my heart sank, for nothing could have been less inspiring.” Anderson told him he might like the Chicago studios better for making comedies, and soon after they left by train for Chicago. It was in December 1914, during the train ride, that they met two Midwestern sheriffs who were returning a convict wanted for murder to St. Louis. Immediately the excited convict recognized Bronco Billy but not Chaplin—something that would never happen again. During the next four months Chaplin’s star rose ever higher. Chaplin didn’t like Chicago, he
»
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« didn’t like Anderson’s cheapskate
partner Spoor and he didn’t like being handed a script when he had every intention of writing his own. Moreover, the studio was partitioned more like a bank, and at six on the dot every evening, even if they were still shooting a scene, the place shut down like any factory or office. So after making one film, aptly titled His New Job, he fled with Anderson back to Niles. Though he liked Anderson, he didn’t much like his working methods, later writing, “He had seven plots which he repeated over and over again… Sometimes he would turn out seven one-reel westerns in a week, then go on holiday for six weeks.” His second Essanay two-reeler—and his first in Niles—was A Night Out, where he and the crossed-eyed Ben Turpin stagger around artfully drunk, negotiating a restaurant and then a hotel, and fighting against the world and then each other. Chaplin is, at this point, recognizably Chaplin; he has the bowler hat, the cane and the sloppy, outsized jacket and pants. The film also starred a college student, Edna Purviance, who’d been found working as a waitress in San Francisco but had no acting experience. As it turned out, her poise and delicacy proved a perfect balance and foil to Chaplin’s antics, and she appeared in his movies over the next eight years, as well as lived with him in one of the small Essanay cottages in Niles while they worked there. To this day, many critics think Chaplin never found a better female screen partner. A Night Out was followed by the boxing comedy The Champion, which featured athletic antics, both in and
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TRAMPING French theatrical poster to A Night Out, Chaplin’s second Essanay two-reeler and his first in Niles.
out of the ring, as Chaplin proceeded to knock out his fellow boxers, one after another, as well as the referee. He also had a pet dog, a boxer of course, who occasionally came to his rescue. Anderson, incidentally, played an extra in an effort to make Chaplin feel more at home in Niles (which he never did). After that came In the Park, shot either in Niles or Golden Gate Park (though the flowing river in one sequence suggests Niles). Chaplin again plays a tramp, still a pretty rough fellow, working the park as a pickpocket and at one point using an unconscious enemy’s open mouth as an ashtray. Still, it was in Niles where he began smoothing out the character of the tramp, who had first appeared in the madcap Keystone comedies; and perhaps not surprisingly,
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
many felt his growing involvement with Purviance contributed to this addition of emotional depth to the tramp character. Charlie was in love, and it affected his art for the better. Come March, Chaplin directed his fifth and final film for the Niles studio, The Tramp, a film considered his first classic. Shot in Niles Canyon, it’s the first film in which he introduced notes of melancholy and pathos to his comedy. The tramp ambles along a path and then, starving, he starts eating grass. A short time later he rescues a farmer’s daughter, played by Purviance, who’s getting mugged by a trio of robbers. Her father rewards him with a farm job, but the character is so clumsy he can’t even carry a candle without accidentally setting someone on fire. However, the gang returns and he chases them off again, though this time gets shot in the leg. Nursed back to health by the farmer’s daughter, he mistakes her kindness for love. But then her handsome boyfriend returns and the tramp, sadly realizing his love was onesided, leaves. That bittersweet departure remains, more than a century later, not only the most memorable departure in cinema, but one of cinema’s great endings. The Tramp leaves, shuffling sadly down the same long and dusty road he arrived in town on, alone once more, his hunched back to the camera, his hobo’s sack in one hand, his cane in the other, a tiny, ragged figure isolated in the countryside. Then, a shrug, a snap of his heels, a swing of his cane and he continues on a bit more jauntily, a touch more hopefully. The iris shrinks to encircle his receding figure and fades out.
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I am a poet I am a storyteller I am a guardian of animals I am a lover of life Maré Simonet-Champlin, resident at The Point in Rockridge
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THE TRAMP Charlie Chaplin as The Tramp (1915) near the west end of Niles Canyon Road.
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Chaplin would use this wistful ending, this most lyrical of images, several more times with variations over the years, including with a woman, a fellow tramp. It became, in effect, his signature, and it sealed his fame. The most famous comedian of the cinema, the man whose face would soon become recognizable the world over, would nonetheless be most enduringly identified with this single melancholy image of the Tramp, his back to the camera, trudging off into the horizon. A century later the ending still holds its own alongside classic endings in movies as varied as Casablanca, Shadow of a Doubt, Some Like It Hot, The Four Hundred Blows and The Godfather Part II. Chaplin became wealthy, Essanay was
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able to demand and get huge advances from exhibitors and an unauthorized Chaplin industry bloomed—Charlie squirt rings, Charlie statuettes, etc. Ziegfeld Follies girls, decked out in Tramp costumes, danced the night away. But Chaplin, for the most part isolated in Niles, was barely aware of his exploding popularity. Brother Sydney, still at Keystone, tried to track all the unlicensed merchandise, but it was an impossible task. Soon after completing The Tramp, Chaplin, who still thought Niles too isolated, too rural and too poorly equipped for his tastes, left for Los Angeles, where he made eight more films for Essanay, thus completing his contract. His Niles residency had lasted
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
only three months, but during that time his magic touched the place. The Essanay studio in Niles continued to churn out films for almost another year. Then on Feb. 16, 1916, in the midst of a shoot, a telegram arrived from Spoor in Chicago, and the shoot ended then and there. Spoor had pulled the plug. The studio that had produced some 700 films was left deserted on Main Street, boarded up and padlocked. And the citizens of Niles were stunned. Their town was no longer in the running with L.A. to become the movie capital of America. Local kids played in the abandoned studio. Reels of film left in a cellar vanished or suffered nitrate decomposition and vandalism. The studio property changed hands, unused, until 1933, when it was leveled and many Bronco Billy negatives destroyed. Then, in 1956, Niles itself was incorporated into the city of Fremont. Still, to this day Niles remains geographically separate, bounded by the Alameda Creek Flood Control Channel and by Route 238, and backed up against East Bay hills that are, for the most part, regional parks. Even today, if the Tramp were to suddenly materialize, he could probably just as magically once more disappear up the ruggedly beautiful Niles Canyon. Chaplin’s Essanay Comedies 1915 is available in a Blu-Ray/DVD Collection of 15 painstakingly restored films from the Blackhawk Films Collection presented by Flicker Alley.
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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
The Show Must
Go On East Bay theaters navigate the pandemic BY Casey O’Brien
P
atrons mill around a buzzing lobby, holding drinks and cookies. They file into the darkened theater and settle into their seats. This used to be a familiar scene in the East Bay’s world-renowned theaters, but during the last six months, they sat empty. The pandemic put a halt to live theater, and the nationally recognized theater companies throughout the East Bay were forced to find new ways of connecting with their audiences through virtual shows, educational programs and more. The results are reinventing theater—and community— for the Covid-19 era. Although audiences cannot gather in physical spaces right now, especially small ones like intimate theaters, a
sense of place is still central to the work of Oakland’s and Berkeley’s playwrights and actors. Several local theaters have created audio shows themed around life in our particular corner of the Bay Area, in this moment and beyond. “Our role is to be the storyteller for our community, right?,” said Josh Costello, the artistic director for The Aurora Theater Company. “Humans understand the world through narrative, through story. We have a deep need for stories that will help us understand this new world that we’re navigating.” When it became clear to Costello that Aurora’s usual lineup of new works by regionally and nationally known playwrights would be impossible, he decided to create something new: an audio show about a group of
neighbors in Berkeley who navigate a government-mandated lockdown, a crisis in racial justice and their relationship to one another (sound familiar?). Costello commissioned local playwrights Lauren Gunderson, Cleavon Smith and Jonathan Spector to write the piece. The show, called The Flats, releases Oct. 23. It accompanies an extensive menu of virtual programming—including online classes and discussions—offered by Aurora. Berkeley Repertory Theater has also created a locally themed audio show. “We’ve commissioned a whole slew of local writers to write about their favorite places in Berkeley,” said Berkeley Repertory Managing Director Susie Medak. “We are calling this series Place/Settings: Berkeley. There’s an
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE
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‘Humans understand the world through narrative, through story. We have a deep need for stories that will help us understand this new world that we’re navigating.’ — JOSH COSTELLO, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
« unbelievable list of people who have
come through this community.” In addition to Place/Settings, Berkeley Rep is releasing an audio show version of It Cannot Happen Here, a darkly satirical play about a demagogue who becomes president of the United States, based on a 1935 novel of the same name. Berkeley Rep debuted the play in 2016, just a week before the election. Now, they are sharing the radio play with 79 partners all over the country—including Howard University and Arena Stage in Washington, D.C.—ahead of this November’s election. “All over the country, we’re figuring out ways to find partners to share the value of that production, so that’s amazing,” Medak said. “It is really cool. The whole message is about ‘get out and vote.’” Alongside virtual and audio shows, theaters are supplementing their lost income—and connecting with their audiences—through online educational offerings. Berkeley Repertory moved all theater classes online, and its staff was pleasantly surprised by the attendance from all over the world. “It’s worked remarkably well, and
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people have really valued it,” Medak said. “People are coming back, signing up for their second courses having taken their first course. We are feeling really good about that.” Berkeley Rep is also running a series called What’s in a Play, where attendees are invited to read and discuss a play over several evening sessions. “People are really enjoying digging deeply into the work and developing a vocabulary to talk about it,” Medak said. Aurora is also running educational programming, such as a series of discussions on the works of August Wilson run by their associate artistic director, Dawn Monique Williams, monthly salons with Bay Area theater artists and partnerships with local community groups. “We have a very intellectually inclined audience that just loves learning,” Costello said. “It’s so fantastic.” In spite of their inventive new approaches to theater during the pandemic, the reality remains that for most theater companies, this is one of the toughest financial challenges they will ever face. No ticket sales, coupled
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
with minimal government support and rent still to pay, are leaving theaters on the edge of collapse. “It is hugely important to support theaters during this time—there will be many theaters who do not make it through,” said Costello. “It is a shame in this country that we do not have governmental support and theaters are forced to compete with other forms of entertainment for earned income. This should be something that is supported by the community as a whole. But we depend on individual donors and foundations to be able to do our work.” Aurora is accepting individual donations but also encourages patrons to join their new $150/year membership program, which gives access to all virtual programming for the rest of the year and any live performances, as well. Berkeley Rep is asking patrons to subscribe for next season in advance. “Of course, we love contributions, but what would be most meaningful is to subscribe for our next season now,” Medak said. “Because that is an investment in the future.” Even as they fight to survive, the East Bay’s nationally recognized theater companies are pushing the boundaries of theater as an art form. Although much of what defines theater—a live audience, a group of actors working together—has become impossible, Aurora, Berkeley Rep, and theaters like them are taking the stage home. “Everything that we do this year we are thinking of as an experiment,” Medak said. “Everything is about learning new ways to do things. New applications for what we’ve done in the past.” ❤
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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE COLLECTIVE
SUBSCRIBED Collective Minds Book of the EAST Month Box.BAY MAGAZINE 26
East Bay
IndieGift
Guide
L
Give awesome holiday gifts without going outside or on Amazon By Chelsea Kurnick
ike everything about this year so far, the holiday season is bound to be weird. Shopping feels like a calculation of Covid risk-assessment and long waits, even at the most responsible and hospitable of stores. Lots of us have lost jobs, and money may be scarce. Meanwhile, 2020 is also the year Jeff Bezos became the first person ever worth $200 billion dollars. Just as it’s a weird year for shoppers, it’s also a weird year for vendors. While it’s been heartbreaking to watch many beloved brick-and-mortar shops
close, it’s also been heartening to see shops and individuals creatively adapt to our suddenly-changed world. I’ve been wowed watching creative people throughout the East Bay launch new projects and independent microbusinesses amid the pandemic. In some ways, it’s easier than ever to find unique and magnificent gifts that support talented people who live and work in the East Bay. This gift guide is designed to give you ideas for how to do all of your holiday shopping without setting foot in a mall and without giving Amazon.com a penny.
KNIFE SHARPENING BY RY’S KNIVES The idea for this gift guide came when I discovered Adahlia Cole’s project compiling the creative entrepreneurial projects of the Bay Area’s laid-off restaurant workers. Most listings on her fabulous new site Hungry Hungry Hooker (hungryhungryhooker. squarespace.com) are for prepared food offerings, but a few are for nonperishable foodstuffs and services that can be gifted. Ry’s Knives is a West Oakland side-business of Ryan Taylor, whose main gig (pre-pandemic) is as
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE
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beginning Dec. 12. Last-minute local orders may be available after that while supplies last. afrourbansociety.com
THE COLLECTIVE MINDS BOOK CLUB The Collective - Oakland is a Blackowned online bookstore founded by Michelle Walton and Wesley Dawan in 2019, with the goal of opening a physical location in 2021. For $24.99 per month, their Collective Minds Book Club includes a hardcover book and three or four lifestyle gifts, mostly from small local businesses. Walton says, “We work hard to reflect our communities’ interests, concerns, and values.” A recent box included a spice mix from Oaktown Spice Shop, a Black Panthers People’s Free Food Program tote bag, Camellia red kidney beans and more. thecollectiveoakland.com
LOOKING SHARP Custom saya made from local sycamore by Ry's Knives.
« a captain at the 2-Michelin-star
restaurant Lazy Bear. Sharpening rates are per knife and vary by size and shape, starting at $7. Taylor can also reshape edges and repair chips. For safe storage in drawers, he can also make beautiful custom sayas out of pine, sycamore or cedar. rysknives.com
Black Box Oakland Collective is the volunteer project of six Bay Area Black women. Since March, their gift boxes have directed more than $90,000 to
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Black-owned, mostly-local businesses. While they planned to make their August offerings the last of 2020, popular demand impelled them to do a holiday release. Boxes range from $180–$300 and feature 18 to 30 items, each valued around $10–$15. Each box would make one bountiful gift or be split into many smaller gifts. Contents include things like premium beauty products, gourmet foods, books and games. Ninety percent of the contents are by Oakland vendors. Black Boxes will be available for order from Nov. 24 to Dec. 8, with pick-up and deliveries
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
Instead of fresh flowers, give someone a different sort of bouquet with wines made from lavender, marigold, rose and hibiscus. Founded just two years ago by biologist and herbalist Aaliyah Nitoto and Sam Prestianni, Free Range Flower Winery utilizes local, organically grown, sustainable flowers and citrus to make their lineup of food-friendly beverages. Flower-based wines, as well as grape wines infused with flowers, are not new; flower wines were made in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and China’s Han Dynasty. Winemaker Nitoto says flower wines weren’t given the legitimacy that grape wines were because they were often made by serfs, rather than landowners who could afford vineyards or orchards. She is inspired by the
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PHOTO COURTESY OF RY’S KNIVES
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Clean Is Their Middle Name
Before H
Bay Area Bin Support workers take tidiness seriously
E
ssential workers are all over the news for the vital services they continue to provide during the pandemic. And the employees of Bay Area Bin Support (BABS) are definitely performing essential services, week after week, month after month. BABS, founded in 2015 by Junior and Nancy Fiame, customizes its waste maintenance services for apartment complexes, multi-family buildings, and commercial sites. This includes pushing or pulling bins and/or trash compactors to proper street pick-up positions, returning them after they’re emptied by city trucks, and making sure trash areas are clean afterwards. The first of its kind in the Bay Area, BABS now covers 18 Bay Area cities and serves more than 400 clients. At the heart of this business are BABS employees, said Nancy Fiame. “Our employees have been so flexible, and have adapted so well to the changing needs of our customers,” she said. For example, the junk hauling service BABS rolled out in the spring has now become an important part of their offerings, as tenants and residents use time at home to clean out their residences—and much of what they don’t want winds up in the trash areas. The amount of recycling has also increased dramatically, as people order much more online and discard the packaging. Company employees pride themselves on leaving trash collection areas spotless. Bins are in the correct locations, the area is swept clear of debris, and if the client has authorized it, bulk items are hauled off. Said Sam Kuka, BABS field tech, “There’s a sense of pride after you see everything cleaned up, sanitized and organized. From arriving and seeing the bags of trash all over the floor, to seeing everything cleaned up, you feel good for the property and the people who live there.”
When residential or commercial property representatives first contact BABS, multiple questions assess how many bins, dumpsters, compactors or trash rooms are involved. This may be followed by a site visit to determine frequency of service and solve individual issues. Once service begins, follow-up communication ensures any adjustments or additions are taken care of.
After H
One thing is certain, BABS employees will do their utmost to ensure a cleaner, healthier environment for tenants and residents. Said Elliott Ama, field tech “It’s a great feeling when we are starting a new account, and we know BABS is going to change the game for them. I also like it when they add a service day, or upgrade service due to our recommendations, because you can see that we are helping make improvements to their trash program.”
Before H
After H
In return for its employees’ dedication and hard work, BABS takes excellent care of its people, including investing in multiple uniforms for each employee, so that they have a clean choice for each workday, protective gloves, and other personal protective equipment (PPE). All this, of course, protects both employees and customers. BABS recently began offering healthcare benefits to its workers, although as a small business, they aren’t required to do so. “Essential workers are on the front lines,” said Fiame.
For more information, visit bayareabinsupport.com or call 888.920.2467
SCREEN The New Parkway is rentable for very private screenings.
«
many women who have made flower wines throughout history. The first releases were teeny-tiny (just 15 cases per batch) and sold out quickly. The popular “L” Lavender Wine, RoseHybiscus Red Wine and Marigold Wine are all available for pre-order now. Bottles are $23–$38 at
freerangeflowerwinery.com
QUEER WAVE COFFEE
30
CREATIVE WORKSHOP KITS FOR KIDS AND ARTISTS FROM MISCHIEF OAKLAND Chances are, you’ve spent a lot more time looking at a computer or phone screen this year than you expected to. The same is almost certainly true for the kids in your life. For this reason, I adore gifts that allow me to use my hands for something other than typing, and develop an offline skill. These are also the first types of gifts I seek out when I’m shopping for my niece and nephew. Mischief Oakland features gifts for kids and adults from over 100 Bay Area makers. They also offer artist-led workshops, some of which are virtual. Mischief features all sorts of kits to make things including moldable
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
playdough soap, slime and friendship bracelets. For older kids or grown ups, there are kits to learn embroidery, make scented soy candles or felt succulent gardens. mischiefoakland.com
PRE-BOOK A TATTOO OR BUY ART FROM YOUR FAVORITE ARTIST Tattoo shops in Alameda County only got the green light to re-open on Oct. 9, after nearly seven months of closure. Not every artist or customer is ready to partake in this intimate art again, but tattoo artists definitely need support this year. Lots of tattooists are selling wall art, jewelry or other art online. Some are selling gift-certificates or doing pre-bookings. If you don’t already have a favorite shop or artist in mind, check out Alameda’s Pretty in Ink (now open) or Oakland’s Diving Swallow. prettyinink alameda.com, divingswallow.com
VERY-PRIVATE MOVIE SCREENING AT THE NEW PARKWAY THEATER Movie theaters have been hit especially hard by pandemic closures. Oakland’s comfy, community-centered gem The New Parkway is no exception, though this cinema-pub-cafe found creative ways to adjust. For an extra-special gift, two people (or up to six people who live together) can rent the theater and screen “just about anything” for up to three hours. The experience includes a three- or four-course meal made to order, and all the drinks you can drink. $500 for two, $750 for up to six. thenewparkway.com/very-privaterentals ❤
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NEW PARKWAY
Coffee is one of the most popular go-to gifts. It’s affordable, and 64 percent of the people in the U.S. drink it. But Queer Wave Coffee (QWC) founder Cheyenne Xochitl Love points out, “The history of coffee is a colonized
one. Coffee is second only to oil as a worldwide commodity.” The culture around drinking coffee is often elitist and unwelcoming. After decades working in the industry, Love, who is a Two Spirit trans woman, created QWC to build a better community around coffee. She and her partner Alex Sparrow roast beans sourced from Catracha Coffee Company, which is owned by a Honduran-American woman and uses a profit-sharing model to directly benefit family farmers. QWC’s mission is anti-capitalist and education-oriented. Love says that QWC offers allies of LGBTQIA people a way to support a trans-owned business, but fair warning—QWC’s Instagram says consuming their coffee will make you gay. Twelve-ounce bags are $20 and you can choose from whole bean, ground for drip, or ground for French press. queerwavecoffee.github.io
Spend. Stay. Love. Every dollar you spend in Oakland, stays in Oakland. visitoakland.com/spendstaylove
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SCOPE OUT ‘Nellie,’ the 36-inch reflecting telescope built by Chabot staff and volunteers.
Chabot Space & Science Center reminds there are more stars than the one on your tree BY Daedalus Howell
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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
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PHOTOS COURTESY OF CHABOT SPACE & SCIENCE CENTER
Gift Heavens
from the
G
iven all that’s happened in 2020, the notion of an asteroid smashing earth to smithereens is inevitable— and it is—except not any time soon, assures astronomer Ben Burress of Chabot Space & Science Center. This is a relief, particularly since there’s a smorgasbord of sights to see in the season’s night skies that likewise won’t destroy civilization (well, any more than it already has been). Moreover, turning one’s eyes toward the heavens is inherently centering— not in a geocentric sort of way (sorry, Ptolemy)—but in a manner that is both humbling and literally puts things in perspective. Burress puts it best when reflecting on his relationship with the
‘In that instant, I experienced this unexpected rush of all the awe I had felt in the past, for simple things, like looking through a telescope.’ — BEN BURRESS, CHABOT SPACE & SCIENCE CENTER
« Oakland-based Chabot, which
he began visiting as a kid in the ’60s. The space and science center hooked him on astronomy, which eventually blossomed into a career in the stars. He taught physics and mathematics in Cameroon during a two-year stint in the Peace Corps, served on the crew of NASA’s Kuiper Airborne Observatory at Ames Research Center and was head observer at the Naval Prototype Optical Interferometer program at Lowell Observatory before working his way back to Chabot. “For the first year, I ashamedly admit this, I didn’t go look through the telescopes because I had so much else to do,” he says about his return to the observatory. “And then one night, a year later, I went and they were looking at Saturn.” Burress took a peek through the telescope and saw Saturn’s rings, vivid and beautiful. “In that instant, I experienced this unexpected rush of all the awe I had felt in the past, for simple things, like looking through a telescope,” he says. “It’s something live and real. It was very unlike looking at an astronomical picture on a computer screen. Something about
34
the quality of actually having the light from that object hit my eye directly through the telescope, connected me with a piece of the greater universe and just kind of reminded me that there’s a constant up there, whatever goes on down here on earth.” Inasmuch as space is a dynamic place, Burress reminds us that there is also a sense of an “eternal constant from the perspective of a human life.” “You can look at the sky and it remains constant,” he says. “It doesn’t change, it’s reliable, but it’s also very real and it has no end of amazing properties that can get you philosophical about distances and size. And where did it all come from? And the fact that we don’t know—though we are pursuing—we don’t know every last answer.” This much we do know: Between 9 and 10:30pm every Saturday, Chabot’s astronomers guide viewers on Facebook Live through the night sky using Nellie, the center’s 36-inch reflector telescope, housed in a rolling roof observatory, which allows access to 180 degrees of sky. These “Virtual Telescope Viewings” will continue into the new year and are free (though donations to support
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
the center’s STEM programming are greatly appreciated). Also on the horizon, so to speak, are a couple of meteor showers this November and December. “Meteor showers are mostly just little bits of dust shed by a comet as it passes close to the sun and heats it up and starts blowing out gases carrying dust with it,” Burress says. He adds that Earth’s orbit takes us through that trail of dust, which results in the fireworks we see as it encounters our atmosphere. “The analogy I give people is that it’s like when you’re driving along on the freeway, in your car, and you drive through a cloud of insects—you only see streaks on the windshield and not the rear window,” he says. “So, you’re on the windshield side of the earth in the morning hours.”
The Leonids The first meteor shower visible in our area in the coming weeks comes courtesy of the Leonids (so named because it appears to emerge from the constellation Leo). The showers will peak in our night sky between Nov. 16–17 as we pass through detritus from Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which takes about 33 years to orbit the Sun.
The Geminids Next up are the Geminids, which will appear throughout the nights of Dec. 13–14 and could peak with 120 or so sightings per hour. “This one is actually produced by an object that’s called a ‘rock comet,’” Burress says. “It’s more like an asteroid that behaves like a
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EYE SPY Chabot’s telescope domes at night.
« comet. It’s called ‘3200 Phaeton’— think of it as an asteroid with a lot of volatile materials in it.”
Solstice Appulse
On Dec. 21, the solstice, Jupiter and Saturn will appear to make a close approach, called an appulse, in which they will appear to be only 1/10th of a degree apart.
“You might not even notice that there’s two objects,” Burress says. “You’re gonna see one bright flare, but if you have a small
36
telescope or even a pair of binoculars, that’ll be something spectacular to see,” says Burress who adds that, in a single view, there is the potential to see Jupiter and Saturn, Saturn’s rings and the larger moons of both gas giants. “They’ll be so close—if you hold a dime at arm’s length, it’ll be about 1/10th the size of that dime,” he says. Mark your calendars, because this won’t happen again 2040. “There’s just something about the sky and the things in it—especially when we could connect with them, like when
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
a comet comes by, or even just watching a meteor shower—that is a real and present thing and a connection to the greater universe,” Burress says. “It kind of reminds us that, yeah, we have our problems here on earth, but there’s a touchstone in the sky that can kind of return us to that childlike sense of wonder and almost reassurance.” To learn more about Chabot Space & Science Center and upcoming events, astronomical and otherwise, visit chabotspace.org.
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Exploring Temescal Alley
s the East Bay slowly reopens after months of lockdown, the region’s small businesses welcome back their customers. From vintage clothing to vegan ice cream, our local shops are at the core of what makes the East Bay such a fun place to live. Temescal Alley, off 49th street in Oakland, offers visitors the
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leatherworkers and screen-printed clothes. Thayer’s family ran a shoe factory for decades, beginning in the mid-1800s, and Thayer displays the original sign in her shop.
Marisa Mason « chance to experience the best of our
community’s world-class designers and makers. It’s the perfect place for holiday shopping or for filling a warm autumn afternoon (safely, of course). Here are the best shops to visit in Temescal Alley:
Minds Eye Vintage This charming vintage clothing shop carries men’s, women’s and children’s clothes that ooze artsy Americana. Racks of denim, Western button-ups in a rainbow of colors and A-line dresses will please any style-lover. You might even get a glimpse of the shop puppy, Mac.
Ali Golden
40 EAST BAY MAGAZINE
The jewelry designs sold in Esquelo range from delicate necklaces with geometric-inspired designs to chunky gold rings, but they have one thing in common: they’re all beautifully crafted. Esquelo is tucked to the side of the alley and easy to miss, but the shop is a must for unique statement pieces.
Curbside Creamery Lines often wrap around the block for Curbside Creamery’s vegan and traditional dairy ice creams. Alongside unique flavors like Thai Iced Tea, the shop’s rotating menu boasts a solid stable of classics. On a warm night, it’s a popular neighborhood gathering spot.
Claflin, Thayer & Co. Liz Thayer sells her own leather goods in this shop, along with designs by other
| EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
Crimson Horticultural Rarities Think of this small, packed plant shop as Temescal’s resident tropical jungle. Hundreds of plants of all sizes and shapes fill the store with every shade of green. The beautifully lush space is a welcome quarantine escape. Temescal Alley feels quintessentially Oakland: quirky, inventive, maybe even a little weird. Since most of the shops are owner-operated, you may even meet the maker of your new necklace or T-shirt. Whether you stop by Curbside Creamery for ice cream or bring home a miniature succulent from Crimson, the alley is a delightful community space to shop, socialize and explore. ❤
PHOTO BY CASEY O'BRIEN
East Bay designer Ali Golden’s designs are sustainable, simple and classic. Golden’s earth-toned separates and sharp patterns make beautiful foundations for a capsule wardrobe, but the brand’s bold window decoration might be its best attraction.
Esquelo
Many of the goods in this tasteful shop are local, but it nonetheless has a global feel, with jewelry and textiles carefully curated for quality. Stop by for unique leather jewelry and colorful homedécor items.
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Tamales
A holiday favorite at La Guerrera’s Kitchen and Picante BY Jeffrey Edalatpour
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eyna Maldonado’s mother Ofelia Barajas is making sweet tamales this year during the holiday season at La Guerrera’s Kitchen. “It’s really, really rare to find sweet tamales,” Maldonado says. For people who are used to spicy tamales, she likens their assortment of strawberry, pineapple and brown sugar ones to dessert. Starting on Nov. 1, both the sweet and the savory tamales will be available for pre-order. They’ve also added a vegan option—calabacitas— which contains squash, corn, tomatoes and peppers. Although La Guerrera’s Fruitvale
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
storefront closed in March, they’ve been selling tamales on the weekends out of Ale Industries on nearby E. 10th Street. The pandemic has certainly cut down their sales, but it wasn’t Covid-19 that forced them out of the space now occupied by Ruby Q Smoke Fusion. Maldonado says that they were already looking for a bigger location. Without being able to confirm an exact address, La Guerrera’s Kitchen might be in a new brick-and-mortar location in time for the holiday season. Barajas grew up in the Mexican state of Guerrero before moving to the Mission district in San Francisco
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« with her daughter. Maldonado’s
mother was a street vendor for 15 years in the city before being accepted into the Bay Area business incubator program La Cocina. In Guerrero, the tamales cooked in corn husks are traditionally stuffed with different meats, vegetables and cheese. Maldonado explains that, “the texture of that tamale is fluffy.” The ones cooked in banana leaves are firmer. La Guerrera stuffs that variation with pork and a salsa roja, or red sauce. All of them are made in-house with corn masa. You can also freeze their tamales and re-steam them later. “We’ll be making a video tutorial on how to re-steam tamales, and then also different ways to eat them, like grilling them to create a smoky tamale,” Maldonado says. At Jim Maser’s Picante in Berkeley, they’re offering a holiday tamale menu in time for Christmas. Maser writes on the restaurant website, “And while the dishes at Picante may not be coming from some grandmother’s kitchen in Mexico, the reactions I get tell me it’s pretty close.” He says the recipes are all from his mentor, Diana Kennedy’s, cookbooks. But the person in charge of executing the tamale menu, Patricia
EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020
Scott Carroll conducted the interview with Patricia Oliveras in Spanish and subsequently translated their conversation into English. La Guerrera’s Kitchen, open Friday-Sunday noon–3pm, Ale Industries 3096 E. 10th St., Oakland, 510.424.8577. laguerreraskitchen. com Picante, open Monday-Sunday 11am–8pm, 1328 Sixth St, Berkeley, 510.525.3121. picanteberkeley.com
PHOTOS BY JEFFREY EDALATPOUR
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Oliveras, grew up in Michoacán, Mexico. Oliveras started her job in the Picante kitchen 14 years ago. After she arrived, Maser added tamales to the menu. She began making them when she was a child. “We made them in my grandmother’s kitchen,” she says, indicating a degree of authenticity that Maser doesn’t claim for himself. “My grandmother cooked everything in clay pots in her kitchen, on an open, wood-burning stove. She cooked the stews in the clay pots and cooked the tamales in the steamers.” In her household, having a tamale dinner on Christmas is a tradition. “In my family, which is about 15 people, on December 24, around 8 or 9 at night, we all sit down, and in the middle we have our plate of tamales and eat them together,” Oliveras says. You can order holiday tamales from Picante until Dec. 22, and pick them up on Dec. 23 or 24. Oliveras and her team make and then sell approximately 5,000 tamales in two days. Since they’re presold, they know exactly how many need to be made. After making so many tamales in such a short period of time,
how do her hands feel? She answered the question and then laughed, “They are good—with the aroma of tamales.” The production process is similar to the way she made them with her grandmother but, she says, “in Mexico you mixed all of the masa by hand.” For cooks tempted to try making tamales at home, Oliveras described the way she makes the masa. “First we mix the shortening, adding in salt and we add baking powder to soften the shortening,” she explained. Then she stirs in the masa, followed by some broth. She leaves those ingredients together for about 20 minutes until the masa becomes smooth. “When you’re ready to spread the masa, you want it spread in the center of the leaf, so that when they are ready to eat, the tamales don’t stick to the leaves.” Sold by the dozen, Picante is offering five tamale flavors this year. Two—Rajas con Queso and Chicken Verde—are only available during the holidays. When you pick them up, the tamales will be wrapped and chilled, with reheating instructions.
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Tweet? Does a Bird Not
An interview with Katie Jo Goldin, the creator of the wildly popular parody Twitter account, ProBirdRights. BY Sara Ost
P
ass the Dortitos ann stay IN UR LANE, human!! Or so might go a typical avian remonstration from the internet’s most insanely addictive Twitter parody account, @probirdrights. ProBirdRights feathers its digital nest with a disarmingly straightforward profile description: “Hello yes this is a bird i am a birdsrightsactivist and I fight against antibird sentiment.” That’s true of the wildly inventive, brutally astute European robin known as Bird. (Bird often self-styles as Birb, in keeping with its ungrammatical—and also somehow perfect—Birdglish.) It’s also only part of the story.
A day in the life of Bird according to Bird may involve everything from the usual—getting stuck yet again inside a “Dortitos” chip bag or a menace vending machine; bestowing excremental blessings on cars; you know, bird things—to the existential: “I am feel uncomfortable when we are not about me.” I’m a longtime bird enthusiast. At the age of 8, I told my father I wanted to grow up to be President of the Audubon Society. Some two decades later, I was recounting this charming little tale to a mannered, serious man named David at a chic Tribeca environmentalist gathering. I only did
so because he had mentioned he worked in bird conservation. And so, after greatly amusing myself with my own anecdote, I asked him to tell me more about what he did in bird conservation. “I’m President of the Audubon Society,” he said. Of course. Anyway, count your writer among Bird’s 421,000-plus fans. Getting parody right on Twitter, much like succeeding at standup comedy, is a helluva lot harder than it looks. I recently spoke with writer and Angeleno resident Katie Jo Goldin, the mind behind the birdbrain, to discuss what makes this plumed little narcissist sing.
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE
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« Goldin is a professional writer
PHOTO BY MELANIE NISSEN/COURTESY OF SHOWTIME.
and podcaster originally from San Diego, who traces her comedic beginnings to post-grad day-jobbing as an educational technical writer. A progressive-minded person with a deep concern for animals and the environment, Goldin remembers having a particular affinity for birds even as a child. “My mom once told me that I went through a phase when I was two where I would run around the backyard trying to catch a bird,” she said. Though she appreciated the rigor of academic writing, she found herself increasingly drawn to writing humor. She got her first break moonlighting for Cracked.com (imagine if Reddit and The Onion had a website baby, and you’re mostly there). Soon after, Bird
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was hatched (sorry). We can thank the “manosphere.” “I started Bird in 2011, and the genesis is slightly surprising,” Goldin says. “I was talking to a group of friends about these copy paste chain letter emails coming from the developing manosphere.” Manosphere, for the unburdened, is a vibrant segment of the web devoted to men’s rights. (Today, the manosphere has melded with the alt-right and worse, but that’s another article.) “These emails and these forums would present themselves as activists, when really they were just hateful and toxic,” explains Godin. “The irrational ranting of it all was somewhat funny to me, so I took it and replaced instances and wrote it from the perspective of an angry bird. Like, I’m mad at squirrels and being gluten-free is anti-bird.” A friend joked that she should take her political comedy bird concept to Twitter, since … well. Thus, @probirdrights. “Hate comes from pain, so I wanted to remove a little bit of that intensity while still commenting on issues that concerned me, and I thought an angry, self-centered bird could be a way to do that,” Goldin says. “I think my first tweet
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was literally ‘tweet tweet I’m a bird,’ but the tweets became cathartic to write.” As it turns out, what began on a lark (again, sorry) would be cathartic for thousands of others, too. Bird’s most defining characteristic is that this little creature is perpetually indignant. Goldin explains that this stems from the fact that birds look, to her, like livid little dinosaurs. “And now we’re fluffy and cute and we steal chips from stores!” she says. “You can see this roiling tension. A friend of mine describes her pet parakeet as having more tantrums than a two-year-old.” While Goldin clearly adores birds and advocates for their preservation (literally, she is pro bird rights), she also knows that birds could care less what we humans think. It’s the heightened convergence of this very real bird urpersonality and the reliable inanity of American politics that makes Bird so hysterically appealing. To a newcomer skimming through Bird’s tweets, a pattern soon emerges of the hilarious—furious feelings about cherished bird concerns such as not enough bread—to the politically hilarious.
Classic Bird logic on display: When bird interests and politics intertwine, as they often do, the internet all but breaks. Bird’s egotistical tweets about the complete and total importance of Bird and Bird alone are disturbingly onthe-nose when considering the current White House resident, although one could argue Bird has better hair. It would be understandable to assume this parodic character emerged in response to 2016. “Gaslighting” is a term many have come to know in the year 2020 (we’re all psychologists now, baby), but the behavior has been on Goldin’s mind for more than a decade. “At this point, it would be nice to have a politician who even pretends to care,” she says. “I’m in a constant state of anxiety. Sure, it’s fun to do the tweets, but it’s also scary when things are so bad. The sky is literally orange.” (This interview was taken during the apocalyptic height of the recent California fires.) I ask her what Bird will do if mass death, mass unemployment and mass
protests still aren’t enough to turn Donald Trump into a one-term Oval Office occupant. “I think I think about this more from a survival angle,” Goldin says. “I haven’t thought specifically about what Bird would do if Trump wins reelection. We’d be set so far back from everything that matters to our existence. “Here’s the trouble with satire and someone like Trump: In terms of my life and everyone’s lives, I would like him to lose. But I would also like him to lose because of comedy. It’s incredibly hard to satirize someone who is blatantly evil.” Satire pulls back the curtain. It’s one thing to find comedic relief in mocking the hate at the fringes of a society. It’s another when the fringe becomes the very fabric. “When someone has the curtains open, and says right out loud that we hate immigrants, or we hate leftists, or we’re for authoritarianism, this is our whole deal, that actually makes satire harder,” Goldin says. We both take a deep breath. Let’s talk about good bird things. For such a massive following, Goldin says she doesn’t spend as much time as
she’d like to on the account. She tweets as ideas come to her, but doesn’t follow a strict schedule or formula. Among her other writerly successes, she’s the host of the Creature Feature podcast and is exploring a bird comic concept. I ask her for her top bird-related recommendations. Here are a few: @falseknees “A wonderful comic artist who does absolutely beautiful nature illustrations and is so funny, some of the funniest I’ve ever seen, and they’re beautiful.” @chickythoughts “Comics about pet birds like cockatiels that really capture the universal language of birds, which is very self centered.” @alexthehonk “One of my favorite real birds on Twitter.”
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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2020 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE
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over. wait. no hang on i got this. ya put one chip on head and one. wait. sorry. i ate the demonstration chips. Q: You’re very vocal online and your tweets are read by thousands. What inspires you?
A: whats that? kajillions of people gather in the onlines to hear me a bird tweet?? wow u mean to say i am most famous celebirdy on all time???? wow stop flatter me (dont stop)
An Interview with
Bird
BY Sara Ost
Q: Ahem. Dear Bird (Mr. Bird? Ms. Bird?), thank you so much for joining us. How are you today?
A: thats president professor doctor bird to u Q: Tell us about the early years. What was your upbringing like? As a fledgling, what were your hopes for your future? What do your broodmates do?
A: my parents sat on me and spat worm in my mouth so u coud say i had perfect
50 EAST BAY MAGAZINE
Q: Who do you predict will win the election on November 3?
A: me because there no law what says birds can’t vote and DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY BIRDS THERE IS M’AM??? prepare for thine reckoning. Q: Have you taken up any new hobbies or developed any new skills during this time?
A: is eat a hobby? Q: How do you spend your days, as well as your nights?
A: see prevous answer Q: What are your thoughts on humans? Give us the birds-eye view.
Q: What would you say your greatest contribution to your community is? In these epic times of peril and strain, how are you doing your part?
A: humans think they so great because of ‘thumbs” and “cell phone” and “pants.” but while u human fight about “stockes” and “taxflation” i have already taken ur pastry and am eating it right now. Oops who the dominante species now????? also wake up squirreles is a conspiracy
A: i figure out how to carry two chip at once: allow me to dermonstrate: one in mouth. one in foot. Then u just walk
Editor’s note: Katie Jo Goldin, the creator of ProBirdRights, contributed reporting to this piece. Please do not tell Bird.
chickhood. i did try kick brother out of nest but it okay we are friend now and he run a hedge fund. inside a hedge. where the funds is.
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