East Bay Magazine January 2021

THE MAGAZINE OF OAKLAND, BERKELEY AND THE WORLD THAT REVOLVES AROUND US

January February 2021

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Jan & Feb 2021

THE MAGAZINE OF OAKLAND, BERKELEY AND THE WORLD THAT REVOLVES AROUND US

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FROM THE EDITOR

ACTION FIGURE

ON THE WALL

INNER KINGDOM

Implored to explore 4

Gen X in a forgotten Star Wars Toy 18

Touring Oakland’s murals 6

Seek and ye shall find 24

YOU DON’T KNOW JACK

Jack London hither and hon 28

A TOAST TO EDDIE’S LIQUORS

In praise of a Rockridge institution 14

PET RENT

Humor with fur, first and last 36

PUBLISHER

CONTRIBUTORS

ADVERTISING DIRECTORS

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Christian Chensvold Christine H. Lee Casey O’Brien Sara Ost Jonah Raskin

Lori Lieneke Lisa Santos

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Karen Klaber

EDITOR Daedalus Howell

DESIGN DIRECTOR

PRODUCTION OPERATIONS MANAGER

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COPY EDITOR

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We’reAll

CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE Ye olde map of Scandinavia as drawn by a Venician cartographer, circa 1539.

Explorers Now W

elcome to the hangover of your life. The blurry, emotionally tumultuous, booze-addled, Groundhog Day of 2020 with all its socially distanced sourdough of fear and loathing, Zoom gloom and conspiratorial conniptions has given way to a bright new day. Congrats, you made it. Pat yourself on the back—you know how to do that, it’s just like coughing into your elbow.

It’s not only a new year, it’s a brave new world—though not necessarily in the Aldus Huxley sense. We barely avoided that one, with its totalitarian state, lack of critical thinking and grotesque consumerism. It’s a brave new world in that bravery itself is a prerequisite for facing 2021’s terra incognita.

I’m reminded of the old maps of yore,

upon the oceans of which cartographers inscribed the admonishment, “Here Be Monsters,” whenever they ran out of continents. For those of us fortunate enough to survive 2020, we can collectively say, “Been there, done that.”

Sure, there may not be a road map to 2021, but at least there is a mission.

Everyone wants the world to be a better place—better than 2020 and better than before. We don’t know how this will look other than we hope it will be different than closed storefronts and tent cities. Truly, all we can do now is explore both what’s left and what’s next.

From the wilds of our cities to the depths of our beings, it’s time to reacquaint ourselves with the world-at-large and the worlds within. Here’s your word of the day: Reconnoiter, an intransitive verb,

which means “To make a preliminary examination of an area or a group usually by moving around and observing” (Thanks, Wordnik).

What will we see as we reconnoiter?

Dunno. But a line from Backward Bill, a Shel Silverstein poem about a cowboy who bumbles through life in opposition to expectation by doing things such as riding his horse backwards, comes to mind: Backward Bill he rides like the wind Don’t know where he’s going but sees where he’s been.

Yep. It’s time to saddle up, take the reins, face the horizon and move forward—not to the sunset but to the sunrise. It’s a new day and it’s time to explore again.

— Daedalus Howell, Editor

Explorers Christian Chensvold is a native of the Bay Area just returned from 20 years wandering from Los Angeles to New York. He is the founder of Trad-Man.com, a new site on spirituality, philosophy and the Wisdom Tradition.

Editor Daedalus Howell is the writer-director of the feature film Pill Head, author of Quantum

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Deadline and is the editor of the North Bay Bohemian and the Marin Pacific Sun. 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.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

Casey O’Brien is an awardwinning 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.

Jonah Raskin is the editor of The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution and two pamphlets about the author and his work, Burning Down the House and The Mysteries of Jack London.

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Mural, Mural on the Wall

BY Casey O’Brien

T

he whole city of Oakland is a canvas. Over 1,000 murals can be found throughout the city, covering once-empty walls in explosions of color. Street art is inherently radical, and many of Oakland’s murals deal with themes of protest, injustice and identity. Like the city itself, Oakland’s murals are bright, bold and unapologetic. By nature, street art changes all the time, but there are enough murals in Oakland to satisfy any urban explorer. Although street art can be found anywhere in Oakland, certain neighborhoods have more murals than others. Here is a self-guided tour to three of Oakland’s best mural neighborhoods—a full map of all the murals in the city is available at VisitOakland.com under “Mural Map.”

»

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

PHOTOS BY CASEY O’BRIEN

A Self-Guided Tour of Oakland’s Murals

PAST TO PRESENT Located at the Golden Gate Recreation Center, this mural honors Oakland’s diverse past and local civic leaders, and inspires the city’s next generation of activists to follow in their footsteps.

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

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HONOR Many of Oakland’s murals, such as this one in its Golden Gate neighborhood, honor the area’s indigenous peoples and the influence of Native arts and culture on Oakland’s identity.

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« SAN PABLO AND GOLDEN GATE

San Pablo Avenue, which runs the length of Berkeley, Northwest Oakland—often called the “Golden Gate” neighborhood— and Emeryville, is home to some of the city’s best murals. Start your San Pablo mural explorations in front of Novel Brewing Company, on 65th and San Pablo, where a large mural by local street artist GATS PTV awaits you. GATS PTV has a distinctive style of Aztec-style

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

figures and geometric shapes—you’ll see more of their work later.

Continue along San Pablo to Paradise Park Café (a great spot to stop for a coffee), where another, smaller GATS PTV mural is on display.

Next, cross the street to St. Columba Catholic church, at the corner of San Pablo and Alcatraz. Next to the church, which often has art displays of its own, a long, abstract mural runs for almost a block.

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SIGNATURE WORK Aztec designs, like this mural at Novel Brewing Company, are the trademark of local street artist GATS PTV.

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« Continue up Alcatraz to see the

rainbow mural at Yu Ming Charter School (even behind a fence, it’s stunning). Continue past Yu Ming, take a right onto Herzog Street and follow it for a couple of blocks.

This will take you to Golden Gate Recreation Center, where large murals depict civil rights leaders and scenes from Oakland’s history.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

TEMESCAL

Temescal has long been an artists’ haven in Oakland, and the street art in this neighborhood proves it. Start your exploration of Temescal street art at Brand X Huaraches, on 43rd and Telegraph. The shoe store, which sells Mexican-style huarache sandals, is covered in murals from top to bottom, including paintings of their

»

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BLOCKBUSTER This mural next to St. Columba Catholic Church on San Pablo Avenue runs for nearly a block with its bright, colorful geometric designs.

« merchandise, flowers, abstract figures

and more.

Continue behind Brand X to explore the murals covering the adjoining buildings—in total, murals cover nearly a block of 43rd Street.

Once you’ve seen those murals, hop back onto Telegraph and head a block up to 4400 Telegraph Avenue, the lot owned by the community group Critical Resistance. The murals here change frequently, since group members gather to update them, but they are always bright and colorful, and a recognizable façade reading “Building People Power” is permanent.

Finish up your mural tour of Oakland by making your way up Telegraph to Shoe Palace, a several-story shoe store

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with Oakland-themed murals from top to bottom. When you’re done taking in the giant Bay Bridge painted across the side of the building, you’ll be right across from Temescal Alley, home to local artisans and small shops purveying perfect holiday gifts.

DOWNTOWN

During the protests following the murder of George Floyd—and during other Black Lives Matter protests before that—downtown Oakland became a workshop for art-asresistance. Artists used boarded-up storefronts and empty walls to depict their feelings regarding racism, inequality, identity and justice—and most of the murals remain.

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

There is no wrong way to go from the downtown Oakland 12th Street and 19th Street BART stations, since murals cover most available wall space. But there are a few particularly striking murals.

At 1431 Franklin St., across from Frank H. Ogawa plaza and about a block up from the 12th Street BART station, Troy Lovegates, a San-Francisco based Canadian street artist, painted a massive portrait of Derrick Hayes in 2017. Hayes is a homeless Oakland resident and vendor of the homelessproduced newspaper Street Spirit.

He befriended both the owner of the building and Lovegates, and they decided to adorn the building with his friendly smile.

Not far from the painting of Hayes, at 1500 Broadway, is a massive mural honoring the lives of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, signed with messages from protestors and activists. Further up Broadway, the famous Art Deco Breuner building is decorated with murals of John Lewis, the Oakland skyline and more.

Oakland’s murals are forever changing, but they all speak to the spirit of the city: a place where color and identity are celebrated and creativity is embraced. Each neighborhood has its own unique art, and there’s no wrong way to explore—but these three areas serve as an introduction to the city’s vibrant street art-and-murals scene. ❤

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Trashed ‘Before’ —Pristine ‘After’ A

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BABS services are customized for individual situations, and include pushing or pulling bins and/or trash compactors to proper street pick-up positions, returning them after they’re emptied by city trucks, and ensuring areas are clean afterwards.

Nancy Fiame explains that BABS crews take photos to document “before and after,” part of the multiple ways the company communicates with clients to provide the best possible service. “We let the property manager know right away if there is an issue, and by the time the phone calls start, action has already been taken.” She recounts an incident in which a BABS crew actually witnessed trash being thrown over a wall from an adjacent property and reported it. “That was taken care of immediately,” she said.

Before H

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BABS prides itself 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. “We see ourselves as the eyes and ears of the property managers,” Fiame said. “They may need bigger bins or more pick-ups than once a week, especially right now when so many people are placing many online orders, and packaging is being discarded.”

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Third T

hird places are the places we go for social connection, for a sense of belonging; they’re the spaces outside of our home and workplace, like temples, cafes, gyms and bookstores. There have been myriad television shows and movies set in that very third space—the record store in High Fidelity, the bar in Cheers and Central Perk coffee shop in Friends— and those of us who watched these shows as children craved such a space for ourselves once we grew up.

There are many consequences from the pandemic. And one of them is the erasure of our communal spaces, either temporarily or permanently. So many places have closed forever already.

Restaurants. Favorite retailers. Bars.

For me, the most painful was Pollinate

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Farm and Garden closing its brick-andmortar. I always felt welcome there; I liked to chat with regulars about the particulars of chicken breeds and bond with them through the love of gardening and urban farming, with our professional lives and other particulars mattering very little, if at all. It was a place that gave me a sense of wellbeing.

So, where is it we still go for a third place, even within the context of a pandemic? I’d like to write about those safe spaces. They still exist.

Where can we belong, when we are supposed to be confined to our homes?

When for many of us the workplace is no longer a place of safety, but of dangerous exposure? And when for many others, the workplace no longer exists because the office is closed, or we’ve lost our jobs?

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

BY Christine Hyung-Oak Lee

As a child growing up in New York City, my third place was the corner bodega. It’s where my grandmother took me on hot summer days—because the owner would take pity on me and stick me in their walk-in freezer to cool down. Where we stopped for a chat.

Where I always got an ice cream on our daily walks around the neighborhood. It was part of our routine, and it provided me with the sense that people cared about each other beyond the walls of our home.

Here in Berkeley and Oakland, my bodega is Eddie’s Drive In Liquors, located a couple of blocks south of Rockridge BART. I’m a regular there, if only because I’m attracted to bodegas and liquor stores for the above reasons.

I’m a regular too, because of the sense of community in that particular store.

»

PHOTO BY CHRISTINE HYUNG-OAK LEE

Places

Eddie’s Drive In Liquors

TO-GO Eddie’s Drive In Liquors is a Rockridge local landmark.

PHOTO BY CHRISTINE HYUNG-OAK LEE

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Who, I wondered, was Eddie? Who created this place where one day, my partner and I walked in and the theme from Law and Order was playing on repeat? «

It didn’t matter if I walked up buying a fifth of bourbon every week like I did in the early weeks after my husband left me or when, after I stopped drinking, that evolved into my buying Takis and Bundaberg ginger beer simply because by then visiting Eddie’s—there’s also a legion of people who insist that it be called Liquor Video, because those are the largest words on the parking lot sign—was a ritual. I feel like I could buy a pack of cigarettes every three hours, no questions asked. They have always greeted me neutrally and with good humor, a wall collage of confiscated IDs and bounced checks behind them.

The banter is the kind you have with a bartender—casual but meaningful, jocular but not dismissive.

Over the years, curiosity piqued, I’ve peppered them with questions.

“Are you Eddie?”

Only to be met with the cryptic but bemused response, “There is no Eddie.”

“There’s no Eddie?” It felt like an existential question at this point.

“Nope, no Eddie.”

Then who, I wondered, was Eddie?

Who created this place where one day, my partner and I walked in and the theme from Law and Order was playing

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on repeat? We knew it was playing on repeat because it repeated three times while we were in there.

“What’s up with the music?”

They said they’d been listening to it on repeat all day. On purpose. For their amusement.

So I asked Adam Johnson, the manager of Eddie’s Drive In Liquors, who, as it turns out, has worked there off and on for over 30 years, as has his father, who worked his way from cashier to manager before buying the store decades ago, “What was up with the theme song on repeat?”

Adam replied, “The theme song on repeat! It was the song from Law & Order and I eventually banned it, lol. I’m sure I drive the staff crazy in my own ways, but playing that theme song for hours was driving me insane!”

Of course, I also asked him, “Who is Eddie? And was it ever a drive-in?”

Eddie was Ed Silva, who passed away several years ago—he bought the lot and built the building before he ran out of money and sold the store, without opening it, to a buyer who decided to keep the name Eddie’s Drive In Liquors when it opened in 1964. So, in a sense, there is no Eddie. And in a sense, there never was—because the owner of

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

Eddie’s Drive In Liquors never was the owner of Eddie’s Drive In Liquors.

Oh, and it’s called a “drive in” because the idea was to “drive in” to the parking lot—a rarity in Rockridge.

The wonder was gone. But in its place was more complexity. That Eddie was both real and a concept adopted by others.

Just like a liquor store—which is its own complex intersection of joy and pain.

“We sell some products that people might feel bad about themselves when buying but it is not our job to question or judge why they are buying it,” Adam said. “Some people use alcohol or tobacco as a way to have fun, relax or to forget about the messed up life they had as a child or have as an adult. I wish peace for people in pain and hope they can seek help in a way that helps them, but for that moment they are there in Eddie’s, we are there to show kindness, respect and love.”

From Adam I learned that a third place is the result of the intentionality behind it. That it’s not just a function of transactions, but a space for people to be themselves, for even a few minutes.

And that a third place can be nurtured by a person. Even if there is no Eddie.

For me, Eddie’s is a place for vices during heartbreak and the pandemic, a place to buy my sundries without having to wait in a long line for a couple items.

But it is also solace during heartbreak and a source of amusing anecdotes during a pandemic. A little break from the world, in whatever way I need, at whatever time in my life narrative. And it helps me see how I can create a third place for others, in turn.

A liquor store is a tough crossroads.

It’s also a third place. ❤

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Lives Blue Snaggletooth

FEELING BLUE The action figure in question.

I’ve Seen the Action Figure, and He Is Us

BY Daedalus Howell

O

fficially, he doesn’t exist.

He has no past, no story— he’d be prime black-ops material if he wasn’t part of the most visible cultural phenomena of the past two centuries. And, then again, he isn’t really visible at all. They say he’s a mistake.

Who Is Blue Snaggletooth?

»

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

PHOTOS BY DAEDALUS HOWELL

Ever see Star Wars? Yeah, well, he’s not in it. But he’s of it. He’s an action figure—a totem, an idol, a symbol—without a referent. In the world of Star Wars, let alone the world at large, there was never meant to be Blue Snaggletooth. He

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At most, he can be a symbol. Or at least, I’m trying to pretend he’s one— he’s my symbol for Generation X alienation, and by extension, my gig as a professional observer-qua-outsider. « isn’t in the movie, he’s not “canon”

and he was pulled from the market as soon as the mistake of his existence was realized. He does not belong.

One of his problems is that he’s just not cool. I mean not in the way that Boba Fett, say, has always been cool. Fett can credibly affect the same sangfroid as The Man With No Name (apparently Clint Eastwood’s eponymous character was a model), but Blue Snaggletooth?

He’s got the face of a pig and poor orthodontia to boot.

At most, he can be a symbol. Or at least, I’m trying to pretend he’s one—he’s my symbol for Generation X alienation, and by extension, my gig as a professional observer-qua-outsider.

Maybe my interest in this particular action figure has led to an overidentification. Perhaps “I am become” Blue Snaggletooth.

The relationship between action figures and Gen X was strained at its inception. The notorious “empty box” campaign was the first great con perpetrated on our generation. (The second was also kind of Star Warsrelated—at least in name—thanks to the spin doctors behind the Strategic

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

Defense Initiative Organization.)

The action figure promo was known officially as the “Early Bird Certificate Package,” which one online wag likened to a diner breakfast.

Kenner, the licensee for the toys, was caught off guard by the blockbuster that Star Wars proved to be and could not produce and ship action figures in time for the 1977 Christmas season. So, they hawked a “$10 piece of cardboard that promised you the first four action figures as soon as they were ready,” Chris Taylor observed in How Star Wars Conquered the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of a Multibillion Dollar Franchise.

Eighteen years later a replica version of this original set was released. But it’s not the same. It doesn’t include an original Blue Snaggletooth.

Popular lore says the artist who sculpted the figurine only had a partial black-and-white photo for reference.

How this person managed not to see the most popular film in the world in 1977 is hard to fathom. Had they actually seen Star Wars, instead of a tall blue figure in silver boots, they would’ve created a small red creature with naked, clawed feet—Red Snaggletooth. He can

be seen in the film squeaking his drink order, barely able to see over the bar.

All subsequent renderings of Snaggletooth onward from 1979 were “corrected,” which is to say made shorter, redder and sans footwear.

His official name is Zutton. In 1995, a hired gun kept the Expanded Star Wars universe expanding with a backstory for Zutton anthologized in Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina. No matter how many times I thumbed through the book, I couldn’t find any mention of Zutton.

Then I realized, what’s the point?

Whatever I’d turn up wouldn’t be about Blue Snaggletooth anyway because, duh, he doesn’t exist.

Blue Snaggletooth wasn’t included in the original Early Bird promotion, instead he appeared as part of a promotion via Sears, which was then pushing the Creature Cantina set. One was on display—under glass!—in a Sears department store in Santa Rosa, California. The toy department was cannily located on the second story next to the women’s department, where moms, including mine, would shop the latest in ’70s women’s wear. The toy department was like de facto child-care and it also meant that no kid left emptyhanded, lest mom’s new loudly-printed, permanent press blouse become stained by greedy little tears.

I’m sure my mother had some reservations about purchasing the cantina for me. It is a bar, after all. A bar filled with unsavory characters.

Children aren’t even allowed in bars, but in the ’70s we could play with them.

What tipped it in my favor was the fact that she was a fan, not of Star Wars per se, but of cultural phenomenon

»

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« in general. I remember trying to

comprehend the album art for Destroyer

by Kiss, which was in our house simply because my mom thought it was, as Annie Hall would say, “neat.” Star Wars was also neat. And so was its bar. If Kiss toured outside our galaxy they would’ve drank there.

Recollections by Star Wars’ cast hold a dim view of the cantina scene. Located somewhere within the “wretched hive of scum and villainy” of Mos Eisely, the cantina was regarded as little more than a kiddie costume party by those on set. In the first trilogy documentary, Empire of Dreams, Mark Hamill made the withering observation that the cast of budget characters looked more like they belonged in the Nutcracker Suite than an alien watering hole.

To Gen X, however, most of whom were far from double digits, the cantina was the most exotic scene we’d ever seen. The wolfman and NASA astronaut, notwithstanding, Mos Eisely’s local color had all the eye-grab of a carnival freakshow.

Here’s a partial roster from memory: A hammer-headed creature that grunted, a devilish fiend with horns, a walrus-like fellow (whose action figure would suffer the ignominy of being called “Butt Face” by us kids), some sort of Yeti smoking what looks like a cigar, someone who looks like a watermelon wearing a gas mask, a pair of rubbernecking Cleopatras, an asshole with terrible rhinoplasty who’s proud of the death sentence he’s evaded in 12 systems and a fey ectomorph puffing on a hookah who just can’t be bothered.

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What a scene. It’s a cosmic Casablanca. Perhaps Hamill’s objections were merely an echo of Bogart’s: “I don’t mind a parasite. I object to a cutrate one.”

Blue Snaggletooth Was Not in the Nutcracker Suite Though the costume department hadn’t lived up to Hamill’s expectations, to a five-year-old it was an intergalactic model of “diversity” that would make the United Colors of Benetton look monochromatic. If it was the Nutcracker Suite, it was one staged in Studio 54, with the same promise of adventure, intoxicants and intergalactic sex.

I’d later see the spiritual echo of this scene when I first attended The Rocky Horror Picture Show and witnessed my first Transylvanians both onscreen and in the women’s bathroom where a couple of Goth girls (before they were called such) dolled me up and led me to a mass display of public affection in a pantomimed swimming pool.

Mind you, this was a good several years before the candy-scented travesties of Teen Spirit, so I was soon intoxicated by a bouquet of girl sweat, AquaNet and clove cigarettes. It’s left me permanently yearning for “creatures of the night.” And in those moments of writhing limbs and mock-makeouts, the innocence of my childhood died a little, going from womb to tomb to teenage tumescence in a galaxy much farther away than a Tatooine cantina. Sure, maybe that joint didn’t serve droids (racists!) but I’m sure it’s where my

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

appetite for the recherché was whetted.

And eight years later, there I was (and many more like me) in a junior high realm of the senses. In such a moment, who isn’t Blue Snaggletooth? Who isn’t dying to be played with?

It should be noted that while Blue Snaggletooth was being officially vanished by LucasFilm, Ltd., Red Snaggletooth went on to have a thriving, post-Star Wars career. He next appeared on the notorious Star Wars holiday special where he danced with Bea Arthur (who mysteriously had taken over bartending duties).

In 2012, Red Snaggletooth cameoed in a Volkswagen Super Bowl ad that revisited the cantina. Blue Snaggletooth wasn’t invited to either party. A Blue Snaggletooth action figure did cameo in ET: Extra-Terrestrial with his pal Greedo (an appearance probably scrubbed with the guns in Spielberg’s digitally-“enhanced” reissue) but otherwise he’s seen little, if any, action for an action figure. He is the “What ever happened to…?” trivia question that no one ever asks.

As a kid in single digits, the closest experience I ever had to the Cantina scene was during a birthday party of a childhood friend with Down’s Syndrome. My then single-digit memory recorded a menagerie of misshapen faces, missing fingers, bent, twisted and otherwise odd children. At that age, I had neither the experience nor politesse to make a more charitable observation. My younger brother and I were among the few “normal” children present. We lived in a track home subdivision. Our mother

drove a Honda Civic hatchback (the “Anderson for President” sticker notwithstanding) and worked at a bank. Our dad did some kind of top secret government contracting.

As the older boy, it prevailed upon me, as it always did, to comport myself with a maturity beyond my years, a decorum as much cribbed from Wally in the Leave it to Beaver reruns I’d seen, as the Englishmen imported into our living room via PBS. I was expected to be an example to the others. In this context, I was the model boy and consequently, in this sea of relative weirdness, I was an outsider. I was the Blue Snaggletooth.

Adding to the surreality of the birthday party was a magician— precisely the sort of schticky, tuxedoclad trainwreck who would gig at a child's birthday party. I sensed that he, too, was somewhat overwhelmed with the spectacle of his audience, none of whom could sit patiently through a traditional show, so he waded among them in his cape and top hat, solemnly performing sleight-of-hand tricks as one might leave flowers on a grave. He made coins spout from the distorted nose of a boy whose allotment of fingers were arrayed such that he was permanently throwing devil horns. I remember thinking it might be rude for the magician to draw more attention to this kid’s nose by turning it into a slot machine. I’m sure I’m the only kid who noticed his nose looked like the twisted schnoz of Cornelius Evazan, the cantina’s barfly blowhard with the dozen death sentences.

As I was then an aspiring magician, I asked for the man’s autograph and

received my first dose of postmodern self-parody: On the scrap the magician signed for me, he followed his name, whatever it was, with the sobriquet “the mystic,” which he first wrote as “the mistake,” crossed out, then “corrected.”

For some reason, I’ve thought about that gag frequently in the decades since.

But, more to the point, yes—yes, he was a “mistake,” or at least had made some along his magical way, to find himself there and then. I relate. More now than then, but still.

LIKE FATHER LIKE SON The author’s kid explores his dark side.

Blue Snaggletooth Endures I no longer have the autograph, but I do have Blue Snaggletooth. He lives on a mantel in my bedroom. He’s in remarkably good condition and could fetch a quick $300 on eBay if I ever had the need. But I doubt I’d ever part with him. It’s not that I’m a collector or even much of a Star Wars fan beyond what’s expected of a man of my vintage.

I keep Blue Snaggletooth because I dig the Zen of his inside-outsiderness and outside-insiderness. To me he is not a mistake—he’s the mystic.

Maybe he is in the cantina, hunkered down in some forgotten alcove over an espresso that glows like antifreeze.

Maybe he’s contemplating the amazing accident of his blue existence; maybe he’s jotting notes whilst watching his contemporaries in the Nutcracker Suite; and maybe he’ll let you read them because that makes him feel like he’s really not so far, far away after all. ❤ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

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Off-World in Inner Space The ‘Hidden Kingdom’ Is Closer Than You Think

BY Christian Chensvold

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EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

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stronomers recently discovered a planet where winds howl at 1,000 miles per hour, rocks rain down from the sky and the seas smolder with lava. It was called the most extreme planet ever found, and, as K2-141b isn’t a very catchy name, the distant inferno was quickly nicknamed “Hell Planet.”

Now, I know what you’re thinking: you thought that moniker belonged to Earth in 2020. Which is why if you perpetually find yourself saying “Get me off this planet,” know that it’s really not that difficult. Seekers, sages, shamans and spiritualists have been doing it for eons. All it takes is a crafty escape to your own private kingdomnot-of-this-world.

Imaginary fiefdoms are notoriously difficult to find. Parsifal, one of the knights of the Round Table, stumbled into the secret Grail Castle, said the wrong thing, and was shot back into

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Imaginary fiefdoms are notoriously difficult to find. Parsifal, one of the knights of the Round Table, stumbled into the secret Grail Castle, said the wrong thing, and was shot back into harsh reality. « harsh reality. He searched for 20

years before he found it again.

But here are a few tips to get started.

First, find a familiar spot—say, the edge of a park or a town square—with cars, people and buildings on the one hand, and trees, flowers, birds and bees on the other. See these two realms as separate from each other, with living things in each one almost entirely oblivious to the activity in the other.

Holding both in your consciousness simultaneously, note that these are indeed two different, but overlapping, worlds: one is the planet with its finetuned perfection, and the other is what we call human civilization. There’s nothing wrong with the “world,” or material reality. The source of your angst is the other part. Hell, as JeanPaul Sartre said, after all, “is other people.” This gestalt shift should clarify that the world of human events is far different from the timeless realm of nature, with its eternal cycle of the seasons, day and night, life and death.

You’re now on the path to the hidden kingdom. For the next step, find yourself a lazy afternoon when you can lie down and close your eyes while you listen to your favorite music.

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As you slip into a meditative state bordering on a snooze, the music will lead you to your heart’s resonant frequency, the inner vibratory channel where all your memories are stored. It’s where every person, place and thing you’ve ever loved is saved; an inner radio station broadcasting wake or sleep, whether you listen or not, with fact and fiction all mixed together beyond all rationality. As you reach the hypnagogic state that precedes sleep, that favorite music you’re playing will conjure up beautifully illogical images, as friends and family and fictional characters all blend together in an archetypal reality beyond time and space. You’ll notice how all the things that vex and roil you in everyday life have magically been edited out, left on the cutting room floor by the higher intelligence operating as editor of this great narrative.

This is the soul’s record of its earthly journey. And this is all that really matters. This is what will play when your life flashes before your eyes, when the pineal gland releases DMT as you exit this realm and head off on the next great adventure.

You’ve now spent a few precious

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

moments inside the inner kingdom— what in esoteric traditions is often referred to as the subtle plane. You actually go in and out of this realm all the time, you just don’t realize it. It’s where you go when you dream at night.

It’s also where your sunlit daydreams emanate from, the kinds of things that blossom in your mind presenting a vision of your heart’s desires, of the things that are most important to you.

It’s the place of imagination, the source of all creative fertility when it comes to building and painting your life. Before anything was ever created in the physical realm, it began as an idea in someone’s inner kingdom. And where was it before that? Perhaps higher up still, hence the concepts of divine inspiration and the Greek muses who filled the hearts of poets with words and melodies.

According to the eminent 19th-century mage Eliphas Levi, magic is essentially a psychological process, based on the combination of imagination and will, capable of manifesting fantasy into reality.

Escaping into nature makes it easier to find this inner kingdom of tranquility, for in nature we discover that the outer world of sunsets and forests, and our inner world of feelings, memories and imagination, are united in a higher, invisible reality joined by consciousness.

So heed the call and embark on the great journey in search of the mysterious and hidden kingdom. You may be surprised what you find, for you might just run into yourself. . ❤

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Jack You Don’t Know

On the Road With Jack London

BY Jonah Raskin

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

that Hemingway, Kerouac, Cormac McCarthy and others followed.

No 20th-century writer dug deeper roots in the Bay Area than London.

And no writer captured its essence more fully than he did, in books like Martin Eden, about a writer who becomes famous and takes his own life, and The Valley of the Moon, which begins in Oakland and ends in Glen Ellen in Sonoma County. A troublemaker and a fiery public speaker, he ran for mayor of Oakland twice, but didn’t allow campaigning to interfere with his writing schedule. Had he lived to 100 or so, London probably would

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PHOTO COURTESY OF WIKICOMMONS

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new guide book for the San Francisco Bay Area offers dozens of exhilarating walks, hikes and historical sites for locals and tourists. A People’s Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area mentions Jack London’s The Call of the Wild, a socialist fable disguised as a dog story, but it doesn’t locate any of the places associated with the author. That’s a pity.

For nearly 40 years, the San Francisco Bay Area was London’s stomping ground. In his heyday, he signed his letters, “Yours for the revolution” and added his alias, “Wolf.” A social animal and also a loner, he blazed a literary trail

AT WORK Jack London writing in 1905.

The author was part of the radical literary enclave dubbed ‘The Crowd’ that, among other causes, unfortunately supported eugenics.

k JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

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The waters of San Francisco Bay lay at the heart of London’s world.

One can view them from the shore in Oakland and in San Francisco, and one can literally feel and smell them on a boat ride to Alcatraz. « have campaigned for Bernie Sanders.

Along with his devoted readers, he called for the eight-hour work day, an end to the exploitation of child labor and the right to speak freely.

Curious folks can take in the highpoints of London’s world in a single day. That means traveling from Oakland, where the author roamed the waterfront, to Berkeley, where he attended the University for a semester, and then to San Francisco, where he was born on Jan. 12, 1876 to a spiritualist and her live-in lover, William Henry Chaney. London was the name of his stepfather.

That day-long journey around the Bay would then end in Glen Ellen, where London died on Nov. 22, 1916, at the age of 40, an alcoholic, a workaholic and a visionary who almost singlehandedly created the field of California literature. Beauty Ranch, where he raised horses and pigs, and aimed to grow crops organically, is now Jack London State Historic Park. I’ve visited it dozens of times and have introduced

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it to tourists from France and Germany who love the spectacular hikes.

Adults and kids of all ages are inspired by the recently revamped museum at House of Happy Walls, where Jack’s widow, Charmian, lived for several decades. The big surprise is the ruins of Wolf House, the mansion that burned down in a fire in 1913. Jack thought it was arson, though no one was ever charged and arrested.

The waters of San Francisco Bay lay at the heart of London’s world. One can view them from the shore in Oakland and in San Francisco, and one can literally feel and smell them on a boat ride to Alcatraz, the island that once housed a federal prison and is now a tourist destination.

London wrote about San Francisco Bay in books such as The Fish Patrol, available in an inexpensive, attractive edition from Heyday Press, a local publisher. After making a living as “an oyster pirate,” London worked for the fish patrol to apprehend pirates.

Oysters are available at Hog Island

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

Oyster Company in San Francisco’s historic Ferry Building.

Jack London Square in Oakland boasts the restored cabin where London lived when he prospected for gold in the Yukon. The Square also boasts “Heinhold’s First and Last Chance Saloon,” where the author consumed great quantities of alcohol, studied the bartender’s dictionary and amassed a vocabulary.

The Square is home to stores, restaurants, hotels and an Amtrak Station. One could arrive by train from L.A. or Sacramento and eat breakfast at the Oakland Grill, the Buttercup, the Chop Bar or the Seawolf, which is named after London’s demonic captain, “Wolf ” Larsen: a wolf of a man. It serves breakfast burritos and other Mexican favorites.

For a time, Oakland residents wanted to erase the name Jack London from the Square, on the grounds that the author uttered racist comments.

Jack London wrote a lot about Asians and Asia. One of his basic fears was that the Japanese and the Chinese would forge an anti-American alliance and make life difficult for the U.S.A. politically and economically. He called it “The Yellow Peril.” In fact, the Chinese and the Japanese became intense adversaries. London covered the war between the Russians and the Japanese in 1904-1905. When Japanese military forces defeated the Russians on the battlefield, London was shocked. He couldn’t believe that Asian soldiers defeated “white” soldiers. London had Asian servants, but he never regarded Asians as his equals. They could help him dress

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LONDON Portrait of the author, circa 1914.

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and prepare him for bed, but they were never friends. “Paternalistic” is how one might characterize his outlook.

Bay Area Born

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regularly to the San Francisco Examiner, the newspaper made famous by William Randolph Heart, a.k.a. “Citizen Kane,” that’s now free and in boxes nearly everywhere. “San Francisco is like the crater of a volcano,” London wrote on May 5, 1906 in “The Story of an Eyewitness” and with the city still smoldering. “The bankers and the businessmen have already set about making preparations to rebuild.”

Glen Ellen was, in London’s day, a sleepy hamlet. It still doesn’t have a Starbucks, a McDonald’s or a

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PHOTO BY ARNOLD GENTHE

From the heart of Oakland, it’s a short car ride across the Bay Bridge to Third Street and Brannan in San Francisco, where a plaque marks London’s birthplace. The house where he lived briefly as an infant burned down in the fires that accompanied the 1906 San

Francisco Earthquake, an event London wrote about for Collier’s magazine. He also took dozens of black-and-white photos that document the damage. Some of them can be viewed on the website for the California Department of Parks and Recreation (www.parks.ca.gov/).

The smoke from the fires reached all the way to London and his second wife, Charmian Kittredge, on their mountain top in Glen Ellen. They packed their bags, decamped for the city and recorded the catastrophe. As a journalist, London also contributed

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Despite the pandemic, visitors walk, bicycle and gallop on horseback across a huge estate where London built a sturdy silo and a round house for pigs that the media called “a palace.” Picnic tables are available, as are restrooms. The old buildings, which were constructed with rocks and stones from the valley floor, exude the kind of romance that tourists often associate with Rome and Venice.

London scholar and Santa Rosa resident, Susan Nuernberg, tells me that visitors to the park enjoy the miles of well-maintained trails. “The scenery is beautiful and the views are spectacular,” Nuernberg says. “Hikers can climb all the way to the top of Sonoma Mountain, or they can circumnavigate the peak. The signage is good.”

The further away from paved roads, telephone poles and houses, the more you feel you’re in the wilderness.

In a state such as California, where old buildings are routinely torn down to make room for new buildings, the

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PHOTO BY TONY WEBSTER

Walmart. That’s part of its charm.

But there are good places to eat, including the Glen Ellen Star and the Fig Café, which have offered take-out all through the pandemic. There’s also the Jack London Saloon, a place one can go to soak up ambiance.

Jack London Ranch Road climbs from the valley floor into the hills until it arrives at Jack London State Historic Park, which has been staffed and operated for years by locals, with help from Sacramento.

In the early 20th century, visitors often took the train to Glen Ellen. Alas, that’s no longer possible. But the drive by car, whether on Highways 12, 116 or 37, runs across eye-popping landscapes and along cascading vineyards. Due to Covid-19, visitors can’t visit the museum at House of Happy Walls, once Charmian London’s home. Also off-limits is the cottage which boasts artifacts she and Jack collected during their globetrotting days.

ruins of Wolf House are truly unusual.

Gazing at the outlines of the chimneys that reach for the sky, and musing on the stone walls, one can imagine the grandeur of the home which London hoped would last 1,000 years.

So much for the big dreams of the bestselling author who wrote 50 books in less than 20 years, even as he welcomed a steady stream of visitors that included artists, translators, anarchists and excons. London served them martinis and regaled them with tales of his own adventures, which still stir scholars such as Geoff Dunn, a Santa Cruz journalist, historian and London expert.

“Jack was one of the most important American writers from about 1900 to the start of World War I,” Dunn tells me.

“His stories have traction; he’s still widely read and his insights about poverty and social stratification are as valid as ever.”

London’s memoir, The Road, led to Kerouac’s On the Road; his novel The Iron Heel gave birth to Orwell’s 1984; and his first-person reporting on the war between the Russians and the Japanese in 1904–1905 opened a door for journalists who battled government censorship in World War I. Before you explore London’s Bay Area you might want to read or reread The Call of the Wild, White Fang or The Sea-Wolf.

East Coast literary stars who ought to know better habitually turn up their noses at Jack and his oeuvre. That’s their loss. ❤

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»

r, Last and Deposit Appeals Judge Issues Decision in Controversial Pet Rent Case

BY Sara Ost

I

n a landmark lawsuit that has gripped the region and pitted the pet-haves against the pethave-nots, U.S. circuit Judge Pete S. Cockburn decided in favor of the defendant, child social worker and homeless volunteer Mia Cordero, 31, bringing to a close a lengthy Bernal Heights renter-landlord dispute.

The case, which has played out breathlessly in worldwide media coverage since March 2020, centered on whether or not the landlord, a t-shirt entrepreneur, aspiring rapper and Jamaican food truck company chief executive who self-styles as TrĂŠs but whose legal name is Joey

Âť

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 | EASTBAYMAG.COM | EAST BAY MAGAZINE

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The service iguana incident further tangled the media narrative, as a debate about regular pets versus service pets versus emotional support animals exploded in online media. « Chad Ryan Jr., had the legal right

to charge Cordero’s pets rent, and to subsequently attempt to evict them for failure to pay their pet rent.

The matter, which appeared at first blush as a simple misunderstanding between a landlord and a tenant over a rescue cat named Bubbles and an aging dachshund named Banana, soon took on ever more wild heights of complexity.

“In what has certainly been one of the strangest matters of my judicial tenure in the 9th [San Francisco Circuit Court of Appeals], but not the absolute strangest,” wrote Cockburn in his decision, “I find the plight of Bubbles and Banana to be a timely example of extreme landlord abuse, improper litigiousness and, finally, a willful denial of a standard of reasonableness to which we should hold sentient but nonhuman creatures in a court of law.”

Chad Ryan, 48, who is not Jamaican, inherited the property involved in the dispute from his deceased mother, Karen “Candy” Chad Ryan, sometime in late 2019. After his initial attempt

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to double rent across the board for all nine tenants failed in January 2020, Chad Ryan quickly employed a number of other efforts to increase his revenues from the property due to “struggles getting his second memoir published” and claims of cost overruns for the fabrication of his food truck.

(No evidence of a first memoir—other than a self-published pamphlet listed on Amazon.com titled Don’t Make Me Creep!—has been found.)

“Simply: Pets cannot pay rent because they do not understand what rent is,” wrote Cockburn. “While the plaintiff is correct in his argument that a pet could, in theory, earn income—such as, according to him, through ‘sidewalk stuff, busking, rodent killing, and other errands’—it does not follow that a pet could understand a contractual agreement and as such, a pet clearly cannot be held accountable on a lease.”

Cordero signed the lease on the second-floor studio apartment in February of this year, for a one-year term. She says that while she disclosed

EAST BAY MAGAZINE | EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

her pets, Bubbles and Banana, at the time, there was no discussion of pet rent. A copy of the lease, which does include a requirement for a pet security deposit, supports her claim. At first, Cordero thought her new landlord was playing a misguided prank.

“It’s hard to even know where to start,” Cordero says. “Trés used to send me literal messages in the middle of the night demanding to know if Bubbles had gotten a job yet. Another time, he put a political poster on my door that said how entitlements are for lazy people, which I guess means renters, that we are bankrupting entrepreneurship in this country.”

On the poster, the judge notes Chad Ryan had crossed out “people” and added “and pets!” to the illustration.

“My basic point to him was that landlords can’t force tenants’ children to pay rent, because children can’t legally sign a contract and generally don’t or shouldn’t have to earn income,” Cordero says. “It would be wrong.

So, how is a pet somehow magically supposed to be able to pay rent? That’s what the pet deposit is for.”

Chad Ryan, representing himself as the plaintiff, initially brought a legal complaint after his attempts to evict Bubbles and Banana, but not to evict Cordero “because she’s been paying her rent,” were ignored by the defendant.

He sought recompense for “back rent from the smushy-face cat and the old weiner dog” as well as damages for his apparent emotional distress. But without a lease agreement in place to charge pet rent, the complaint was dismissed within 20 minutes.

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« The saga, however, was only

beginning.

“At one point he even emailed and asked me what Banana’s FICO score was, and said that if either pet’s score fell below 650, it would be grounds for eviction. I was like … they’re pets?”

Cordero says.

The dismissal did not deter Chad Ryan, who appealed the decision and expanded his complaint to include his civil rights. Meanwhile, relations between the landlord and the tenants grew fractious.

At one point, Cordero came to learn that her neighbor directly across the hall, who wishes to remain anonymous, was not being held to the same expectation despite having a pet iguana. “Trés said it was a service iguana and therefore did not have to pay rent,

40 EAST BAY MAGAZINE

and then he berated me publicly on Facebook as ‘ableist.’ I mean, I’m a social worker,” Cordero says.

The service iguana incident further tangled the media narrative, as a debate about regular pets versus service pets versus emotional support animals (a non-working animal and thus controversial category) exploded in online media. At one point, #lizardsagainsttheBs—a dig at Bubbles and Banana—became a trending hashtag on Twitter.

Simultaneously, colony collapse activists misunderstood the hashtag and, in an episode emblematic of the modern media climate of fragmentation and interference, were deceived by a Chamber of Commerce–affiliated bot platform into participating in a smear campaign against Cordero.

| EASTBAYMAG.COM | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021

“I woke up one morning to shouting outside my window,” Cordero says.

“It was an event being held against my supposed anti-lizard and anti-bee sentiments. Bubbles and Banana had no clue what was going on. They just thought it was another San Francisco thing, I’m sure. I mean, we didn’t have a conversation about it.”

Chad Ryan, who also lives in the building he owns, was involved in the ensuing melee, blasting his new “Caribebaby Cali-maybe fusion” album and shouting insults at Bubbles and Banana through a megaphone. “I won’t repeat them,” Cordero says. “Mainly because I couldn’t understand them.”

In an ironic twist, the neighbor with the service iguana called the authorities to disperse the event. “I mean, Mia definitely has nothing against bees,”

»

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« says the neighbor. “That’s when I

felt like Trés was taking it too far. Plus, she’s always been pretty nice to Harold.”

(Harold is the tenant’s service iguana.)

In his conclusion, Cockburn notes, “Chad Ryan, who goes by Trés, dba as Caribe-baby Cali-maybe fusion LLC, appears to have enacted a number of schemes and campaigns hostile to the tenant and her pets, including protests, social media screeds, bot attacks, and other various forms of harassment. In his effort to extract $45 more per month in rent from his tenant, who had already paid the pet deposit, he has escalated what should have been a petty matter to one of the highest courts in the state, and as a result, is likely to prove instrumental in setting back the growing spate of

recent efforts by landlords to charge pets rent, as tenants reasonably argue that residents such as minor children and pets cannot legally consent to pay rent.”

“Oh, he already tried to charge kid rent,” says Harold’s owner, upon being read the judge’s decision. “I guess that didn’t come up in court. One of our neighbors came home to find Trés had enlisted his eight-year-old twins in painting that old ice cream truck of his.” (Whether the ice cream truck is also the Jamaican food truck is unclear; Chad Ryan has not returned our calls and emails.)

Further investigation revealed that the parents took him to court for exposing their twins to toxic fumes and for committing labor trafficking

and wage theft of a minor. The family settled out of court for an undisclosed number of free months of rent.

“That’s probably when he got the idea to go after Bubbles and Banana,” Harold’s owner says.

There is a happy ending in all of this, just not for Trés. @bubblesandbanana has become one of the biggest petinfluencer accounts on Instagram— with over 2.7 million followers.

Cordero says she was not only able to move into a nicer, bigger 1-bedroom apartment in SOMA last month, she is now able to afford to send her niece to college with the extra revenue she earns from the social media platform.

“So it turns out, Bubbles and Banana actually can earn money. But they still can’t pay rent,” she says. ❤

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