Issues / 2000
Your Letters
Thanks, Ghostbusters Thank you for your good, detailed coverage of our local heroes ("Ghostbusters," 12/14-20), who uncovered the compromised land-use practices that had been allowed to flourish between developers--attorney Tony Lombardo and the county. Pat ...
Streetalk
New Year''s Eve is just days away and the parties are ready to begin. As we slide from holiday revelry and into the first year of a new millennium--or maybe the second, no one knows--resolutions ...
The ancient Chinese art of feng shui has people all fired up trying to combat that nasty little 'sha' force.
831--Tales from the Area CodeWithin hours of my first feng shui workshop, I''d broken a sweat rearranging the bedroom furniture. It wasn''t that I actually held any hope for our overpriced little rental with its ...
Scientists study the health risks of poverty.
Jesus Lopez''s eyes flash with indignation as he describes the difficulty of proving that it''s not just farmworkers who are at risk for pesticide exposure. A community worker who has worked for California Rural Legal ...
From The Editorial Desk
on an enlightening, entertaining year--read our cover story for all the shenanigans, skullduggery, boondoggles and Poppycock.Squid looks back
The Music Heritage Society offers a world of hard-to-find choices for classical music lovers.
classicalWhile most classical record manufacturers continue to struggle for corporate stability and artistic direction, Music Heritage Society quietly continues to deliver the goods. Garnering licensing agreements that make up to 300 titles available to its ...
Squid looks back on 2000
Why''s Everybody Always Picking on Me? Stetson-sportin'' legislator Pete Frusetta was better known for his verbal gaffes than his silver spurs. Eventually his fellow Assemblymembers just stopped listening altogether. It Takes Money to Save the ...
The origins and orientation of a food critic looking for love.
Amazingly, the year 2000 has come and finally is about to be gone. Aside from the hyper hype and fanfare on the front end, it was pretty much like any other year. Now we''re about ...
Your Letters
Animals Are People, Too Having written about urban wildlife for years, I am used to seeing misinformation, and Christina Waters' article, "Boomer the Critter Man" (12/14-20), was no exception. For the record, Fish and Game ...
Scott Dosch creates stunning seaside sculptures that are literally here today, gone tomorrow.
Scott Dosch stands on the sand at the bottom of Carmel''s Ocean Avenue passing around a plastic bucket as gawking tourists scramble through their pockets and purses for dollar bills. "Please support the arts, folks," ...
At Little Wings' Carmel Highlands farm, abused kids and mistreated animals learn kindness and trust.
Across from Point Lobos off Highway 1, a dusty road winds past horse pastures, trailers, and barns. A small sign tacked on a tree points the way to Redwings Horse Sanctuary, a 50-acre refuge overlooking ...
Streetalk
The Season is upon us like fleas on rats. Everywhere people are spreading joy and maxing out their credit cards. Is this the spirit of America''s favorite holiday? To find out, we braved Santa''s little ...
Menorahs, dreidels and mom's homecooking make the Jewish holiday special.
SidedishHanukkah, the eight-day Jewish holiday that begins on Dec. 21, commemorates the survival of the Jewish faith. During the second pre-Christian century, the Syrian-Greek emperor Antiochus IV forced his subjects in Judea (the southern part ...
Squidfry
Torpedoes Be Damned The Monterey Bay Shores Resort, the 495-room hotel and condo complex previously destined for the Sand City coastline, went down in flames at the state Coastal Commission meeting in San Francisco last ...
A return home for Christmas offers cold comfort and warm memories.
831--tales from the area codeFor those of us whose karmic condition involved a happy childhood, the kitchen refrigerator occupied a special niche. And I don''t just mean slightly to the left of the oven. In ...
Women with low voices find a niche in the boys' room.
classicalTrue female altos, singers whose range extends well below the middle C that stands at the bottom of the soprano range, are rare. Famous altos of modern recording history include Kathleen Ferrier, Erzsebet Komlossy and ...
A frenzy of residential redevelopment threatens to change the face of Carmel.
Last Thursday, about a dozen longtime Carmelites journeyed from their sleepy village by the sea to San Francisco to give the state Coastal Commission a piece of their minds. On the commission''s agenda loomed the ...
From The Editorial Desk
Congratulations to Jeff Zunich,who's $101 dollars richer as a result of winning our annual short story contest. Zunich's miniature story narrowly beat out runners-up Gary Carter and Penny Ellsworth, who each scored a free dinner ...
the winners
Congratulations to Jeff Zunich, who's $101 dollars richer as a result of winning our annual short story contest. Zunich's miniature story narrowly beat out runners-up Gary Carter and Penny Ellsworth, who each scored a free ...
Though the parallels with Robinson Crusoe are obvious, Cast Away misses the point.
Rereading Daniel Defoe''s Robinson Crusoe--the godfather of all castaway adventures, including the new movie Cast Away--it''s striking how much of a message it contains. Written in 1719, the novel flatters its middle class audience in ...
Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
The Virgen of Guadalupe''s mythic story has roots that reach back centuries and still enthralls believers. It begins when Indio Juan Diego first sees the Virgen on Tepeyac Hill outside Mexico City, a site sacred ...
Your Letters
High Rents Hurt All I'd like to thank the Weekly for Traci Hukill's article on the Buena Vista Land Co.'s massive rent hike ("Home Breaker," 12/7-13). As a resident of the Olympia Grove Apartments mentioned ...
The new organic standard is almost here.
When is a potato a potato, and when is it a pesticide? Ask McDonald''s, whose popular salty french fries were pulled from restaurants six months ago after disgusted customers learned that the potatoes had been ...
Reap this year's harvest of boxed CD sets and make a music lover's day.
After a couple of fairly lean years for people who enjoy giving the gift of music for the holidays, the new century has begun with a bumper crop of boxed sets to consider for gift ...
Want a future community leader? Local churches and unions are finding the best way to get one is to train one yourself.
Martha Diehl just concluded eight hours of role-playing, active listening exercises and communication training aimed to make her feel more connected to people around her. "It''s a very different way of doing things. It''s very ...
News of the The Long Bar's abrupt closure headlines a week that's filled with music.
Earlier this week, owners of the Long Bar suddenly shut its doors. On the one hand, it was sudden and unexpected; on the other, a revamp had been scheduled for sometime after Christmas. So it''s ...
The Camerata Singers deliver a concert of seasonal music that reflects improved sound and tone.
classical Noticeable improvements marked John Koza''s Camerata Singers concert at Carmel Mission. The holiday program--a sampler which wandered the world from France to Latvia to Nigeria--was almost free of the pitch problems that have nagged ...
Christmas feasts feed both the body and the soul.
Eating messy krushchiki and listening to mystic kolendy as a child at the home of my mother''s best friend always made me feel the magic of Christmas. Those Polish "angel wings"--a twisted, deep-fried cookie liberally ...
Two engaging exhibits echo a fixed fact of life, that it's the little things that really reveal the big picture.
Many writers claim that a second-rate novel is easier to write than a first-rate poem. With a small work, there''s no fudging or hiding: Every word counts. Something similar happens in art, as two local ...
The electoral college reconsidered.
This Sunday, John Laird will climb into his car and drive part of the way to Sacramento to his mother''s house in Pleasanton to spend the night, just to make sure--really, really sure--that nothing gets ...
Streetalk
People can''t seem to stop hoping for World Peace--and we''re not just talking Miss America candidates, either. While wars and riots rage all around the world, we sit and conceptualize a budding utopia for every ...
Tony-winner John Guare's glittering lines lost in lackluster production.
One of the key speeches in John Guare''s Six Degrees of Separation is delivered by Ouisa Kittredge (Marlie Avant in a fine performance). She marvels at the ways in which human beings are connected to ...
How a retired schoolteacher and some lawyers unveiled a deceptive labyrinth of ghostwritten government records.
Something just wasn''t right. To neighbors and activists who keep a watchful eye on Monterey County''s development activities, goings-on down at the Planning Department hadn''t seemed fair for years. For the latter part of the ...
Indian food temple's tandor and seasonings fire the palate and the imagination.
Here was the plan. Chico, Zeppo and I (Harpo), would meet Groucho down at India''s Clay Oven for a foray into the mysterious world of curry and tandoori. Chico wanted us to wear turbans, but ...
Excerpts from depositions taken by attorney Michael Stamp in the case Bernardi v. Monterey County
Joseph Karnes, attorney with Lombardo & Gilles: Q. Well, as part of your standard practice of reviewing what you submitted and comparing it to what the county actually filed, would it surprise you to find ...
Letters
Whale of a Tale First, I'd like to thank the Weekly for Traci Hukill's excellent article on the humpback whales, as well as the state of whales in general ("Fluke of Nature," Nov. 30-Dec. 6). ...
You can't taste, smell, see, touch, or hear it but you know what makes a band great.
What makes Tom Waits so goddamned special? Waits mumbles words that dribble like shards of glass on honey. Looking at his mug is something like staring at some old dog who has had a hard ...
Smuin Ballet delivers a stockingful of seasonal treats.
classical It seemed everyone exclaimed "What a treat!" in reaction to the Smuin Ballets'' Christmas Ballet at Santa Catalina School last weekend. The performances--three of them--fired up the holiday spirit for those who attended. During ...
Artifacts
Scene and Not Heard Once upon a time, every cabbie, bookie or cableguy had a screenplay knockin' around the old brainpan. Taut, tense, terribly artsie all. Uppity Quentin Tarantino's rough and randy screen work unleashed ...
Monterey Bay SCUBA diving is not for the lazy, the vain or the faint of heart.
831--Tails From The Area Code Scuba Libre: Neophyte underwater adventurer Traci Hukill takes one last surface breath before her virgin dive. Fifty-five feet below the ocean''s surface in a hazy world of green and blue, ...
Squidfry
It's All For the Children!So, Skip Barber Racing School has become the new Kid Friendly Skip Barber Racing School, eh? Squid took note last week when 100 students from Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas ...
Carmel Valley photographer John Sexton examines the meaning and beauty of technology and the natural world.
Artistic inspiration can strike at the oddest times and in the oddest places. For Carmel Valley''s John Sexton--regarded as a contemporary master of large format black and white landscape photography--the inspiration for his latest book, ...
No rope can break Vertical Limit's plummet into bad moviemaking.
Chris O''Donnell, emoting horror at the death of his father, is one of the most uproarious sights in this year''s cinema. In the opening of Vertical Limit, Peter (O''Donnell), his father and his sister Annie ...
Some thirsty citizens strive to flush away thePeninsula water district.
Mark Twain''s words "Whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over" ring truer than ever today. In the year 2001, you may not see shotgun showdowns between riled ranchers. Nevertheless, some of Monterey ...
Streetalk.
You come to two doors. One leads to hell, the other to your goal. Standing in front of them are two men. One lies all the time and one tells the truth. You can only ...
Buena Vista Land Co.'s rent hikes could force many long-term, older tenants to hit the road.
Terry Robbins is steamed. "For these landlords to do this to us is just unconscionable," the 79-year-old New York native says disgustedly. "They have no heart and they don''t care. What gives them the right ...
Don't laugh--'sudden oak death' is a real menace.
There are portions of Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park where the bare tanoaks and live oaks resemble a New England forest during the height of winter. The trees are victims of "sudden oak death syndrome," ...
No-frills but delectable thrills at Seaside's Orient Restaurant.
There are 176 different dishes on the menu at Orient Restaurant, a little Chinese/Vietnamese joint in Seaside, over there around the corner from University Plaza, whose landlord has still done nothing to improve the appearance--like ...
Through fleeting encounters, two Monterey photographers achieve colorful contact with both the exotic and the shared.
Color is emotion--it has the capacity to shock, seduce, envelop, divide. How we see color reveals who we are, what we believe. Color also can suggest new ways of looking at the world, as the ...
Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable toys with cultural philosophy while delivering a respectable thriller.
Nine-year-old Elijah Price is a boy with a burden, specifically a degenerative bone disease that has rendered his thin frame as excessively fragile as a crystal champagne flute in the hands of a tipsy New ...
Tommy Castro's blues wear well; Jessica Williams likes to improvise; Jeffrey Osborne gets smooth.
what''s up, chuck? Tommy Castro, one of the biggest names in contemporary Bay Area blues, makes his debut at Sly McFly''s this weekend. Although this marks Castro''s first time at the Cannery Row nightclub, he ...
Revisiting Reviews
Like his reviews, Scott MacClelland''s take on the Herald''s decision to exclude classical music reviews was right on target: relevant, substantial and perceptive ("Critical Shortfall," 11/22-29). The decision was unfortunate for a number of reasons. ...
At Last, Room Service for Squids!
Squid''s announcement two weeks ago concerning an initiative to legalize gambling in California prompted one good citizen to pass on information about a plan to build an undersea hotel in the Monterey Bay. Yes, you ...
The War on Drugs goes after books.
Should the purchase of certain books be considered evidence of criminal activity? The Drug Enforcement Agency thinks so, and so does a Colorado judge who ordered the owners of the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, ...
By Aaron S. Birk and Kevin Smith
street talk There are people out there who are just too cool to be ignored. Some of them have the secret of sublime personality down to a science. They wear dark sunglasses and say all ...
A wide-eyed innocent abroad learns about manners, noodles and little white things with bright pink edges.
sidedish As I changed my inside slippers for my outside shoes, Yakko said, "We will eat lunch now." She then led me out of the house, both of us ducking under all the door frames ...
Getting high, spyhopped and slimed by Monterey Bay's friendly humpbacks.
A small, fleece-clad group huddles in the storefront of Randy''s Fishing Trips on the wharf, still flushed and excited from the brisk salt air and thrill of the recent encounter. This gaggle is comprised of ...
Talented troupe offers insight and laughter in Pirandello's classic.
Western Stage''s production of Luigi Pirandello''s Six Characters in Search of an Author is both accessible and amusing. It''s also thought-provoking, thanks to director Jon Patrick Selover''s staging of the dense but playful 1988 Robert ...
The Central Coast gears up to give mighty Cisco a mighty legal challenge over its proposed Coyote Valley campus.
Make no mistake--the hotly contested Coyote Valley research park is not the only project in the works for computer networking giant Cisco Systems. Likened by some to a snapping turtle, Cisco has gobbled up more ...
Union labor may yet get the last word on the Basic Vegetable strike.
The summer of 1999 was a low point for labor on the Central Coast. In June, the United Farmworkers of America lost its hard-fought election bid to represent workers at the nation''s largest employer of ...
Pugilism, Passion and Poetry
They stood together, sharing the ultimate private moment, foreheads nearly touching like two teens plotting a slumber party prank, girlfriends planning a shopping trip to the mall. Moments before, Carol Wirth and Anna Carrizales had ...
Local abortion providers are still far from ready to prescribe the abortion pill.
Seventeen years after the FDA gave the OK to test RU-486, 12 years after French women began using it, seven years after President Clinton lifted President Bush''s ban on its importation, four years after the ...
Michele Wilkes conjures magical moments in Fifi's food and wine fairyland.
There are many things to remind us (the males of the species) daily that women are tougher than we are. I will not insult anyone reading this by making a list, since even the simplest ...
Shaken, Not Stirred
Anyone who has spent even a short time at the martini bar at Lallapalooza Restaurant on Alvarado is familiar with Daniel Koffman''s work. He''s the artist responsible for the 60 artworks in varied mediums that ...
'Tis that time of year: Time for more movies than you can shake your laser at.
holiday picks What''s the holiday season without the fat-dripping smell of roasting turkey, the boozy nutmeg aroma of spiked egg-nog...or the comforting smell of buttered popcorn? Yep. Along with the usual family and travel stresses ...
The next generation of El Teatro Campesino continues to make art for social change but with a decidedly modern beat.
Brothers Kinan, Anahuac and Lakin Valdez, along with cousin Emiliano and a council of approximately 15 other young people, engage in a wide range of projects that continue the late ''60s and ''70s social activism ...
From The Editorial Desk
If you live in any sort of an urban area, you've seen them, the street people in their ragged clothes. In moments of guilt you've given them some spare change, or maybe, in moments of ...
Fries With That?
Truly, it is not good to be cheap. It is not good to be easy. This is true if you are dating and it is true if you are voting. But Squid would caution readers ...
A venerable piano bar attempts to navigate Monterey's byzantine zoning regulations.
There is a bar on Lighthouse in Monterey affectionately known as Bosso''s. It''s a typical bar, with a poolroom, a taproom, and more important to this tale, a large lounge within which rests an old ...
MPUSD schools need at least $60 million in repairs and a successful bond issue.
When a 200-square-foot section of roof crashed down on the heads of some Monterey High School students in March of 1999, injuring two of them, Monterey Peninsula Unified School District officials could no longer ignore ...
A daughter of Detroit discovers the Mideast sun through Levantine cuisine.
sidedish When I was a child, my mother''s favorite thing to make for dinner was reservations. This meant that at least once a month we would eat at a restaurant catering to Detroit''s 350,000-strong population ...
Memorial Needed
"Vet Project" (11/9-15), the fine article by Rebecca Crocker, hit home. As a veteran of bloody Word War II and frozen Korea, I still see the dead and dying. All of us had the right ...
Latino candidates sweep Monterey County elections.
Through the fog of the national election results (or the lack thereof) that loomed last Wednesday morning, one thing became perfectly clear: The drive to get out the Latino vote on the Central Coast worked. ...
The 54th Signal Battalion completes the circle with its last reunion in Monterey.
Two weeks ago, in a meeting room at the Casa Munras Hotel in Monterey, a small band of 75 World War II veterans, their wives and widows gathered together for the last time. It was ...
Murder Mysteries
In the city of Monterey alone, there are 17 unsolved murders since 1971 that are begging for answers. These are the cases that Monterey detectives Leslie Sonne and Bill Clark face every day. Detectives Bill ...
Piece by piece, Fort Ord's abandoned military prison gets a new life as an anti-crime art exhibition.
Left: For the past year, Bob Gillard has been restoring the prison at Fort Ord. Right: ''Inmates'' constructed by artist E. Thogmartin will inhabit the cell blocks. Robert Gillard is painting the prison walls. For ...
Benefits of Homeschooling
Thanks to Brett Wilbur and the Weekly for the interesting and well-balanced article on homeschooling ("Teach Your Children Well," 11/9-15). As a homeschooling support teacher for 12 years (and former homeschooling parent), I would like ...
A desperate developer digs deep to secure the swing vote on the water board.
Jack Farmer is 70 years old, in need of .03 acre feet of water to install a new shower in his home, and stuck at number 74 on the county''s waiting list for water. "I''m ...
By Aaron S. Birk
street talk It was William Blake who said that "excess leads to the palace of wisdom," but we have to wonder if there is any truth in that. Some people go out and imbibe with ...
Homestyle Creole cooking makes Ferdi's famous with locals.
I''m sitting around on the morning of the day we''re going to Ferdi''s for lunch (they only serve lunch) and into my head fly images of the Fight Doctor, Ferdi Pacheco--you know the guy, the ...
"Ahnuld" continues his investigations into the future, taking on evil scientists in The 6th Day.
The new Schwarzenegger film takes its title from Genesis 1:27, where God makes man on the 6th Day of creation. The 6th Day is all about the wrongness of playing God, a theses that''s maybe ...
There were no signs of forced entry, and testimony from more than 100 people paint a profile of Mooren as someone who was particularly security conscious.
When Starr Lynn Mooren was stabbed to death on Dec. 12, 1996, it was front page news in the Monterey County Herald. A year later, the identity of the murderer was still a mystery and ...
Dept. of Steinbeckiana
Audry Lynch, who wrote With Steinbeck in the Sea of Cortez (1991), has just published a new volume of reminiscences about her favorite author. The determined Lynch spent years tracking down Steinbeck''s remaining friends and ...
Viva, Las Monterey!
Reminisce with me, if you will, about last March''s election, when activist Barbara Bass Evans and attorney Michael Stamp proposed Measure B, the Monterey Coastal Protection Initiative, to voters. Measure B failed at the polls, ...
Artisanal cheese just might be your idea of heaven.
A dinner without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye. --Brillat-Savarin, early 19th century Does this sound European? I love how these guys are always comparing things to beautiful women. I would ...
The weirdness continues: Bloodthirsty DJ and one-man reggae band.
rock DJ Brian usually spins records for ''80s Night at Club Octane on Thursdays. This week, however, the young man is competing at the Pankration Finals in Greece. Pankration is a no-holds-barred fighting competition, one ...
Artist Pamela Carroll finds the world in the details.
Pamela Carroll bears witness to the world. In fact, the Carmel artist has made a career of exhaustively observing--sometimes inch by inch--everyday objects, down to their smallest aspects. "I look at an object like you ...
From The Editorial Desk
On TV, it's simple. Somebody gets murdered, the cops find a few clues or wring testimony out of some witness, the killer is apprehended and justice is served. In most cases, it takes an hour ...
Norbert Wu's Antarctica photographs take viewers on an incredible ocean journey.
In an age when everyone has become adept at picturetaking, when we are inundated with thousands of images from every corner of the globe, you would think the Earth would hold few visual surprises. As ...
Two recent books remind us that we are what we speak.
What if every single tree, plant, flower and shrub was killed off and replaced by, say, iceplant? And what if not only California, not only the United States, but the whole world became entirely "English-only"? ...
Tales From Across the Tracks
There''s something about Election Day... the rush of empowerment as you approach the poll, the ethereal sense of democratic righteousness when you slip the ballot beneath the plastic sheath and depress the hole punch, the ...
R.L.S., Part One
Monterey Public Library is presenting another in its series of lectures by distinguished scholars, this one by Dr. Barry Menikoff, a leading authority on Robert Louis Stevenson, who has just edited a new edition of ...
A Vietnam memorial in Salinas inches toward actualization.
Dionne Ybarra-Greenberg was three months old when her father was shot down by friendly fire in the jungles of Vietnam. "I met some men that had gone to school with my father and all gone ...
The late David Brower ignited the conservation movement.
When legendary Sierra Club executive director David Brower died at his home in Berkeley on Sunday, the environmental movement lost a fierce and uncompromising crusader. Brower, who was 88 when he died, left a string ...
Homeschoolers claim their kids are happy, well-adjusted and intellectually stimulated. But some homeschools look more like playtime than education.
Meet Amanda Meyers, 8 years old, and really into horses. Dressed in riding pants and shirt, she gallops around her living room clutching her new riding helmet. When she settles at the kitchen table next ...
A former New Yorker pines for the pies of his youth.
sidedish When I was 9 years old, I used to walk up the hill to the avenue to Regina''s Pizzeria. There was a local gentleman who used to sit on a backwards chair and welcome ...
Despite a stellar cast and game performances The Yards never quite comes together.
There are a number of extremely enjoyable aspects to this second feature by James Gray >(Little Odessa). Among them is Howard Shore''s ominous score, which never lets you forget you''re watching a slew of characters ...
Cafe Stravaganza is a colorful paean to its creator.
This is a story about a story I pieced together while eating at this colorful extension of what must truly be a colorful character, Mr. Fuad Bahou, proprietor of Cafe Stravaganza. Bahou, firstly an artist, ...
Monterey Opera's production of Madama Butterfly is awaiting metamorphosis.
classical Sufficient, if less than abundant, resources should have led to better results than were witnessed at last Saturday''s Madama Butterfly in Carmel. The cast in the Monterey Opera production, directed by Sid Cato, came ...
The Long Bar resurfaces, and Octane gets some mileage.
rock Last Thursday, sipping warm, steamed mead at Morgan''s, I was reminiscing about the old days (like a year ago) at the Long Bar when in the course of a few months I saw bands ...
