WINE & DINE 2012: Thinking Caps
A journey into the moist, dark-harbored and delicious existence that is growing mushrooms in Monterey County.
The sex organ of a lion’s mane mushroom looks like it belongs under the ocean. Its ridges evoke coral, with pale yellow ribs and dramatic swirls that look like they’ve been carved by the sway ...
WINE & DINE 2012: Olive You Long Time
Carmel Valley’s artisan olive-oil producers pledge their devotion to extra virgin, while sluttier impostors lurk.
A knuckle-deep pour of oil pools inside a cobalt-colored shot glass; Charlotte Muia instructs me to slurp it, sans bread. I take it down, wait for the picante to arrive on the exhale and note ...
Issues / 2012 / Oct 25
Most Wanted
The first annual Monterey Bay Bacon, Blues & Brews Festival celebrates a heavenly combination.
Homer Simpson once asked, “Is it Bacon Day?” Saturday the answer to Homer’s question is a big fat yes thanks to the inaugural Monterey Bay Bacon, Blues & Brews Festival at the Fairgrounds. As pork ...
Conducting Research
Youth Music Monterey’s new youthful director brings a global background to the stage.
When Farkhad Khudyev addresses his orchestra, he often sounds more like he’s prepared to give a thoughtful commencement speech with deep truths about life rather than correct a measure played too quickly or a note ...
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the coming days, many of your important tasks will be best accomplished through caginess and craftiness. Are you willing to work behind the scenes and beneath the surface? I suspect ...
By The Numbers 10.25.12
Real Estate
$2,179,000 Recent Sale 78 Spanish Bay Circle, .3Pebble Beach Built: 1990 Size: 3,476 square feet Features: 3 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms, 2-car garage Amenities: Ocean views, 2 fireplaces, vaulted ceilings, breakfast nook, chef’s kitchen, landscaped grounds ...
Edgy Eating
The daring art of crafting a Big Sur Food & Wine Festival that lives on the brink.
The mysterious, dark and unmarked wine bottle came as a thank you for schlepping tables, chairs and boxes between venues at Big Sur Food & Wine 2011. The event volunteer who gave it to me ...
Marinus
Star Turn: Bernardus Lodge builds upon an esteemed reputation with a refreshed look and seasonal food that merits more from Michelin.
Marinus at Bernardus Lodge is Carmel Valley’s throwdown answer to the French Laundry, a hotel restaurant that should be known as so much more, a place surrounded by grapevines and lush grounds meant for strolling, ...
Letters To The Editor 10.25.12
The Enforcer The city needs to start enforcing its building codes (“Shootings, gang violence on the rise in Seaside; what do you think should be done?” posted Oct. 18 to Facebook). The apartment building next ...
Cloud Atlas
High in the Sky: Time flies in more ways than one in soaring, enthralling Cloud Atlas
It opens in the same way that, most likely, the very first story told for entertainment began, 100,000 years ago: with an elderly person wizened by wisdom speaking to an audience gathered ’round a campfire. ...
Fun Size
Run from Fun: Fun Size takes the tweenage comedy genre to icky places.
Fun Size is amoral, unfunny and a chore to sit through. Worse, it takes some situations with children so nonchalantly that it becomes uncomfortable to watch. If ever a movie sends the wrong message to ...
New Frontier
Communion in the Redwoods II brings three days of music, in its purist form, to Big Sur.
United Kingdom-based live music promotion team/label Communion prides itself as a music industry outsider. “Communion was born out of musicians being fed up with being exploited,” says Communion co-founder and Mumford & Sons keys player/accordionist ...
A Little Crush
Salinas Valley wine industry slow growing, despite vision for economic boom.
In the time it’s taking to resolve litigation over the county’s 2010 General Plan, winemakers could have already fermented a couple of vintages of Monterey County’s signature Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. The county’s vision for ...
Chaos in Slow Motion
Monterey climate-change workshop looks at the latest shoreline impacts.
A sand-mining operation in Marina is chewing at the southern Monterey Bay shoreline, and the West Coast sea level is rising faster than we thought. This is among the evidence that climate change is here, ...
Bridging the Gap
County still stalled on implementing temporary coverage under Obamacare.
Kathy Singley says she and her husband never get sick, but she’d really like to visit a dentist. Employer-provided health insurance, though, has proved elusive; her husband works in construction and Singley is a caregiver, ...
Backup Plans
Central Coast Veterans’ Cemetery is likely to be funded without Monterey Downs.
Fort Ord conservationists and veterans are publicly sparring over the proposed sale of a tree-studded Fort Ord parcel to fund a long-awaited Central Coast Veterans Cemetery. But that debate may be a red herring. Most ...
Walmart workers walk off the job in a dramatic action that could remake working-class America.Walmart workers walk off the job in a dramatic action that could remake working-class America.
More than a year ago, Walmart spokesman Steven Restivo lyrically told me that the company had changed its relationship with communities, from a “transactional to transformational” one. That had a nice ring to it. Walmart ...
Public Citizen 10.25.12
THURSDAY 10 | 25 HOW MEMORY WORKS | MONTEREY – Pat Potter, director of the Alzheimer’s Association, presents tips on memory retention that can help people with early memory loss. 2-3pm. 21 Lower Ragsdale Drive. ...
Osio Cinemas faces down its own extinction.
At the Osio Cinemas in downtown Monterey, co-owner Mark Borde had a decision to make this summer, one of the “change or die” variety. The change (as it so often is) was inevitable and going ...
Street Talk 10.25.12 (asked @ Coffee Mia in Marina.)
What was your strangest talent As a kid?
Follow-up: What did you want to be when you grew up? TIM LEDESMA | Contractor | Marina A: I could fix anything. I fixed radios, bicycles at age 10. And I still fix things. I ...
Squid Speaks
LETTUCE ENTERTAIN YOU… There’s nothing quite like a late summer Bacchanalia of food, wine and young Republicans at play to make Squid gleeful. And so last weekend Squid put on the finest party regalia (popped-collar ...
Who Done Ate?
Saltshaker Theater’s murder/mystery performance pops up in an unlikely place for good (and probable) cause.
Saltshaker Theater’s doing dinner theater? That relic of the 1970s? Actually, the idea dates back to the Middle Ages, but established itself in the States in the 1950s and ’60s, and flourished as popular regional ...
