Most days on the Mendocino Coast are beautiful, but last Sunday, the first day of Fall 2024, was quite possibly the most perfect day I’ve experienced there yet. First, the day started under a blanket…
Posts published in “Essays”
It was a short walk to San Francisco's primary riot venues from my grungy tenement apartment at 925 Sacramento Street. Either up the hill to the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins, or through the Stockton…
Meeting Patrick Broderick, the brewmaster and owner of Tall Guy Brewing, is a lot like meeting a gigantic seven-year-old with tousled sandy hair and twinkling eyes. He ambles amiably through his taproom and, although well…
I don’t like it when sniveling little punks from the suburbs make snide and condescending comments about rednecks. “Oh yeah, those rednecks, those scary hillbilly goat-sodomizers in their overalls and Nascar jackets.” It’s a bunch…
Slim Pickens, a rodeo caller who went on to fame as a movie actor, said that 1950 Boonville was the roughest place he’d ever called a rodeo in. Buck Clark admits to having been an…
(Note: Today’s column is also available in Pumpkin Spice. Please see Page 42 for details.) As the days dwindled down to a tolerable few, I began taking increased interest in the sudden, colorful blossoming of…
At Burning Man sometimes something happens that is so totally unexpected and delightful you shake your head in wonderment. Interviewing the medical director of Emergency Services at Burning Man this year we both got a…