She has paid $2,000 for Grape Camp, a three-day getaway for tourists who want to learn how to pick grapes in the vineyards. She has perfect salon hair, neatly plucked eyebrows half hidden by sunglasses, and the relaxed demeanor of, well, someone who can afford to spend $2,000 on Grape Camp. While Mexican laborers work the vineyards behind her, she speaks to the camera.
Articles by Gabe Meline
The Box Sets of 2011
Ah, Nevermind. Although the Pixies’ Trompe le Monde, the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ BloodSugarSexMagik and A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory were all released on the same day in 1991 as Nirvana’s breakthrough album, only Nevermind received the 20th-anniversary box-set treatment this year.
Deposit Security
In the minds of most renters, interior design is the Eden-like province of homeowners. Time and again, the looming threat of losing one’s security deposit keeps tenants in the live-in equivalent of a hospital room—white walls, sterile décor, few or no design elements whatsoever and a TV in the corner. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are some cheap and easy methods of basic design that can ameliorate Ugly Rental Syndrome.
Gift Guide: Bike Gadgets
Bike people are the worst. I mean that in the best possible way. Namely, bike people have such a personal physical and spiritual connection to their bikes that to give them a bike-related gift and expect them to use it traipses on blasphemy. If they’re serious about cycling, chances are they’ve educated themselves about every gadget on the market and tailored their ride just so, ne’er to be altered by a meddling if well-intentioned gift-giver. If they just dig cruising around town on a single-speed, chances are they’ll laugh in the face of anything remotely like clip-pedal shoes or spandex gear. What to do?
Fred Eaglesmith, Back in Santa Cruz
After 30 years of ramshackle, redneck storytelling about cars, guns and booze, Fred Eaglesmith has found his soft side. Cha Cha Cha, the prolific, under-the radar songwriter’s 18th album, is a swampy, noirish landscape of minor keys, rattling percussion, female backup singers and a far more subdued iteration of Eaglesmith’s signature rasp. His lyrics are lonesome, pleading for departed lovers to return and quell his inner torment. Even to diehard Fredheads, as his legions of fans call themselves, the record is a complete curveball, departing radically from the rollicking, good-natured Eaglesmith of old.
Metheny Clatters into Santa Cruz
Pat Metheny is jazz’s eternal teenager, forever fiddling with knobs and effects, playing as many noodling notes as possible and tonight, on Easter Sunday, calling at 11:30pm to talk about his new project, the musical equivalent of the ultimate remote-control car.
The Carnivore’s Agenda
It’s another Monday night south of Market in San Francisco. As the jukebox blares Joy Division, the Bloodhound Bar is shoulder to shoulder with thirty-somethings sipping from Mason jars of bacon-infused whiskey cocktails. Beards, tattoos, bandanas and black T-shirts mingle. Suddenly, the back door flies open. Ryan Farr and Taylor Boetticher emerge, carrying giant goat and lamb carcasses high above their heads. With slideshow
