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October 2007

October 2007

 

October 2007 FEATURES


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Oakland Magazine »  October 2007 »  In the Mix
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In the Mix

A Hard Act to Swallow

The Yard Dogs' Life is a Cabaret


    “You can’t miss him. He looks like Johnny Depp and James Dean mixed together.” The young woman sitting in the sunshine on a sidewalk in an industrial Berkeley neighborhood near San Pablo Avenue munches on a salad and points toward the entrance of a cavernous art warehouse. Dodge the profusion of unidentifiable metal objects, old furniture and what looks like stuff but could be an installation-in-the-making, and you get to a narrow wooden staircase that leads to Zebu’s rented office space. The man is dressed entirely in black and yes, the sculpted cheekbones and leanness are Deanish and something in the gaze is Deppish.
    Zebu is the manager of the Yard Dogs Road Show, an Oakland-based performance art phenomenon that features a hyper-talented song-and-dance, have-bus-will-travel carnival cast of 13. Included in the lineup, along with a fire-eater, is sword-swallower Tobias Weinberger who also plays the musical saw (which helps give the show’s sound its eerie Cabaret quality) and produces a chicken during a magic act.
    Then there is the Folies Bergère-ish “Black and Blue Burlesque” troupe. “In the six years since they joined Yard Dogs, they’ve become less burlesque and more an abstract combination of artistic 8 aesthetic and performance,” says Zebu, who describes the show variously as surreal, vaudeville, art deco, ’70s glam-rock, carnival and, of course, cabaret, harking back to the form associated with Germany in the 1920s and ’30s.
    Zebu—also known as Eddy Joe Cotton, author of the book titled Hobo, which is his personal account of life on the road (freight train hopping and so forth)—is one of the Yard Dogs’ three original members. The name, he says, comes from the locomotives that move freight cars in the railroad yard. The group began with the intention of being a traveling show; it still is.
    The troupe started as a jug band that evolved into carnival, says Zebu. “What happened was a collaboration with the universe. There was this undercurrent of fate, like we were being led by an unknown force. We didn’t know where we were headed.” What they did was add musicians and performers, and reinvent themselves again and again.
“We starved for a long time,” he continues. “For years we just made food money and got by on the kindness of strangers. People would give us a place to stay for the night.” Or the Dogs would sleep in the bus they eventually acquired. They’ve played in probably 200 U.S. cities at least once, some many times, says Zebu. Early venues included such out-of-the-way places as Huntsville, Ala., a retirement community in Pahrump, Nev., and an Indian reservation in Yuma, Ariz.
    This year they filled San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium, and on their first European trip, wowed people in Portugal. London and Berlin are in the cards for next year.
Zebu and the group now believe anything is possible. “We need to keep defying gravity,” he says, adding that he feels there is a thin line between exploding creativity and things falling apart. Zebu’s imagery makes me think of the varied roles of the ever-mutating, never-predictable, sometimes earnest, often intense, Caribbean-camp-it-up Depp. I’d say this man in black tips to the pirate side.
    See the Yard Dogs Road Show schedule online at www.yarddogsroadshow.com.
—By Wanda Hennig
—Photography by Jan Stürmann

OAKLAND MADE

Nothing Cheesy About This Art


    Most of us complain about junk mail. But not Barbara Cushman. About 15 years ago, the enterprising Oakland artist started recycling her junk mail: stitching bits of it together to form envelopes. The envelopes became classier when she switched from junk mail to recycled calendars. Then she began making pop-art cards: collages of postage stamps, with zigzag pinking-shear edges, rubber stamp ornamentations, found-art images and distinctive perforations (initially done with her sewing machine, now with a small hand press).             Cushman displays a selection of her cards next to the cheese counter at The Pasta Shop in Oakland’s Rockridge Market Hall—her place of employment for almost 15 years. She reduced her shifts to two days a week in May 2007 so she could devote more time to her art, which includes customized cards for weddings and special events.
    When Cushman moved west from New York in 1972, she opened a small retail store on San Francisco’s Fillmore Street. She met artists, got introduced to color-Xerox and postage-stamp art, and soon was stocking so many avant-garde items, way beyond the comprehension of her mainstream customers, that she put herself out of business. But by then she had realized that she was an artist herself. “I recognized I had an amorphous creativity and appreciated stuff ahead of the curve,” she laughs.
    Cushman—a walking creative statement with her distinctive mauve coif and enormous collection of earrings, pins and necklaces that she wears in infinite inventive combinations—lives in a colorful, cavernous loft in Oakland, crammed with objets d’art. Each piece is either something she might use to create her own art or something she has collected that comes with a story, such as the cluster of blue and white mugs and cups made by Berkeley contemporary ceramic artist Coille Hooven. Cushman loves their whimsy and starts each day with a creative question. “Which cup should I use today for
my morning tea?”
    Her own art, Cushman says, is still a work in progress, constantly evolving. And at last, now that she is “retired,” she has time to grow it.
    See a selection of Cushman’s cards at www.barbaracushman.com. Contact Cushman through her Web site or call (510) 534-8685.      
—Wanda Hennig


Caffeine, Collaboration and Cartoons

    Some East Bay coffee shops are serving up more than froth-topped lattes and fresh-brewed regular and decaf. We’re not talking about the flavored concoctions that are more milkshake than Joe. Creativity and community rule at Gaylord’s Caffe Espresso on Piedmont Avenue. It’s a hangout that supports just that: hanging out—with a laptop; with friends; and, in this case, with drawing tools and a fellow artist who, like you, has a passion for the cartoon genre.   
    Thien Pham thinks he’s 32, but he isn’t sure, as he escaped with his parents on a boat from Vietnam when he was about 5 years old and doesn’t have his birth certificate. His best friend, Briana Miller, is in her 20s. Pham is married. Miller has a boyfriend. Both are art teachers at Oakland’s Bishop O’Dowd High School.
    Gaylord’s comes into the picture because it’s where this pair, who met at a comic book convention in San Francisco, have been getting together amidst the aroma of what’s brewing, the occasional screech of the blender and the hubbub of conversation every Wednesday evening for the past three years to create—and brainstorm on ways to promote—comic book art. Together they represent 13 comic book artists, buying their work and then selling it on consignment at stores such as Comic Relief, Dr. Comic & Mr. Games, Issues and Pendragon Books, and on their promotional Web site, www.hobocomics.com.
    Pham is best known for his quirky East Bay Express restaurant review cartoon, “I Like Eating.” Miller creates a daily comic blog on her Web site, www.breakcomics.com. Their work regularly features each other as characters and together they’re planning a cartoon cookbook.
    “Piedmont Avenue is a hotbed of cartoon creativity,” says Pham, who lives nearby and adds: “I love this street. I get sad when I have to leave it.” And Gaylord’s, they attest, is where they’re inspired to create. “We see a lot of collaboration here,” says Miller. “Knitters, crocheters, jewelry designers—other artists.” A case of a coffee shop brewing up a great deal more than caffeine and beans.                                                                  
—Wanda Hennig
—Art by Thien Pham and Briana Miller

ABOUT A LINEBACKER

Hometown Hero


    Kirk Morrison’s story reads like a Disney movie. Not only does he make it from West Oakland to the NFL, overcoming a rough environment and perpetual underdog status in the process, but he also gets to play for his hometown team, the Oakland Raiders.
    Morrison, a 6-foot-2, 240-pound middle linebacker, is in his third season with the Raiders, and the novelty has yet to wear off.
    “Every day you go out there, it’s a dream come true,” Morrison, 25, says. “At that moment, when I’m about to come out of the tunnel, it’s just one of those feelings. I can’t explain it. It’s unbelievable. The same feeling comes across me every time I come out on that field.”
    It’s pretty rare for professional athletes to play for their hometown team in any sport. It’s even rarer to start out their career with their hometown team, as rookies have very little control over where they land. Morrison went from Pop Warner football with the Oakland Saints to high school football at Bishop O’Dowd to college ball at San Diego State before being drafted in the third round by the Raiders in 2005.
    Morrison was a Silver & Black diehard growing up. Though the Raiders were in Los Angeles when he started following the NFL, Morrison was still born into Raider Nation because his family remained faithful fans. He used to drive to L.A. for Raider games with his father, David, who has owned a block of four season tickets since the team returned to Oakland.
    Morrison was there almost every game until he got drafted. Now he is there every game, with a much better view.
    “There are just so many things, being at home, I have to play for,” says Morrison, who led the Raiders in tackles last season. “So I have to bring it. I always have to be on my toes, give everything I’ve got. I know how our fans are, because I was one. I know how everybody feels about the Raiders. I’m not just doing this for myself.”      
—Marccus W. Thompson II

Returning Pacifica to Treasure Island


    The year was 1939, and a 20-year-old Oakland athlete named Sal DeGuarda was living a dream. He was performing in the Billy Rose Aquacade at the Golden Gate International Exhibition on Treasure Island. The thrill of swimming with icon Esther Williams was something he would never forget. But there was another lady that captured his fancy, and continues to hold it today.
    DeGuarda’s dream, in his golden years, is to rebuild the 80-foot sculpture called Pacifica that was erected for the fair as a symbol of Pacific Rim unity. “That statue should never have been torn down,” says DeGuarda, who watched the Navy destroy the grand lady a year after the Expo ended. “She was the most significant piece of art at the World’s Fair,” he laments. He compares Pacifica to the Statue of Liberty in New York and envisions restoring her to prominence on Treasure Island.
    Pardon the pun, but isn’t rebuilding this statue a monumental project for an 87-year-old man? Not if you’re a guy like DeGuarda. A contractor for more than 60 years, he’s rebuilt it a thousand times in his mind. “I go to sleep every night thinking about this statue,” he admits.
    In fact, DeGuarda has built an exact replica in miniature and has been given the OK to construct an 8-foot statue of Pacifica in, fittingly, the town of Pacifica. “It’s going up in the entrance to one of the city buildings,” he says, adding that the money for the project is coming out of his own pocket. “My son told me, ‘Dad, I’ll run the construction business, and you concentrate on making the statue.’ ”
    Now he’s hired a fundraiser and come up with a plan and a pamphlet for soliciting donations for his Treasure Island project. There’s also the matter of convincing the Redevelopment Agency on Treasure Island that the statue should be rebuilt. “We have to do a little maneuvering to get them off their rear ends,” laughs DeGuarda, who has met with officials and knows how slowly the wheels of bureaucracy can turn.
    But it’s hard to argue with his vision. DeGuarda sees the statue as a huge PR piece for Treasure Island and even Oakland. “Every time there’s a football game or a baseball game, the blimp will fly overhead and show the Pacifica statue to the world.”
    Will DeGuarda’s dream be realized? Will he live to see his beloved Pacifica with her outstretched hands, standing proudly on the site that she graced almost 70 years ago? “It’s what keeps me going now,” he says with an unwavering voice. “This is my legacy.”
—Ginny Prior

Rare Flower Stops Developers


    There is a flower so rare it only grows in two small locations—and one of them is smack in the middle of a new development in the Oakland hills. The tiny endangered plant known as presidio clarkia, a member of the evening-primrose family, is found in a total habitat of less than five acres in San Francisco’s Presidio and the Oakland hills, but it is mighty enough to have put the brakes on a plan by Andalucia Properties to develop 11/3 acres of steep hillside around Crestmont Drive and Redwood Road in Oakland. Purchased nine years ago, the property was originally intended to be developed into five homes, but after the pink flower was discovered on the land, the plan was scrapped in favor of building only four homes and adding a conservation easement on the remaining two-thirds of the property to help protect what is left of the flower’s shrinking habitat.
    But a local environmental group called the Center for Biological Diversity (www.biologicaldiversity.org) objected to the plan, saying that in similar cases of plant versus developer (such as the Oakland Hills Tennis Club and Chabot Space and Science Center, located nearby) builders haven’t followed through on their agreements to protect endangered flora. The center also claims the city itself has contributed to the decline in population of these plants through “careless vegetation management activities” and is in violation of the U.S. and California Endangered Species Acts, which require anyone who plans to destroy a native plant to get a “take” permit first, as well as file a conservation plan.
    The project is being watched carefully by local activist Ralph Kanz, who began Friends of Oakland’s Endangered Species to rally support for presidio clarkia and other endangered plants with tiny habitats also found in the area, including the pallid manzanita, most beautiful jewelflower and San Francisco popcornflower. He reported the presence of surveyors at the Crestmont Drive site to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has put a hold on the project until a take permit is issued.
—Jeff Swenerton


DIALOGUES

Barbara Dane - Crowd Pleaser

    Barbara Dane can still belt out a tune, even on her 80th birthday. The longtime Oaklander made a name for herself singing jazz and blues with Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters and others and is married to Irwin Silber, the left-wing author and one-time editor of Sing Out! magazine. In addition to several concerts this year (including a milestone 80th birthday gig at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse in July), her popular 1966 folk album with the Chambers Brothers was recently reissued on CD and others are available on her Web site, www.barbaradane.net.

Is it true that your singing career started at a protest?
    I was part of a demonstration against a hotel, and I was tasked with leading the singing because everybody knew I could sing. Without even much time to think about it, I was shaping the sound that I felt would tell my story.

What story was that?
    I grew up in Detroit in the throes of the Depression. My dad had a little neighborhood drugstore and a WPA gang was working across the street. A black man came in, and in a very soft voice, asked for a Coca Cola. I poured it and put it on the counter and invited him to sit down. My dad came running out of the back room and said to the man, “You know you can’t drink that in here,” and [he] shooed the man out.” It was not racial hatred; it was [Dad’s] fear for his own survival. I realized later that, what I did, mentally, was step into the black man’s shoes. I was not on my dad’s side—and that actually became a theme throughout my whole life.

It became a theme in your sister’s life, too.
    She’s 78 and lives in assisted-living down in Glendale, and when the war started, she started a vigil by herself on the main corner in Glendale, holding up a little sign that read “Honk if you want peace.” That vigil has never stopped. Every Friday at 6 o’clock, downtown, you’ll see them there.

Hasn’t it been kind of a downer singing songs of protest and social struggle all your adult life?
Actually, engaging in anything is where the joy is. If you don’t engage, you can be beaten down by it, whatever the problem is. It’s where the sense of self-ownership comes about—where the joy in life comes from—that sense that I’m free. No one is telling me what to do.

So I guess no one has told you it’s time to retire at 80. But how do you keep your voice in shape? Morning exercises?
I don’t get up in the morning, first of all, and secondly, I never exercise. In fact, I hardly ever sing until it’s time to sing. When it’s time for a performance, I start singing in the car or sing as I go through daily tasks. Singing is communication for me, so it’s got to be communication, not practice.

It’s got to be a blast knowing you can still draw a crowd at 80.
I wasn’t planning to do an 80th birthday concert. I’d already done a 75th—a four-hour concert at Freight & Salvage, and I kept people way too long. It was too self-indulging, but there are so many kinds of music I love to do.
—Ginny Prior
Green Business