As a transplanted Sureño, one of the things I miss most about SoCal is being able to spend a nice day at the beach. San Francisco’s Ocean Beach is a great place to catch pneumonia in a foggy riptide. Alameda is nice as far as Oakland beaches go, but it’s hardly Laguna. But just an hour away there is Santa Cruz, a little spot of sun and sand that’s as good as anything in the O.C. I’ve been touristing in Santa Cruz since the late 70s, and no summer is complete for me without a few visits. While I’m hardly a local, I’ve traveled there enough to know what I like, and here are a few of my favorites.

The Boardwalk - Beachfront amusement parks used to line the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco, but this is the only one still standing. Compared to a modern chain park it’s ridiculously old-school, down to the redwood-timbered Giant Dipper, my favorite roller coaster ever. And unlike those mouse-eared and flag-waving mega-parks, at the Boardwalk you can still buy individual tickets instead of an all-day pass. So if you just want to ride the Dipper a few times, you’ll still have plenty of cash left over for funnel cake. And Dippin’ Dots. And deep-fried candy bars. And salt-water taffy. And by the way, you’ll probably want to enjoy all that deliciousness after you ride the Giant Dipper, not before. I’m just saying.

Shakespeare Santa Cruz- At the opposite end of the cultural spectrum, UC Santa Cruz has one of the best Shakespeare programs in the country. Every production I’ve seen here has been world-class, most recently A Midsummer Night’s Dream.Their outdoor theater, set in a redwood grove on the UC campus, is the perfect place to indulge your taste for the Bard. Bring a picnic and a bottle of your favorite poison, and make like a groundling under the big trees.

Zachary’s - Once you’ve breakfasted at Zachary’s, any other joint is just a greasy spoon. Everything on the menu is delicious, but I’m partial to the sourdough pancakes, the house-made hash, and the unbeatable fried potatoes.

New Brighton State Beach- Lodging in the Santa Cruz area is notoriously over-priced, with your typical crappy motel room costing as much as a three-star in San Francisco. But if you bring your own tent you can enjoy beachfront living and million-dollar views for about $20 a night at this gorgeous state park, located just a few minutes south of town between Capitola and Aptos. The only downside: you need to book months in advance, especially for the summer months.

Pacific Garden Mall- As a general rule I hate shopping, but Pacific Avenue has so many quirky little stores that even I can have a good time here.  Independent booksellers, oddball importers, vintage and consignment shops, and a watering hole strategically placed every block or so. So when I grow weary of retail and Mrs. M wants to keep at it, I can sit down for a pint and enjoy the book I just bought.

Motiv- Earlier this year I was crushed to learn that my favorite Santa Cruz restaurant, the Pearl Alley Bistro, had gone down the tubes. But now there’s a new restaurant in the same space, and I’m happy to report that it’s even better. Forget the downstairs lounge, the happening scene is upstairs, where executive chef Anthony Kresge is working some serious Mediterranean mojo. A Napa Valley expat, he’s also brought a great wine list to the place. I was, as they say, completely stoked, and I’m already dreaming up excuses to go back and eat here again.

Stagnaro Brothers Fish Market- Located at the end of the Municipal Wharf, Stagnaro’s sells smoked fish that’s just like I remember it from my boyhood days in Orange County. The flaky goodness of smoked albacore, and the oily, salty, bony deliciousness of smoked herring. The latter, which my family affectionately referred to as ”stinky fish,” is just about impossible to find anywhere else these days, and Stagnaro’s does it exactly right. Give me a half-pound, a cold beer, and a breath mint, and I’m ready to climb in the car and drive home. But I will be back. Oh yes, I will be back.

“Great idea,” I said to my friend John when he proposed that we enter a meat-themed float in the “How Berkeley Can You be?” parade and cover it with meat-grilling, meat-gnawing, cigarette-smoking freaks dressed in leather and fur, spewing clouds of charcoal smoke, under a banner reading PETA: People Eatin’ Them Animals. “Great idea, except we might get killed. Those peace-loving Berzerkeley moms will rip us to pieces.

“We need our own protest marchers,” I suggested. ”We’ll field our own counter-demonstration.” And thus was born the VegetAryan movement, a brave cadre of brown-shirted, jack-Birkenstocked, sign-waving, slogan-chanting thugs, violently opposed to all things carnivorous and willing to disrupt the “meat people” by any means necessary.

Thanks to the efforts of DocumentAryan Puzzling Evidence, we can now enjoy the thrills and (grease) spills of this epic confrontation and its sequel (“Meat People II: Straight to Video”), in which we returned to the streets of Berkeley the following year with more meat, more fur, more cigarettes thrown to children, more pig heads on stakes, more spud-guns filled with hot dogs, more chain-saw kung-fu, and of course, a vaster and even more devoted mob of VegetAryan skinheads, led once again by yours truly. I tell you what, my old bullhorn was smoking that day.

Once again, we escaped with our lives, though at one point things got dicey. A few overprotective parents panicked, shielding their childrens’ eyes and ears with their hands and fleeing the scene in oversized baby strollers, tripping over the hems of their batik skirts and slip-sliding around in the slimy debris of chain-sawed pig heads that so liberally larded the locale.

Thanks to Puzzling Evidence for the awesome videos, and to John Law and Bishop Joey for making things happen.

In one of the biggest non-stories of the year, President Obama met yesterday with the principals in the soon-to-be-forgotten but currently-notorious, racially-charged, violently overblown incident up in Cambridge, in which a black Harvard professor was arrested for disorderly conduct after allegedly breaking into his own home after a trip abroad, and not reacting well when the police were called in. Our usually well-spoken Chief Executive, remarking that the police had acted “stupidly” in the affair, found himself promptly tasting shoe leather, and hastily invited Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley to the White House to discuss the matter “over a beer,” and perhaps turn bad PR into good PR by creating a “teaching moment” for the Nation. In other words: desperate spin control. 

The resulting “Beer Summit,” covered in exhaustively shallow detail by the national media, was frought with symbolism, intentional and otherwise. As a so-called Beer Expert, I feel the need to step in as an analyst, and help you decipher the Story behind the story.  Because while the event may have been nothing more than a feel-good photo-op, the beer selections of the participants say a lot about race and class in this country, and the perceptions of our perceptions about race and class.  So let’s take a look at exactly which beers were called in to grace the nation’s highest picnic table on that fateful afternoon…

President Obama’s beer choice: Bud Light. The message: “I don’t really like beer, but I don’t want to come off as an elitist, wine-drinking douche, so I’ll order the best-known brand in America and hope I poll as a regular Joe, albeit watching his weight.”  The sub-subtext: “I’m still paying for that ‘guns-and-religion’ comment in the PA primary, and  I’m going to need Joe Sixpack on my side to get Health Care passed.” Beeradvocate.com’s review of Bud Light: C (mediocre).

Professor Gates’s beer choice: Red Stripe. The message: “What did you expect, malt liquor? You did, didn’t you, you damned racist. You think just because I’m African-American I’m going to go for the forty?” The sub-subtext: “I wish I was in Jamaica.”  Beeradvocate.com’s review of Red Stripe:  C (mediocre).

Sergeant Crowley’s beer choice:  Blue Moon. The message: ”Beer is beer, but I don’t want to come off as some ignorant blue-collar douche by drinking Bud Light, so I’ll order a Belgian Coors and hope it doesn’t taste like ass.”  The sub-subtext: F#@k these f#*cking politicians and their f^*king photo ops, and f%^k that ni%^ah egghead motherf#$kah who got me into this mess. If I’ve got to go through with this f#@king charade I’m ordering off the top shelf , f#@k you very much.”  Beeradvocate.com’s review of Blue Moon:  B- (worthy).

But wait! There’s more! Washington’s emerging expert on saying stupid shit and having to eat it later, Vice President Joe Biden, heard they were passing out free malt beverages on the South Lawn and crashed the party.  The veep’s choice: Buckler, a non-alcoholic brew. The message: “I am an alcoholic.”  The sub-subtext: “I am a f%&king alcoholic.”  Beeradvocate.com’s review of Buckler:  C (mediocre).

That’s it, everybody go home now and have a real beer. Nothing to see here, move along…

The Michels, my great-great-grandparents

While I’m hardly a genealogy nut, I do consider myself the keeper of the keys when it comes to family history, and I try to keep opening old doors whenever I get the chance. One research trip that’s been on my list for way too long is a trip down to the New Almaden Mining Museum south of San Jose. According to my mom, her great-grandfather Pascal Michel worked there in the 1850s as a mining engineer, and I’ve always wanted to check the payroll records and get the full story. A few years back I phoned the museum and they confirmed that they had tons of records dating back to the early days, but they told me I’d have to come down and do the research myself – and only on a Saturday or Sunday.

Weekends are tough for me, since I usually work – but finally the planets lined up and I had the time, so I hit the road for the 90-minute drive down to the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. On the way down, munching a chorizo burrito and blasting Los Cenzontles to get me in the mood, I reflected on what I knew about Pascal Michel. A French Mexican, he was either born in or emigrated to Sonora, where he married Petra Murillo, an eductated girl from a good family in Hermosillo.  Mining was the family business, and he plied the trade in Sonora for some time before heading north. According to the stories, he and Petra started a family together down in Mexico, but all the kids from that first batch were wiped out in an epidemic, which had a lot to do with their decision to start over in Alta California.

Main Street, New Almaden

Unike the majority of 49ers, Pascal was a mining professional, and as far as I know never tried his hand up in the Mother Lode with the amateurs. The Nueva Almaden was a hard-rock cinnabar mine, producing all the mercury that was used to refine all the gold that was pulled down out of the Sierra, and then some - it didn’t shut down until the 1940s. Unlike the typical 49er, Pascal brought his wife with him, and settled down in the Bay Area – still a frontier zone but considerably more civilized than Gold Country. They had four children who lived to adulthood: three sons and my great-grandmother, Loreto Michel Taber, who was baptised at Benicia in 1859 and schooled by the sisters at Holy Names in Oakland.  Pascal never got rich, but the salary must have been pretty good – in the 1860s he bought some property down in Lemoore, where he lived out the rest of his days as a gentleman ranchero. 

Of course my Google directions were a bit off, and I was briefly sidetracked by a wrong turn in Willow Glen, but before long I was winding my way south through the Almaden suburbs and up into the hills. It was a clear, breezy day and the poppies were still in bloom, with green grass on the hills and the jacaranda trees covered with purple flowers.  Finally the two-lane road became the main street of an old town, lined on both sides with 19th century buildings, and on my left, a large construction project with a sign on the chain link fence reading: MINING MUSEUM CLOSED FOR REMODELING.

Oh, imagine my surprise. And yes, I did check the Interwebs before I embarked, but somehow failed to notice any mention of a closure. Oh well. I guess the family research will have to wait until next summer. But the trip was not a complete waste of time. I had a nice hike in the hills, through the old grounds of what was once a vast, sprawling operation, now mostly overgrown but still studded with old buildings and mining infrastructure. It turned into a contemplative day in the hills, marked by reflections on the elusiveness of history and the uneasy value judgments it sometimes invokes. I couldn’t help but remember reading that nearly all of the mercury contamination in San Francisco Bay was a direct result of the New Almaden operation, which despite its park-like environs is still a Superfund site. Mercury poisoning remains an all-too-common occurrence for people who fish from the bay and either can’t read the warning signs or are too hungry to care. Knowing that my great-great-grandfather may have been a gross polluter had a similar effect on me as when I learned that another ancestor had been a slave-owner,and that most of the people who share my surname in this country are descendants of African slaves. On the one hand, it’s hard not feel a little shame when you uncover such things. But on the other hand, it’s futile and arguably ridiculous to judge the past by today’s ethical standards.

America's most beautiful Superfund site?

Those men were what they were, and did what they did, and like it or not I wouldn’t be here today if they hadn’t. I hope that my own descendants will someday be able to look back on me with the same moral relativism, and not judge me too harshly for anything I may have done – or not done – in my years on Earth.

I’m looking forward to going back to New Almaden next year, and combing through those old payroll records. The exact year of the Michels’ arrival from Mexico is still unknown, along with Pascal’s actual role (if any) at the mine. I also owe the sisters at Holy Names a visit, to see if I can find out more about my mama-grande Loreto’s school years.  California’s early history was so chaotic, and so many records have been destroyed by fires and earthquakes, that I can’t hope to ever know all the details. But I can keep digging, even when the search leads to a Superfund site, and try to leave my grandchildren a more complete story than the one I grew up with.

It’s not easy being a bullfight fan in California.  Sure, bloodless corridas are legal, but the Portuguese societies that sponsor them wisely choose to fly under the PETA radar, making them both hard to reach and hard to hear about unless you’re part of the community. Most of the venues are out in the dustiest corners of the Valley, in little farming towns that are hours from the cities. Most of the fights are on weeknights, conducted in Portuguese, and only written up in Portuguese newspapers. There’s a fan website in English, but it’s no longer being maintained, and the URL is up for sale. In other words, you’ve really got to love this sport if you want to see it.

And make no mistake, this is definitely sport. When a team of forcados leaps into the ring, eight brave men versus one angry bull, it’s like being catapulted back into the Stone Age, when bull-jumping and bull-baiting were some of the world’s earliest athletic spectacles.

The cavaleiros – mounted bullfighters – are superb equestrians, and the highly-trained fighting horses they ride are nothing short of amazing.

Some of the matadors are great athletes as well,  and since this is a long way from the big leagues, you see a lot of older toreros with years of experience, not just a pretty face and a tight set of sparkle-pants. The fact that they use velcro rather than steel in these fights only makes it better – the bulls aren’t bled out, and their neck muscles aren’t cut, so they fight harder and longer. In fact they often  refuse to leave the ring after a fight, and have to be patiently coaxed out by a herd of fetching cows and a team of men with goads. They are bred in California from old-world fighting-bull stock, and bear little resemblance to your typical hamburger-on-hooves. They are faster, meaner, and more dangerous than just about anything left in the wild. And they get to trot out of the ring like champions, surrounded by a bevy of bovine beauties, instead of being dragged out on a meat-sled by mules. What’s not to like?

Because I’m an aficionado, I’ve dug through some Portuguese society websites and put together a partial schedule for this summer. I’ve only included the bullrings that are within an hour or two of the Bay Area, because that’s about as far as I’m willing to roll. Thornton and Tracy are the closest, but I’ve also seen some great fights in Gustine and Stevinson. Phone numbers are included so you can call to confirm that a fight is still on. Enjoy!

BLOODLESS BULLFIGHTS 2009

Stevinson

• Mon. June 1, 2009
• Mon. June 8, 2009
• Mon. June 15, 2009
• 8:00 p.m.
• Festa do Espírito Santo – Stevinson, CA
• 2962 Lander Avenue
• Hall: 209-634-5910

Thornton

• Fri. June 12, 2009 6:30 p.m.
• Mon. October 19, 2009 8:00 p.m.
• Our Lady of Fátima – Thornton, CA
• 9650 Thornton Road – Hall: 209-464-3924

Tracy

• Fri. June 19, 2009
• 8:00 p.m.
• I.P.F.E.S. – Tracy, CA
• 430 W. 9th Street – Hall: 209-835-9909

Chowchilla

• Sat. June 20, 2009
• 8:00 p.m.
• Soçiedade Flor Açoriana – Chowchilla, CA
• Hall: 800 S. 3rd Street – Hall: 559-665-4961

Gustine

• Mon. July 20, 2009 8:00 p.m.
• & Sept. 14, 2009 7:30 p.m.
• Vella Vista Arena
• G.P.S. Hall – Gustine, CA
• 500 – 3rd Avenue, Gustine
• Hall: 209-854-1830
• Church (Our Lady of Miracles): 209-854-6692

Thanks to Mayalibre for the forcado video. Cavaleiro photo and video by Stuart Mangrum.

Because so many Top 100 lit lists are so full of crap, I’ve decided to make my own. No Proust, no Joyce, none of those put-you-to-sleep, emperor-has-no-clothes writers that we’re supposed to like but really don’t.  Just good ripping tales well told — works of fiction that I’ve read and enjoyed and can recommend. If you want to read any of them, great. If you want to argue about what’s on or not on my list, or recommend other titles that you think I ought to like, that’s also great. Friend me on Goodreads.com if you really want to mix it up.  Anyway, here’s my list, sorted alphabetically by author. Enjoy!

• Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang
• Sherman Alexie, Indian Killer
• Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues
• Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake
• JG Ballard, Empire of the Sun
• JG Ballard, High-Rise
• John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor
• Louis de Bernieres, Birds Without Wings
• Louis de Bernieres, Corelli’s Mandolin
• Luther Blissett, Q
• Marc Bojanowski, The Dog Fighter
• Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives
• Paul Bowles, The Sheltering Sky
• TC Boyle, Riven Rock
• TC Boyle, Water Music
• Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
• Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes
• Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye
• Charles Bukowski, Women
• Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
• Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
• William Burroughs, Naked Lunch
• Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
• Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
• Raymond Chandler, The Lady in the Lake
• Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
• Craig Clevenger, The Contortionist’s Handbook
• Andrew Conn, P
• Samuel Delaney, Dhalgren
• Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
• Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
• Philip K. Dick, Confessions of a Crap Artist
• Joan Didion, A Book of Common Prayer
• Joan Didion, Democracy
• Fyodor Dostoevski, The Brothers Karamazov
• Harlan Ellison, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
• Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
• Louise Erdritch, Love Medicine
• Philip Jose Farmer, Lord Tyger
• F Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
• Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
• Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain
• Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra
• Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera
• Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
• Oakley Hall, The Children of the Sun
• Oakley Hall, Warlock
• Joseph Heller, Catch-22
• Herman Hesse, Siddharta
• Homer, The Odyssey
• James Dickey, To the White Sea
• Denis Johnson, Already Dead
• Denis Johnson, Tree of Smoke
• James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late
• Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
• Natsuo Kirino, Out
• Norman Mailer, Harlot’s Ghost
• Charles McCarry, Tears of Autumn
• Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
• Cormac McCarthy, Suttree
• Cormac McCarthy, The Road
• Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
• Henry Miller, The Rosy Crucifixion
• Christopher Moore, Lamb
• Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
• Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
• Ryu Murakami, Coin Locker Babies
• Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
• Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato
• Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
• Chuck Palahniuk, Survivor
• Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country
• Arturo Perez-Reverte, Queen of the South
• Thomas Pynchon, Against the Day
• Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
• Thomas Pynchon, V
• Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
• Matt Ruff, Set This House in Order
• Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses
• George Saunders, In Persuasion Nation
• Nevil Shute, Pied Piper
• Nevil Shute, Round the Bend
• Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
• Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
• Neal Stephenson, The Baroque Cycle
• Hunter S Thompson, The Rum Diary
• John K Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces
• Mark Twain, Pudd’nhead Wilson
• Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
• Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
• Luis Urrea, The Hummingbird’s Daughter
• Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard
• Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos
• Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
• Nathaniel West, A Cool Million
• Nathaniel West, The Day of the Locust
• Tim Winton, The Riders
• Stephen Wright, Meditations in Green
• Rudolph Wurlitzer, The Drop Edge of Yonder
• Roger Zelazney, Lord of Light

Not an Actual Photograph

Like most of John Law’s events, it began with cryptic instructions: “We will be leaving from the Vaillancourt Fountain in Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco at 7:01 pm sharp. Look for the man in the Top Hat. Bring legal ID, $2.75 in quarters, and a flashlight.”  There was no indication of what we would be doing, other than the event name, ‘COVERT,” and John’s rich history of hosting off-the-grid excursions.

A veteran of the Cacophony Society and its predecessor, the Suicide Club, Law has organized everything from illicit bridge climbs to tours of undergound military facilities to elaborate street games. COVERT seemed to be in the tradition of the Suicide Club’s notorious “Into the Unknown” events, where the participants had no clue where they were going until they arrived.

Mrs. M and I arrived at the fountain at the appointed hour, and along with 48 other adventurers we were relieved of our cell phones, digital cameras, and all other electronic gear for the duration. No photos, no Tweets, no permanent record of the event was to be allowed, other than what we carried out in the folds of our puzzled little brains.

We were herded onto a Muni train and rattled across town to the Forest Hill station, where a big Ryder rental was waiting for us at the curb. We were loaded into the back of the truck like so much hipster cargo, the doors were sealed, and we were plunged into anxious darkness. Flashlights came on, and the nervous adventurers amused themselves with shadow puppets and restless chatter as we were transported to the next stop. The doors were unsealed to reveal a posh residential neighborhood with dramatic ocean views and a set of rustic stone steps leading up into the wooded hills.

Quietly, if not exactly stealthily, we debarked and ascended the stairs, which quickly became a steep and winding trail through the Eucalyptus, lush with blackberries and poison oak, studded with forget-me-nots and wild iris.  Twilight was approaching, and the clear skies began to turn to red and gold as we wound our way up through the tall, sweet-smelling gum trees.

Nearing the peak, our location was at last revealed by the looming shape of an enormous white concrete cross, the eminently non-PC capstone of Mt. Davidson, San Francisco’s highest hill. In the clearing at the top, musicians were waiting for us. While I must admit I was a bit disappointed that this COVERT event was in fact an unpermitted concert, I have to say that the quality of the music was quite good, and I quickly swallowed any regrets I might have felt that there would be no abandoned missile silos or sewer spelunking involved on this particular adventure.

The opening act was a duo performing Argentine music, the simple and haunting combination of a woman playing accordion and a man singing soulfully in Spanish, bluesy tango songs of loss and regret.

The second act featured the event’s co-organizer, Mark, a talented singer and multi-instrumentalist, backed by a small combo of trumpet and stand-up bass.  Mark played sax, accordion, and the handlebars of a ten-speed bike, blown like a flute. He sang quirky songs that reminded me a bit of the great Rube Waddell, and led us all in a bracing game of “thread-needle,” a call-and-response, circular singing and dancing workout that had us looping around insanely through the grove in a sort of demented conga line.

It was full dark by now, and with our blood up from the needle-threading we barely noticed the gathering cold  and rising wind. The skies were clear and the moon was full, and the view of the City and the Bay was nothing short of epic, a golden panorama that would soften the heart of even the most adamant Friscophobe.  But after a final set of songs, everyone was wearing everything they had brought, stamping the cold ground with frozen feet and blowing on frigid hands, so we threaded our way back down the hill like a chain of flashlight-fireflies, and returned to the mundanity of our phone-yakking, picture-snapping, everyday twitterdom.

Every once in a while, a little mystery is a good thing. And it never hurts to be reminded that we live in one of the most beautiful places in the world, surrounded by talented people and immersed in a rich cultural gumbo. Thanks to John, Mark, and the COVERT team for a singular evening of fun and games.

I’m probably going to Hell for this, or maybe I’ll just get sucked into a massive black hole, but I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what one of those dorky Penthouse letters would sound like if it was read by Professor Stephen Hawking.

I saw Dr. Hawking once on the streets of Berkeley, or someone who looked just like him, accompanied by a tall, rather sexy nurse in crisp white uniform. I remember thinking: “Way to go, Doc!” After all, his condition hasn’t stopped him from fathering three children. He’s a man, damn it, not just a disembodied brain with a speech synthesizer!

So here you go: a little soft-core pillow talk from the smartest man in the world. Enjoy!  Dear Penthouse

You know how the car radio occasionally scans up a station that sounds like standard indie rock, with big guitar riffs and some guy singing about getting high, kicking ass, and falling in love? But then you listen for a minute and you realize he’s getting high on God, kicking Satan’s ass, and falling in love with Jesus? C28 is the rag-trade equivalent of that sneaky FM station, a retail chain selling faux-hip clothes and gear for young evangelicals who don’t want to dress like Mormon missionaries, but whose moms won’t let them shop at Hot Topic.

Poised between the godless Bay Area and America’s pulsing red heartland, I have a rare vantage-point from which to observe this sort of phenomenon. It’s called Sun Valley Mall, and it’s easy enough to find the C-28 store if you know what to look for. Just stand in front of Hot Topic, then look across the mallway to the store that looks just like it, only instead of being staffed by surly teens with clip-on nose rings, has a fresh-scrubbed cheerleader type working the door.

From a distance, all the gear looks like normal teen wear. Screen-printed tees and hoodies with bold text tags like “Convicted” and “Sinner.” But get close enough to read the fine print and you’ll see that “convicted” is also “not condemned,” and that the “sinner” is “saved.” The graffiti on those low-rise jeans is actually scripture (“Ezekiel” brand), and those Vans-look skate shoes are covered with tiny crosses.

I’m not sure why this bothers me, but it does. When I was in school, it was easy to spot the religious zealots. Their hand-me-down clothes, birth-control glasses, and bowl haircuts made them instantly recognizable. But with this C28 gear, you could be chatting up some Betty for ages before you noticed that her ring says PURITY and not HAIL S8N. Of course goths have been plundering Christian imagery for decades, but that’s different: it’s ironic. This, on the other hand, is just wrong, like Jesus putting on a red suit and a pair of clip-on horns and hanging out in dive bars, passing out cigarettes.

C28 founder Aurelio Barreto seems to have hit gold with this formula. A dozen retail outlets, a clothing line (the “Not of This World” brand) and an online store at www.c28.com. Aurelio is also willing to preach the gospel at your next “outreach” event (honorarium negotiable), and C28 franchise opportunities are available. Believe it, my children.

A friend texted me this morning: “All of us are going to the Bistro for the double IPA fest today.” I got all worked up for about 90 seconds, until I realized he was off by a week, and it’s not until next Saturday. Which is a workday for me. Damn.

If you’re fan of giant beers, the Double IPA Fest is the Super Bowl of tastings. Held at a little beer bar in Hayward, it’s the flagship event in this year’s SF Beerfest. I would so be there if I could. But since I can’t, I’ll have to make do with a few Plinys and maybe a Racer X down at my local pub to wash away the grief.

Here’s a little backstory for the non-beergeeks. Once upon a time, when the sun never set on England’s empire, her Majesty’s soldiers needed a beer that could travel for months without refrigeration. The resulting style, known as India Pale Ale (IPA), was brewed like a conventional pale ale but with more hops and a higher alcohol content, resulting in a longer shelf life. Flash-forward to the modern age, when some brewers decided to up the ante by adding still more hops and alcohol, resulting in the “West Coast” or “American” style of IPA. From there it was a short, booze-addled leap to the “Double,” or “Imperial” style of IPA, based on the notion that there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing. The double IPA (DIPA) is nothing less than a fistfight in a bottle, with alcohol in the 10 percent range and enough hops to make you feel like you’ve been clobbered in the mouth with a sack of pomelos. Yeah!

So if you’re going to the Bistro next weekend (lucky bastard), or if you just want to arrange a little tasting at home (hide the car keys mate), here’s my checklist of must-try beers in the DIPA category:

- Hopnotic from San Diego Brewing, Hip Hop from Hollister Brewing, and Hop 15 from Port Brewing. I haven’t had any of these but they were the gold, silver, and bronze winners in the category at last year’s Great American Beer Festival.

- I’d also check out Hop Suey, another well-regarded DIPA from Port Brewing, Marin Brewing’s White Knuckle, recommended by my good friend Doc Anderson, and Russian River’s Pliny the Younger, which I’ve had only once at the brewery, and remember quite fondly.

Let’s see: are we out of beer tickets yet? It’s hard not to like the Green Flash Imperial and Stone’s Ruination, two stalwarts in the field. Of course Moylan’s should be on the list, with their benchmark Moylander and the legendary Hopsickle, which is so incredibly hopped up it will actually make the inside of your mouth sting like you’ve swallowed a jellyfish. In a good way.

I’d go on, but writing this is making me incredibly thirsty. Maybe I’ll head over to Raleigh’s and see if they’ve still got that cask-conditioned Bombay by Boat from Moonlight on the hand pump. Cheers!