Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

This is posted on Plastic Alto, my WordPress blog, as of January 19, 2019 and is best read aloud. Headline:

UPRIGHT DOWNWARD SIGN DAWG.

OR: HOT STAYS HOT, COOL STAYS COOL (which is a sub-head)

A TRADES MAN assembles the new sign he says is for “Baptist Yoga“ at Edgewood Plaza in Palo Alto between Starbucks and the bagel people more or Les. House of Bagels (pronounce this part “beg” “Less” but don’t read this instruction; read it twice to get it right) rather. I don’t know about you, but I like to squeeze my inner Hindu when I do my sukhasana.

edit to add or “The rest of the story”:

Rebecca Bera  is a Palo Altan and experienced Yogi with a former studio in Redwood City. The word is “Baptiste” named for its originator and is a type of hot yoga as compared to religious yoga or related to the spiritual beliefs and practices of her landlord Peter Pau of Sand  Hill Property who bought the Fox Theater also of Redwood City principally as a place of worship on Sundays. Better than that, Rebecca is dear friends with the-wife-of-my-friend-and-quasi-mentor, or guru, Chris Cuevas, the rocker and jazz-manager turned x-Wanderlust yoga promoter and agent for top yogis who she claims will be invited to the opening and is based in Sacramento and has two kids:

and here’s a picture of her

THE CUTLINE: Leading Palo Alto yogi – that’s a thing —Rebecca Bera looking forward to a peaceful transition from a room with four walls one of which is glass to a sacred place of growth and stretching and mind at rest

andand  but not “Anand” (personal to CS):

What a cute little mini-Cuevas or semi-Cuevas – he’s part Flippin’ right? And a member of the tribe, right? Mazel mazel!

edit to add, again: I heard back from Chris Cuevas, the artist manager turned yogi or yogaentrepreneur, and he confirmed that the above is his wife and first-born son, who is now seven. I went back to find that I had mentioned him by his Claypool-nickname five times over the last eight years — but have not seen him or heard from him:

I remember when Rupa Marya (of Rupa and the April Fishes) played in LA, and I was kinda sorta the intern or co-manager with Chris Trouz Cuevas, that I met some hip Muslim cultural creatives in LA. 

and

I met Jerry via Chris “Trouz” Cuevas (Charlie Hunter’s manager, went to high school with Kirk Hammett of Metallica and Les Claypool of Primus) when the three of us went to Chicago — where I was born, again — to try to get Tom Windish of the Windish Agency to sign and promote Jerry. Interestingly, to me at least, Danilo Perez and band, booked into Cubberley weeks later, but from Panama City, Panama were at Siegel’s Jazz Palace the very same night and I saw both shows. There is also a photo of the three of us, Hannan, Cuevas and Weiss after procuring identical Kenneth Cole carry-on bags — I still use mine and may bring it to the show tonight. The bag, I cannot seem to find the photo. This was 2000, October.

and

Note: When I met Jordan he was a dread-locked assistant to both Chris Trouz Cuevas of Spire and David Smiley Leftkoastwhich(!) of Figurehead Mgmt on 16th Street Different Fur building in the City. He sent me a letter on David’s letterhead in fall of 1995 about whether his roommate –not a client of DL –Matt something could open for Dar Williams at the Cub (the spot was filled, but nice try).

and

Perhaps going too far: think also “Into the Wild” which I do recall as a Sunday Chronicle “sunday punch” – was that actually its name, the section? — when it was news, Chris McCandless was that his name? and then, who?, Seb Junger wrote about it (? question mark) and then Jerry Hannan, who I ironically enough bought luggage with in Chicago in fal,l 2000 on tour — I have a photo of he, I and Trouz outside the luggage store with matching Kenneth Cole black overnight bags, although Chris Cuevas quickly returned his for something more practical — I still have mine and have beaten the crap out of it. I thought the “tell” on the Alaska dude saga was something about the parents and either alcoholism or abuse — seemed omenous but not stressed. But good song, Jer Bear, about “Society”, Eddie Vedder. We are all souls playing roles and shards mowing yards.

AndAnd but still not “Anand” — although I did meet and write about an Anand — the filmmaker, who chronicled the dalit and their music — but that’s a horse of a different color or a wooden elephant with copper details my parents brought back from a trip to India about 30 years ago:

and this one is a slighly longer pull, if you can stay in the saddle a little longer:

In a self-pleasing departure from eavesdropping on would-be and wanna-be billionaires regaling each other with talktalk about the latest rounds of venture funding, angel pitches and other circle-jerking, I watched a recent UC Santa Cruz honors grad named Chelsea Bell show her bikini samples to a sage advisor at the table next to me at Cafe Venetia (the former Cafe Del Doge) and could not stop myself from intervening to try to get the actual detes and digits. I was on break from pamphleteering for TLPW456- The Last Picture Waltz- my campaign to save the historic and beloved Varsity Theatre in Palo Alto from its fait accomli as office space or co-working, whatever that is.

“What’s your line?”

(I had been waiting about forty years to say that, mindful of the old black and white tv show).

“My name is Chelsea Bell but I will be selling my custom bikinis at “stone fox bikinis dot com” ” she said.

“Hey,” I added, without being asked to, and not reminding anyone but myself even one iota of Michael Franti, who is, like the gourmet cappucino, partly Italian. “I know of two bands named Stone Fox. The first was a girl-band circa 1993, friends of Linda Perry of “What’s Going On?/What’s Up?” and the second is a group of young new guys who are like the Allman Brothers or something, a guitar rock band.”

For some strange reason I always pantomime a guitar when I describe rock music, (pantomines guitar) maybe because a kid from my Hebrew school car pool named Ed Solomon went on to write “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” — this was before young Chelsea was born. Not just the car pool, the movie. The movie came out before she was born, I’m quite certified.

I also seized the moment — her colleague had stepped outside to take a phone call, presumably from a woolcap designer from Bemidji State –to brag about my old neighbor Erich Schulz, who is a F.I.T. graduate, a former Robert Comstock designer, and at one point was selling $10 million per year in high end leather jackets, with his older and wiser partner, under the name Ka Uomo, on Bryant in SF I recall. He also had a line of cotton called Frank Et Gertie (after his grandparents) that I wore as my costume as m.c. of my first Earthwise Productions concert, in 1994 at the Edge. I recall Erich Schultz profiled in 1991 New York Times as one of SF’s hottest designers although now he seems  to have faded into shadows and fog, like Miles Archer lurid by Bridgid O’Shaughnessy. 

on aproximately this spot miles archer partner of sam spade was done in by brigid o’shaughnessy

Chelsea and I traded contact information — I gave her a TLPW456 flyer as well. For good measure.

Until my actual interview — a sitting would be pushing my luck — I offer this and recommend people check out “Coke Whore” from Stone Fox. Stone Fox played my first Earth Day Rock and Bike, at Cubberley (blink 192 played the second version) and I recall that a lady from a local band called The Guttersluts won the door prize of a Soft Ride bicycle. Who could forget that?

I will credit Palo Alto High grad Katie Ross with hipping me to Stone Foxes; I hear tell that Katie is now logistics manager for Charlie Hunter — I was the one who suggested she try Charlie’s manager Chris “Trouz” Cuevas for an internship and the rest, as they say, is her story.

Kim Prior of Stone Fox, the guitarist with the fag dangling ala Robert Johnson, is a Gunn grad. Janice Tanaka went on to fame with Seven Year Bitch and I think Pink. (I think pink when I think “Chelsea Bell” but she has actually filed a trademark for a rust-colored logo). I want to suggest for Chelsea’s brand the Stella Brooks chestnut “I’m a Little Piece of Leather”.

My friend the search-injun tells me that Bell is a cum laude graduate of Santa Cruz.
I am also recalling here that in Elmore Leonard’s “Be Careful” the fictitious band was called Stone Coyotes, similar concept.

Come to think of it — and this might be instructive or cautionary for someone like Chelsea Bell and The Bikini Fox line — I distinctly remember talking to Jorjee Douglas of Stone Fox about the sudden ascendence of Gwen Stefani and No Doubt — Stone Fox was big in San Francisco before No Doubt was big in LA and then worldwide. Jorjee told me that she got there first with that post-Madonna mixed-race kinda-slutty but still classy look. So use it while you have it ladies ( and gents), and get a good trademark lawyer.

fact-checking this ex post facto  had me running down a lead on something Jorjee Douglas contributes to called Citizen’s Band which is run by a Sarah Sophie Flicker who my instincts tell me is a Gunn or Paly grad and the daughter of longtime Palo Alto lawyer (for instance did pro bono for Palo Alto Jazz Alliance) Michael Flicker.

NB or NM: This originally had the more provocative title that is the refrain of the Stone Fox song “Coke Whore”. Or: when was the last time you called me an Uber?

and so to reiterate or make more clear — and because David Shields said to me personally that when I write about Chris Trouz Cuevas I am writing about myself — the cast of characters today (and Wednesday night from 6 to 9:30 or so) includes ME, Trouz, Jorjee Douglas, Gwen Stefani, Sarah Flicker, Michael Flicker, the woman from our first session with whom I walked from the steps of the quad to the street or the oval where her husband was waiting to fetch her and she kindly offered me a ride, For it rained. Chelsea Bell, Elmore Leonard, Kim Prior, Janice Tanaka, Stella Brooks (who I never met but heard about thru her niece Deb Wright), Katie Ross, Charlie Hunter, Erich Schultz, Ed Solomon, Michael Franti, Rupa Marya, America (when will you send your eggs to India?); Linda Perry, Eddie Vedder, Jerry Hannan, Matt Nathanson, Dar Williams, Jordan Kurland, David Lefkowitz, Tom Windish, Danilo Perez, Kirk Hammet, Rebecca Bera and Ananad Pathatwaran.

A list of names does not make a memoir but if you read enough of this you really do get a map of my brain and they used to say “don’t tell me, show me” but now they say “don’t tell me or show me but be real or funny or fun.

I said to myself last Wednesday (Lynn Stegner’s class) that if would be worth the $600 just to find out what happens next to the Nigerian! Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.