“From Bleak to Dark to San Francisco,” by Jack Boulware
In February, comedian-actor-podcaster Marc Maron performed at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The day after the show, Maron and his old friend, author and Alta Journal contributor Jack Boulware, drove around the city to revisit some of their ’90s haunts.
“It’s kind of depressing,” Maron concluded. And yet, even amid the ghosts, they found much to be excited about.
“There’s Always Room for Jell-O,” by Gustavo Arellano
Gustavo Arellano, a longtime Alta contributor and one-half of our monthly Ask a Californian column, visited the kitchen of Musso & Frank Grill to learn how chef J.P. Amateau makes the jellied consommé, one of the oldest of this old-school restaurant’s specialties.
“There’s a reason why jellied consommé was such a hit in our great-grandparents’ generation,” Arellano wrote of the meat Jell-O characterized by a “chilled, chewy essence.”
“Selling Pioneertown,” by Stacey Grenrock Woods
The other half of our Ask a Californian column, writer-actor Stacey Grenrock Woods, weighed in on a controversy that rocked Pioneertown, the tiny desert outpost she once called home: Did a reality TV star named Alanna Gold really own the place as she’d claimed on Selling Sunset?
“I ran to the internet, which was ablaze with articles from reliable news outlets about Gold, the Canadian former veterinary student turned real estate agent who owned a town. How did I not know that the place I’d spent years living beside and months reporting on was owned by some woman on a reality show?”
“Portrait of Phenomenal Women,” by Shaquille Heath
In late September, the San Francisco Arts Commission unveiled a new sculpture devoted to Maya Angelou by artist Lava Thomas. As arts writer Shaquille Heath explained, getting to that moment was not easy.
“It’s been a long and sometimes arduous journey to get to this point,” Thomas told Heath. “But ultimately, all of the challenges make it all the sweeter.”
“Fear and Pogoing in Las Vegas,” by Santi Elijah Holley
Author and regular Alta contributor Santi Elijah Holley took a road trip to Las Vegas to check out the Punk Rock Museum, “a collaboration of more than a dozen founders and partners, the most famous being Mike Burkett, better known as Fat Mike, lead singer and bass player of Southern California punk band NOFX.”
Holley, a grown-up punk with the tattoos to prove it, was impressed by what he saw. “I was expecting the punk version of the Hard Rock Cafe or the House of Blues, but the Punk Rock Museum is more like a pop-up exhibit in some side street warehouse—which, essentially, it is. It feels slapdash and unfinished, whether by accident or design. It’s like entering into some old-timer’s basement and gawking at all the cool shit they’ve collected over the years.”
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