The intergenerational performing artists breathe new life into the big top with “La Vita Nuova.”

By Leah Worthington/Redwood City Pulse

Ilario Fabrizio Luigino Zoppé balances, upright and giggling, on his father’s outstretched hand. Six months old, he looks gleeful from his high perch. Together they sway and restabilize as if it were the most normal thing in the world — which, for this family, it is.

Ilario is the youngest in a long line of Zoppés, creators of the Zoppé Family Circus, who have been traveling and performing for close to two centuries. Founded in 1842, 30 years before P.T. Barnum began touring “the Greatest Show on Earth,” the Zoppé Circus was conceived by a rather unusual pair.

“It’s actually a French clown and a Hungarian ballerina,” says Giovanni Zoppé, from the parking lot of Redwood City’s Public Library, where an enormous blue and white tent is being erected behind him. “They met each other on the streets in Budapest. They fell in love. But her parents didn’t like him because he was a clown.”

Throwing caution to the wind, Napoleone and his ballerina bride, Ermenglida, ran off to Venice, where they did something even more unlikely: They started a circus.

Having survived multiple wars and two pandemics, the Zoppé Circus is celebrating its 12th anniversary in Redwood City, led by the charismatic Giovanni Zoppé, a self-described clown and Napoleone’s great-great-grandson. Giovanni was first introduced to Redwood City when a friend connected him with Lucas Wilder, the city’s Assistant Parks, Recreation & Community Services Director, who’s been a champion for the family circus ever since. Unlike the Cirque du Soleils and other big-budget, highly produced shows popular today, Zoppé, with its classic domed cupola and single ring, evokes something of the past — a time of whimsical jingles, high-peaked tents and twinkling lights — or what Giovanni calls, “the true Italian-style of circus.”

Today, Saturday is tent day. All around, Giovanni echoes a cacophony of English, Spanish, Russian as lights are strung up, poles are hammered down, and kids dodge deftly between the ropes. (A half-tethered circus tent, it appears, is the ideal place for a game of hide-and-seek.) Jeanette Prince, Giovanni’s partner of around four years and mom to Ilario, hurries past, scooping the baby up to take him back home to one of the silver Avion travel trailers parked beside the tent. The scene seems to be the usual amount of pre-show chaos. Only six days remain until opening night, and they’re still waiting on the majority of the performers to arrive, most of whom are new to the Zoppé Circus. But Giovanni seems unfazed.

“There’s a basic structure,” he says, waving as if to indicate that the rest will figure itself out. “The way we let the performance go, we try to let it live,” he adds. “It’s a living creature that always changes as we do.”

After a year of quarantine and isolation, this year’s show, aptly titled “La Vita Nuova,” or The New Life, is both a celebration of survival and a message of hope for the future.

Featuring an almost entirely new cast, with performers from Belarus, Mexico and Australia, to name a few, La Vita Nuova is a never-seen-before production explicitly created for Redwood City — for the parking lot outside the public library, to be precise. Even the tent, which Giovanni and his father Alberto designed themselves, was built with this venue in mind; its dimensions calculated to accommodate a large pole in the middle of the library’s lot. Giovanni refers to the place as their second home.

“It was the last lot my father was ever on. First lot my son was on,” says Giovanni. “When we get here, I breathe easier.”

Pandemic notwithstanding, the troupe never entirely stopped performing. Last year, with the support of Wilder, the company put on a drive-in circus that ran for seven weeks at the Port of Redwood City. Cars packed in front of a 23-foot LED screen that broadcast the on-stage performance, which included everything from a horse vaulting act to a trapeze artist, while sound piped in through the radio. According to Giovanni, it was the world’s first and only drive-in circus, and he attributes their success to the determination of his partner, Prince, and Wilder — whom he calls a “sort of crazy genius.”

“He really wants the best for his town. And we’re one of those items,” says Giovanni. “During the pandemic, we were the only circus in the world working. And they were the only city in the world that had a circus.”

Still, as for many other performance artists whose careers were on hold during the pandemic, this new season marks a return to normal for the Zoppé Circus.

“I believe we’re all living a new life,” says Giovanni. “We’re coming out of the fog and trying to figure out how to live in this new world.”

Like father, like son

Like his father, his siblings and now his children, Giovanni has been performing for as long as he can remember.

“When I was [Ilario’s] age, I started becoming a clown,” he says. “As a child, a little boy traveling in a circus family, you become the clown because you learn how to go into the ring, you learn how to act with the audience, how to perform, how to read people.”

Though he grew up mainly in the States, Giovanni traveled back and forth to Italy, where he worked on various family circuses. Dabbling in trapeze and bareback, among other acts, he’s had his share of close calls over the years.

“I’ve had a lot of accidents,” he says. “I had a splenectomy. I fell off the trapeze headfirst.” He was in a coma for four days, and the doctors told his parents he wouldn’t make it. But he takes it all in stride. “If you drive a car and you have an accident and a head injury, you don’t stop driving the car, right?”

In recent years, Giovanni’s settled into his role as the bumbling “evening clown,” or pagliaccio di serata. Much like the manager at a restaurant, his purpose is to guide the show — saying just enough to keep the momentum going but not too much to overpower the performers — and to fill in when there’s a lull or a mishap.

“When I see something that needs help or the props need to go in or out, I just step in and balance my shoe on my nose or do whatever. You know, do a magic trick,” he says.

It’s not just the forces of nature or misfortune that keep him on his toes, however. Each show is different, he says, because each audience is different. And a big part of his job is to respond to his patrons’ shifting needs and desires. “We’re not here to direct what they think, what they want. They’re there to direct us.”

Though the spectacle is meant to mystify and delight, ultimately, Giovanni wants his audience to consider whether the true illusion happens inside or outside the tent.

“Right now, I’m acting. Right now, I have to act because this is how we have to be in society,” Giovanni says. “But when I’m in the ring, I’m truly who I am.”

“It’s just different”: The changing tide of circus life

Jeanette Prince is already out of breath. It’s Wednesday morning, and less than half an hour remains before the show’s first run with the whole cast.

“I’m at Target grabbing milk in the middle of my laundry cycle, and it’s not even 10 a.m.,” she nearly gasps into the phone.

Prince wasn’t born into the circus — in fact, she only joined the caravan in 2019. But in managing everything from immigration paperwork and venue logistics to last-minute costume repairs and repainting their trailer home, she’s become a sort of adoptive mother to the Zoppé family.

“My business card says marketing. But it’s really not,” Prince says, shushing Ilario in the background. “Does anybody have a title when they run their own business?”

It hasn’t always been easy, leaving behind her home in Oklahoma and helping her kids adjust to a peripatetic lifestyle, especially as a homeschooling mom. Life on the road can be tough; they had three tire blowouts during the drive from Arizona to Redwood City. On top of which, running a circus isn’t exactly a lucrative business, especially in recent years.

“So much of old circus traditions are gone,” she says. “Like putting up posters? That used to be someone’s job. Now it’s all Facebook advertising. It’s just different.”

The biggest challenge, she says, is getting people to the door. But once they come, they usually keep coming, which is why Zoppé’s annual event in Redwood City is so valuable.

Still, she says, the metabolism of circus life suits her. “I do sort of work better when a lot of things are happening, or things are changing.”

Showtime in the tent

I arrive at the lot later that evening, just in time for the second run. (The first one went “OK.”) Prince is already inside the tent, hunched over a laptop, furiously placing a last-minute order online. “OK, 20 ostrich feathers coming up!” she shouts to no one in particular. “What do you think the circus was like before Amazon?”

Performers mingle around in various stages of dress. A young girl in a red velvet dress with a flowing black skirt introduces herself as Mia. Only 12 years old, she’s well-accustomed to circus life.

“I was born into the circus,” she says. “My parents traveled with them before I was born. I would play in here all the time as a kid.”

Mia will perform the Spanish web, aerial rope and the lyra, a suspended hoop. Though she’s old hand at the lyra, she’s only been working with the rope for a week or so.

“The first time was really scary,” she says. “I felt wobbly because I was shaking.”

But this — picking up a new trick just days before a performance — is, apparently, pretty typical.

“The traditional way is that you learn on the lot,” explains Prince, looking up from her laptop. “Mia and Audrey are learning the web because we need aerialists, and people here have the skills to teach them.”

From inside the ring, Giovanni claps his hands, instructing the cast to their places. As Mia scurries to join the other artists, Prince retreats to the lighting and sound booth — donning another of her many hats. The string lights glow in the dimmed tent, and a lilting calliope tumbles out of the speakers. It’s showtime.

For the next couple of hours, performers of all shapes, sizes and nationalities grace the ring with their particular skills. Dogs perch jauntily on their hind legs (except for Winnie, who requires extra prodding); two Belarusian brothers and their Russian partner somersault gracefully in giant, metal wheels; a young woman, introduced as “the woman with the wings of Mercury at her heels,” swings, waving, from the high-flying trapeze. Then, awaiting their turn in the spotlight, the onlookers cheer each other on while Giovanni, sporting cargo shorts and his red felted clown hat, offers the occasional, supportive brava!

The show is carried by Giovanni, also known as Nino the Clown, and his Ringmaster “Chissà” (meaning “who knows”), played by actor Mace Perlman. The duo parodies a typical parent-child dynamic through an ongoing choreography of banter and slapstick with Nino playing the petulant kid who continuously defies Chissà’s attempts to keep him off the stage. And, much to the audience’s delight, Nino often succeeds in outwitting his ringmaster, scaling ladders and dangling precariously from the trapeze.

As a contortionist folds his body into a pretzel, I’m joined by a familiar-looking woman with Heidi braids and a high-necked, velveteen leotard complete with glittering, rhinestone trim. “We’re sort of half-dressed,” she says, laughing. “I don’t normally wear a purple sports bra.”

The woman introduces herself as Disa, 33, the flying trapeze artist. “It’s the most wonderful and terrifying thing I’ve ever done — every time. If it goes really wrong, I fall off,” she says. “When it goes well, it’s like flying, like in dreams.”

Disa, unlike many of the other cast members, isn’t from a circus family. Growing up in Wisconsin, she “always wanted to be Peter Pan” and followed her mom to a trapeze class. She’s been a professional trapeze artist for 15 years now. “Somewhere down the line, someone said that I could get paid to do this, and I never looked back.”

She interrupts our conversation to redirect my attention to the ring where a group of four Mexican men and women are swinging from a giant platform — a Russian swing, it’s called. “You don’t want to miss this,” she says as one man launches himself off the swing and through a hoop into the net below.

There’s a brief intermission, after which Disa runs back into the ring to join Mia and two other girls in a dizzying routine on the Spanish ropes. Despite a few hiccups — someone’s feet don’t seem to want to hook into the right loop — the act is mesmerizing, their limbs extended and twirling like fairy ornaments.

“Nice, ladies!” Giovanni shouts as they exit through the back of the tent. “Don’t worry about the music. I don’t want any of you rushing — you’re 20 feet in the air!”

Next is Hermán, a supposedly sixth-generation circus performer. He balances a tray of wine glasses on a knife, which rests tip-to-tip on another knife he holds between his teeth. Then, impossibly, he climbs a ladder. He’s followed by Miah, a 21-year-old equestrian trick rider from Australia. Meanwhile, three kids sit on the bleachers chatting about their favorite acts. No older than 10, they’re already well-versed in circus talk, clearly having been raised “in the tent.” Their mother, Mariana, was a musician and performer before she started having children. Now, with five kids in the circus — a juggler, a rope aerialist, a contortionist and two clowns — she’s on the road again, every bit the quintessential stage mom.

Then, just as quickly as it began, the show is over.

All the performers return to the ring, appearing comically sad for their final bow. They applaud each other on the way out, though no one is louder than Giovanni, who offers a few brief words of directorial encouragement. “Very good,” he says with the usual nonchalance. “I think we’re going to be fine for the show.”

Just the beginning

After the run-through, most cast members retreat to their trailers for food and a shower. A few, including Giovanni, Disa and Perlman, linger in the silence of the suddenly empty tent. As ringmaster and clown debrief, Disa entertains Ilario who, miraculously, has only just awoken after having slept through theentire spectacle.

“You should have seen him at the EDM festival we performed at last week, with his headphones on, asleep backstage,” says Giovanni.

A few partially costumed characters drift in and out of the tent, reattaching ropes, adjusting lights, tightening pulleys. There seems to be no distinction between cast and crew, an observation that Disa confirms.

“Everybody wears a million hats,” she says. (In addition to training the new Spanish web performers, she helped set up the tent, scaling the dome to stitch together giant vinyl flaps.) “The guys who do the Russian swing are also the stage crew.”

Though the reasons are primarily financial, Giovanni takes pride in their scrappiness and teamwork. “We’re all family here in the lot.

The conversation lulls as exhaustion begins to set in. There’s still much to do before opening night on Friday — and in the coming weeks. Even with COVID measures reducing capacity, the cast is planning to put on ten performances a week until nearly Thanksgiving. Then, being a traveling circus, they’re off to Arizona for the next round.

So, how do they feel having completed the first full run of the show?

“It’s time for dinner,” Giovanni says, laughing.

“I mean, the show’s not over,” Disa says. “The show’s just starting.”

The Zoppé Family Circus runs from October 8 –November 21 at the Main Library Parking Lot in downtown Redwood City. Tickets and more information can be found here. The tent opens 45 minutes before the first show of the day. Masks required.

Stay up to date with other coverage from The Six Fifty. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, featuring event listings, reviews and articles showcasing the best that the Peninsula has to offer.

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Stepping into the ring: How the Zoppé family built a Redwood City legacy was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Meet the NASA astronaut who became a climate change activist after seeing the earth from outer space

Ahead of her Kepler’s talk on Oct. 19, astronaut, engineer and aquanaut Nicole Stott talks jury duty, watercoloring and how to save the world from space

It wasn’t long into her first stay on the international space station that Nicole Stott learned that space has the “sweet, metallic odor of an overheated car radiator” (or at least the materials exposed to space do).

She learned that astronauts can totally receive jury duty summons while 420 kilometers above Earth (and, yes, be excused). She learned that fire burns in a different shape, with round flames, in microgravity.

But Stott will tell you that the greatest lessons she gleaned from her 30-year career as a NASA astronaut, engineer and aquanaut weren’t about what’s happening off the planet. They were about how to change what’s happening on it.

Her new book, “Back to Earth,” transforms her well-earned expertise in problem-solving and crisis response into Earthbound tips for reversing global warming.

Turns out there’s a lot of similarities between protecting the thin walls of a space shuttle and repairing the ring of atmosphere that greenhouse gases are burning through:

A “we can do it” attitude is necessary. International cooperation absolutely helps. And each of us must remember we’re all crewmembers who risk perishing at excessive passivity.

Stott, who’s set to speak next week at Kepler’s Literary Foundation, took a moment to chat with us about those ideas, plus space tourism, artivism and a little ritual she calls “earthing.”

I notice you use the word “interconnectivity” a lot throughout your own book. Tell me about the thinking you’re doing around that term and what it means to you.

Astronauts always learn something in space that they should’ve already known. For me, it was, and I really mean this, “Oh my gosh, we live on a planet. Holy Moly. Would you look at that.”

It’s true for everything. When you step aside and look at things from a different perspective, it all just becomes crystal clear and obvious how connected everything is. To look at the Earth from space, it’s clear there’s no ‘other side of the planet.’ Everything that’s going on where I am is absolutely connected to every other place on the planet.

Like, thunderstorms: Wow. I grew up in Florida, where I thought thunderstorms were a thing happening over your head. And I always thought once thunderstorms pass, they pass, but that’s not true at all. In space, you can see a storm wrapping itself around the planet. To watch these lightning strikes firing in a way that looks like neurons firing in your brain — stuff like that makes you realize it’s all bigger than interconnected. It’s interdependent. Everything is depending on everything else for life to work.

When it comes to the climate change conversation, it feels like we put so much pressure on individual agency. But I think some people get stuck on that concept because our actions feel irrelevant if big industries and governments and real powers that be aren’t doing anything. How do you think through those questions of agency?

I think there’s a good astronaut metaphor for this. When you’re a crew of six or seven aboard a space station — which is just this mechanical life support system that mimics what the Earth does — when you’re stuck in that small space, you start to see how every individual’s actions can impact the whole environment. If all six people decide they’re going to trash the place, it’s going to get really messy. But if even one person starts to put stuff away, that alone can have an impact on the rest.

The same is true for the way we monitor the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, the amount of clean drinking water we have, and the way we respond to those numbers.

I think that doing something as simple as saying, ‘I’m not going to use plastic straws in my drink anymore’ might seem like no big deal, but it can do a number of things. For the person as an individual, it starts to make you more and more aware of the other things you can be doing, all those subtle changes you can start to make in your day-to-day life. The people close to you will witness that. Hopefully, they’ll see something positive coming from it.

My friend Guy Laliberté — who’s in the book and is the co-founder of Cirque du Soleil and was a space flight participant when I was also up there — he has this saying that goes, “every drop matters.” Even the littlest things we do can have a ripple effect.

That connection between small moments and big change is a theme of your book, too. You write about your “earthrise moment,” for example — the moment in space when you were able to look back on Earth and the new perspective sparked a deep, profound, maybe even spiritual connection with it.

Where do you go when you need another “earthrise moment” here on Earth? Without being able to hop in a spaceship every day, how do you reconnect with that sense of awe?

There’s two ways I can always reconnect to what it felt like to look out the spaceship window. One is meditation. The other is this thing I call “earthing.”

I try to do it every day. You just walk outside barefoot. You stand in the grass, stand in the dirt, and just contemplate the feeling for a moment. Think about the fact you’re on a planet that’s spinning a thousand miles per hour, circling the sun at 76,000 miles an hour. I know we all look up at the sky and think that it goes on forever, and yet it’s like this veil — just a thin blue line wrapped around us all. It’s wild to consider how the sky doesn’t go that far, and how such a little thing can do so much for us.

And yet it’s so easy to feel grounded here. You get this sense that this is where you’re supposed to be. This place was designed for us to survive and thrive here.

It kicks in the whole responsibility/accountability paradigm. There’s not a day that goes by for me where I don’t go, “Oh my gosh, I’m on a planet.” And I can feel those things without having to go to a space station.

Okay, well, since you put it that way now I have to ask. More and more people are going into space these days, searching for their own genuine earthrise moments. What do you make of the space tourism movement? Do you think letting CEO’s chase that sense of wonder will impact the climate change conversation?

I do, and I’m really hopeful for it.

I’m sure if you look back at the days of wagon trains and big ships, there were people who thought that, too, wasn’t acceptable. If you look historically at how big exploration shifts were made, it usually translates well for the public. I think with space travel, we’re really in the baby steps.

Underlying all of it is an extension of what we’ve been doing in space all along. When we return to the moon, travel to the space station, launch the Mars expeditions — these things are all, ultimately, about improving life on Earth. I know that doesn’t get publicized all the time. But think about even the way we’re able to talk right now on this call. The way our phones are like another appendage. Even thermometers — the infrared kind we’re using from a distance during coronavirus every time you go in restaurants and museums — that was technology that was first used to measure the space between planetary bodies.

One business I’m really looking forward to is space-based solar power. Why don’t we lift all of these energy issues off our planet and put them into the benign environment of space? That’d be huge! That’s going to happen through the person who wants to travel for a vacation in space. Everything we’re going to do for space tourism is going to help our life down here on Earth as well.

You were the first astronaut to paint watercolors in space. It feels to me like a brilliant way to make space cool in a new way to someone who might not be a science person. Your book, to me, does a similar thing. It’s about science underneath, but the surface is so wildly entertaining with your very human, grounded impressions of that science.

Do you think storytelling is key for making science accessible? Were you thinking about that when you decided to bring the brushes along?

I can tell you for sure there was no conscious effort or grand plan when I took the paint kit into space. Really, I wouldn’t have even thought to do that on my own.

As astronauts, we get so wrapped up in the checklists and systems and the astronaut-y part of the job. Thankfully, we have people around us who are there to think for us. My friend Mary Jane Anderson is one of the people who helps astronauts pack up to go to space.

She was like, “Hey, Nicole, you’re bringing your son’s stuffed dog, and you have all the photos of your family, but is there something you can bring for just you? You’ll have free time when you’re up there. Is there something you like doing on Earth that you might like to bring to space with you?”

Wait, okay, how can I get that job? Professional astro-packer?

She made it cool, too! It was like, “Here’s the one pair of pants you’re going to wear for a month, but also let’s get you a hobby.” When I think about Mary Jane now, I realize she encouraged me to bring a bit of my human side to a human space flight.

We think of astronauts as science-y, technical people, but they’ve been doing this since the very beginning of space flight. There’s been music on board the craft. My friend Karen Nyberg quilted. Some people write poetry. It’s so much bigger than just going and doing work in space, because we’re humans.

Don’t get me wrong, we should purposefully send people who are real artists to space. I can’t wait for that. But it’s great to recognize that the humans we’re already sending to space have these interests and talents. We want people to use their whole brains so they can really solve the world’s problems.

It makes me think again of the climate change conversation. I think a lot of people might get turned off from taking individual action because learning the science can be a burden, something we don’t feel qualified for. It’s so important to remember that you don’t have to be an expert to engage with something meaningfully — whether you’re an astronaut writing poetry or a kid recycling.

Absolutely. I think, for the most part, the purpose of art is to raise awareness and get people thinking about a topic. Art is like the universal communicator. It’s all about engaging people in the conversation.

I can paint how the Bahamas look from space, and some people might be interested by the view alone — but then you can tell them about the international space station. And, the next thing you know, they’re the ones with the app on their phone tracking when it’s going to fly over. And then they’re wondering, if those people can work together in space, how can we be crewmates here on Earth?

We can’t ignore the numbers, for sure, but I think people are spurred more by hope than doom and gloom.

Nicole Stott’s book, Back to Earth, is available now from Seal Press.

She will be interviewed by Kishore Hari at Kepler’s Literary Foundation next Tuesday, October 19. Tickets are free, but book sales and donations are encouraged. Reserve your spot here.

(Editor’s note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Stay up to date with other coverage from The Six Fifty. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, featuring event listings, reviews and articles showcasing the best that the Peninsula has to offer.

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Meet the NASA astronaut who became a climate change activist after seeing the earth from outer… was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

José Dolores Marquez and team found “little hometown” in Half Moon Bay

Nearly 30 years ago, José Dolores Marquez, Giovanni Marzocca and Roberto Pugliese drove from “over the hill” toward the Coastside. They’d carved out careers at Italian restaurants in San Francisco and on the Peninsula. They knew Half Moon Bay for its farms and flower growers. But could the town of about 10,000 people support their dream to open their own restaurant?

Time has told. The location positioned them perfectly to establish partnerships with local food purveyors like the anglers at Pillar Point Harbor, and local farms, many of which happened to be founded by immigrants from Italy. They opened Mezzaluna Italian Restaurant in 1993, and have since developed a following of local residents and visitors alike.

“Half Moon Bay is like our little hometown,” co-owner and chef José Dolores Marquez says.

Recently, the Peninsula Foodist caught up with Marquez to chat fresh food and cultivating a culinary career from scratch.

Peninsula Foodist: How did you begin your career?

José Dolores Marquez: I have relatives in (Los Angeles) and I came over to see my aunt, and then my uncle who lives in San Francisco. When I called him up to see how he was doing, he said, “I’m doing fine. Why don’t you come over and spend a week or two?” I never went back to LA. It has different weather, I like it better here. San Francisco’s a beautiful town, with the bridges and a fisherman’s wharf. East LA, it was a totally different atmosphere. I thought I’d be there for two months, and I ended up here. I never went back.

I started 40 years ago working in San Francisco, different places. Some aren’t even there anymore. I’m learning how to cook Italian food — after a while it becomes like a passion. Of course, you need to work, so I mixed two things in one. It’s how it happens.

I was 17 years old when I started. You learn the basics, cutting vegetables, prep, washing dishes. You start from there, all the way up to starting cooking.

When I started cooking, I was about 20. To see a kitchen that big, I was in shock, like “Wow!” I thought I’d be working at a small kitchen, making 20 or 30 dishes at most. But you find yourself covered in dishes, and pretty soon being in the line cooking for 300 or 400 people. It’s incredible. At the beginning it was kind of scary, but after, you get used to it.

Since then, it’s been one restaurant, and after two or three years, I’d change to another one in the North Beach area. Pretty soon I was in San Mateo and Burlingame. Then I came to Half Moon Bay and got involved at Mezzaluna with Giovanni and Roberto.

Foodist: What was it like for you to learn a new cuisine?

Marquez: It happens to be the first place I was working was an Italian restaurant. I was working on this place called Grazie, which means “thank you” in Italian. I worked there for about four years, before I was working at another place.

(North Beach) was totally different then. Now there’s not as many Italian restaurants as it used to be. It was great, it was beautiful to be working in the area, and be part of all the people that were working at that time. San Francisco is a tourist palace, but in North Beach it was mostly local people.

When you start getting involved in Italian food, you start getting into it and learning new recipes and new things. Pretty soon you find yourself cooking Italian food.

Especially for a person like me, coming from Mexico, learning Italian food was tough. You don’t know the different types of food. As soon as you start learning, you get to know the ingredients and put them together — that was fun. It’s totally different. I was not even allowed to cook in my house, because the only people allowed in the kitchen was girls. Boys were not allowed. It was a different experience to come over here and to start working in the kitchen. You never thought you’d be doing that, but it happens.

Like other jobs, you start doing something, you start learning and like it, and start from there. Pretty soon you find your way out, and you start talking to other people and listen to what other people are doing. Pretty soon you find yourself sitting with the same people, who know everything about Italian food.

I started to appreciate that — the feelings you have after so many years of hard work and learning. It’s a great experience.

Foodist: What sets Italian cuisine apart from others?

Marquez: Italian people, they have a passion for the food. When it comes to what you do in the day, it’s like you have to eat first. It’s the first priority — the food — and everything comes after.

When it comes to food, they care about eating good stuff. I didn’t know that until I started working. When it comes to sitting at the table, you sit for 30 minutes and eat because you have to? No! It’s passion for the food, and what they eat and what they drink.

The ingredients depend on the region — if it’s the north, south. If you have good tomatoes, you don’t have to do too much. They use olive oil, of course, and salt and pepper, but not too many others. It’s more like, natural, simple. It’s the best. It’s not too complicated. That’s why I like it. You don’t have to make stocks or reduce a sauce. You grab a fry pan, chop the onion and garlic, and you can make a pasta out of that. If you make a nice tomato sauce, it’s the base for a good pasta. With a little basil, it’s even better. It’s good as it is.

I like to eat, and I love Italian food. I eat other cuisines too and it’s all good, but this one? I was able to make it, and enjoy it. When you cook it and serve it to customers and see the satisfaction, and they love it, it’s a good feeling.

Foodist: What inspired you to open your own restaurant?

Marquez: We (Giovanni, Roberto and I) decided to move on after we’d been working with other people.

We got the idea to go to Half Moon Bay.

We just drove by, to go to the beach and the harbor. You think it’s a fishing place — at least we thought that. It was not a place to do business.

There was a place available. We went to see it because the price was right and the small place, we thought we could try: Everything was in the place. A few tables and chairs had to be fixed, but it was a good opportunity. So that’s why we came in. It’s one of those opportunities — when it comes in front of you, you just grab it. Half Moon Bay is like our little hometown.

A lot of people told us, “You’re not going to make it,” because Half Moon Bay’s a small town. You drive along and you don’t see that many houses like San Francisco, San Mateo, other towns. But after a while, you get to know local people. They followed us. At least 60% of the business we do is local people. It’s a nice town, and has beautiful people.

We started slowly and built up. Pretty soon, after a couple years, we were already on the move. Now it’s 28 years. We think we do something that people like. We saw the place and opened in 1993. We tried and it worked, so the rest is history.

Foodist: The longevity of the restaurant is impressive. What’s the key?

Marquez: We try to make simple, good food. We cook everything from scratch. We treat our customers like family. At least, we try. Everybody’s welcome.

It’s not the type of place (that) if you’re not dressed right, people give you looks. We’re good with customers and a friendly atmosphere. We’ll get people that say, “Can you make pasta like this?” “Can you grill me a fish?” We try to make people comfortable.

I think we have a good thing going on. We’ve built it up after all this time, changing the menu and choosing different dishes. What most people like, we keep. We have daily specials so whatever’s fresh, we make it. It’s enough. It’s simple, and always tasty.

Foodist: Tell me about the menu.

Marquez: We have pastas, pizza, chicken, veal, lamb, steaks, salads and desserts. We make all the desserts, and we try to do our fresh pasta too, and make our own bread. You can find capellini to fettuccine, ravioli. We have pizza. We have the fish of the day: We call the company and whatever they have, we buy it and serve it. We have a full bar.

Local people know the menu by heart, they don’t even have to look because they know everything already. We have customers who probably eat the same things for 20 years. It works, because we still have the same recipes and we do the same way. So if you have a pasta you ate 10 years ago, and you say you have a craving for that, you go back — it’s still the same. We’ve always been steady.

But some people, especially in the summer, they go for seafood. When the winter comes, it’s more like meat.

Foodist: And it sounds like a lot of your ingredients are local.

Marquez: We try to buy local. We buy the seafood from a local person here. We buy it exclusively fresh, from the local fishermen. Like now they’re catching halibut, petrale, rockfish, sand dab. Pretty soon I think it’s going to be albacore. And crab season, we buy crab and make cioppino. Otherwise you get salmon from Alaska, or Alaskan halibut or swordfish from Hawaii or Mexico. Of course you have to get different stuff, that’s why we buy other types of fish, like (from) different countries.

(But) we try to do local stuff. Everybody grows different things. One grows peas and beans, the other grows Brussels sprouts, and Swiss chard and basil and herbs. We try to get local products and be part of the town too, because it helps each other.

We have breweries with our own beers, harbor with our own fishermen. People come over and buy flowers, even just for the day. There’s so many little things to do, and the restaurants. It doesn’t look like it has that much, but it does. Downtown is a historical town, small streets and businesses and boutiques. It’s a nice little town.

People follow us and support us. Thank them, because if it wasn’t for them, we would probably be closed by now.

Mezzaluna // 459 Prospect Way, Princeton-by-the-Sea; 650.728.8108

Dig into food news. Follow the Peninsula Foodist on Instagram and subscribe to the newsletter to get insights on the latest openings and closings, learn what the Foodist is excited about eating, read exclusive interviews and keep up on the trends affecting local restaurants.

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Made from scratch: Mezzaluna chef chats career and seaside Italian fare was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As a food writer, I feel like I’m expected to cover the Michelin Guide, a longstanding publication that rates dining experiences, originating from a French tire company. And I must admit, I’ve been wrestling with why I feel this pressure, and if I do cover the guide, what degree to do so.

I’m puzzled as more and more media outlets ditch their own rating systems, but also continue to dedicate quite a bit of coverage to this particular one. In the U.S., Google searches for “Michelin Guide” outpace searches for other travel-ish and food-ish guides, so it looks like there’s at least some curiosity about it across the country, and especially in California and New York.

For my part, much of my musing boils down to these questions: Is this coverage of interest to our million or so readers across our greater community? Does it serve the Peninsula? When bandwidth is limited, does this accolade warrant coverage over another? Is it more noteworthy than a restaurant simply surviving?

I haven’t settled on answers to all these questions. And I’m curious to hear what you think — as readers, as people who work in the industry, as diners — what does the Michelin Guide mean to you? Dear reader, do let me know: peninsulafoodist@embarcaderopublishing.com.

Local stars

In any case, I’d like to congratulate the restaurants and the teams behind them that received Michelin recognition this year, achieved in difficult circumstances that have included navigating COVID-19 safety measures, physical and mental health needs for themselves and their loved ones, staffing challenges and rising costs.

Out of more than 500 listees, the Michelin Guide included dozens of restaurants on the Peninsula and surrounding area in its 2021 California edition, the first since 2019 after it took a break in 2020.

The list includes some extraordinary local restaurants, rated with symbols, like stars and plates that denote things like whether a restaurant is “worth a stop,” how good the cooking quality is and how “comfortable” a restaurant is.

One of the newcomers to the list was Sushi Shin in Redwood City. This year, the restaurant’s second since opening, it earned one star. However, chef Jason Zhan is not new to this recognition. Zhan trained in his craft under Hideo Kuribara at Ushiwakamaru in New York, which received a Michelin star while Zhan was there.

Now at his own Michelin-starred restaurant, where Zhan gets to work at 8:30 a.m. and leaves at midnight as he prepares 20- to 22-course meals with a lean team that includes his wife, a dishwasher and a part-time assistant, Zhan says, “I don’t work just to earn a star, or to get a good review from Yelp, so it (doesn’t) really change anything to me — just still the same thing, every day.”

Zhan pauses, and laughs: “I feel, ‘Just — oh! — one star?’ Because I’ve been working 20 years,” Zhan says. “But it’s good. This is the second year, and we got one star. Hopefully we can improve, and get two stars, three stars in the future. That means to me, I work hard, and people like it, so (I’ll) have more energy to do and to create more unique dishes so people can enjoy.”

A restaurant that maintained two stars between 2011 and 2019 has been removed from the Michelin Guide at the proprietor’s request. You’ll no longer find Baumé in the guide’s proverbial pages.

“I care about my stars, it’s not that I don’t care,” Bruno Chemel says of the restaurant he runs with his wife, Christie Chemel. “But I reach a stage of my life, a stage of my business, when I need to evolve the business…I need to pay the bills, I need to have my life, because owning a two-Michelin star restaurant in COVID in Palo Alto is not easy.”

Removing the restaurant from the guide now alleviates the pressure to adhere to what’s demanded of a Michelin-starred restaurant, Chemel says.

“To me, we’re just a mom and pop restaurant. It’s just me and my wife,” Chemel says. “I’m just a cook, and I want to please my guests. That’s what’s very important to me. I feel very happy. I have no stress for guidelines I need to follow. I just follow what I want to do, and we see if it works.”

Meanwhile, Manresa returned with three stars in Los Gatos.

The Bacchus Group has added another Michelin star to its portfolio with its newest property in Atherton, Selby’s. The group’s San Francisco outpost, Spruce, also holds a Michelin star. And The Village Pub in Woodside has been recognized with a Michelin star for 12 consecutive years.

“Three restaurants, three stars…It means I have to open a fourth one now, because I’m not competitive or anything,” founding partner and president Tim Stannard says, a joke with a kernel of truth.

So while the Bacchus Group has seen plenty of stars, this year’s holds special meaning. Selby’s opened in 2019, but then closed when COVID-19 shelter-in-place ordinances were announced in March of 2020. After briefly reopening to offer takeout and delivery, they closed again in October. They remained completely shuttered nearly a year, and just reopened last month.

Selby’s team, all together when they heard the news about their Michelin recognition, popped a magnum of champagne, and shed tears.

“It is for us like the Oscars, the World Series, the NBA finals and the Super Bowl all wrapped up into one,” Stannard says. “It means a lot to us, just from a business perspective. And more than that it just feels great — especially after the last 18 months — to see the hard work that everyone undertook … be recognized.”

Michelin Guide rating system

Michelin restaurant recognition is awarded according to a rating system that includes icons and accompanying descriptions. I’m trying to wrap my head around what they all mean.

The descriptions leave me wondering: What exactly is “comfortable”? Is there really such a thing as a “simple restaurant”? Is “quite comfortable” more comfortable than “comfortable”? What is the “traditional style”? What’s the “top class”? (I don’t know!)

This is how Michelin breaks down some of their ratings:

Stars

Represented by a star icon

• One: High quality cooking, worth a stop
• Two: Excellent cooking, worth a detour
• Three: Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey

Comfort and quality

Represented by a fork and spoon icon

• One: Quite comfortable (according to one Michelin Guide article; it’s described as “simple restaurant” according to some of their restaurant listings)
• Two: Comfortable
• Three: Very comfortable
• Four: Top class comfort
• Five: Luxury in the traditional style

Michelin Bib Gourmand

Represented by an icon of Bibendum, the formal name of the “Michelin Man”

• Good quality, good value cooking

Michelin Plate

Represented by an icon featuring a plate, fork and knife

• Fresh ingredients, carefully prepared: A good meal

Peninsula Michelin Guide restaurants

Without further ado, here’s the complete list of local restaurants included in the 2021 Michelin Guide:

Atherton

• Selby’s: 1 Michelin star; 3 comfort and quality

Belmont

• Shalizaar: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality

Burlingame

• Rasa: 1 Michelin star; 2 comfort and quality
• New England Lobster Eatery: Michelin Plate; 1 comfort and quality

Half Moon Bay

• Pasta Moon: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality

Los Altos

• Aurum: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality

Menlo Park

• Flea Street Cafe: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality
• Madera: 1 Michelin star; 2 comfort and quality
• Camper: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality

Millbrae

• Tasty Place: Michelin Plate; 1 comfort and quality
• Wonderful: Michelin Plate; 1 comfort and quality
• Hong Kong Flower Lounge: Michelin plate; 2 comfort and quality

Mountain View

• Chez TJ: 1 Michelin star; 3 comfort and quality
• Doppio Zero Pizza Napoletana: Michelin plate; 1 comfort and quality

Palo Alto

• Bird Dog: Michelin Plate; 3 comfort and quality
• Ettan: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality
• Evvia: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality
• iTalico: Michelin Bib Gourmand; 2 comfort and quality
• Protégé: 1 Michelin star; 2 comfort and quality
• Tamarine: Michelin Plate; 1 comfort and quality
• Vina Enoteca: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality
• Zola: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality

Redwood City

• La Viga Seafood & Cocina: Michelin plate; 1 comfort and quality
• Sushi Shin: 1 Michelin star; 2 comfort and quality
• Warung Siska: Michelin Plate; 1 comfort and quality

San Bruno

• Gintei: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality

San Carlos

• Saffron: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality

San Mateo

• All Spice: Michelin Plate; 2 comfort and quality
• Pausa: Michelin Bib Gourmand; 2 comfort and quality
• Sushi Yoshizumi: 1 Michelin star; 2 comfort and quality
• Wakuriya: 1 Michelin star; 2 comfort and quality

Woodside

• Village Pub: 1 Michelin star; 3 comfort and quality

Stay up to date with other coverage from The Six Fifty. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, featuring event listings, reviews and articles showcasing the best that the Peninsula has to offer.

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Seeing stars: Peninsula restaurants shine in the 2021 Michelin Guide was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re looking for a pocket-sized list of climate solutions, this interview won’t be it. Frankly, those lists aren’t helping, according to Paul Hawken.

The renowned environmentalist has headlined conferences, advised governments and published eight books, which have sold more than two million copies in 50 countries and 30 languages. But he still struggles with how to engage the 98 percent of the world that isn’t working to reverse global warming, even as the average temperature continues to rise .18 C (.32F) annually.

Hawken’s latest book, Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation, leans on his years of climate conversations — and 7,262 research citations — to offer a new vision for the climate movement: Stop using jargon, war metaphors and a poverty-vs-biodiversity mentality. Focus instead on addressing current human needs.

Enlisting the words of farmers, philanthropists and novelists, Regeneration analyses over 60 nexuses for their clear impact on global warming. Educating girls in developing nations, for example, is given the same prominence as protecting Boreal forests. For Hawken’s team, it’s all interconnected — and beneficial for humans everywhere.

“Reversing the climate crisis is an outcome,” he writes in his opening essay. “Regenerating human health, security, well-being, the living world and justice is the purpose.”

We caught up with Hawken (who also happens to be a Marin County local) ahead of his talk at Kepler’s Literary Foundation this week to discuss big intentions, better messaging and being able to smile amidst crises of the existential variety.

The subtitle of your last book, Drawdown, was “The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming.” So why the need for a second book? What does Regeneration address that wasn’t covered in Drawdown?

Honestly? That subtitle came from the publisher. It was clever and it was interesting, but to me it never felt true. The book isn’t a plan at all; it’s a look at what could be done. It was meant to map, measure and model because no one had ever mapped, measured and modeled the most substantive solutions to global warming.

[Prior to Drawdown] the Union of Concerned Scientists had a list of what you could do — work closer to home, eat smart, put your appliances on a power strip. It was bizarre because anyone reading that list would know it’s all insufficient for the task at hand.

So individuals look at corporations, they look at the Biden administration, they look at authority figures in their own country and say, ‘Well I hope they do something.’

What Regeneration is saying is that in between that individualization and the hope for big institutions to change, there’s this other 98 to 99 percent of humanity that’s not doing anything at all.

How can that proportion of humanity not be engaged in doing something given the crisis? That question leads back to language. The way we’ve been describing this thing has been guaranteed to make people feel numb, to turn them off, to disengage, to make people feel like they don’t understand or to turn off altogether and think of it as a concept.

Really, the Regeneration website is the point and purpose of this book. It’s free. It’s the learning-teaching-action-connection center. And it will contain the world’s most complete network of climate solutions and challenges and how to address them.

[Note: The Regeneration Organization also plans to release a video series, curriculum, podcasts and climate action software.]

Speaking of language — it feels like even within the community of folks who are into this stuff, there’s not a lot of consistency and agreement on terms. One essay in Regeneration talks about buying carbon offsets and the lack of international standards.

Yeah, and offsets have been an awful way of thinking because only 5 percent of offsets sequester carbon. 95 percent don’t. So they’re not even really offsetting anything — they’re just protecting existing stuff.

Also, if you’re focused on “your” emissions, you’re not making up for those who can’t do their own emissions, for those who can’t afford it. For example, every restaurant in the US is on life support because of COVID. We can’t just expect them to buy offsets for their gas stoves.

And our emissions are always bigger than we calculate. Your airplane does so much but also, how did you get to the airport? What’s the carbon output of the airport? What about your Uber? What about your hotel? Again, there’s a siloed way of looking at the climate which is incomplete.

One line that caught my eye in your opening essay was that “war metaphors — words like fighting, combatting, battling — aren’t connecting with an audience.” What’s your thinking there?

Which gender do these words come from? I bet you can guess. With all due respect to men, war and sports metaphors are just othering. They separate you entirely from the source and the cause of climate change — which is us.

Even saying “climate change” isn’t the right thing. Climate is an expression of a warming atmosphere. The climate is what produces weather. We’re feeling the impact of the weather.

If the climate was static, we wouldn’t have life. The fact that the climate changes every nanosecond is the very reason why we have hummingbirds and honey and cherries and rivers and glaciers and seas and oceans and forests.

The language of “tackling, combating, fighting” keeps people out and keeps understanding out. It keeps engagement out. It keeps out a sense of interconnectedness between ourselves and this place where we live. Regeneration is very much about coming home to ourselves and where we live.

We’re innately regenerative people. You might say, ‘Well wait a minute, we’re trashing the planet.’ And yes, we are, but at the same time, our 30 trillion cells are regenerating every nanosecond or else we couldn’t be having this conversation.

But what gets all the headlines?

It’s interesting — words like “fighting, combating, tackling” are the same words I heard time and time again in conversations around coronavirus. I’ve always felt like that language is designed to mobilize people, trying to instill the idea that we all need to be playing an active role against an existential threat. I’m curious if you took any lessons on global warming messaging from the pandemic?

I think what coronavirus showed us is that, yeah, people respond to a current existential threat. The climate conversation is just focused on future existential threats.

Wait, do you think people were responsive to coronavirus? In an effective way? Maybe this is just me as a journalist who covered politics a lot last year but…

Sure, yeah, we can talk about ineffectiveness. We tend to project what we do in this country to the rest of the world and that’s wrong. We’re the ones who had hundreds of thousands of anti-vaxxers and bizarre conspiracy theories. We have to understand that this isn’t how it worked in Mexico or Japan or Botswana or China or Switzerland. We want to make sure we don’t universalize the clear degradation of American intelligence.

But, globally, most people did respond to current threats. The world spent $12 trillion on COVID-19 within a single year. If we put $12 trillion towards reversing global warming — well, it’s astonishing what that could do, especially in developing countries.

I think what’s happening is that climate change and global warming are changing from concepts — future existential threats — to experiential things, vicarious or direct.

This year, when the sixth assessment came out [an annual report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] it was labelled “code red,” which is not a term you hear all too often from scientists. Every country in the world signed onto it, which was astonishing. Yet even these kinds of warnings don’t usually take. But this year, it happened to land during a time when the Northern Hemisphere was on fire. California, Oregon, British Columbia, Siberia to Greece to Spain. They were these kinds of fires that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put out. Some of them are still burning to this day.

I think a lot of people are saying, ‘Oh, okay. I understood before but now I get it.’ There’s a difference. People are asking the question, ‘What can we do? What should be done?’

What keeps you optimistic that people will actually do something?

It’s really tough to take it all in. And I don’t think everyone should have to take it all in. It’s too much.

It’d be like waking up every morning to read how many people were sick and how many people survived and how many never got medicine and never got physician care. If you did that every morning after every morning after every morning — you’d get sick yourself.

Being in the field that I’m in — or you, as a journalist — it comes with the job description. If you’re not informed, you’re not very useful.

But, I think, when other people see the full list of solutions, even if they didn’t understand climate science and they didn’t know about Hurricane Ida or the threats — they’d still look at this list and go, ‘Yeah that’s a good idea.’ Because these solutions have 10 cascading benefits for one thing. They create employment. This one improves life for children. This one improves water quality. This one improves nutrient density. This one makes people healthier. This one addresses biodiversity. This one addresses water poverty.

You don’t need to immerse yourself in science to start doing these things, or to want to do them. You really don’t. If you’re the person who’s teaching these things — or financing them or learning them — you’re doing what you can and want to do.

That’s what Regeneration is all about. It’s finding that for yourself as opposed to doing it out of obligation or guilt.

I’ve got the facts, but I’m not going to wallow in them, because I’m only here for a short time. So how am I going to spend my time here? If you want meaning in your life, how about regenerating life on earth? When you bring the world back to life, you bring yourself back to life in a way that nothing else can. You couldn’t ask for something more meaningful.

(This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

Paul Hawken will be in conversation with Kepler’s Literary Foundation on Friday, Oct. 8 at 6:00 p.m. Tickets are free, though donations and book sales are encouraged. RSVP here.

Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation is out now via Penguin Books.

Stay up to date with other coverage from The Six Fifty. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, featuring event listings, reviews and articles showcasing the best that the Peninsula has to offer.

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Unsung ideas to save the planet: A local environmentalist reframes the climate change debate was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

William Becerra first saw the Pacific Ocean underneath the typical, heavy fog of the Bay Area. He had spent little time outside of his home in Huila, Colombia. Then, one day, he was on a plane to visit the Peninsula where he saw the Google campus in San Francisco. The sheer scale of it all—a city that was just shy of the population that his native state hosts across its 7,680 square miles—was a lot to take in.

At the same time, Becerra’s coffee farm back home was being converted into a sustainable farm with innovative techniques such as shade-grown cultivation crop rotation, and giving the soil a chance to breathe. These are the future-facing practices required to raise the kind of coffee that can net the prices that make life on the farm a little easier.

It’s thanks to Maria Palacio and John Trabelsi, owners and founders of Progeny Coffee, that Becerra may have a dog in the fight 20 years down the road. It’s thanks to them that he took an eye-opening trip to California. But it’s thanks to Becerra, and producers like him, that any of us get to have a cup of coffee in the morning at all.

Palacio and Trabelsi are doing what they can to bring a new narrative to your morning cup. They want the financial tides to shift for folks who are growing your morning brew. They’re starting with the coffee lovers on the Peninsula and those who work for your local tech giant.

Romantic origins

A would-be fashion designer from Colombia and an advertising bigwig from France fell in love in New York. Fast forward to their apartment in Palo Alto where they agitate the global coffee supply chain from their living room.

They came to the Peninsula after Trabelsi got a job in tech marketing. They were married at this point, with a baby on the way, and they didn’t want to raise their kid in New York. It was then that they launched a coffee company. They called it Progeny, and it was created alongside their emerging family, crunching numbers at the kitchen table.

But the venture is about more than just their family business on the Peninsula. Palacio was born and raised in a smallish city called Armenia, one of many coffee-growing communities in Colombia. When she came to California, fashion fell to the wayside. She returned to the coffee that runs in her veins, and convinced her husband of the idea to start their company after his first visit to her home in Armenia. Today, her work is about farmers rather than fashionistas.

“Maria saw her family struggle,” Trabelsi said. “The first thing our company does is help the farmers.”

For Palacio, launching Progeny was the American Dream. Her family, like many others in Colombia, faced the hard task of picking and collecting the red cherries as a way to generate income.

“Many are anxious to get out of there to look for new opportunities,” Palacio says of Colombians she knew back home. “That’s what happened to me.”

For centuries, communities have crouched over fires to cook up cauldrons of coffee by the gallon. This is no exaggeration — it’s a common way to drink coffee still today in these same communities in the hinterlands of Mexico, Ethiopia and, yes, Colombia. As the the third-largest coffee producing country in the world, it’s more than just a personal dedication that piqued the Progeny team’s interest in the nation’s export market. In fact, the small business team dreams of becoming the largest buyers of Colombian coffee in the world.

Right after arriving in the States, Palacio noticed the obvious: It was normal for people to buy coffee for five bucks a cup at her favorite cafe, La Colombe. On the Peninsula, it became clear these prices weren’t unique to New York.

Palacio and Trabelsi want to make sure farmers receive proper credit for those cups. For Palacio, she still has friends and family back in Colombia who get only a dime of that profit — if they’re lucky.

That’s not uncommon. According to economist Stephen Pitts, in the case of purchasing green coffee from Chiapas, Mexico, it is common for farmers to be paid just $1.50 a pound for organic coffee.

Palacio and Trabelsi have an intelligent approach to the coffee supply chain. After four years of visiting Colombia together and reading books and white papers on coffee, they came up with an approach they call “beyond trade.” It’s farmer-forward and farmer-centric, which is Progeny’s way of saying more of that profit goes to the farmer than the alternative “do good” businesses on the market.

Fair Trade USA and other such initiatives are failing farmers, according to Progeny. They’re not the first, nor will they be the last, to make such a claim. So-called Fair Trade organizations can end up creating the same pricing and producing issues they aim to solve. James McWilliams, pop economist of Freakonomics, did his part to sum up critique of the ubiquitous program:

“When the price of coffee drops, the appeal of Fair Trade’s price support lures growers into the cooperatives that sell coffee under the Fair Trade label. As poor growers rush into Fair Trade agreements, the supply of Fair Trade coffee rises. Protected by the price floor, the Fair Trade coffee remains inflated despite flagging demand.”

Progeny has identified a disconnect between the industry’s actions and words. With a long background in Parisian marketing, Trabelsi found a hypocrisy in big coffee communication. Many seem bent on removing or marginalizing farmers.

“All of the major companies sell these coffees as their own,” Trabelsi says. “But they did nothing in the process in terms of time. It’s noticeable with low-level research to see that farmers are getting lost.”

Endemic illnesses

Saturation in the coffee market is a problem. How employees are treated at work by customers and management is also a problem. In addition to issues in trade practices broadly, plenty of businesses throughout the Bay have been called out for mismanaging these larger trends. From Equator to Paper Moon, coffee businesses have been addressing their numerous chickens coming home to roost.

These are issues that Palacio and Trabelsi want to steer clear of. While they have yet to open their own brick and mortar (though they might like to someday), the owners of Progeny know that there’s more to it than managing the day-to-day issues of service employees in the States. They want to maintain that critical eye trained toward rural Colombians, with optimism for positive change in the supply chain.

They’re happy to evangelize. Trabelsi says the first thing a company can do is to avoid representation pitfalls of the industry, such as Starbucks’ “Traceability Tool.” The mega-company allows customers to scan a bag of coffee to see where the beans were roasted and grown. The well-intentioned app has been criticized for lack of transparency by the folks at popular coffee website Sprudge. Time spent at source by the people who roast and sell the coffee, in this case the owners of Progeny, helps smaller, more agile businesses tack around these problematic issues.

“This is critical,” Trabelsi said.

Another long-standing issue surrounds ethics in photographing and documenting people at origin, common for gathering marketing materials. It is almost always better to hire local talent to document producers if the company wants to portray coffee producers in culturally relevant ways. Vava Angwenyi, who works with the folks at The Crown, an East Bay peer of Progeny’s, covers this in her book “Coffee Milk Blood.”

Progeny follows this practice, paying dozens of photographers across Colombia for their services. In fact, they love the hyper-specific approach. It’s the anti-Juan Valdez, a homogenizing and mostly offensive image promoted by the Colombian government in a global advertising campaign.

That’s something that Progeny has going for it: Farmers are a part of the ethos, not an accessory or an afterthought.

What Peninsula coffee-drinkers can do

Palacio believes in education. Her own crash course in biodiverse farming techniques, supply chain economics and ethical representation has helped build Progeny into what it is today. But it can be an enormous challenge to translate that experience to consumers.

It’s harder still to express the reasons to highlight quality and sustainability to a fourth-generation farmer who has been cultivating coffee in the same way Colombians long before them did. For instance, Becerra’s community of producers live in the hinterlands, accessible only by hours in a car. This makes it difficult to frequent the area and sustain consistent conversations about changing farming practices that have been at play for decades.

“The small farm holders don’t get the information,” Palacio says. “We need a mindset of delivering technical support to create sustainable farms.”

They work with plenty of tech companies to place their coffee, and farmers, inside the industry. This is what Progeny calls their “Adopt-A-Farmer” program. Google adopted several such farmers — one being Becerra. After his trip, Google sent a team to one of the same farms in Colombia. They mapped the area to host a virtual reality tour for the Googlers back home.

For their part, the husband-and-wife team can be found sipping espresso at a Verve or Blue Bottle in Palo Alto. They love Proyecto Diaz Coffee, as “their heart is right.” Proyecto Diaz places its coffees in Peninsula cafes like Boba Guys, sourcing from the owner’s abuelo’s farm in Oaxaca.

“Oftentimes we see that companies don’t aspire to more,” Trabelsi said of why he likes Proyecto Diaz. “They are participating in the chain we are trying to break.”

Progeny puts the scores of their coffees right on the bags. Coffee scores are just like scores for wines, and in that same spirit most businesses avoid printing the number on the product itself. Sometimes the Progeny team docks themselves half a point or a point to ensure the quality. Trabelsi says this is yet another moment to boost the farmer’s work.

“I don’t see major specialty coffee brands putting scores on their bags,” Trabelsi says. “It makes me wonder why. Is this the low end of specialty coffee?”

And Progeny coffee is really, really tasty. The “Alegria,” which features a gorgeous portrait of the producer Sandra Isabela Campo painted in electric yellow on the front of the bag, is as complex and bright an espresso as one can pull.

Progeny offer the spicy take that, sometimes, a business giving money to farmers isn’t the best thing to do. Starbucks offering a bundle of $20 million looks good on the surface, but the best scenario is to see money used for specific projects and investments. Buying a bigger fridge, an improved drying bed, or even food for farmers can be the right choice instead. It’s not just throwing money — it’s investigating how to throw it.

Progeny will keep cutting deals with the massive companies of the Peninsula. They’ll keep putting coffee farmers right in front of your face. Whatever the future holds, the workers slinging espresso are hoping it’s about raising those tides, at home and abroad.

And the dedicated duo at Progeny will keep making it happen from their kitchen table.

Learn more about Progeny on their official website

Stay up to date with other coverage from The Six Fifty. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, featuring event listings, reviews and articles showcasing the best that the Peninsula has to offer.

More local life from the Six Fifty:

• Meet the devoted, diverse, slightly crazy coffee roasters of Silicon Valley
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Transparent coffee: Two Silicon Valley transplants disrupt the industry from their kitchen table​ was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Feast your eyes on these art-oriented interiors from around the 6–5–0.

Can art enhance your eats?

Well, we’d point to the fact that most restaurant critics include ambiance in their assessment of any eatery, so there must be something to that idea. And here on the Peninsula, we have a special place in our hearts (and stomachs) for restaurants that go big on art-oriented interiors. From original floor-to-ceiling work by San Francisco’s favorite doodle master to a vast cartoon recreation of Japanese food hub Osaka, Silicon Valley delivers for those eager to eat with their eyes. And no, we can’t tell if it’s the creative stimulation, the Insta-friendly backgrounds…or the fact that we just like to eat tacos beneath a mural of a kid holding a fish (well, fishes…fish plural).

So as we slowly make our way back into restaurants, here are a few of our favorite restaurant murals from around the zip code. Take a look….(and snap a pic when you’re there…)

Taro San Japanese Noodle Bar

The buzzing streets of Osaka are alive at Palo Alto’s Taro San Japanese Noodle Bar. Nigel Sussman’s teal monochromatic painting of folks eating, biking, hugging, talking, cooking and going about their daily lives was painted at various perspective points giving it a surreal feel.

The idea came about in 2018 as Taro San’s owners Lihn and Jerome Ito were building out the restaurant. Sussman was asked to “create a mural that represented the streets of Osaka, the foodie hub of Japan; filled with all the food stalls, busy streets and people enjoying good food.”

The Itos say the mural is the restaurant’s focal point as it’s the first thing viewable upon entry and “adds an energy and vibe to the restaurant, allowing the viewer to enter the world of the painting.”

Taro San Japanese Noodle Bar // 717 Stanford Shopping Center, Palo Alto; 650.815.2700

Sweetgreen

Twenty spectacle-sporting cartoon images surrounding the words “Live the Sweet Life” are plastered onto a wall at the Mountain View Sweetgreen location. The black and white mural was created by artist Lauren Asta who set out to design a “fun doodle world of healthy food and good times.”

Asta says she hopes restaurant visitors will “take a pause on life and enjoy the doodle life,” which she said is her own motto. Each doodle wears a goofy expression and overlooks the restaurant’s dining quarters. Asta, who says she spent three days creating the mural in 2017, wants viewers to know “good food and being healthy can be fun.”

Sweetgreen // 440 Castro St, Mountain View; 650.753.7300

La Viga Seafood & Cocina Mexicana

Wanting a “remark on fresh ingredients, produce and fish,” La Viga Seafood and Cocina Mexicana Chef and Owner Manuel Martinez employed muralist Morgan Bricca of Morgan Mural Studios to create two complementary murals — each embracing an unfinished look — inside his Redwood City restaurant.

According to the artist, the pieces — one depicting a woman holding a basket of produce standing amid flowers mostly void of color, and the second, a young boy standing alongside colorless flowers and displaying a large fish dangling from each of his fists — were designed to be hip, casual and celebrate the La Viga market in Mexico City. Each of the murals contains a handful of black birds and a simple semi-circle color splash with the woman in front of turquoise and the boy’s image before a bright red backing.

At the time the mural was painted in 2017, Martinez told Bricca that adorning his walls with images was “like getting a tattoo on my business,” and has since said the murals have “made a huge difference” in his restaurant with customers enjoying the dining experience the images create.

La Viga Seafood & Cocina Mexicana // 1772 Broadway, Redwood City; 650. 679.8141

Rooh

Designed and painted in January 2020 by artist Amanda Lynn, Rooh restaurant’s mural of an Indian woman peeking out from green foliage, butterflies and white flowers is worth a deeper look. Wearing a headband of red roses, bindi and green and gold oversized jewelry, the subject in the image is meant to make patrons pause.

“All of our restaurant locations have a mural of the woman,” says Rooh Co-owner Anu Bhambri. “They are an ode to strong and powerful women. Murals align with our concept, representing the new modern world while preserving the traditions.

“The mural is a focal point of the restaurant,” she continues. “It ties different elements of the space together. Space represents an old Indian haveli, a historical Indian building with enormous courtyards and ornate archways.” According to Bhambri, Lynn took inspiration from different elements already in place within the space, including the two plants meant to mimic mango trees at Rooh’s entrance and the restaurant’s floral wallpaper by Sabyasachi.

Rooh // 473 University Ave, Palo Alto; 650.800.7090

Chico’s Taqueria

Two black and white sombrero-wearing men, one with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, stare down diners. The smoker points a handgun directly into the dining room while his companion extends a bouquet of red roses — the painting’s only splash of color — toward patrons as they order. On a rosy wall, a brightly colored sugar skull looms. Painted in bright blue, hot pink, vibrant yellow, turquoise and green shades, the image serves as both a contrast and complement to the yellow wall across the aisle.

Chico’s Taqueria // 127 W 25th Ave, San Mateo; 650.242.1780

It’s-It Factory

It’s not exactly at a restaurant, but everyone loves an It’s-It, and the Factory Shop has a mural worth visiting. Yes, it’s partially an image of the It’s-It Factory, but the mural has so much more and serves as an homage to the Bay. The image of San Francisco’s Playland-at-the-Beach, the original location of the It’s-It Factory, contains a Ferris wheel, fun house, cruise ship and a white, multi-story building built into the headlands above Ocean Beach, creating a carnival atmosphere viewers will want to dive into and visit.

It’s-It Ice Cream // 865 Burlway Rd., Burlingame; 650.347.2122

Stay up to date with other coverage from The Six Fifty. Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, featuring event listings, reviews and articles showcasing the best that the Peninsula has to offer.

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Instagrammable eateries: The original art of Silicon Valley’s most photogenic restaurants. was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dig into Indian curry, Panamanian salsa, Southern queso and more

“Oh my god, it’s so yum.”

The Return of the OG Queso dish from Alpa Bhas’s Belmont restaurant, Eats Meet West Bowls was inspired by her time in Georgia. With melty American cheese and milk, jalapeno and cilantro, Panamanian-style salsa and cilantro-garlic chutney, it’s one of nine customizable bowls on her predominantly vegan and vegetarian menu that’s influenced by Indian, Panamanian and U.S. cuisines.

“Everyone comes in for more of the curry flavors, but then they realize there’s a lot more to it,” the Redwood City resident says.

As the restaurant’s founder, owner and cook, it was important to Bhas to have a concept that’s completely hers. The menu is a part of that, reflecting the influences of her journey, starting with her parents’ immigration from Gujarat, India, and the other places she’s lived.

“When (my parents) first immigrated when they were 15, they moved to Panama first. That’s why there’s a lot of Panamanian influences in my food. So it’s not just Indian food,” Bhas says. Inspired by that, Bhas’s dishes have eggplant, olives and salsas.

When it came to determining the curries to include on the menu, Bhas says, “I just looked at India geographically, and divided it into north, middle and south,” and she included ones from different regions.

The dish All About the Makhani builds off a tomato and onion curry, with tamarind and cilantro. You are the Pav to My Bhaji pairs a potato curry with cilantro dressing. The Darling Lia — named after Bhas’s 16-year-old daughter, her right hand person in the business — adds a splash of red pepper and coconut dressing to a lentil curry.

Every customer gets personal attention. “My customers come first,” Bhas says. “And that’s why people keep coming back. Even when someone calls, they talk to a person.” That person on the other end of the line is Bhas. “That has a lot to do with my Southern roots. There’s a little bit of that Southern hospitality that comes through,” she says of her years going to high school and university in Georgia.

“I feel like I’m an eclectic mix. I was born and raised here,” Bhas says. “When people ask me, ‘How is this pronounced?’ I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing it right. I’m like, ‘I don’t know. I’m winging it myself.’”

Bhas’s dream to open her restaurant long precedes its 2019 launch. She worked in corporate roles for years, and decided she needed change.

“I was like, ‘This is not working.’ I had children,” Bhas says.

She moved from the corporate world to being a general manager at her in-laws’ inn, which was familiar to her from the “mom and pop” motels that her parents owned as she was growing up. But that didn’t resonate in the long-run either.

“I wanted to do something on my own, and be owned by me — 100%. I was not happy working for somebody else. It wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to have my own place,” Bhas says.

“I kind of wanted to prove to people, ‘You know what? A woman can do this.’ Especially in a culture where it’s really hard. I got very little support. I built it from the ground up myself.”

Bhas started to get experience cooking, first for some of the employees she managed at the inn, and then for tech workers visiting from India. That led to her catering for weddings and corporate events, launching her catering business about four years ago.

From there, Bhas got a brick and mortar location in October of 2019, replacing a Subway store at Gateway Plaza. It was a tough season to start: Pacific Gas and Electric Company was shutting off power to mitigate fire risk, and the restaurant ended up losing a lot of inventory. Then the COVID-19 pandemic came to a head. Bhas had to let go of the employees she’d hired, and entirely rethink her business model.

“The pandemic changed my plans, because I lost my corporate clients and started focusing on the bowls and doing that,” Bhas says.

Despite the challenges, there was an upside: “Honestly, I really think the pandemic was a blessing in disguise, because it kind of made a quick start. You could figure out what was wrong, how to streamline, get more efficient and make things faster.”

Bhas eventually nailed down a fast-casual concept. Now, the restaurant offers takeout and delivery, as well as some indoor and outdoor seating. There’s a build-your-own-meal model, aiming to give people a wide range of customizable options to choose from according to their health needs and preferences.

“I hate to say we’re like a Chipotle, because we’re so different, but that’s what it is,” Bhas says. “It’s very much a line concept. You pick your flavor, your base, your protein, your veggies and your final crunchy toppings. It’s a five-step process.”

The pandemic turned out to be a blessing for another reason.

“It was a blessing in disguise for the customer support I ended up getting,” Bhas says. “It was amazing to see how these people from Belmont and even San Francisco would help out. I’d say, ‘You came down here just for a salad?’ And they’d say, ‘Yeah.’

“Those nights when I was like, ‘Should I shut down and give up?’ I didn’t, because I was like, ‘Dude — I can’t do it. People love the food so much.’”

Follow Eats Meets West Bowls on Instagram.

Eats Meets West Bowls // 1602 El Camino Real Suite A, Belmont; 650.722.00670

Dig into food news. Follow the Peninsula Foodist on Instagram and subscribe to the newsletter to get insights on the latest openings and closings, learn what the Foodist is excited about eating, read exclusive interviews and keep up on the trends affecting local restaurants.

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Five steps of flavor: Eats Meets West Bowls creates customizable fast casual feasts in Belmont was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How a local writer joined extreme kayaker Scott Lindgren for the Netflix doc “The River Runner”

Thayer Walker discusses navigating the turbulent waters of the Grand Canyon, masculinity and mental health for a powerful new documentary.

From raging Himalayan rivers to navigating the Nile, Northern Californian Scott Lindgren has made headlines for his worldwide kayaking expeditions.

But it hasn’t been until more recently that he’s opened up about the personal physical and mental health challenges he’s faced alongside his journeys through some of the world’s most dangerous rivers — a story highlighted in the new Netflix documentary, “The River Runner” (2021). The film documents Lindgren’s quest to kayak the four rivers that begin at Mt. Kailash: the Indus, the Sutlej, the Karnali and the Tsangpo.

A big part of how Lindgren is telling his story has to do with the work of Thayer Walker, a longtime Outside Magazine correspondent, Bay Area resident and cofounder of the Half Moon Bay-based Ink Dwell Studio. (His wife is Jane Kim, a visual artist whose work we’ve featured in the past.)

Walker wrote and produced “The River Runner,” co-authored an article with Lindgren sharing his story in Outside Magazine, and is now co-authoring Lindgren’s memoir.

We caught up with him recently to learn more about his work.

(Editor’s Note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.)

How did you get involved as writer and producer for “The River Runner,” and how has the process been for you?

This has been my first documentary, and it was such a fun process … I’ve certainly been aware of Scott for a long time. Scott’s a formative figure in the sport, kind of the Warren Miller/Laird Hamilton of whitewater kayaking. Several years ago I was on Instagram and wondering what Scott had gotten up to…The first post was this very vulnerable window into the journey that Scott had been going through up until that point.

I reached out to my editor at Outside Magazine and (connected with) Rush Sturges, the director of “The River Runner” and Scott (who) had been working on a film project.

[When Rush brought me on, they] had 70% or more of the raw material at that point, but turning this into a human story that a non-kayaker could appreciate was my biggest focus.

I feel like I kind of had the best job of anyone on the team, because Scott had to do all this hard work opening himself up and becoming really vulnerable. And Rush, as the director, basically everything falls on him. For me to be able to work with these two really talented people, and just help guide their process, was a real treat.

It’s very different than, say, writing a book or an article on your own. That’s a very solitary and sometimes painstaking experience. So having the ability to work with a creative team in this manner was really refreshing and a very energizing process.

Telling Scott Lindgren’s story has now become an endeavor that spans multiple mediums for you: a magazine article, a film documentary and now a book. What about Scott’s story is so inspiring to you that you go to these lengths to present it in these different formats?

There’s so many layers and levels to it.

First of all, it’s the personal and human journey that he’s on. I think it’s especially relevant today in 2021, as people are talking about topics like masculinity and vulnerability, and what do those things actually look like, versus the archetypes that we’ve created for ourselves.

Are those archetypes that we’ve created for ourselves healthy, or are there other ways to go about it?

I think Scott was very much an archetype of that alpha male kind of personality, and that really served him in the exploratory kayaking world, but that was not a particularly productive attitude to have off the river.

We’re starting to see, over the last five or 10 years or so, that athletes, and especially men, are starting to lean into and ask these questions about vulnerability and strength and what that means. So I think that’s part of it.

Certainly, I think that the sport of kayaking is also a sport that has not chronicled or documented itself particularly well. There’s really only been one or two books of any quality or note that have been written about the sport.

(With) Scott being such a formative figure within the sport, being able to then take that and tell a much larger story that has the ability, for decades to come, to be a foundational piece to a sport like this, is really exciting. It’s a small sport, but the opportunity to contribute to that in a meaningful way is certainly unique.

Then there’s this broader concept of river exploration. This niche, little sport of expedition kayaking is almost the evolutionary endpoint of a process that has guided human evolution and social evolution—the process of river exploration and river navigation, and harnessing rivers to advance societies. I mean, look at the Nile — it basically laid the foundation for much of the culture and science that we have today.

If you look at this country, and the way that its mythology and economy evolved, there was river travel. It was the Mississippi. It was the Columbia. It was Washington crossing the Delaware, one of the most legendary images in the birth of this country: someone crossing a river in a small boat. I think there’s a historical context here.

So when you add it all together, it’s the adventure component, which is off the charts. It’s one of the top exploration achievements of our time, for sure. You take the personal transformation, and that story, which I think is a really important story for us to tell, and then the broader context of the evolution of human civilization and how it’s tied to rivers. So, there’s a lot of ground to cover.

So what’s the timeline for the book project?

We’re about a third of the way into it. This last year and a half has been a bit of a challenge because we’ve been pinned down. …So much of this book and Scott’s life is tied to a sense of place and to exploration. When we were first developing the outline for this a lot of it involved me and Scott revisiting some of these places and paddling some of these rivers. As a travel writer myself there’s no way to replace actually going and seeing a place. So some of these places I know pretty well, and I’m comfortable with, but, for instance, Mt. Kailash, we are hoping that Scott and I will be able to get out there and do a circumnavigation. That will help the central part of the book, which revolves around Kailash.

We’re going to Costa Rica next month for a couple of weeks to do some paddling down there, where he first learned how to kayak.

I’m hoping by the middle of 2022 is when we have the manuscript done, and and then I think the book would potentially come out later that year. That’s really up to our publishers.

What is the collaboration process like with Scott?

For every type of co-authored book, I think it’s always different. This one in particular has been really smooth.

First of all, Scott and I both understand each other, which is important if you’re going to do a project this personal for both sides. In terms of how the story actually gets cranked out, Scott and I’ll sit down and we have many, many conversations about the journey of his life and how we get from point A to point B.

Then it’s my job to pick out the formative events that are really going to shape the story — and in an article, there’s far fewer than in a movie or than in the book.

Scott’s biggest focus was making sure that the message was conveyed accurately in the story that he wanted to tell. And the story that he wanted to tell was not a story of “Scott Lindgren, the chest-thumping expedition kayaker,” or “‘Look at how cool I am.’”

He wants to tell this story about personal healing, [that] you can find that strength and vulnerability. And if he had known these things sooner, what that would have meant. I think for Scott, the most important thing is that we nail the themes right.

Obviously, it’s his story — he’s so close to it — and I think that he’s been appreciative of the fact that I can offer some distance and some perspective to it, and then lead into a bigger conceptual geography and take these bigger themes and weave it in ways that he wouldn’t have necessarily gravitated to.

It’s a pretty collaborative process, but it’s also one where there’s a lot of trust.

What’s been one of your coolest river adventures?

I’ve basically had the opportunity to spend two years following the stern of one of the world’s great expedition kayakers, so selfishly, there’s a component to this story that was undeniably attractive and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. My paddling has significantly improved since I started this story. We just got back from two weeks in the Grand Canyon. In the middle of June, we went we went down there … and Scott and I kayaked the whole thing.

I tell people that it’s both your right and obligation as an American to go and and do the Grand Canyon. And by doing, I mean go rafting down that river and spend two weeks down there and see it. It’s a dynamic, life-changing, spectacular experience.

Closer to home, there’s a section of the North Fork of the American River called Giant Gap. It was actually the first whitewater experience Scott ever had. He rafted it back in the late ‘80s and with the rafters who pioneered that run. It’s a full-on, one-day expedition. It’s a 14-mile river canyon with a 2,000-foot vertical hike in, down switchback trails. It’s a solid Class IV or V run, depending on the flows.

In addition to COVID-19, one of the challenges has been that it’s been so dry that rivers haven’t really been been running the way they typically do. For Giant Gap, we got one of the few days this year that it actually ran and that was an absolutely spectacular experience.

I literally drove there from San Francisco, woke up early and then was in the bottom of this river canyon. By 11 a.m., I could have been on the dark side of the moon. Knowing that this stuff is out there and still relatively accessible is a beautiful thing and one of the reasons why I still live in this corner of the world.

Why should people watch “The River Runner”?

First and foremost, this journey to kayak these four great rivers of Mt. Kailash is a superlative adventure quest. The Tsangpo itself was considered one of the greatest expeditions of the 20th century. And then you layer on these three other (expeditions) and the mountain on top. It’s an absolutely phenomenal achievement. There’s still so much spiritualism and mysticism around it with Mt. Kailash being this holy place.

Then there’s the fact that this feat will never be duplicated — Scott is the only person that has done it, because some of these rivers are in the process of getting dammed up, like a section of the Sutlej River. The Tsangpo River has been sort of an endangered species for some time. No other expedition has been there ever since. From that perspective, it’s an incredible adventure that anyone who is interested in exploration of the natural world will appreciate.

Beyond that, from a human level, there is this story of a hard man learning how to open his heart, and learning that the only way that he’s ever going to achieve this incredible 20-year quest is by being vulnerable and embracing vulnerability, and … shedding the protective armor that I think we all wear to a certain degree every day.

It’s ultimately a story about the strength that can be found in vulnerability, and opening yourself up to the people around you. And that is a really transcendent story. That’s something that I think all of us can appreciate. The kayaking and the adventure component is aspirational, certainly, but the human journey is inspirational, and it’s something that I think we can all understand in our own ways.

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How a local writer joined extreme kayaker Scott Lindgren for Netflix’s “The River Runner” was originally published in THE SIX FIFTY on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.