Best of 2014

Once again it’s time to put up that totally arbitrary list!

Best Bow Ties
Dap Kitsch This young fellow makes really handsome and reasonably priced bow ties. Found him at the otherwise uninspired Union Square Christmas market. https://www.etsy.com/shop/dapkitsch

Best Massage
I had a great masseur in SF but he moved locations. So I found this guy who treats massage like a dance. Something to look forward to every month! http://deepesalenmassage.com/

Best Design Book
Leslie Williamson’s “Modern Originals.” http://www.lesliewilliamson.com/modern-originals/

Best Design Workshop
From Leslie’s book. http://www.werkstaette-carlauboeck.at

Best Mysteries set in France (tie)
This year I read four mysteries set in Provence by M.L. Longworth. Even Frank O’Hara’s Lunch Poems make a brief appearance!

Also found a new series by Peter Steiner that predicts all that CIA nastiness!

Best Book of Love Letters
Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy I keep reading everything that comes out by or about them! http://us.macmillan.com/theanimalslovelettersbetweenchristopherisherwoodanddonbachardy/christopherisherwood

Best Garden
Le Jardin Plume It took us a while to find this paradise on the edge of Normandy. Never travel without an atlas. But the detour was worth it all. One of the most beautifully conceived modern gardens we’ve been to. http://lejardinplume.com/

Best Restaurant Outside the US
La Pramil in Paris. Ran into our friends Anne Fougeron and Mark English in Paris and found this gem without a reservation. My starter was white asparagus soup with foie gras ice cream. Last meal before the revolution! http://www.pramil.fr/

Best House Museum
Just before lunch with we visited Le Corbusier’s apartment and studio in Paris with Sofie Nunberg, Anne, and Mark. Only open on Saturdays. Must see! http://www.fondationlecorbusier.fr

Best Thai Restaurant
We ate at a great Thai restaurant called Au Petit Thai. They don't seem to have a website. Here is their info. 10 Rue du Roi de Sicile, 75004 Paris, France +33 1 42 72 75 75

Best Recipe
Rachel Ray’s carrot soup. But put in mild cayenne, not hot cayenne. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/curried-carrot-soup-recipe.html

Best Concert
Thanksgiving Concert at St Paul’s Church in London conducted by Andrew Carwood. It featured Paul’s commissioned piece, “Psalm 30” sung beautifully by the Choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

Best New Shoes
My Alden slip-ons http://www.aldenshoe.com

Best Spice Shop
We don’t shop that much but we found this local spice shop a few blocks from our house and it’s got me back in the kitchen. A must visit. Oaktown Spice Shop https://squareup.com/market/oaktown-spice-shop

Best Art Exhibit
Ai WeiWei on Alcatraz. And it’s there until April 26, 2015 http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/

Best Art Exhibit in NY
There were quite a few. But Robert Gober was the most thought provoking. Not pretty like the Matisse or Cubist knock-outs but a lot of new information to think about.

Robert Gober
Untitled 1992
courtesy www.moma.org

Best Quirky Exhibit
Maynard and Lu Lyndon’s show of baby rattles at their shop, Placewares, in Gualala. http://www.placewares.com/category/gallery/

Best Private Club
OK, let’s be honest we don’t get invited to very many private clubs. But Two Brydges in London is basically a hang-out for folks in the performing arts. Great food, mismatched chairs, and adorable waiters. Thank you Paul Hughes!

Best Swimming Lake within a Short Driving Distance
Emerald Lake above Redwood City. It’s also private, but not fancy. You feel like you drove several hours to hang out in Andirondack chairs and jump off diving boards into cold green water. Perfect on a hot summer day.

Second Best Lake within a Short Driving Distance
Lake Anza in Tilden Park. It’s public and there is a nice sandy beach and a snack bar, but the water is a bit murkier…

We live on Lake Merritt but you can’t swim there.

Favorite Asian/Tribal Rug Store
The Claremont Rug Company has some of the most beautiful rugs in the Bay Area. But if you don’t have a big budget for antique rugs you might check in at Emmet Eiland and some of their new tribal rugs. Good prices, no pressure.

Best Chinese Food
Mission Chinese Clean up a funky Chinese restaurant, turn off the lights, shrink and freshen up the menu, and Bob’s your uncle. http://missionchinesefood.com/

Best Documentary
CitizenFour about, you guessed it, Edward Snowden. https://citizenfourfilm.com/

Best New News Source
What happens when you bring a billionaire together with several very determined journalists? Well, I can only imagine the chaos, but most days you get something very interesting from The Intercept! https://firstlook.org/theintercept/

Best Snow Globe
OK, I am not a big snow globe fan. But our pals Liz Ross and David Westby create something really different. Check them out at: http://coolsnowglobes.com

Best Air BnB in New York
Found this charming apartment in Manhattan. It is four long blocks from the Lexington subway, but the linens are marvelous and so is the morning light. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/825732?euid=f92852da-0e60-f6e9-c3d2-56f57213deee

Slowing Alcatraz Down

Alcatraz is full of myths. Some true, some false. The park service has done a good job of underplaying the dramatic potential and introducing some interpretation, but not too much. Even so, the voices of birds on the ferry’s loudspeakers, the audio phones, the introductory materials, and the large crowds make it difficult to experience this solemn place as more than a quick trip between Fisherman’s Wharf and the highbrow shopping emporium at the Ferry Building. Is it possible to slow this experience down?

Ai Weiwei’s show “@Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz” is probably not going to mean a great deal to first-time visitors looking for Al Capone’s cell, the hospital room where Birdman of Alcatraz stayed, or the answer to how a trio of prisoners escaped through the ventilation system. But for return visitors, Ai Weiwei’s installation offers a chance to interact with several different kinds of spaces and experience a deeper insight into the meaning of freedom.

The New Industries Building has not been open to the public previously. This factory structure offers vistas of the bay and the Golden Gate, which the prison blocks do not. Prisoners had only endless days in tiny cells, so factory work offered variety to an otherwise monotonous routine. Above the prisoners was a gun gallery with armed guards ready to shoot if a whistle’s shrill was heard from the factory floor. In this spare building, the artist has created three large-scale but very different works.

With Wind, 2014
photos: Kenneth Caldwell

With Wind is the first piece after the beautiful uphill walk from the ferry dock. Wind, a force that cools you in the heat, also makes a kite soar in the sky. The beautifully detailed dragon is not frightening, nor is it alive—like any prisoner, it is waiting for an unseen force. A viewer can look at the beautifully detailed structure and painting, but I found myself concentrating on the sharp contrast with the ugly peeling workplace where prisoners and their guards toiled, counting days to release of one kind or another. Another view of this cloth serpentine-like form can be seen from the upstairs gun gallery. This narrow space, barely wide enough for two to pass, was filled with sunlight on the day I visited but felt unbearably claustrophobic. I couldn’t focus on the work again until I left the building. It is no mistake that Ai Weiwei chose a dragon kite, a stereotypical Chinese icon, to begin his complex and enormous multimedia essay on freedom.

Trace, 2014
photos: Kenneth Caldwell

In the next room, Trace portrays over 170 faces of political prisoners and exiles using plastic LEGO bricks. Foregrounding something as serious as the injustice of governments (democratic as well totalitarian) acting against their own citizens in the medium of children’s toys seems like an odd juxtaposition. Each pop portrait looks like a pixilated heat scan, not far from abstraction—perhaps inspired a little by Warhol silk screens or distant cameras? What remains is just a bright trace of the individual. At first, it’s tempting to look for the more famous names, the late Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Chelsea Manning, and of course, Edward Snowden. But like the LEGOs themselves, these are points of access. And then I was overwhelmed by the enormity of all these human beings suffering for advocating freedom and justice. Thankfully, the @Large website has biographies of each person so their memories are not left on the factory floor.

Refraction, 2014

photo: Jan Stürmann

Interestingly, the most physically beautiful and complex piece in the installation, Refraction, can only be seen from a distance in the lower gun gallery. After being immersed in viewing the kite and walking around (although not on) the LEGO tiles, seeing this sculpture—wings made of metal panels from Tibetan solar cookers—serves as a reminder that art, like freedom itself, is not guaranteed. You can barely experience the most beautiful form in the island, a wing too heavy for flight. Freedom is never certain.

After the claustrophobia of the gun galleries, being outside with vistas of the bay—which prisoners rarely saw—is restorative. A further walk leads up to the door of the main cellblock, where you enter as prisoners did and are faced immediately with the same series of completely open showers that they saw. The associations with the final solution, though not intentional, are obvious.

Blossom, 2014
photo: Jan Stürmann

photo: Kenneth Caldwell

photo: Kenneth Caldwell

Up the stairs are the hospital and psychiatric observation rooms, which are usually closed to the public. In the sinks, tubs, and toilets of the hospital, the artist has inserted precisely measured groups of porcelain flowers. At a distance, they appear to be bunched-up paper, some kind of waste. On closer inspection, they reminded me of kitschy trinkets that tourists might find in Chinatown a few miles away. Weiwei entitled these groupings Blossom. The longer you look at them, the more they turn into groups of pure white blossoms, white like the porcelain containers they rest in. They are monochromatic, a commentary perhaps on a colorless life behind bars. Yet they are also a contrast to that life because they are so delicate, so fragile within the stolid vitrines of fluid waste inside an oppressive monolith. One color, many layers.

Ilumination, 2014
photos: Kenneth Caldwell

Nearby, in the psychiatric observation rooms, I felt another sudden urge to get out as fast as possible. But I was drawn in by an almost hypnotic chanting of Tibetan monks and Hopi Indians. This piece, entitled Illumination, reinforces the well-known link from Chinese dissidents to Tibet. But few people are aware that Hopis were imprisoned on Alcatraz in the 19th century when they wouldn’t let their children attend U.S. government schools. I was also reminded of the Native American occupation of the island for nearly two years in the late 1960s/early 1970s.

Stay Tuned, 2014
photos: Kenneth Caldwell

Back downstairs and over to A Block, which was not renovated when the military prison became a federal penitentiary. The cells were later used by prisoners for typing up their correspondence and for storage. Here, the artist has turned each cell on the ground level into a space commemorating a well-known political prisoner. Stay Tuned encourages the visitor to sit on a simple stool in the small cell and listen to some kind of text or song created by prisoners such as Russia’s Pussy Riot, Chilean poet and musician Victor Jara, Tibetan singer Lolo, and of course, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Their voices reach across oceans, years, and concrete walls. With so little “art,” this installation finally causes you to just sit and feel the tiny enclosure that is a prison cell.

Yours Truly, 2014

photo: Jan Stürmann

photo: Kenneth Caldwell

Exhausted from the walking and contemplating, you end up in the former cafeteria wondering, what can one person do in the face of all this oppression? Instead of predictable organic snacks on beautifully made, locally sourced wood tables that you might expect in the Bay Area, there are pens for you to write a note on a pre-addressed postcard with images of the countries where today’s political prisoners are being held. Yours Truly is a tidy conclusion to the show, but it does serve to remind us that one person can make a difference and help free people. Each of our voices helped Ai Weiwei get released from prison so he could, with help from hundreds of people, make these pieces of art. We hope that one day he and the other prisoners will be able to physically stand with us. As Edward Snowden has shown us, preserving freedom takes a lot of thinking and a lot of action. But one person can make a difference.

More information:
http://www.for-site.org/project/ai-weiwei-alcatraz/ 
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/arts/design/ai-weiwei-takes-his-work-to-a-prison.html?_r=0