Father Daughter Life on the Road…

Tonight I begin a Father-Daughter Night series at the Olympic Club in San Francisco. Over the next two weekends I’ll do five nights of shows with the irrepressible Bob Sarlatte hosting the stage. Bob’s a Saint Ignatius High School grad. I went to school at Bellarmine. My wife and I have three daughters. Our youngest, Alana […]

Grass Roots Audience, The Small Time Entertainer, The Fully Funded Heart

The grass roots audiences the small time entertainer plays to is located closer to the heart. We are literally physically closer. Venues are scaled to size. Expectations are held in check. We are paid less money but we acquire a greater bounty of intimacy. We begin our performing careers creating material that is both visually […]

Lambrusco with a Steinbeck Chaser…

In 1975 in the Mission Gardens at Santa Clara University the season’s final show with the Royal Lichtenstein Quarter-Ring Sidewalk Circus ended my year long stint with the foundational experience of my new variety arts path in life. By 1977 I had a new show and played dates for the next three years with the talented […]

Long Hops and short stops

In the early 70’s as the counter cultural movement took to the streets the first wave of artists built shows from scratch. We had no templates to work from. By the early 80’s that was over. Acts arrived at venues derived from the first wave shows of the late 60’s to early 70’s. We felt […]

Life as Transition

My beginnings as an entertainer started in 1974 with the Royal Lichtenstein Quarter-Ring Sidewalk Circus. I am on the left and Nick Weber the shows creator is on the right. After a year long national tour with the circus I struck out on my own. Sold my motorcycle and bought my 1967 Ford pickup and […]

Left Coast Lifter

Here at work is the Left Coast Lifter. Left Coast a right wing epithet coined to characterize the voting habits of California, Oregon and Washington. We are reliably Liberal. Yesterday was a classic Indian summer day on the San Francisco Bay. This gigantic crane is preparing to hoist into position the last piece of the […]

Prayer at Sunrise before the Masts

Here at the Emeryville Yacht Harbor just a stones throw from downtown Oakland site of the horrific riot by police that sent an Iraq war Marine veteran to the hospital where he was being treated to a traumatic head injury when what seems to have happened is a tear gas canister shot at the Occupy […]

Good Man to Go with a Good Woman aboard a Blue Water Vessel

I’m a big fan of traditional yachts. Here is Chris and Helen’s. Lyle Hess designed this vessel with the Bristol Channel Cutter in mind. She displaces almost twenty thousand pounds. She is made of wood. Chris built her in New Zealand. While her hull is made up wood she’s been sealed (in fiberglass?) and LPU painted. […]

Sailings Unimpeachable Reliable Sources……

Sailing is a thinking man’s game. The equipment is complex and so are the sailing skills. And like all human endeavors there are a host of actors, some good and most of the rest? Well, we’ll wish those bad actors a safe voyage as they go about hazarding their own lives at sea. If you […]

Bernard Moitessier Pelagic Wisdom for Celestial Loons

“I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth. A nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the […]