While this year’s Taste of Los Gatos will feature Rush cover band R50 and Livewire headlining the main stage, with Chain of Fools, Identity Problem, Phill & Rob and Sam Marshall scattered throughout the one-day street party, make no mistake, the essence of the fest will be the nibbles and libations.

“It’s really telling the story of Los Gatos as a culinary destination,” Chamber CEO Jennifer Lin said about the event, taking place on Sept. 6. “I really do feel like we’re experiencing a culinary renaissance here.”

Lin was in a buoyant mood after the Los Gatos Planning Commission supported the food-and-furniture plan by RH, the upscale company based in Marin County’s Corte Madera.

“They recognize that Los Gatos is a destination,” she said of the business known as Restoration Hardware until 2012. “And if approved, it will only help us to elevate that reputation and drive even more regional traffic here.”

It’s been all-hands-on-deck at the Visitor’s Bureau as staff sifted through details about the eats and sips to be offered at Taste. At press time details were still emerging about the 27 restaurants and 20 local wineries that are participating. But here’s a sneak peek…

• Oren’s Hummus: mini falafels and pita wedges
• Telefèric Barcelona: duck confit empanadas with spicy aioli
• The Lexington House: nectarine crostini (garlic butter, burrata, crispy capocollo, nectarine, seasonal berries, balsamic)
• Michi Catering: sushi handrolls
• Coup de Thai: famous dragon balls
• The Pastaria & Market: tortellone a la vodka and peas

“We find people just love being in the middle of the street connecting with neighbors and making new friends,” Lin remarked. “And we do think that this festival is one of the best ways that we can share who we are.”

This year’s event will feature an interactive digital map to make wayfinding easier.

“People will actually go to the business locations. They will go to the restaurants to go to get their bites, and they will go to our stores who are hosting the wineries to do their wine tasting,” Lin said. “The restaurants will be marked with a red flag outside their entrance, and the wine tasting locations will be marked by a blue flag.”

Lin thanked the sponsors, particularly title sponsors El Camino Health, Good Samaritan and Netflix. The latter is partnering with Cinelux to hand out popcorn at the Los Gatos Theatre during the festival.

“Having their trust and financial support, it enables us to offer a lot of things to the community,” Lin said, noting Netflix increased their community involvement this year. “Timing was right.”

Taste of Los Gatos takes place noon–5pm on Sept. 6 in Old Town Los Gatos. Tasting tickets are $75-$95. losgatoschamber.com

Editor’s note: Corrections made on Sept. 3.

As tariffs against goods from Canada, Mexico and China were announced Sunday, and Republicans hit national political television shows to slam our neighbor to the north, local winemakers braced for impact.

But John Clerides, the owner of Marquis Wine Cellars—a Vancouver importer of Californian wines (such as from Saratoga’s Mount Eden Vineyards)—says he’s not going to let edicts from Washington ruin long-standing friendships.

“We’ve never had—at least in my lifetime—a trade war like this,” he said, but added, “Our relationships are not going to be compromised by a bully in the playground.”

As President Donald Trump signed off on a sweeping 25% levy on Canadian goods, premiers in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia responded with varying degrees of retaliation, particularly on alcoholic beverages.

Doug Ford, Ontario’s leader, directed the LCBO, the government-run monopoly, to remove all American liquor from its shelves by Tuesday, the day the tariffs were scheduled to go into effect. British Columbia said it would stop selling American liquor made in red states, though it was initially unclear how widely this would apply.

The move comes as Cupertino-based Ridge Vineyards has been gearing up to head to the Vancouver International Wine Festival, scheduled for Feb. 22 to March 2—which is billed as one of the country’s top industry showcases.

Ridge has been at the forefront of spreading awareness of Greater Silicon Valley’s wine-growing prowess. 

But now, with sports fans booing the American national anthem at basketball and hockey games, observers are already predicting Canadian consumers could soon sour on American grapes.

That would be a shame, says Jeremie Garcia, founder of Quebec-based Picole Import.

He’s become a huge fan of the Santa Cruz Mountains wines and makes the case for these products to that province’s relevant Crown corporation—the Société des alcools du Québec (SAQ), the only wholesaler.

“I decided to niche myself in that region specifically,” he said. “Since then—I don’t want to say obsessed…”

It’s the agricultural scene, mixed with the surf culture that he’s drawn to; plus, he adds, the wines have this very unique character, thanks to the landscape that births them.

“You get the height of the mountain that brings in the cool air, the sun exposure—while not necessarily blocking the air from the Pacific,” he said, comparing the region to more-established Napa and Sonoma. “It’s a more holistic approach to wine-making, and a little less ‘business.’”

It’d been a hectic morning, as he learned the SAQ was cutting off US producers.

“They’re going to block all the imports, and they won’t be selling them on their shelves either,” he said in a Sunday phone interview. “It hurts people like talented winemakers and representatives such as myself who don’t really have anything to do with the trade war.”

In addition to Saratoga’s Mount Eden, he represents other Californian exporters, such as Margins Wine.

The Megan Bell-founded company gets its grapes from Carmel Valley, the Santa Cruz Mountains and the Santa Clara Valley, among other sites.

Luckily, Garcia said, he just received a shipment from America, and expected to be allowed to sell-through the inventory—including at the high-end Montreal restaurant he manages called Tuck Shop.

The Mount Eden 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon goes perfectly with their steak and fries with chimichurri dish, he boasts.

“We make a mean one,” he said. “That steak and that wine together—you have to have it sometime.”

Their wine list also features a sauvignon blanc from Healdsburg-based Cormorant Cellars (which sources grapes from the Santa Cruz Mountains), as well as a Verdejo from Margins.

“The stock is in, but the trade war has started,” he said, adding he’s concerned American bottles could become tarnished by stigma.

Garcia emphasizes he’s no expert on trade policy, but says, even if the point is to pressure Ottawa into cracking down on fentanyl, he’s not a fan of how Trump went about it.

“It could have been a more collaborative process,” he said.

American journalists have pushed back on the claim that Canada is a big source of the synthetic opioid.

But, over in BC, Clerides says his law enforcement contacts have told him it’s becoming a real issue.

“This has got something to do with wine, but I can tell you this has more to do with the fentanyl production that comes out of British Columbia,” he said. “It’s a significant problem here.”

Only time will tell what Trump’s long game is, he adds.

“He’s using wine as the leverage,” Clerides said. “In the meantime, it’s going to affect a lot of small businesses. Especially the importers.”

He can’t help but think of the headaches to come. For example, Americans on vacation could be in for a rude awakening if US wine disappears from menus.

“They like to drink their own product,” he said. “The last thing you want to do is get in an argument with an American customer.”

On the other hand, Marty Mathis, the president and winegrower at Kathryn Kennedy Winery in Saratoga, notes the reason the Canadian wine industry was able to develop back in the 1970s was because of protectionism.

“They had the ability to compete on a different playing field,” he said, noting their company doesn’t sell north of the border. “They were able to grow.”

Meanwhile, their operation would be more affected by the 10% tariff on China, as that’s where they get their bottles from (it’s cheaper)—though he says it would take a while for this to make a dent in their bottom line.

And if Trump goes further and puts tariffs on European wines (as happened temporarily the last time he was in office), they’d see a bigger boost, Mathis adds—while stressing he’s not advocating for tariffs.

“Then, I would be a beneficiary of protectionism,” he said. “Because then my wine would be less expensive (relative to imports).”

But even if that happened, tariffs wouldn’t necessarily shift things that much—at least not right away, he adds.

“It’s hard for restaurants to change on a dime,” he said, noting image and wine list revamps take time.

Metro Silicon Valley’s editor, Dan Pulcrano, said tariffs could have a negative impact on American newspapers.

“Canada supplies all the newsprint,” he said. “There’s almost no US mills left.”

Felton’s Hallcrest Vineyards once exported to Canada, but hasn’t for years.

“It’ll be interesting to see how it affects us all,” said owner Lorraine Schumacher amid Sunday’s rain at their tasting room, adding, “—the backlash.”

Alex Frenette, a 38-year-old Bonny Doon resident who’s originally from Moncton, New Brunswick, says he isn’t too worried. He works as a wine educator at Beauregard Vineyards, which doesn’t ship to Canada.

“We grow the grapes and we make the wine, so that makes us a little unique,” he said, adding the Californian product is so good, Canadian sellers could always just keep the bottles in their cellars until the newfound anti-American sentiment fades. “When this blows over, the value of the wine will hold.”

Meanwhile, his coworker, Leia Regan, 47, was a little less blasé about the whole thing.

That’s because she just got back from the California Association of Winegrape Growers’ Unified Wine & Grape Symposium, in Sacramento. (“I toured a lot of tractors,” she joked.)

One panel discussion, where experts discussed labor and trade, stood out to her in particular.

“The mood was, very concerned,” she reflected, “—like, we’re coming into something difficult.”

To start with, she notes, wine sales have tumbled somewhat from their pandemic peak. Plus, Trump’s deportation agenda has struck fear into the heart of the industry, she added.

“They’re really concerned about that,” she said, when asked to characterize the labor aspect of the session.

Since many Californian growers sell grapes to Canadian producers, looming tariffs were top of mind, Regan added.

But from Frenette’s point of view, Santa Cruz Mountains winemakers shouldn’t fret too much.

“It’s going to be a big kick,” he said, as they closed up shop for the weekend, but added, “We still live in one of the best winemaking areas in the world.”

Back up in Vancouver, Clerides is frustrated the trade war could prevent quality wine from reaching thirsty Canadians. “It’s denying my customers really good wines.”

Then, at the 11th hour, Trump reversed course and said he was putting the Canadian tariffs on hold.

Fielding a question on its Facebook page late Monday, the Vancouver International Wine Festival confirmed neither Ridge nor any of the other American wineries had pulled out of the event.

“Wines from all participating festival wineries will be available at the onsite festival store,” the official VIWF account responded. “As announced earlier today, there will be a pause on tariffs for the next 30 days.”

On a Friday afternoon, Coskun Abik was inspecting the work underway at the site of his new venture in Los Gatos.

The Kurdish chef from Cyprus behind such Bay Area eateries as Blind Butcher SF, Dunya Bistro and Moka Coffee SF is opening a Greek-Anatolian restaurant at 25 E. Main St., which was most recently home to Sidecar Modern Tavern.

“It’s a great opportunity to bring a couple of my touches,” he said. 

It will be the second Mediterranean-focused dining spot to spring up on the picturesque downtown strip this year, after brothers Milad and Chef Esam Shaqir, who grew up in the Middle East, opened Dar Restaurant and Bar this spring.

“This might be similar, but the flavors (are) totally different,” Abik said, explaining the back-of-house in each business will be influenced by ingredients from the different geographical regions. “Whatever they grow in their area they use as their sources.”

Abik began his kitchen career in 1994.

Last June, he received a Certificate of Honor from San Francisco Mayor London Breed for the Blind Butcher, which opened in the Castro in 2019.

That was preceded by Lark, a Mediterranean-American restaurant next door established in 2015, and Dunya, a “Mediterranean casual” wine bar and grill, in the upscale Nob Hill neighborhood of the city, started in 2010.

His Los Gatos lease kicked in at the beginning of August.

“Ours is more a lighter version,” he said, contrasting the menu he’s dreamed up with Dar’s. “We use marsh pepper, oregano, olive oil…If you go down to the Arabic culture, they have more stronger flavors.”

Diners will get to see the complexity of the region for themselves, much like sampling cuisine from northern and southern regions of Italy, or Greece, Abik continues.

“If you go to eastern Turkey, it’s more, like, the Kurdish touch,” he said. “What is that? It’s more like grilled kebabs, lahmajoun—it’s like the flavors are a little bit stronger.”

He promises to bring some of that Kurdish flare to the Greek-Anatolian experience he’s creating.

“I’m not just chef-and-owner, at the same time I’m operating the construction and everything with my contractors,” he said, emphasizing that the interior must match with his dishes. “I have to create the right ambiance to represent my food.”

The whir of machines provided a near-continuous backdrop to the interview, as a crew made progress on the epoxy floor.

“My customers, they are going to feel they’re like in the Mediterranean Sea,” he said. “We’ll get some good wines from Greece, Turkey—maybe Lebanon.”

Abik is pretty thrilled to move into a storefront along a corridor that includes Sara’s Southern Kitchen, Purple Onion Cafe, Namaste Indian Cuisine, and others a jaunt away.

“It’s good to have good restaurants around you, good flavors,” he said. “Our menu’s totally different for this beautiful neighborhood.”

As I sip a Gypsy Queen at Carmel’s Cypress Inn, I think about getting tossed and turned, hours earlier, by the crisp and nearly onshore emerald waves down the hill from this hotel once owned by Doris Day. I look up at the five framed CDs presented to Terry Melcher, Day’s son, by the Recording Industry Association of America for 500,000 sales of “Good Vibrations, 30 Years Of The Beach Boys,” hanging above.

I wonder how exactly it is that I ended up here—a Canadian expat working for a Central California newspaper. And, as the Beach Boys’ return to San Jose this weekend at Music in the Park draws near—with Los Gatos-bred John Wedemeyer leading the guitar lineup—my mind wanders to the role this four-piece from Hawthorne, California, may have played in my arrival in the Golden State. And I can’t help considering the band’s role in shaping the development of surf culture—or at least the place it occupies in the popular imagination.

Somehow I’d forgotten about the weekend nights when my dad would put on a Beach Boys greatest hits cassette, and I would run ’round, ’round the living room to “I Get Around.” My mom called it getting “rambunctious.” I didn’t exactly understand what the lyrics were all about. And I didn’t really care. The music awoke something inside, a sense that musical frequencies could be something to which you could devote your being. 

I understood the Beach Boys to be emissaries of a sunny Californian culture that seemed appealing to someone accustomed to windows iced shut all winter. In Canadian “lake country,” the idea of surfing seemed more distant than a Caribbean vacation. Even then, I had the sense that this was a reflection of a moment in American history that had already passed, and transformed into something else. The broken beats in the Beach Boys’ drum machine-laden collaboration with hip hop trio the Fat Boys on the 1987 “Wipe Out” single brought the myth to a new generation.

BIRTH OF SURF CULTURE

Nowadays, you’re more likely to hear hip-hop music blaring from vehicle stereos in the beach communities of Southern California. But as I drove home to Santa Cruz, KZSC 88.1FM was playing “Cherish” by the Association. The still-full moon beamed milky light past towering palms, as I arrived, and I saw one of my roommates in passing. He came to California from the Midwest in 1976 and remembers cruising around LA to the sounds of Wolfman Jack on the airwaves. I asked him about hearing the Beach Boys as a kid. “It was a whole culture,” he said. “It basically made California—and it was fun, too.”

The previous weekend I’d driven down to Los Angeles for the California Journalism Awards dinner and headed to Torrance Beach, near where I lived during the pandemic. I wanted to see if there were any rideable waves. There weren’t. In my favorite nearby coffee shop, I was approached by a 77-year-old man named Richard Kelsey, and we struck up a conversation. Kelsey has been living in Seattle, but he grew up in Torrance. His family moved there in the ’50s.

“Hermosa Beach was kind of Ground Zero for the beach culture,” he said. “Surf music came, and it was just a new type of music—and everybody liked it.”

His father surfed a wooden board. Kelsey followed in his dad’s oceanic footsteps.

However, the hardcore surfers didn’t exactly buy into the Beach Boys schtick at the time, he recalled. He didn’t think much of the act at first, either. Although, one day that changed. “They came to Torrance High School,” he said. “It was a big local thing.”

Kelsey was quite impressed with their performance.

“They certainly didn’t embarrass themselves at all,” he said. “They were great.”

Kelsey hadn’t been back to Torrance in half a century. And now, upon his return, what struck him most was how little things had changed. “It was surprising,” he said. “There’s way more money here, of course. It’s a trillion times more expensive.”

And he credits the Beach Boys—and their ilk—with helping shape the place.

“It put the beach communities—especially in LA—on the map, for sure,” he said. “Nevertheless, those things kind of come and go.”

THE MOTHER SPORT

Back in Santa Cruz, the place with arguably the most vibrant surf scene, you can’t throw a stone without hitting someone who played a role in growing the wave-based pastime. It’s as good a place as any to gauge the Beach Boys’ impact on beach culture.

Randy French, who founded sailboard manufacturer Seatrend in Santa Cruz in 1976, and then later Surftech, used to ship 80% of his boards to SoCal. He says the Beach Boys didn’t appeal to the older generation of surfers, who preferred instead the sounds of jazz and blues. Those guys, he explained, felt like the group was capitalizing on a culture they didn’t have much to do with. “My generation,” he added, “we liked the Beach Boys.”

French was close with the stuntmen for the film Big Wednesday. And he ended up making surfboards with Robert August, star of the 1966 documentary The Endless Summer.

“Surfing is the mother sport of all the satellite sports—skateboarding, windsurfing, snowboarding, kiteboarding,” French said. “All of that emanated from surfing.”

French, who at one point was sponsored by O’Neill, would go on to sell boards in dozens of countries. 

“Running surf companies is an art form,” he said. “The guys that made the money in the surf industry aren’t the guys that made boards.”

Another local with ties to the venerable O’Neill brand, which was founded in 1952, is 76-year-old Michael Yankaus, who was the art director there from 1985 to 1991.

Yankaus recalls owning a ’56 Mercury “Woodie Wagon” in the mid-’60s. 

“It was considered to be the cool surf wagon,” he said. 

He also remembers the artwork for Surfin’ Safari (1962), which featured the Beach Boys in a thatch-adorned ride on the sand at Paradise Cove in Malibu. “Their first album cover was really cool.”

Another influence was The Endless Summer movie poster, created by Surfer magazine art director John van Hamersveld. Yankaus even went to the film premiere in LA.

“It was packed,” he said.

Decades later, he would wander into a Santa Cruz paint shop and select a fluorescent orange hue to bring to O’Neill’s 1980s graphic design.

After the Beach Boys’ music was featured in the 1973 George Lucas film American Graffiti, Capitol Records released the hits collection The Beach Boys Endless Summer—which catapulted the group back to the top of the charts.

In a 1992 interview in Goldmine, co-founder Mike Love took credit for the name, stating the original concept was more generic.

“They were going to do a Best of The Beach Boys Volume Three,” he told the publication, adding while he loved the “vibe” of the record, he wasn’t a fan of the artwork. “It was awful.”

MUSIC AND MEDITATION

One day in 1984, in a Dutch airport on the way to a Transcendental Meditation assembly, Yankaus spotted Beach Boys lead singer Mike Love.

“He had just gotten his luggage; and I was just walking in to locate mine, and we crossed paths,” Yankaus said. “I said, ‘Hey, surf’s up!’”

They ended up rooming for the duration of the course.

“We did yoga together, meditated in a group with 5,000 other people,” he said. “And see, the Beach Boys were gigantic in Holland.”

Yankaus, a TM teacher, was impressed by Love’s friendliness and his respect for the practice, which they’d both learned (as did the Beatles) from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

“He was just awesome,” Yankaus said. “He’s always been very supportive of the TM program, as Paul McCartney and Ringo are.”

Yankaus, the former director of the Silicon Valley Transcendental Meditation Center, sees plenty of similarities between music, meditation and surfing.

“Surfing is one of the best things that ever happened to me, and that’s why I still do it,” he said, during our interview at the second-floor TM space in Capitola. “Whatever was bothering you is gone after you catch a wave.”

The Beach Boys brought the guru on tour with them in 1968. Even though that effort ended in disappointment due to low ticket sales in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Love said he didn’t regret trying to spread the message of TM.

“I thought I could do some good for people who were lost, confused, or troubled, particularly those who were young and idealistic but also vulnerable,” Love said in his autobiography. “I thought that was true for a whole bunch of us.”

Yankaus says the group has been broadcasting upbeat messages to audiences since their earliest days.

“The Beach Boys really created a positive vibe in the youth in the United States,” he said. “They had their fingers on the pulse of what was happening.”

NORTH VS. SOUTH

I met Mark Gray, 75, in the Billabong store in the Pleasure Point neighborhood of Santa Cruz, where he explains surfboard and wetsuit technology to shoppers. Over the years he’s written for outlets like Surfer’s Path and Surfer, and helmed Surfer’s Japanese publication. He’s the product of parents who met on a ship to India in the ’40s. He was in his early teens when surf music popped off in 1962.

“That’s when I started surfing,” he said, recalling how he would hitchhike from Redwood City to Half Moon Bay to catch waves.

He remembers how the surf culture of Northern California had a slightly different flavor to the southern half of the state, given the colder climate and the influence of the beat poets from San Francisco’s North Beach—which ultimately morphed into the Grateful Dead–soundtracked hippie generation.

So, while the groups of SoCal would tend to play surf music exclusively, the NorCal bands would perform a mix of hits and surf rock, he explained.

He saw the Beach Boys wanting to ride that wave to mainstream success.

“They were trying to attach themselves to a trend,” he said. “But the ‘Pet Sounds’ album was really quite remarkable.”

THE NEXT WAVE

Unfortunately, as he sees it, it was the fact that surf music was intrinsically linked to the Pacific Ocean communities that spelled its downfall. While it surged for a while, pop audiences of America couldn’t always relate—though some groups, like the Beach Boys were later able to capitalize on nostalgia.

“It was really a music of the coast,” Gray said. “A lot of the surf music was primitive.”

He remembers going to a “surfers stomp” party in Santa Cruz on Seabright Beach, back when it was called Castle Beach (because of the castle-shaped bathhouse that was turned into the Casa del Mar restaurant).

Recently, there’s been a renewed interest in surf culture, particularly from the new wave of transplants to Silicon Valley who can now spend more time near the beach, due to pandemic-prompted work-from-home policies.

“They could live anywhere, because they had enough money, so they’d get an apartment where they could see the waves,” Gray said, noting some of them started to get good at surfing quite quickly. “A lot of them were trying to go from a longboard, to a mid-length, to a shortboard.”

With the early 2000s came the rise of “indie surf” and “Lo-Fi” music. Groups like the Growlers, Wavves, Best Coast, Beach Fossils and the Drums—who are musically indebted to the reverb-heavy sounds popularized by the Beach Boys, and others, back in the 1960s—began to provide the soundtrack to parties in beach towns and beyond. Meanwhile, Australian bands King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Tame Impala have extended beachy rock’s contours in new directions. 

“I think that surf music is still alive and well,” Gray said.

Drew Penner is the editor of the Los Gatan newspaper. He also hosts the Frequency Horizon electronic music and surf culture podcast, Fridays from 10-midnight on 92.9FM Pirate Cat Radio (kpcr.org).

In an April 11 interview, Los Gatos Town Councilmember Rob Moore—who was seeking a delegate spot on the guest list at the Democratic National Convention—said unless something “drastic” shifted, he expected President Joe Biden to continue seeking reelection.

Since then, there were several key developments: Moore secured his place at the Chicago event; Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt; and, on Sunday—after a dismal debate performance and a series of gaffes—Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race.

“A lot has changed over the past few months,” Moore said in a telephone interview. “I think that Joe Biden has made a very courageous decision today.”

Just a couple hours earlier, Biden posted his decision on Twitter, with a photo of a letter in which he talked up accomplishments like passing climate change legalization and reducing drug costs of seniors, while expressing his “heartfelt appreciation” to the American people for trusting him with the top job in the land.

Moore, the youngest member of Los Gatos Town Council, will now have the opportunity to vote for the Democrats that will run against Trump, who is currently leading by a healthy margin, according to many polls.

But the overall thrust of the campaign has not changed, added Moore, who was already serving as a state delegate.

“What I care most about is defeating the existential threat that Donald Trump poses to our country,” he said, noting he believes running Vice President Kamala Harris will be the Democratic Party’s best shot at retaining the White House.

However, he doesn’t think she should be a shoo-in.

“I don’t think it should just be a coronation,” he said, explaining he’d like to see a process play out that allows people to make their case for who the new leader should be. “I haven’t endorsed anyone, but I believe that the nominee will be Kamala Harris.”

In his view, this will inject some positive energy into the race.

“It is going to be fascinating,” he said.

Former Saratoga councilmember Rishi Kumar will also be a delegate at the DNC. He been publicly calling for Biden to step down for months—including on CNN.

Writing on Twitter Sunday, Kumar saluted Biden’s determination and commended him for “prioritizing the country and the party” over his own ambition.

“The Democratic Party now needs to do damage control,” said Kumar, who has endorsed Gavin Newsom. “Let the best candidate emerge!”

Rep. Anna Eshoo said she learned Biden was giving up his campaign the same way everyone else did.

“I had just left mass and turned my phone on, and there was the announcement,” she said in an interview Monday. “It was a great act of patriotism.”

“I’ve known Joe Biden for about 40 years,” she said. “I believe that historians will treat his presidency as one of the most consequential presidencies in the history of our country.”

Eshoo recalled meeting with Biden in the Oval Office in March 2021, when he urged lawmakers to launch an effort to get yet untamed diseases under control.

“I went right back up to the Hill and began working on it,” she said. “He signed my legislation into law in the last Congress, establishing a new advanced research agency called ARPA-H.”

On Monday night, in a virtual meeting with party leaders, Moore committed to voting for Harris at the convention.

On a Thursday night in Los Gatos last month, DJ MARSHiANN bounced around Charley LG’s plush second-story dance floor, checking on attendees, as NAPA spun energetic electronic music. It wasn’t long before Brendan Sherry, one of the members of Where You At?, hopped behind the decks to deliver a slew of fresh-sounding beats, going back-to-back with other youthful DJs.

As the powerful and crisp sound wafted out along a mostly quiet North Santa Cruz Avenue, toward the bluegrass show at a Main Street coffee shop, preparations were underway for the bar’s future.

After about two-and-a-half years, Alex Hult, CEO of Flights Restaurant Group Inc., has decided to sell the space, which came with plenty of lore and baggage.

The venue was previously the home of Mountain Charley’s Restaurant and Saloon, which was founded by Jim Farwell and Jack McNamara in 1972. Farwell, a decorated Vietnam veteran and founding member of Santa Clara University’s rowing team, was the great-grandson of founding Los Gatos settler James Lyndon. The saloon was named after Irish mountain man Charles McKiernan, who was born almost 200 years ago and famously mauled by a bear in the 1850s.

Farwell died at age 48 in 1992 of pancreatic cancer. His wife, Sue Farwell, partnered with Los Gatos bartender Mark Achilli to continue the business.

In 2008, after selling the business to Esequiel “Paul” Garcia, Achilli was killed outside his Los Gatos townhome in a murder-for-hire that shocked the town. The criminal trial against Esequiel “Paul” Garcia was D.A. Jeff Rosen’s last hands-on case before he became Santa Clara County DA.

In December 2016, a jury awarded $45.1 million in damages to Achilli’s daughter, Alexandra.No payments on the damage award (which was reduced to $20.1 million on appeal) to Alexandra Achilli have been made, according to attorney Robert Bohn Jr. “It’s essentially uncollectable,” he said.

Garcia was imprisoned for life, with no chance of parole. 

Venue’s Fresh Starts

In 2021, San Francisco DJ Donovan Friedman and professional hockey player turned restaurateur Hult partnered to launch a dinner theater concept, called Immersive: Los Gatos, at the location, featuring spooky drinks, sword-swallowing and aerial dance.

“We’re tapping into something that nobody’s doing down here right now,” Friedman said at the time.

The quality of the production did match what you might expect to see in Hollywood or New York.

Around that time, an avid disability-lawsuit-filer swept through town and hit Hult’s Flights restaurant a few blocks away. He chose to let that location go to focus on growing his dining empire elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the partnership between Friedman and Hult didn’t play out as hoped, and Hult opened the rebranded “Charley’s LG” as a still-ornate but pared-down bar to a full house on Feb. 26, 2022. On Feb. 14 of this year, lawyer Neil Chan established DJJ LG15 LLC, which appeared on a change of ownership notice posted on the Charley’s LG door.

“Charley’s name will go away, the venue will look completely different, and for many a lot of memories will be lost,” said longtime valley nightspot operator Chuck Oliver on Facebook. “We are excited for a new business coming into Los Gatos and fully supporting them.”

Charley’s general manager Pam Davis said that despite ups and downs, the bar was doing well.

“We were hitting all of our goals that we wanted to hit,” she said. “We did not have Charley’s up for sale.”

When an ownership group with connections to Los Gatos made an offer, however, Hult—who has two kids and a baby on the way—went for it, Davis said, declining to reveal the price.

The buyers started making overtures around September, and the transaction was completed in April.

Davis adds that, now, Hult can put more of his energy into the restaurant-focused AI startup he’s developing.

A tractor-trailer pulls onto the shoulder at the foot of the Santa Cruz Mountains near Morgan Hill, at dusk on Oct. 12, across from a fresh deer carcass where insects and amphibians sing their evening songs.

The driver, carrying something akin to a lunar crawler or oil sands equipment, pauses for a moment to revel in the fact that, while in an utterly rural landscape, he’s just a short distance from Apple Inc.’s global headquarters.

“New York,” he says, revealing his destination point, confirming that, following in the footsteps of many in the tech workforce in recent years, the four-axle Oshkosh machine is moving out-of-state.

It’s the third firefighting vehicle the Katz brothers have had to sell to pay for their ongoing legal brawl with the Santa Clara County Planning and Development Department.

The pair came to national attention in an Associated Press article about their efforts to respond to the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fires. State resources were stretched thin, and they appeared on scene to protect homes in Bonny Doon, a village north of Santa Cruz, long before Cal Fire crews arrived.

More than 900 homes were destroyed in the converging blazes.

Back then, they brought a single small fire truck, which they were later able to sell to afford the one now being sent back east. 

Joe Christy, founder and president of the Bonny Doon Fire Safe Council, says he remembers hearing about the Katz brothers’ contributions, noting it was the private brigades that led defensive maneuvers during the three days they awaited Cal Fire.

The Katz brothers could’ve brought another truck, too—a more powerful model—had they not sold it off to cover legal bills in a protracted battle over grading they say they did, in part, to create a fire break on a newly-acquired property during the Loma Fire.

“If we had a second fire truck, we could have saved more homes,” Jesse Katz said. “We just didn’t have the resources—which I would’ve had if it weren’t for our legal problems with the county.”

Jesse, 44, was still covered in soot from the CZU response when he got a call from a Santa Clara County official. A Board of Supervisors aide told him an agreement they’d struck to pause enforcement had fallen apart. The county was going to strong-arm them.

And now, as a third fire truck disappeared into the night on the back of a semi, Jesse mused that he hopes it’ll find a new life protecting against forest fires in upstate New York, perhaps even across the border in Canada.

Battle Lines Across the County

In the end, the Planning Department got what it wanted—a verdict that upheld stiff fines against the brothers with a healthy collection of military surplus vehicles in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

But the way in which the case against Jesse and his sibling Rob, 33, played out raises questions about practices employed by the Silicon Valley agency’s code enforcement officers and lawyers, as well as its transparency record, and suggests a willingness to disregard evidence to win prosecutions.

“I don’t think what the county is doing should be allowed to happen under cover of darkness,” Jesse said.

From the county’s perspective, the case is an example of the enforcement process working: a complaint from a neighbor leads to a visit from an official who orders the Katz brothers to stop moving large amounts of earth, and citations for violations are issued (for illegal cuts and fills amounting to millions of pounds of soil), then amended, as additional information emerges. Some are eliminated as the brothers argue their side of the story, but others remain, and the brothers must pay up.

The county levied 17 violations against the Katz brothers. After telling their side of the story, 11 were removed. Then, upon appeal, two more were deleted. With just four left, the county is still seeking more than $282,200 in fines—more than the original value of their sprawling property.

During an administrative hearing, the Katzes claimed they weren’t properly served with a Notice of Violation for some infractions, and said the county told them this would allow them to seize their land if they didn’t sign a compliance agreement.

“We asked repeatedly to have a copy of the NOV,” Rob testified. “They refused. We appealed to the Board of Supervisors, saying, ‘Can you please investigate this and show us if a NOV was sent?’ We’ve always maintained the mindset that, like, maybe we messed up, maybe we missed something. We’re human. But, in this instance, the error was on their part. And they lied about it—and then they doubled-down.”

Broader Issues

It’s not the first time County Planning has caused major headaches for Santa Cruz Mountains residents in wielding their code enforcement powers.

For years, the Planning Department has relied on an old building violation to prevent rural Los Gatos homeowner Sidney French, now 70, from repairing her 1930s-era cabin.

The document, from 1997, states her home was demolished and rebuilt without a permit. But even after French presented signed statements from neighbors attesting to it having been in its current form for decades, the Planning Department refused to budge and has even threatened criminal charges and exorbitant fines.

After additional experts looked into the case and advocated on French’s behalf, the county finally agreed a few months ago to expunge the mistake from her records.

French also filed an elder abuse complaint with Adult Protective Services against the County Counsel’s Office on Dec. 30. She took the extraordinary step after the department told her, 10 days earlier, it was declining to investigate complaints she’d sent in over how the department acts—or doesn’t.

However, her fight with the county continues, as she says it looks like they simply shifted the violation to another address, instead of eliminating it altogether, and adds the county is still refusing to remove the actual violations that she racked up because of the incorrect notations from 1997.

On Oct. 22, French added a new whistleblower complaint. She did this, she says, because her previous filings don’t resemble any in the latest transparency report to the Board of Supervisors.

As of Nov. 7, the report had not been posted to the county’s whistleblower portal.

French says last year’s didn’t appear there, either, until after she demanded the county put it up.

Agricultural Beginnings – The Katz Legacy

The Katz brothers grew up in Morgan Hill after the family moved from San Jose.

“I spent my life there and watched the southern part of Silicon Valley become more urbanized,” Jesse said. “When I was young, there were strawberry fields around the house and people rode horses unironically.”

He has memories of watching the wildfire that consumed the mountain property he and his little brother would come to own.

“We would play in the forest out to the west in the Santa Cruz Mountains,” he said, telling of their early cycling and motorsport adventures. “I started working at the local Specialized bike shop when I was in 7th grade.”

Rob went on to study manufacturing engineering at Chico State with a minor in sustainability management. Jesse took classes in business, mechanical engineering, industrial design and marketing at a variety of colleges across California.

The brothers say they bought the Croy Road property, in part, to hold onto a little slice of the region’s agricultural heritage.

“We didn’t have any illusions about this being a profitable endeavor,” Jesse said. “It’s deeply hurtful to have Santa Clara County mischaracterize and portray us as bad actors.” Rob is technically the sole owner of the land, through an LLC.

The Katz brothers say the grading they did was appropriate because it related either to creating defensible space during and after the Loma Fire or was connected to agricultural activities they’d envisioned. They’ve argued some dirt-moving occurred prior to their ownership, and was simply laid bare after they cleared trees Cal Fire said they might want to remove.

They also say they’re happy to remediate their property, if they’ve done something wrong. Santa Clara County maintains the Katz brothers couldn’t have been attempting to farm, as they found little evidence of this. The Katz say they’d barely gotten started when the county forced them to put things on hold.

Brother Farmers

A transcript of audio recordings of conversations with county staff, obtained by this newspaper, reveal that in the wake of the Stop Work Order, the brothers tried desperately to learn what sort of agriculture they could continue, but were shut down at every turn.

The county’s legal team told administrative hearing officer, George “Duf” Sundheim, that  if the brothers were really planning to engage in agriculture, they should’ve brought this up during inspections.

However, the recordings transcript shows Jesse Katz told one of the inspection party—Craig Farley, of the South Santa Clara County Fire District—the exact location of a proposed root cellar, as well as the spot microgreens were to sprout.

In addition, they told multiple county officials of their designs for growing grapes.

“One question we have is, whether we would be allowed to resume our agricultural endeavors after this inspection, because I have like, 3-400 grapevines that like, if I don’t get them in the ground in the next couple weeks, we’re fucked; and I’ve already lost the whole season’s worth of seasonal agriculture,” Jesse said. “Our vintner’s been holding these for us, and he’s like, ‘You have to get them into the ground right now.’ But the thing is that all that terracing below the emergency landing zone is for those grapes, and I need to do more dirt work before we can put those in.”

“Yeah,” county construction inspector Jerry Guevara acknowledges, per the transcript.

“All the hay needs to get scraped off,” Rob says, “because the hay can’t be in the grapes.”

“I understand resolving this red tag code enforcement stuff might be a big process, but if we could be allowed to resume our agricultural endeavors,” Jesse chimes in, “It’s an extreme hardship for us to be in suspended animation since November.”

Ward Penfold, of the County Counsel’s Office—who earlier in the day told the brothers his own distant relatives run the famous Penfold winery in Australia (“That Grange stuff is really expensive,” he commented)—appears to completely brush off the viniculture remarks, as they gathered evidence for their prosecution. “We’re just gonna have to circle-up with the team after the inspection and all,” he said.

It’s unclear why this audio was excluded, as the inspection took place outdoors and so the conversations likely wouldn’t have carried the same expectation of privacy. In fact, in the ruling nixing recordings (that weren’t voicemails), the hearing officer states California’s current standard is “whether a participant to the communication reasonably expected the communication was simultaneously overheard or recorded.” 

Ironically, in his decision, Sundheim agreed a recording of a marijuana dispensary raid would be admissible, as officers executing a search warrant would have no reasonable expectation their conversations weren’t being overheard or recorded.

Just this past January, Randall Zack from the County Counsel’s Office, sent a transcript of all the surreptitious recordings containing mysterious green highlighting to the Office of the County Hearing Officer and the Katz’s lawyer—while cc’ing county lawyer Michael Rossi and James Stephens, as well as the Board of Supervisors clerk. The version the Katz brothers’ lawyer sent had been clean. 

Zack is now a deputy attorney general with the California Attorney General’s Office. He didn’t respond to questions about this email, or the Katz brothers’ case.

Many of the green passages in the county’s version direct attention to quotes seemingly most damaging to the brothers’ case (such as how Jesse tells code enforcement officer Tyson Green “our strategy has been to hope that we can fly under the radar for long enough that if and when any enforcement action comes against us, we’ll be able to substantiate our intent, and show good faith, and show the progress we’ve made.”)

However, other highlights show the Katz sharing their ideological views on integrative agriculture with the county, including where Jesse discusses (with Green) their desire to create “more of a living landscape and a revitalized forest where people can be more in harmony with nature in ways that is a productive use of the land.” In another highlighted quote from the first inspection, Rob mentions to Guevara how excited they are to have a south-facing slope to work with.

Jesse said that they shared with the county the site’s agricultural properties. “If you’re on a shaded, north-facing slope, you can’t grow the same types of things,” he said. The green highlight suggests County Counsel was aware of this too, and flagged it as an area of concern, in case Sundheim, former chairman of the California Republican Party, chose to admit the transcript.

In an April 11 letter to the hearing officer, the county was still using the fact that the brothers hadn’t been doing “in the ground” farming—something they believe they’ve been prohibited from—as a reason their trucks shouldn’t be considered agricultural vehicles.

But when county witness Darrell Wong, a civil engineer, was asked on the stand about whether the county considered if the brothers had farming plans, he confirmed they never did.

“When you go out to a property and you see grading activity that clearly violates the ordinance code, are you in the habit of asking the property owner about every single exception to see if it applies?” Katz’ lawyer, Donald Sobelman of San Francisco-based Farella, Braun + Martel, LLP, asked.

“I do if it’s brought up,” Wong said. “But in this case—with both inspections—there was no exemption that was ever brought up.”

The county got a warrant that allowed it to search the Katz’ shipping containers, yet staff apparently never bothered to peer inside. The brothers say since they were no longer allowed to disturb the ground, the shipping containers were the main place they could continue to engage in agricultural activities.

The county’s own photos show vegetation poking out from one container, and planters with growing items placed on top of—and along—others.

At the administrative hearing, county counsel argued it was the brothers’ responsibility to proactively direct the inspectors’ attention to the inside of each container if they wanted to be granted an exception.

Photos the Katz brothers placed into evidence depict a variety of agricultural uses from seed germination to squash growing. The Katz’ lawyer brought this discrepancy up while cross-examining code enforcement officer MaryEllen Luna.

“It could be the case that every one of those cargo containers was being used for agricultural use,” he suggested.

“Possibly,” she replied. “I did not look inside them.”

Sobelman asked if the Stop Work Order would prevent the Katz from doing agriculture.

“You can plant stuff, but you cannot continue to grade,” she said.

The brothers say they still needed to do more earth-moving before they could conduct agriculture on a commercially-viable basis.

The Katz Brothers & “Kangaroo Court”

The Katz brothers were worried they might face a “kangaroo court” long before they got to the administrative hearing. After all, it was county employees who warned of underhanded behavior in the department.

Early on, Tyson Green, the code enforcer, sought to build a report with Jesse and told him how, as a Planning Department neophyte, he actually follows procedures—unlike others in the office.

In a March 11, 2019 call—three-and-a-half months after he’d first reached out (and three months since he’d left a message on department head Jaqueline Onciano’s machine)—Jesse complained to Green about a lack of communication from the Planning Department. According to Jesse, after the Stop Work Order appeared, it took more than a month to even get in touch with the county.

At the time, the Katz brothers were telling the county they had an opportunity to help them eliminate an illegal pot farm on the property next door (the neighbor was willing to give them the land for free), a proposal the county doesn’t seem to have followed up on.

“I think there’s some real inherent flaws in the way we do things out here,” Green tells Jesse. “If I issue somebody a Notice of Violation, I’ve got my contact information on there…and I’m required—within two days—to get back to somebody…I operate by that philosophy…I will tell you though, that that is not the standard operating procedure of most people around here.”

The brothers eventually managed to get a voluntary site visit scheduled, but as the date approached, Jesse shared with county staffer Michael Meehan that he felt like Penfold, of the County Counsel’s office, had taken an unnecessarily adversarial tack.

Meehan, who didn’t respond to interview requests, reminded Jesse that his colleagues weren’t to be mistaken for friends.

“What’s important for you to know is that—to be quite frank—they have everything they need to totally fuck you on this,” he said. “County Counsel has the authority to basically employ a receiver to take a loan out on the value of your property, remove you from the property, remedy all of the grading violations—at cost to you—and then also bill you for every minute that they spend working on it.”

He urged them to get into a compliance agreement.

“We need to be allowed to go back to our agricultural endeavors, or we’re gonna miss this whole season, and all the money that we’ve invested in these vines,” Jesse said.

Meehan cautioned that their attempts to reason with the county were falling on “deaf ears,” as the legal arm of Silicon Valley’s regional government built a case against them.

“They don’t want to hear anything,” Meehan said in the April 19, 2019, conversation. “They just want to show up. And so, the more information you give them, they’ll take it as hedging. You know what I mean?”

He told Jesse to speak to James Stephens, the code enforcement manager.

Jesse replied that it was the first time he’d ever heard that name—more than five months after the initial Stop Work Order appeared.

Meehan said he’d actually talked to Stephens just the day before about their case—and, boy, was he ever pissed. “He was upset that you hadn’t reached out to him,” Meehan said.

This is an ongoing and evolving story. Updates will continue to be posted.

Over the last decade, the Santa Clara Valley Water District has continued to spend more money on cleaning up homeless encampments around Silicon Valley. 

Back in Fiscal 2013-14, the regional water wholesaler put $786,085 into the initiative. That grew to $1.5 million just a few years later, then dipped to a low of $364,896 during the first year of the pandemic.

This year it soared to new heights—costing the agency $2.4 million. That’s in addition to spending $403,594.60 on litter removal (down from $1 million last year, but still up from the $130,881 it put into the task in 2013-14).

Officials at the district, which manages 10 dams, say it’s a necessary part of ensuring residents have clean drinking water while contributing to the biodiversity of the Bay Area. 

The agency has become responsible for cleaning up the mess left by illegal dumpers and the refuse generated as a result of NIMBYs using environmental laws to block housing construction across California.

“Unfortunately, when these items get into the creek, they do become dirty or contaminated,” said Jen Codianne, deputy of watershed operations and maintenance at Valley Water. “They do need to be removed.”

Encampment cleanups are funded by the “Safe, Clean Water and Natural Flood Protection” Measure S, which was approved by 75% of voters in 2020. 

Valley Water takes care of 300 acres, attempting to prevent trash and other debris from polluting rivers and streams. It’s currently expanding its army of trash eliminators.

“We’re going to manage two encampment cleanup crews,” Codianne said. “We’re experts at this by now.”

The integrated effort includes internal staff, contract laborers and contributions from other agencies. 

For example, Valley Water signed a $200,000 contract with San Jose, in 2019, to pay for police patrols along waterways like Coyote Creek and the Guadalupe River. It topped this up with a $400,000 agreement in 2021 for SJPD to police Coyote Creek Trail.

On Aug. 21, the riverside cleanup force was on full display in Los Gatos, as the Valley Water-led team descended on Los Gatos Creek—between Lee Avenue and Bascom Avenue. 

“This actually is just part of our general routine maintenance,” Codianne said. “It’s really amazing to see these guys work.” 

The crew forms a human chain, combing through the sloped earth, picking out the puzzle pieces that don’t belong. “They work really well together,” she said. “It’s complicated terrain. Sometimes it’s dangerous.”

Over three days they removed 9.07 tons of encampment-related trash from the site. 

Valley Water explains that, just as waste management companies go door-to-door picking up trash from the homes of housed residents, it’s now the garbage-disposal service for the unhoused.

“When you look at the numbers, your first thought is, What if all this trash entered the waterways? Where would we be then?” she mused. “It’s an incredible amount of work that we’re doing to make sure the waterways are as clean as they can be.”

They work hand-in-hand with municipalities and have a team of biologists who are part of developing cleanup strategies. “We have to ensure we’re not harming any fish or wildlife,” she said. “They’re looking for nesting birds. They’re looking for endangered species.” 

Some of these animals include the harvest mouse and Ridgeway’s rail in the tidal marshes along the San Francisco Bay, and the California red legged frog and California tiger salamander in Los Gatos Creek. And, Codianne adds, salmon can even be spotted, at times, in parts of that creek.

Codianne wants to make sure human activity doesn’t disrupt the natural life-cycle of these animals. “It’s natural in the creek channel to have downed trees that have fallen in,” she said. 

When human debris comes into the picture, it can compound the challenges faced by animals. “It’s blocking the wildlife from their habitat,” Codianne said, describing this particular landscape scourge as a “trash raft.”

“That’s what we’re trying to avoid happening,” she said. 

It’s not just the physical movement constriction that they’re worried about. Officials are also concerned about elements of the world being poisoned or choked by human waste. “Plastics can break down,” she said. “Sometimes wildlife can eat them mistakenly.”

To get all the junk out of the natural landscape, sometimes they have to call in the big guns—hauling a trash compactor to the site or deploying a skid steer. 

“Sometimes you even have a crane,” Codianne said, commending the lower-level workers for their contributions, too. “They’re handing trash off one-to-another,” she said.

Beyond aiding the animals and protecting their water distribution chain, funding homeless encampment cleanups has an additional benefit—preventing flooding. 

“There’s potential for that,” Codianne said. “We really want to make sure that the debris isn’t blocking…any of these flood-protection structures.”

Recently, Los Gatos stepped up its homeless outreach program. The Town has already established a portable toilet downtown and is planning for a longer-term public restroom facility. 

It’s also developing an emergency hotel voucher program and has increased funding for a shower program, so residents can clean themselves twice a week in proper facilities (instead of just once).

Codianne says projects like these from their partners are really helpful.

“We really appreciate all the city efforts,” she said, noting they also have a portable restroom program, which is funded by an Environmental Protection Agency grant. “We all really do our part, and do it as best as we can.”

But will all this taxpayer money that’s now directed to homeless services and environmental protection make a difference?

“I’m very optimistic,” she said. “Obviously there are a few things that are up against us.”

She’s referring to the intense economic hardship faced by so many Silicon Valley residents, despite the massive wealth generated by many technology companies during the pandemic work-from-home boom.

“The amount of people falling into homelessness keeps increasing,” she said. “It’s hard for the community to see the benefits right now. But I think as long as we keep coming up with new initiatives and collaborating, hopefully sometime soon…we’ll see the difference.”

Vicki Dowell remembers hearing a loud noise on the steps outside her condo, where son Jake, 26, had gone downstairs to help a friend change a tire. It was Dec. 3, and he had just finished putting up holiday lights.

Jake had grown up in San Jose, was getting certified to be a mechanic and making plans to marry his girlfriend. “He fell and he hit the back of his head on a railing,” Dowell says. “He wasn’t responsive at all. I dragged him in the house and started performing CPR.”

“I was on hold with 911. We’d get a pulse, then he would fade away. I worked on him for 40 minutes,” she says. The memories of just a few weeks ago are still fresh and raw, but she wants to share the story so that lives can be saved.

“He tested positive for fentanyl. The ER doctor told me. He had done what he thought was cocaine, but it was laced. He spent two weeks on life support. He eventually gave out. It was two weeks exactly.

“He was so strong and healthy. My son did a one-off decision. He made a bad decision, and it cost him his life.”

“I lost my best friend. I’m never going to experience being a grandmother. My lifeline is gone.”

The Bay Area, like the rest of the United States, is experiencing a dramatic surge in drug overdoses. San Francisco is the region’s overdose hotspot, with 435 deaths in 2021.

Sonoma County is another, with someone dying every two days from an overdose, according to the Sonoma County Department of Health. Deaths there involving fentanyl increased by 2,550% between 2016 and 2021.

Though Alameda and Santa Clara counties have less than half San Francisco’s number of fatal overdoses, the poorest neighborhoods have been hit hard. In urban Alameda, overdoses are concentrated in five Oakland ZIP codes that appear on lists of the Bay Area’s ten poorest areas. And while rates in Silicon Valley—Santa Clara County and the southern parts of Alameda and San Mateo County—are lower than in surrounding regions, synthetic opium use has surged in San Jose’s central, east and south neighborhoods.

California’s rural counties of Mendocino, Humboldt, Lake, Trinity, Shasta, Tuolumne, Yuba, Butte, Kern and Inyo have also been plagued by overdoses.

No demographic is immune. In 2016, Gabriel Tramiel, 32, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment a day after he met up with childhood friend Avinoam Luzon of Mountain View on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Luzon sold Tramiel what the medical school student later told police was morphine but was, in fact, pure fentanyl. Prosecutors said Tramiel paid $1,200 for the drug, which he ingested with a nasal sprayer.

Tramiel grew up in Los Altos Hills as part of one of Silicon Valley’s most famous dynasties; he was the son of former Atari president Sam Tramiel and the grandson of a personal computer industry pioneer—Commodore International founder Jack Tramiel.

Between March 2020 and February 2021, Gilroy residents Fernando Sanchez, 17, Jacob Vasquez, 24, and Joseph Saavedra, 26, all died by overdosing on fentanyl. Each got drugs from the streets they thought were Xanax or another less harmful substance. Their mothers believe all three acquired the fatal doses from the same small-time dealer, who they believe should face homicide charges. (Luzon received a nine-year sentence in New York in connection with the Tramiel case.)

“It is important to bring awareness because there is a lot of this happening,” said Eleanor Saavedra, Joseph’s mother. “These kids came from good homes.”

It’s not just the young and adventurous either. Just this month, on Feb. 6, three men were found dead of suspected fentanyl overdoses in a home near Gilroy, authorities said; a fourth was revived by Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies. All were in their 50s. First responders said the patients received doses of Narcan, a branded naloxone product.

Even though California’s overdose rate is lower than almost two-thirds of U.S. states, it has the most overall casualties due to the sheer number of people who live here. The California Department of Public Health reported 5,961 fentanyl deaths in 2021, accounting for more than three-quarters of all fatalities from opioid substances. The death rate jumped 70 percent during the pandemic, with racial and ethnic minorities hit hardest.

Locally, there were 154 opioid deaths in Santa Clara County, with the highest number—24—occurring among 20- to 24-year-olds. White and Latinx communities experienced around 11 deaths per 100,000 residents, while the rate was nearly double that for African Americans. Asians and Pacific Islanders were found to have died from an overdose at around one-fifth the rate of white and Hispanic/Latino residents.

In December, Sen. Dave Cortese of San Jose introduced a bill that would require public school staff to undergo training in how to treat overdoses of opiates and synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl. Schools would keep naloxone on hand and incorporate opioid overdose response in their mandated school safety plans.

Cortese says the state will include funding in its budget “to provide resources so that counties don’t see it as an unfunded mandate.” This is particularly important in smaller counties with tight budgets, he says.

Cortese says he introduced the bill after a sitting through committee hearings on an unsuccessful bill last year in which family members called in with a succession of similar stories about Californians who “got spiked and stopped breathing.”

“It stuck in my head,” Cortese said. “We need to do something about this.”

Trevor Leopold would have turned 22 on Jan. 30. Instead, he’s “forever 18,” his mother says.

When Michelle Leopold received the news that her 18-year-old son had died in his dorm room, she didn’t need to wait for the coroner’s report to know what killed him.

Although it was November 2019—before many parents had heard of the fentanyl crisis—there was no doubt in Michelle’s mind that this powerful synthetic opioid was the culprit. The drug had claimed her son’s close friend the previous year. Toxicology results confirmed that Trevor died after ingesting a pill laced with fentanyl. One pill.

He thought he was taking the prescription drug oxycodone, Leopold said. As it turned out, the laced pill contained no oxycodone at all. Public health officials say it’s common for fentanyl victims to believe that they’re taking another, more benign, drug.

Exactly how did fentanyl, a powerful legal synthetic opioid developed in 1959, cause this nationwide crisis? Fentanyl, used as an analgesic during surgery and as a prescription drug to treat severe pain, is easily produced and affordable.

Unfortunately, its characteristics also make it attractive to the illicit drug market. In recent years, the supply of fentanyl has grown swiftly, with most of it manufactured outside of the United States. The drug’s effect is similar to heroin, and it’s extremely addictive.

“Fentanyl is up to 100 times more potent than morphine,” said Melissa Struzzo, the program manager for Sonoma County’s Substance Use Disorder Services.

Drug dealers bank on fentanyl’s addictive quality to keep their customers coming back for more. But just two milligrams of fentanyl—a few grains—can kill a person, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. It issued this urgent health alert: “One pill can kill.”

Without access to the sophisticated and expensive scientific weights and measures used by pharmaceutical companies, it’s almost impossible for dealers to calculate how much fentanyl they’re putting into a pill or powder. 

And with pill-pressing machines available at a variety of price points—and just a few keystrokes away on Amazon—it could be someone living next door who’s concocting drugs that look almost identical to the Ritalin, Adderall or oxycodone you might get from your doctor.

“Fentanyl is now present in most illicit pills and powders,” said Dr. Matt Willis, Marin County’s public health director. “People overdose from the presence of fentanyl in what’s sold on social media as prescription pills, cocaine or other powders.”

Local health agencies have been promoting a “harm reduction” approach and are pushing for more organizations to keep Narcan on hand. The Santa Clara County Opioid Overdose Prevention Project offers free Narcan training and kits, from 1-2pm every day, at two San Jose clinics and one in the South Valley. Because you spray it into someone’s nose, there’s no need to worry about having to reenact the classic John Travolta and Uma Thurman scene in Pulp Fiction, where Thurman’s character receives a shot of adrenaline in her chest following a heroin overdose.

District 5 Supervisor Joseph Simitian, who chairs the Board of Supervisors’ Health and Hospital Committee, says this laser focus on combating the fentanyl crisis is quite new here. Though school systems are now frantically stocking up on naloxone and other supplies, his overtures were spurned, at first. “There wasn’t initially any sense of urgency, quite frankly,” he said. “I think people were perhaps lulled into a false sense of security.”

Less than 10 Santa Clara County deaths were attributed to fentanyl in 2015. But around that time, Simitian had taken a trip out east, and began hearing horrific stories about overdoses. He met with a firefighter who was also a mayor of a small town who gave him a dark forecast of the storm clouds on Silicon Valley’s horizon.

Within six years, Santa Clara County had experienced a more than 10-fold jump in fentanyl deaths. “Fortunately, my board colleagues kept pressing on the issue after we had this initial lack of response,” he said. “I would say middle of last year…was when we—as a county and a board of supervisors—made the commitment to step up our efforts to push back.”

In September, the Board of Supervisors voted to put $135,000 in state funds toward placing Narcan kits in high schools. Now, they’re expanding the drive to get the fentanyl antidote into middle schools. But Simitian says there’s another prong of their strategy that’s key—public awareness. “Even as the problem began to grow, I think there was a sense in many of the suburban communities that I represent that this could be a problem in other parts of the county,” he said. “This was a problem that was happening ‘somewhere else.’”

In the summer of 2020—in the midst of the pandemic—star wrestler Linus Blom was facing academic pressure ahead of his senior year, as his parents brought him back from Finland to Los Gatos.

He’d begun experimenting with drugs and had become addicted. He ended up purchasing what he thought was a Percocet pill, but, in fact, it contained a lethal dose of fentanyl. “We found him when it was too late,” his father, Jan, said as part of an informative event in October. “We were not aware of the fentanyl issue.”

Jan Blom has since joined a Santa Clara County task force to help root out the problem, but says he still has trouble figuring out how to discuss drug risks with his surviving teenager. “It’s so hard,” he said. “Talking about this—I know it’s really hard—but, I think awareness is the first step.”

Simitian, who also spoke as part of the panel, says he was moved by Linus’s story. “That young man was a victim of the fentanyl epidemic,” he said. “I think it’s too easy to dismiss this as a set of statistics. When we hear from the parents, (we see) it’s all too human.”

Another event to educate students about the risks of fentanyl is being organized for March 22 in Palo Alto.

Meanwhile, police and prosecutors have been targeting dealers.

In December, a San Jose man was charged with felony drug sales after a group of Los Gatos High School students overdosed on fentanyl-laced pills they bought from him, the District Attorney’s Office said. According to prosecutors, 23-year-old Simon Jose Armendariz’s student buyers were so painfully aware of the dangers of the pills in his inventory that they’d carry Narcan in case they overdosed. Deputy District Attorney Eunice Lee argued letting him out on bail would put the public at risk. In December, a judge agreed. And on Jan. 23, Armendariz lost another bid for pretrial freedom as the DA’s Office urged the judge to consider the grim reality of the fentanyl crisis. “The court agreed with my position,” Lee said. “There is not sufficient means to protect the public” if he were released.

When “one pill can kill,” you don’t have the “safety net” of experimentation like you might expect with other drugs, Lee said. “We now understand that this can affect people from all walks of life,” she said. “We have to respond.”

Despite the prioritization of such cases, experts say social media can make it easy for dealers to hide. And given how lucrative the market is, there’s always another ready to fill the void if one is arrested, according to Dr. Willis.

“Public health and law enforcement agree that we aren’t going to arrest our way out of this problem,” Willis said. “Instead, we partner with the justice system using all of the tools at our disposal, including diverting people with low-level drug offenses to assessment and ensuring people who are incarcerated have access to addiction treatment.”

Trevor Leopold’s mom plans on educating as many people as possible about what happened to her son, with the goal of preventing fentanyl deaths. “People just don’t know,” she said. Last year, Leopold and her husband hosted Narcan training sessions at the six Ace Hardware stores they own. Although Leopold admits it’s not easy, she makes herself available to the media and speaks at numerous public forums.

“When we got the phone calls about Trevor, I turned to my husband and said, ‘We can’t be quiet about this,’” Leopold said. “There are a lot of us speaking out on behalf of our dead, poisoned children. Hopefully, it’s making a difference.”

On the day that I spoke with Katherine Blunt, the author of California Burning: The Fall of Pacific Gas and Electric—And What It Means for America’s Power Grid, firefighters attacked a 1.1-acre blaze that had broken out the day before north of Boulder Creek, in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The Hartman Fire devoured a single residential structure; it would take at least six different agencies nearly 24 hours to put it out.

But that was not the only wildfire that sparked around then, at the tail end of August. The Gulch Fire, in Los Angeles County, started on Aug. 29 and burned 113 acres—the same day the McCovey Fire began its run through 25 acres in Humboldt County. On Aug. 31, two larger fires began: the Route Fire (5,208 acres in Los Angeles County) and the Border 32 Incident (4,456 acres in San Diego County). And those are just a few of the more than 6,382 incidents in 2022 that were logged by Cal Fire by mid-September.

In the Hartman Fire, there was no immediate indication that electrical wires were to blame. And PG&E was not at fault for the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex, which destroyed more than 900 homes in the Santa Cruz Mountains. But its equipment has sparked other conflagrations in recent years—including the Zogg Fire, the Camp Fire (the state’s deadliest) and the Dixie Fire (its largest single fire).

In tracing this trail of controversies in California Burning, Katherine Blunt has merged an exhaustive corporate compendium, criminal procedural and courtroom drama into a single narrative. It sucks you in with inviting prose, while dishing detailed explanations about one of the greatest miracles of modern life—illumination.

Blunt is a wizard with repetition. She helpfully reminds you of personalities, events and concepts while never stepping over the line into redundancy. For example, she takes great care in helping the layperson come to grips with a key concept: electricity firms make profits in California through capital investments, not maintenance work on aging equipment.

A journalist based in the Bay Area, Blunt covers renewable energy and utilities for The Wall Street Journal, and her team’s reporting on PG&E has won a Barlett & Steele award for business investigative journalism, the Thomas L. Stokes award for energy and environmental reporting and also been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

She’s awash in podcast appearances, interview requests and radio hits, but is particularly pleased that PG&E has said the book will be required reading, internally.

“It’s nice to feel that it could have that kind of value, you know?” says Blunt. “PG&E’s response has been very gracious.”

California Burning is also likely to strike a chord with anyone who lives near the fire-prone wildland urban interface, who are increasingly concerned with both wildfire prevention and power-company transparency amid PG&E’s acknowledgement of failure to communicate with its customers. Blunt has deftly laid out the delicate balance PG&E is now trying to strike in attempting to protect lives and wilderness while delivering the electricity that we all rely upon. She speaks about the book in an interview that has been edited for length and clarity.

Your book is a methodical look into the web of decisions made over the previous century, as we’ve figured out how to bring gas and electricity into our homes. Why did you feel it was necessary to go to that granular level of detail for the reader to be able to understand PG&E’s history?

KATHERINE BLUNT: I think it’s reflective of my style and the way that I think about things. But I also think it is important to spell out how complicated the story is. I mean, when PG&E evokes such ire right across the state of California, it’s lost the trust of a lot of people. And, you know, people might say, “This company has been putting profits over safety for years.” In some ways, that is true. But it is much more complicated than that statement conveys. And I wanted to explain what that actually means in practice for a company like this, and how you can see that sort of systemic breakdown. It’s not the fault of any individual. But by the same token, it’s the responsibility and the fault of all individuals. I think it’s really important, so that you can truly understand what it means for this company to have failed.

A lot of people in the state have been touched by fires. What do you hope that California residents can get out of your book?

Well, a few things. I hope it does justice to the really challenging elements of this story. A lot of people lost homes. They lost loved ones. The loss was really devastating. I think telling that story is important, to remind everyone of the consequences of this sort of failure. That’s one thing. But, I suppose, like with everyone, I hope it helps them develop a more nuanced understanding of PG&E and why it failed. These people feel very victimized, sort of like, the company did this knowingly and intentionally. And that’s sort of true, as we’ve seen with the criminal charges. But it is a company that’s full of hard-working people who don’t mean any harm. And then they are trying to do better going forward. So, it’s doing justice to the stories—the victims—and maybe helping introduce some new elements into the conversation about PG&E.

Your book is a blow-by-blow account of how our energy landscape emerged—with a particular focus on PG&E’s origin story. Despite how it catalogs bureaucratic shifts and the minutiae of deregulation, it was still surprisingly easy to read. What was the key for you to weaving snappy quotes into the book?

The key to writing a book like this is that you do want to make it accessible. And when you’re looking for quotes and other things—like you referenced—it’s, What is representative of the bigger picture that you’re trying to put forward, instead of getting bogged down with the details. And being selective in choosing the sorts of details that keep it interesting. Keep the reader engaged, but also, make the bigger point. Because this is a book that’s meant to zoom out and explain what’s happened, holistically. So, I’m glad you felt it was effective.

One of the points that you hammered on a couple times is how PG&E makes money by buying infrastructure or investing in capital projects, rather than in putting money into maintenance. 

It’s a really, really important point, not just to understanding PG&E, but in understanding utilities across the country. In most cases, electricity is provided by what are known as investor-owned utilities. They are regulated entities, but they are also beholden to shareholders. They’re publicly traded corporations. And the way these utility companies make money is unusual. Basically, the regulatory body allows them to make an “authorized rate of return” on what amounts to the value of their overall system. So, it’s what’s known as “rate base.” It’s the sum total of power lines, power plants that they own, gas pipelines. So, by investing capital in the system, it increases the overall value, and therefore, that’s how they earn that “rate of return.”

There’s a different category of spending known as “operations and maintenance.” Collectively, these are expenses, and the company does not earn a return on the day-to-day stuff, like pipeline inspections, powerline inspections, replacing little tiny pieces of hardware. That doesn’t amount to a big capital project. And so, it doesn’t increase the overall value of the system, and therefore they don’t earn a return on it.

The best financial performers in the industry are good at keeping expenses pretty low—since that just comes out of the bottom line—and using the savings to invest as capital. In theory, this should work well. It can work well, but it can be about the tough balance to strike. And PG&E has done pretty poorly at striking this balance over the last 20 years.

One of the most frustrating moments in the book is after PG&E is convicted for the first time, in the San Bruno gas explosion case in 2010, where eight people died. And then suddenly the prosecution drops its ask from half a billion dollars to $3 million. How should we make sense of this?

Basically, the way to make sense of it is: the Penal Code is written for people. It’s not written for corporations. So the statutory maximum fines for a lot of the crimes that a corporation has the capacity to commit, as it turns out, they’re meant to be significant fines for individual people. But if you’ve got a multibillion-dollar corporation, $3 million really doesn’t mean anything. And trying to impose an alternative fine can be really hard. Because you basically have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, how much the company’s misdeeds cost the public. And that’s tough. I’d like to look into whether or not there has been much success on this front in terms of prosecuting other companies and imposing alternative fines. But in this case, it was tough. I think that’s why they dropped it. So ultimately, the statutory maximum fines for the crime ended up being just a few million dollars. And it didn’t have much of an effect on the company.

There have been several instances of power outages throughout the Santa Cruz Mountains that, according to PG&E, are a result of new equipment that puts customers’ safety above all else. I’m wondering how you think about the balance that not just PG&E needs to strike, but also other utility companies. 

What is remarkable is that after the major fires of 2017 and 2018, PG&E really began employing a new strategy at scale in which, as you say, it preemptively would cut power if big, strong winds picked up and increased the risk of its line sparking. And this strategy in and of itself is a tacit admission that the company cannot provide electricity safely and reliably all the time. Historically, that has been the expectation of all of our utility companies: to provide safe and reliable power at the same time, constantly. And so, you’re beginning to see that relationship break down. I think that there may be a future in which we do have to accept some of these inconveniences for safety, but I don’t think it should be used at scale. I don’t think it should be used with great frequency, because I just don’t think it’s sustainable long term. I think that customers are going to expect more, and rightfully so. I think the challenge here is finding solutions that eliminate—or at least substantially reduce—the need to employ that strategy.

One of the things that PG&E is doing right now is working to underground a large section or swath of IT system—10,000 miles of distribution wire that would really change the risk profile. It would basically eliminate fire risk on the circuits, and make it so that, when the wind picked up, they wouldn’t have to shut off power to those that were running underground. Whether they still need to do public safety power shutoffs elsewhere remains to be seen. They probably will. But yes, I think it’s going to be incumbent upon PG&E and other utilities to really minimize the use of this strategy going forward, to the best of their ability.

Is that a lot, though, 10,000 miles of distribution wire? And also, does that count toward their capital thing too? Or is that under their operations budget?

It is “capital,” so they will earn a return on doing that. 10,000 miles is pretty substantial. And it’s going to be limited to the high-risk fire areas. So, I think it could do a lot. But cost management is going to be a challenge. You know, it’s expensive to do this. And rates in California, as we all know, are very high.

The book is, to some extent, a character drama. Tell me about some of your favorite characters.

Well, yeah, they’re all really interesting. I really enjoyed talking to James Haggerty, who helped lead the federal investigation of a big natural gas pipeline explosion south of San Bruno. It was really personal to him, you know? It happened on his birthday, right in his childhood neighborhood. And just the amount of passion with which he approached his undertaking was really kind of inspiring, and helped me understand the consequences of the case in a way that I might not have otherwise. 

I certainly enjoyed talking to Nick Stavropoulos, who helped rehabilitate the gas division after San Bruno. He’s a colorful guy, he’s a lot of fun to talk to. And I think he’s really proud of his work. And it’s a nice reminder that the companies can make progress on improving issues throughout their systems—if they have the right leadership in place, and the right strategy.

I liked that you went through the history of California governors, including the role that Arnold Schwarzenegger played in putting climate change at the forefront. Do you still have hope that California can lead the way into a green energy future?

There’s a lot of near-term challenges. Managing the pace of the transition has proven to be difficult. Just managing the retirement of certain plants, notably Diablo Canyon, with the addition of wind and solar farms and batteries to store the output for use when production declines. We’re at a period right now, this kind of inflationary, challenging environment with supply-chain problems, that’s made it so it’s been harder to bring some of that new generation online quickly enough to make sure that supply and demand are always in balance. I think the next few years are going to be tough to navigate. But I think some of these challenges will ease with time. And I do think that there’s certainly a longer-term story of hope for California.