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Late Night at the Pelican Cafe – Candela at El Rio

Late Night at the Pelican Cafe is an experimental web site where I post historic recordings of various bands from the San Francisco Bay Area. You can just go to the post and music will play.  Listen to the sound of a bar or club filled with people, listening and dancing to a live band. Many of these recording are live recordings from a quality analog cassette tape recorder  ( SONY TCS-580-V) positioned on the floor in front of the trombone player. For around fifteen years I was a freelance trombonist and arranger in San Francisco.

Candela Live at El Rio – 1992

CANDELA LIVE AT EL RIO – 1992
In the 1990’s I had the fortune to play many Sundays at El Rio. At one point it felt like I was the house trombone player. On this particular Sunday the band was a phenomenal line-up of San Francisco based musicians – many players, including myself, were filling in for regulars. You can hear solos by Wayne Wallace, Rebeca Mauleón, Ramon Lasso, Paul Lyons, Michael Spiro, Jorge Polmar and others. Rebeca Mauleón’s piano Solo on Bailando Asi is outstanding.

CANDELA – 1992
Edgardo Cambin – Congas and Lead Vocal (Solo on Yembeke)
Jorge Polmar – Bass
Rebeca Mauleón – Piano (Solo on Bailando Asi)
Sandy Cressman – Coros
Ramon Lasso – Piano (Solo on Yembeke)
Wayne Wallace – Trombone (Solo on Yembeke)
Eric Rangel – Timbales
Michael Spiro – Bongo (Solo on El Cuarto)
Paul Lyons – Trombone

Current Candela Website

https://musicandela.com

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Remembering Bahia Cabana – 1600 Market Street, San Francisco

Remembering Bahia Cabana - 1600 Market Street, San Francisco

INTRODUCTION
In 1992 I played in a band lead by Marcus Lopez called Cubanacan. In this band, on this night,  I was taping the band so as to learn the tunes. The tune is Richard Kermode’s Catalina. and you can hear the solos of Peter Cornell,  Paul Lyons and the late great Richard Kermode –  a great musician with a huge spirit who earlier had worked and recorded with Santana and Janis Joplin. Richard could play a wicked montuno.

Fito Reinoso – Voice
Marcus Lopez – Bass
Louis Romero – Timbales
Geraldo from Cuba – Congas
Richard Kermode – Piano
Peter Cornell – Sax
Paul Lyons – Trombone

Katalina by Richard Kermode

ACT 1 : AN ELECTRIFYING EXPERIENCE
Besides unemployment, anxiety and pondering your mortality, the Covid-19 pandemic is a time for cleaning out closets. Going through some old stuff I ran into a postcard from a bygone era. In the 1980’s and 90’s Bahia Cabana in San Francisco was a hopping club on Market Street in San Francisco with a tropical vibe and live music many nights of the week.  The bands were mostly Latin bands playing samba or salsa and it catered to a dance crowd.  The place must have been crazy during San Francisco’s Carnaval.

Remembering Bahia Cabana - 1600 Market Street, San Francisco
Postcard from Bahia Cabana – 1992

Long before the pandemic and before the rise of the internet, there were many clubs and bars like Bahia Cabana employing musicians. It is hard to imagine but in the late 1990’s, five nights a week there were at least five clubs up and down Mission Street that had bands with full horn sections and multiple singers.  Most of these bands were cover bands that played the hits of the day and also the many regional Latin tunes – merengue, rancheras and cumbias. San Francisco is home to a lot of people from Central America where cumbias seem to always be popular.

But that is a bygone era.  For years, live music in clubs has been in decline and Latin clubs are few. When you do hear a live salsa band it was often just a quartet with various people sitting in and the entire band playing for a tip jar.

But back to Bahia Cabana – a place were I could have been electrocuted to death.  Bahia Cabana had this third world vibe down to the electrical system.  I remember playing there in the 1990’s with Julio Bravo and looking at the wiring backstage for the sound system and wondering if everything was legal – wires going every which way like spaghetti. Next thing I know after attempting to plug in an amp, I got an electrical shock unlike anything I have ever received. I stepped back and wondered for a second if I should go to the emergency room only to be reassured by the trumpet player that if may hair was not on fire and there were no visible burns that everything was fine.  It was a strange feeling.

Bahia Cabana –  an electrifying and shockingly happening hot spot long gone.

A few years later Bahia Cabana opened another club in the basement – music by a DJ, lots of flashing lights, drum and bass, loud pounding sounds and surely a smoke machine. I wondered how they got that by the San Francisco fire department and being in the basement was a bit concerned for safety reasons. Sure enough, sometime around 2000 the entire building caught fire and Bahia Cabana closed down for good.  Another victim of using unlicensed, non-union electrical  contractors who do not ground service panels. But Bahia Cabana would have closed soon after with the invasion of the tech industry, increased rents and the changing economics of the San Francisco.

I think I will keep the postcard as a keepsake.

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Surfing Ocean Beach in the Winter

Recently some very large swell hit Northern California. December 4, 2020 was probably the biggest day of the year so far with waves peaking at probably around 25 feet. The following day, December 4, 2020 I ventured to the beach to take some photos and surf. These are photos from around 9 am to 11 am at Ocean Beach in San Francisco when the waves were about 7 feet at 14 seconds. Fortunately, even though there is a raging pandemic, surfing appears to be a safe activity. As the saying goes, once you leave the beach, you are in the wild.

Some sequences of rides

Ride 1
Surfing Ocean Beach in the Winter Surfing Ocean Beach in the Winter Surfing Ocean Beach in the Winter Surfing Ocean Beach in the Winter

Ride 2
Surfing Ocean Beach in the Winter
Surfing Ocean Beach in the Winter
Surfing Ocean Beach in the Winter

At the beach (the little black things on the waves are indeed humans)

 

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Video Conferencing with Aliens

It is rather odd that there is not more written about the influenza pandemic of 1918 or what came to be known as the “Spanish Flu.” No one really knows the death totals but it is safe to say that over 50 million people died worldwide and over 600,000 people died in the United States of America. Like most bad things that happen in life, humans seem to be better off just forgetting these tragedies, but then again perhaps that is why we keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again.

What is different about our current 2020 Covid-19 pandemic is that technology has made it so we can connect with other people in ways probably not even thought possible in 1918. In fact, many are living lives that are more in keeping with the technological imaginations of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Like the spaceship Enterprise on Star Trek we have technology to connect to our alien relatives even if we find them irritating and obnoxious. Like Captain Kirk we have our trusty cellphones even more advanced than his silly flip-phone. We can view and speak with aliens like our strange brother-in-laws on large screens as though they are Klingons from another planet. Perhaps like 1918 our times are often full of solitary activities and our “bubbles” are where we practice our daily and weekly rituals, and many people continue on with their lives working over the internet.  That the video conferencing application ZOOM finally figured it out just  in the nick of time was serendipitous. Like the crew of the Star Trek Enterprise, people are often found living for days on end wearing what look like pajamas.  Instead of getting beamed over to the Covid-19 testing area we get in our spaceships with wheels and are tested without leaving our seats.

Just like Star Trek, sometimes the video connection fizzles out or people just leave like a band-aid torn off with a sudden pull.  I am not sure if on Star Trek they had video drinking parties and happy hours but those can be great fun.  Rarely does the the narrative get aggressive – “Scotty: we will need more tonic Jim. I don’t think the party will survive without it!!”- as during Covid-19 you are so starved for attention, just seeing another face is often a welcome and novel event.  And of course, never mentioned in  space travel science fiction, and one thing they always seem leave out, is that to get to Mars, let alone another solar system, is going to take a lot of travel time.  Surviving the Covid-19 pandemic is perhaps like training for space travel to Mars.

In 1918 we were just coming to the end of The Great War which eventually gave rise to Hitler and fascist Germany.  In 2020 we dodged a bullet as Donald Trump was barely defeated at the polls. Fascism is indeed alive and well and humans are just barely intelligent enough (a little over 50%) to choose between burning up the planet or at least attempting to save what is left of this marvelous place we call Earth.

 

 

 

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Books I Read in 2020

Books I Read in 2020 is brought to you by Bird and Beckett Books in San Francisco.

Bird and Beckett Books

Remember, before you buy a book from Jeff Bezos consider supporting your local bookstore. You get that warm fuzzy feeling just thinking that you may have kept a local business alive and you may even make some real friends.

This year I started a book diary and kept track of all the books I read. I recommend all of these books however special shout-out to three books: There There by Tommy Orange, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand and My Song: A Memoir by Harry Belafonte. Below is a list and a short description of each book.

The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
Louis Menand
Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First edition (April 10, 2002)

Louis Menand is a brilliant thinker and The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America is a great read. It is like a play with four characters as leads.  It is strange to think that the Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes  fought in the Civil War then went on to be on the Supreme Court for around thirty years in the early 20th century. Not brought up in my rudimentary education of the 19th century is the debate between monogenists and polygenists and such characters as Louis Agassiz and how the entire science world was convinced that Africans were a different species. This was the accepted belief until Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. Just a warning to the world on how perception is so often not reality and science when overly influenced by money and politics is often wrong.

There There
Tommy Orange Knopf (2018)

I highly recommend this book as the story telling and writing are phenomenal and the characters memorable. Based in Oakland and written by and about Native Americans – something not often found in published literature. Amazing book!

The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
Erik Larson
Random House (2020)

I read this at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and it gave me an escape from the lack of leadership of the Trump administration. I was curious about Churchill’s speeches, but instead you get the day to day life of Churchill during the bombing of London. A key source for this book are the diaries of Churchill’s daughter Mary. When politicians seem spineless, unable to lead, corrupt beyond belief, this is a good one to restore your faith. Churchill told the people the truth and would end his speeches with optimism and encouragement. What a concept.

Time Will Tell: Conversations With Paul Bley
Paul Bley & Norman Meehan
Berkeley Hills Books

Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Ibram X. Kendi Bold Type Books (2017)

Lot’s of stuff you never got in high school history class.

I Walked With Giants: The Autobiography of Jimmy Heath
Jimmie Heath Temple University Press (2010)

Great read from Jimmie Heath who lived a long productive life.

Cash: The Autobiography Johnny Cash
HarperOne; Illustrated edition (October 7, 2003)

If you are a Johnny Cash fan this is a must read. Given to me a few Christmas’s back by my second child, I finally got around to reading this autobiography. It is sort of interesting how in the first few chapters he skims over his first family, but comes around in the end to explaining things.

Little Bee
Chris Cleave
Simon & Schuster (2008)

This is sort of like a Netflix series that you watch because you have run out of options. Still, well written and engaging.

Dialogues and Natural History of Religion
David Hume
Oxford Classics

I read this because I am a big fan of Hume’s Zen-like skepticism. Heavy read where I understood only about ten percent at times.


Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class
Scott Timberg
Yale University Press (January 31, 2015)

I wrote a review of this book on this website.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Thomas Wolfe
Picador (2008)

I had never read this book and was curious. San Francisco in the late 1960s.

My Song: A Memoir
Harry Belafonte and Michael Shnayerson
Knopf; First Edition edition (October 11, 2011)

I wrote a review of this book on this website.

All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
Maya Angelou
Random House; Reprint edition (May 20, 1997)

Amazing writing.

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The Treason of Donald Trump and the Republican Party

It is now a week after the November 3, 2020 election. Because of Covid-19 and the large amount of mail-in ballots, it took until Saturday for Pennsylvania to be called for Joe Biden.  The United States of America is still counting votes but the outcome is clear. Joe Biden won the Electoral College vote as well as a popular vote margin that when everything is counted will be over 5 million votes. Donald Trump is soon to be evicted from federal housing.

However, Donald Trump is playing the sore loser and claiming election fraud with no evidence that anything fraudulent happened. This is a typical Trump maneuver and this behavior of “deny, deny, deny” is a skill he learned from the notorious scumbag Roy Cohn. The prediction that Trump would never concede was pointed out by Michael Cohen over a year ago.

Michael Cohen Warned Us In February 2019

That just about every Republican supports Trump in his chronic denialism and legal maneuvers is deplorable.; Mitch McConnell has always been deplorable. At this point the Republican party is a party of traitors and treason and the oaths that they took to The Constitution are absurd.

NOTE: The opinion above is only that of the author and does not represent the San Francisco Journal, investors or subsidiaries. Letters to the editors can be sent via the contact link below.

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How to Change the Water and Clean an Older Hot Springs Hot Tub – Spa

Tools Needed
Phillips head screwdriver
Needle nose pliers
1 ½ inch scraping tool
Rags
Dish soap
Garden hose

Optional: Wet-Dry shop vac

Your hot tub may be very different. This is the only hot tub I have every owned. It is a Hot Springs hot tub from 1987 that was given to me fifteen years ago by a good friend. It still works great.
I change the water probably twice a year depending on use and the condition of the water.

You can simply empty the water and refill, but I find that going the extra mile with the cleaning really helps the quality of the water.

Step 1
Unplug the hot tub.

Step 2
Connect a garden hose to the drain pipe Open the valve. Empty the water directly into a drain. The water is not meant to water your lawn or a garden. The bromide will kill you grass.

I often drain the tub at night as it does take a few hours to drain.

Step 3
Bail out the rest of the water. I often find that the wet-dry shop vacuum works well.

Step 4
Unscrew the plastic fittings holding in the screens. Use a 1 ½ inch tool. I use a scraper wrapped in a rag. Carefully clean hair and lint out of screens with a toothbrush and under a faucet.

Step 5
Replace screens and screw plastic fittings back in. Be careful. This is an old hot tub.

Step 6
Wipe down the hot tub with a rag and a bucket of water with dish soap. Wipe with clean water.

Step 7
Use shop vac to suck out all remaining water. Do a final wipe down

Step 8
Close drain valve and put cap back on

Step 9
Fill hot tub with the hose

Step 10
Plug hot tub back in and start jets. Let run for around 10 minutes.

You are done! It will take 24 hours to fully heat up.

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Crane Cove Park in San Francisco is Awesome!

Crane Cove Park will be a major new open space along the currently inaccessible former industrial shoreline. The park will be a part of the Blue Greenway, a necklace of waterfront public access connecting the City to the shore via pathways, parks and open spaces.
https://sfport.com/crane-cove-park

I found Crane Cove Park in San Francisco on the day it opened purely by accident. It was a clear day and I was doing one of my bike rides around the city. Great job SF Port and all the people who made this happen! You can now update your website. (e.g., will be is)

  • On that old bike Lane I’ll ride it once again, just no longer will I ride with you.
  • I saw you pretending indifferent, from the warmth of your automobile.
  • This road has broken some strong ones, but it’s never gonna take my will.
  • The path beneath us is wicked, and best traveled on two wheels
  • Bike Lane – Lucas French

Where is Crane Cove Park in SF?
It is in the Mission Bay, south and not far from the new Warriors stadium along the bay. It is a stones-throw south of The Ramp and Mission Rock. It has a wading beach and a large open space that once was a shipyard. No swimming but I did see some paddle-boarders out there. Just an interesting space along the water.

The entire Mission Bay has been transformed in recent years from a district of warehouses and open spaces to a place with hospitals, UCSF and a stadium. For better or worse, many of the open spaces are now glass office buildings. However, Crane Cove Park is a welcome addition to all this development. During the summer months, May to September, Crane Cove will usually be fog-free and five degrees warmer than the rest of the city – a great respite from the fog for people living in The Sunset or further west.

COOL ACTIVITIES AT CRANE COVE PARK:

  • Easy short-distance, safe biking.
  • Walking
  • Wading
  • Picnicking
  • Views of Oakland, the bay, the Bay Bridge, old cranes
  • Rollerskating

Just in time for a pandemic is San Francisco’s Crane Cove Park.

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The Quarterly Report – October 2020

This SF Journal Quarterly Report is brought to you by Gentilly and Taqueria Guadalajara, both excellent options for take out dining in the Excelsior District of San Francisco.

I am a little concerned about the concept of a Quarterly Report as the world is moving far to fast.  Since the last Quarterly Report, entire cities in California have been burned to the ground, we discovered Donald Trump paid just $750 in Federal Income Taxes for two years while pretending to be president and while getting exceptional health care on the people’s dime, and the baseball season came and went like a beer fart that thankfully did not even register on the air quality meter.  But a plan is a plan, and here is The Quarterly Report – October 2020.

Weather

Whether or not you “believe” in climate change or not, California during September 2020 was literally on fire, with massive fires up and down the state. There were fires in Boulder Creek close to Santa Cruz, in the Sierra and north in wine country.  After some freakish dry lightening strikes in September, there were so many fires going on at the same time that you simply  lost track. For many days San Francisco was dark with smoke and the air quality was at dangerous levels across the state.  One Tuesday morning we woke up to a day where the sun never rose. The sky was an eerie orange. We were told the sky was similar to what it would be like if you survived a nuclear explosion – a nuclear winter.

11 am in San Francisco - September 2020
11 AM  in San Francisco – September 2020

While the expression that people “believe” in climate change (like it was some sort of religious epiphany)  always has seemed odd, all I know is that this is “the new normal.”  The climate is changing in more ways than we can even measure. The survival of the human species is quite dire.

Early October was fortunately a bit cooler with a lot of marine-layer and fog along the coast, but starting around October 7th we have entered our “Indian Summer” period with warm days and light winds. Many people are heading to the beach to cool off, swim and surf. This is the best time of year in Northern California.

COVID-19 Pandemic Update

In San Francisco we are doing pretty well in terms of containing the virus. People wear masks and practice social distancing in creative ways. Restaurants have adapted and there are many new “parklets” outside of establishments where people can eat.  A few places are hiring bands to play as well. Even though all the public schools are doing online classes, people are getting out and the hum of freeway is about back to normal.

Presidential Politics

Most everyone in San Francisco seems to be holding their breath hoping that the Biden-Harris ticket wins come November. It is shocking that so many people in the United States of America support Donald Trump as he has always seemed a dangerous fraud from the start. Let us hope that this nightmare ends and in the least we can have some civility in the national discourse. Then there is all the actual work to be done – climate change, racial justice,  education equity, the state department. The list is long. Where to start?

Sporting News

The Oakland A’s made it to the playoffs in this shortened season but lost in the second round. Someone mentioned that there are professional football games being played but that is all I know on that front. It sounds like a really bad idea as football tends to be a sport where bodily fluids are exchanged on a regular basis.

 

For the citizens of San Francisco there are many street closures to facilitate places to be outside and exercise. People are out and about, running, biking and skating. I predict that there are more kids that have learned how to ride a bike in the last nine months than in the last five years as you see them out on the Great Highway enjoying the 4 mile stretch of flat, open road with stunning views of the Pacific Ocean.

 

That is The Quarterly Report – October 2020. Be well. Wear a mask. Drink plenty of water, get regular exercise and for the love of God stay away from “social media.” Read books.

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Donald Trump Gets Covid-19 – Why Are People So Concerned?

The latest news on the national level is that Donald Trump has contracted Covid-19 – the Corona Virus. It seems odd that this is a big deal. All along Donald Trump has explained that Covid-19 is little more than a mild flu. Please let us stop with the hyperbole. Donald. Go home and get some rest. It is just a mild illness. Maybe check back in a few weeks after you down a few Dixie Cups of Clorox or perhaps have your “come to Jesus moment” like what happened to Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

“It’s going to disappear one day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
Donald Trump

“A lot of people think that goes away in April, with the heat, as the heat comes in, typically that will go away in April.”
Donald Trump

“Covid-19 affects ‘virtually nobody’”
Donald Trump

“I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? “Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that.”
Donald Trump

“It’s a little like a regular flu that we have flu shots for, and we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.”
Donald Trump .

Quotes begin from statements made by Donald Trump starting in February 2020.

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Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2020 Awards Will Take a Break

The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival that takes place in Golden Gate Park every first-weekend in October is still happening this year, however it is going to be all online or what they now call “virtual.” Not my cup of tea folks. I like the real thing and will not be attending. That said, this year’s  SF Journal Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival Awards will take a break.

As it turns out, live music festivals, with thousands of people bumping into each other, spilling beer on you and sharing local herbs is probably the best way to boost your immune system.  As an added bonus there is the perilous activity of attempting to hygienically go to the bathroom in a port-a-potty.  Wash your hands? Yeah right. Let’s all share germs!

For the past eight years I have written up reviews of  HSBG festivals and given out awards. If you are curious or simply getting nostalgic, they are listed below. Until next year hopefully, when the light of health, peace and sanity returns.