West Sacramento has been going through many changes and turning an empty riverbank into a bustling district is one of them. Recently, The Bridge District in West Sacramento has been morphing into a location where food trucks, musicians and locals converge for commerce and entertainment.
In keeping with that cultural facelift, West Sacramento wanted to incorporate public art into its burgeoning landscape. However, unlike the $8 million statue of Piglet that welcomes guests to the Golden 1 Center, a custom art piece in West Sacramento was made to reflect and interact with its surroundings. Instead of seeking out a specific artist, there was an international competition, which was won by Federico Díaz.
A Czech artist of Argentinian descent, Díaz is known for his abstract art installations that combine the reality of everyday life with methods that incorporate science and technology. I sat down with Díaz hours before the unveiling of his contribution to the city, titled Subtile.
Once Subtile was delivered, Díaz was unable to help assemble the art piece because he did not have American contractors insurance and could only direct workers. Though he did admit it was strange only being able to watch his art piece be installed, he felt comfortable with the process.
“One of the city managers came to Prague to see how the installation would work, so they had experience before it got here.” Díaz explained. “I was kind of the brain around it, and they felt quite comfortable having me around, so I could pinpoint things that I saw. There was good cooperation.”
During our conversation, Díaz was willing to share his creative process and the passion he has for society as a whole, but when asked how he felt about Subtile Díaz became soft-spoken and humble.
“It’s not about me,” Díaz said when talking about his recent addition to The Bridge District. “It’s about the space.”
The inclusion of public art in The Bridge District of West Sacramento is very exciting. What led to you being selected for this project?
One day I received an email—and thanks to another installation I made for MASS MoCA [Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art] called Geometric Death Frequency-141, they found me. They invited me to enter the competition and I sent my portfolio. After about three months, they selected six artists. Then they invited me to see the space and to observe. I was here for three days, looking around. Because it was nature, I was really interested in the natural processes.
So you created the piece after touring the area and being inspired by the location of the art installation?
Yes, it was really site specific. I used a special algorithm that simulated the trees and simulated different levels of growth in nature around the river.
I noticed that incorporating science into your artwork is very important to you.
Yes, I use algorithms and digital processes that are connected with nature.
When you reference algorithms, what specifically are you talking about?
I’m talking more about the trees and bushes in the area, how the wind hits them. You will see on the surface of the sculpture, the targets shimmer when the wind hits them, so they are connected with the nature and movement of the area. I wanted to capture it like leaves. So it’s also about attention. We don’t have time to see something that is natural and primitive so the sculpture activates our attention to something that is part of the space and surrounding area.
You’ve been known to use media and technology as a catalyst for social activism. How do you connect activism with a public audience?
I’m always thinking about activation, visual activation, or political activation. I think it’s important to create something that is not only a representation of the soul of the artist—of course that is really important —but if the piece is in a public space, I think it is a big responsibility to make the connection between the art and the audience.
You mentioned that one of the reasons you were contacted was because of your art piece at MASS MoCA, can you tell me a little about that piece titled, Geometric Death Frequency-141.
Yes, It was based on light and shadows from the museum.
And it was built by a machine right?
Yes, untouched by human hands. I believe our bodies are limited, and for this reason we create devices which are made because of our fear.
Fear of what?
That something and everything will come to an end. So we devise these tools to prolong our fragility of life.
Your art speaks to society in many ways. Since your approach can come from a social activist’s point of view, have you ever experienced backlash?
I was invited by one of the most important museums in Beijing, China, named the CAFA [Central Academy of Fine Arts]. They invited me and I went there more than 20 times during several years observing. Always if you look at the periphery of a city you will find new information. There, in the middle, everything was perfect. But, if you are on the periphery there is always something coming to the surface.
What came to the surface in China?
During these trips, I saw that transportation like bicycles and rickshaws disappeared. Then one day I saw in one district a poster that said rickshaws were banned in that area. After about a month, I went back again, the government of Beijing pushed the people that used rickshaws, and repairmen that welded broken rickshaws and bicycles to the fifth circle, the periphery. From the first to the fourth circle, it’s impossible to weld. If you think about this problem from the point of view of a Chinese worker, it became really hard [to get around] and thousands and thousands of workers lost their jobs.
So, one month before my exhibition, I saw a small demonstration and one of the rickshaw men was killed. So after one year of observing, I was interested in the momentum of that movement, interested in the momentum of that war.
How did you transfer what you saw into your art?
I noticed that all of these techniques and rituals were disappearing, so I decided to transfer it into my art using an old technique, which was Chinese ink combined with modern technology onto a big canvas in the museum. Then, one day before the opening, I invited a repairman and he stenciled the mechanism of the rickshaw gears.
Would you say you were protesting through your art?
I don’t know if it’s a protest, but it was deliberate. I didn’t want to do any kind of political action on purpose, but at the same time I wanted to show something that the Chinese society creates. I wanted to tell something about the society, but everything is political in China.
How long was it on display?
It was only complete for one day before the opening. The next day the managers of the museum got an email from the Ministry of Propaganda that stated the exhibit had to be replaced by another exhibition.
Wow, so this email was sent out on opening day?
Yes, on the day of the opening. So we protested a little bit. We applied some political pressure through certain channels and they backed off a little bit and said the repairman in the exhibit had to be removed and only the static installation and the accompanying video can stay there.
Although what I created wasn’t a direct confrontation with anything or anybody, I felt the powers working behind the scenes. My friend went to the exhibition a week later and there was almost nothing left. All of the signs were taken off, the accompanying video was gone and there was only the canvas, which really said nothing since there was no visual connection.
Would you call yourself a political artist?
I want to stress that I’m not interested in being a political artist. I’m mainly interested in society and the process in society. That could be the downward process we have discussed, or that can also be positive things. I believe this way, change can be achieved in a more effective way as opposed to if I used political language. For me, political language is very complex and sometimes also misleading, so I want to keep my distance from it.
I can see that you are very passionate about the effect your artwork has on society, whether it’s connecting people to their heritage and livelihood like in China, or making someone stop and appreciate the simplicity of the natural world like in West Sacramento.
Yes, exactly.
**This piece first appeared in print on pages 18 – 19 of issue #255 (Dec. 18, 2017 – Jan. 1, 2018)**
Raley Field in West Sacramento will have a special glow about it on Saturday, Sept. 9, when the nationally touring Blacklight Slide party comes to town. Event goers can grab an inner tube by either purchasing one at the event or bringing one from home, and then hit up the giant water slides flowing with bright, neon glow-in-the-dark water. Then, after getting all glowed up, you can let loose on the dance floor with live DJs at the afterparty. Sliders must be 5 years old and 42 inches tall, so this event is fun and open to (mostly) all ages. Find more information and register at Blacklightslide.com/sacramentoca.
The scorching summer days are upon us, and with the temperature constantly lingering in the high 90s, thoughts of ice cream often consume my mind. Thankfully there’s Devil May Care, a new ice cream shop in West Sacramento. With their small batch ice cream and one-of-a-kind floats, Devil May Care is quickly becoming a go-to spot during these dog days of summer. Sure, there are many places in the area where you can get your ice cream fix, but how many of them source their ingredients from local farms, neighbor’s yards and the occasional river bank?
Devil May Care’s owner, Jess Milbourn, is no stranger to supplying tasty bites to West Sacramento. Milbourn was co-owner and chef of The Eatery, which was located on the opposite side of the city. After a little time away from the food scene, Milbourn was eager to jump back in, so with a little less stress and a little more rock ‘n’ roll, he rallied friends and family to join in on the fun.
“With any restaurant you have around 20 people, so you’re not going to have a tight-knit group like we do here,” said Milbourn. “Here the entire staff works together quite often and there’s a lot of cooperation between making and serving the ice cream.”
When talking to Milbourn, it is easy to see why he keeps choosing to open businesses in West Sacramento.
“I’ve been here forever, I grew up in the Rio Linda/Elverta area, but my grandmother lived on 6th Street here in West Sac the whole time,” Milbourn said. “My cousins all lived out here too. I was here every weekend. We knew we wanted to be in West Sacramento, we didn’t know that this area was going to develop like it did, but we really like this area and what it was becoming.”
As we continued our conversation, it became evident that Devil May Care is not just an ice cream shop, but already a community staple.
How long after The Eatery closed did you get the itch to return to the food business?
I bounced around a little bit doing freelance catering and it got to the point that I was two years out of The Eatery and I was like, “OK, do I want to get back into the restaurant business? Do I want to reopen The Eatery, do I want to open something else?”
What made you go the ice cream route?
I started to think about it realistically. I would be 45 years old jumping back into a 70-, 80-, 100-hour workweek. It just becomes a huge time commitment, a huge drain. I’ve got family, I’ve got other things I want to do now. I totally understand why you see 28-year-old chefs diving into it and doing it. I did it myself, but now I’m older and it wouldn’t be good for anybody involved. So we started looking into what was next—I say we because my wife is involved heavily of course—and we decided we wanted to go the retail route. So from there, the focus became ice cream.
Have you made ice cream professionally before Devil May Care?
I made ice cream for restaurants before, but never in a commercial setting. I can’t just make a gallon for a garnish of one dessert; it’s a different process. So I started by doing a lot of research and a lot of reading. I’m making 90 to 100 gallons of ice cream a week, so it’s a much different scenario than what I’ve been used to.
That seems like it would be a fun challenge. Were you nervous when you first started?
No, I love the fact that—even though I went to culinary school and have cooked forever—with something like this all of my professional training is gone. I’m starting from square one. I’ve never made ice cream consistently enough to be very well versed. I took this kind of weird turn professionally and I think you can find a lot of people doing that now. You just have to find the thing that you think is interesting and share your story. That’s what I’m doing when I’m sharing ice cream with people.
I can tell from Devil May Care’s Facebook live videos that you’re a big music fan.
I love music. I love rock music and all that comes from it. I don’t want to say we have rock ‘n’ roll ice cream or anything like that, but we’re trying to be a little fun … I don’t want to say [we’re] edgy because it’s ice cream, but we do stupid things sometimes, and we take risks, and we’re silly, we’re a little bit reckless and overall we just like to have fun.
It sounds like the ice cream business is a lot less stressful and a lot more fun than owning a traditional restaurant.
Yeah, I don’t want to have the stress that’s associated with a restaurant anymore. This has its own kind of stress. We’re still running a business, but at the end of the day, we’re making ice cream.
Many of your ice creams are seasonal and rotate frequently. How do you decide what kind of ice cream you’re going to make that week?
We don’t know what we are going to make until we start planning on Sundays. My ratio consultant comes in Sunday nights and we talk about what we want to do for the week.
You turn to the farmers markets for some of your ingredients. Do you try to keep everything as local as possible?
The West Sac farmers market is only once a month now, so we don’t get to go to that one as much, but we go whenever it’s happening. I use a couple local farms, like Kingfisher Farm in Winters that’s growing strawberries right now. It’s not always that way though. We rely heavily on Produce Express. We’re doing a P.O.G. (passion fruit, orange, guava) sorbet right now and I’m not able to get local passion fruit and guava, but we source local whenever we can.
What are some of your favorite flavors?
We did a chamomile kumquat ice cream recently; it was a perfect combination of flavors, and luckily we nailed it the first time! The kumquats came from a guy that lives right over here in an old West Sac neighborhood. He brought us in, like, 20 pounds of kumquats! And we picked the chamomile from right off the river bank. It’s neat because there’s this hyper local connection for me. I grew up here and remember picking chamomile with my grandma all of the time, so there’s this sentimental feeling I get about that ice cream.
It’s clear that the community has been very supportive, but how has it been working the city of West Sacramento? I hear the city is really supportive when it comes to small businesses.
Yeah, they are open to new businesses, but even more than that, they’re actively involved in making it happen. Every city councilmember, the mayor and people in the city offices are so supportive and easy to work with. Looking back to when we opened The Eatery, it was my first time going through any of it and I couldn’t have imagined doing it was an easier group of people. The city is super easy to work with and everyone is very supportive. Not just in helping business happen but creating a business environment too.
What does the future hold for you and Devil May Care?
Right now, the goal is to expand the ability to produce more ice cream, so moving to an industrial park somewhere to be able to make more ice cream more efficiently. I don’t think that this shop will sustain a standalone production facility, so concurrently I would like to open another shop like this. In the immediate future, I would like to just expand the menu. That’s the biggest thing that we want to do right now. I would also like to start making milkshakes. We can make novelty items, we just don’t have the capacity to do them all of the time. They are so much fun to make and people love them! And in a really cool world, I would like to develop a cone that looks exactly like the logo. That would be a neat thing! I would love to focus on the innovation and novelty stuff a lot more, but really I just want to make good ice cream.
Devil May Care is located at 322 Third St. in West Sacramento. Pay them a visit in person or online at Devilmaycareicecream.com.
For Chaz Bundick, the process of designing artwork for an album is as uniquely fulfilling an experience as recording one. The LPs he puts out under his main creative persona, Toro y Moi, reflect this craft, demanding attention to the sleeve and cover, suggesting heavily a certain character before the music even begins. For fans, these are must-buys on vinyl; something to place in a row on their own special shelf, always there for a quick spin and each ready to entertain one state of mind or another. There is the aqueous, ambient pulse of Causers of This, accompanied by murky, dark-hued artwork; there is the crystal-clear, after-hours funk of Underneath the Pine, paired with a playful, intimate cover; and the crackling, caffeinated focus of Anything in Return, alongside bold, warm-toned color visuals. The overall body of work that makes up Toro y Moi can be as alternately vibrant, subdued, contiguous and varied as a coral reef. One might spend countless listens wrapped up in the surface texture of one of these records, and still get the feeling that there are hidden depths behind every hook and melody.
Without sacrificing complexity, the latest Toro y Moi album, What For? (released in April, 2015) burns off some of the layered production of Bundick’s past efforts in favor of a clear-cut, ‘70s rock-inflected sound. The result is as bright and breezy as a cloudless Bay Area afternoon, with analog instrumentation supplied by Bundick himself alongside a who’s-who of names in current indie rock (Ruban Nielson of Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Keath Mead among them). From the swirling synth, guitar and breakbeat leaps of lead single “Empty Nesters” to wistful, Big Star-influenced numbers such as “Yeah Right,” it is clear that his songwriting chops have reached a new level of sophistication. Even so, the record feels effortless, as if this time around, the undertaking was made lighter by experience.
Although still a fresh face on the music scene, making inroads to new audiences with every subsequent release, Bundick has come a long way from the pre-emptive labeling of 2009’s so-called “Summer of Chillwave,” taking stylistic left-turns with each new release and even producing dance music under a pseudonym (check out the excellent 2014 album by Les Sins, Michael, named after Bundick’s dog). In recent years, he’s left his old stomping grounds of Columbia, South Carolina (where he’d once taken classes with Ernest Greene of Washed Out) and relocated to Berkeley, California, which seems to jive well with the light, psychedelic flair of his new work.
Between touring and recording, which he still tends to do in his quiet home studio, Bundick also indulges in design work, including custom screen-printed T-shirts. If there is a dark or turbulent side to his life or his art, it doesn’t show; the man himself can be enigmatic and congenial in equal amounts, like his albums—mellow, but in a cerebral way. One certainty is his passion for crafting a sound or look, and his formidable sense of taste. “Taste transcends the physical world,” he was once quoted as saying. It is this devotion to the discriminating eye and ear that makes Toro y Moi such an impeccable figure on the music landscape of today.
In a few days, local fans will have the opportunity to see Toro y Moi live at TBD Fest in West Sacramento, where his act will utilize the full live-band sound of What For?. It will mark only the second time he’s played a show in the region, the first being an early 2009 performance in Davis, his first-ever gig in California. It goes without saying that Toro y Moi has evolved by leaps and bounds since then, much like Sacramento’s own blossoming local festival. We were able to briefly catch up with Bundick before his appearance on Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, to talk style, early influences, and possible future directions.
What has changed most fundamentally about your idea of the Toro y Moi project since 2009?
My musical process has been constantly changing, but aside from that, my attention to detail has gone up more. I just pay more attention to aesthetics, because there are more eyes on me now. I’d rather make sure everything from the music to the album covers to the merchandise is a cohesive thing, because it’s still me doing all of that stuff. It’s just me and an art director, or me and a friend designing the T-shirts. Not really much more than two people working on a given aspect, so if anything, I feel like my business model overall has changed. I think of it more as a business now. There’s a lot more aspects to think about at all times.
Did you have a similarly distinct vision when you set out with your first album, Causers of This?
Yeah, in a way. I definitely wanted to pay attention to some design aspects. But I really wasn’t thinking—being fresh out of college—about music video quality, or what kind of camera to shoot things on, or what kind of typefaces to use, or trying to stay consistent with all of these things from project to project. I think I was definitely aware of those decisions to some extent when I was just starting out because I was a fan of design in general. But it wasn’t until the second album [Underneath the Pin] where I really started thinking about crafting it better.
Did you discover design or music first when you were growing up?
Probably music, but I appreciated visual art and visual components from an early age. Everything from like, looking through my parents’ album covers to being afraid to look at just covers, to appreciating books and being able to tell if something was watercolor versus just pencil. That has always just stuck with me.
What was the first album/design combination that truly blew you away?
To be honest, I really thought that The White Album was genius when I first saw it. It’s perfect, it’s nothing, it’s a no-brainer. It’s, you know, proto-Apple computers. It’s no coincidence that it was named Apple, with The Beatles and everything. I think that was the smartest thing … It’s part of what makes The Beatles the best band in the world, in my opinion. That and the way they transformed themselves so many times, the way they had so many visual elements from The White Album to other iconic covers like Abbey Road. It was just smart and simple, it wasn’t too over-the-top. I really appreciate the album covers of 10cc and Pink Floyd, the work of Hipgnosis. That stuff is really awesome, surreal and beautiful. Sometimes I feel my album covers should try and reference this kind of surreality, but mostly, I think simple is still the best way.
Where were you headed artistically, both visually and musically, with your latest album?
I think I was just channeling my inner “soft rock” side. I was listening to a lot of Elliott Smith and Big Star. I wanted to make something approachable, basically a snapshot of me. I feel like, for the longest time I was against putting my face on a record, because of different things—me not wanting to be recognized, or things like me just feeling weird about it. For this album I really just wanted to have a quick photo. I’m into records that are just pictures of the artist, that are like quick snapshots, that haven’t been photoshopped or anything—that’s what I wanted to go with.
What led you to create your alter ego Les Sins? Would you create more in the future?
I like the idea of alter egos, because there’s no preconceived ideas about them. It’s hard to really absorb a song when you know that the artist works in a certain way, or has a certain personality so in a way it’s nice to change names like that, but also nice to separate certain music from my main project, Toro. That’s my main reason for changing names … If it sounds too “indie pop,” then maybe I won’t do it as Toro, or if it sounds too “dancey,” I won’t do it as Toro.
Any clues as to the next direction you’ll take Toro y Moi?
I see it going everywhere, from albums that are bigger to albums that are smaller, with me just being behind the board, to me becoming bigger and better performance-wise. I don’t want to limit myself to one direction. I could start other projects, do design work, or produce other artists as well. There’s no telling which way it’s gonna go.
Don’t let your summer fade into the cold, dark night of autumn. Go out with a bang! TBD Fest will be held Sept. 18, 19 and 20, 2015, in the Bridge District in West Sacramento. Toro y Moi will perform on Sept. 18 alongside Tyler the Creator, The Glitch Mob, Purity Ring, RL Grime, the elusive Death Grips and many others. Go to Tbdfest.com for a full lineup and to purchase tickets.
Everyone loves a good day party. Sun is up, music is loud, drinks are flowing, life is good. The good folks at HOF (aka Hall of Fame) know this all too well and are planning their triumphant return to the party-throwing scene on Saturday, Aug. 15, 2015, with “Gametime: The Infamous #HOFDAYPARTY.” Going down at the beautiful and well-shaded River Walk Park in West Sacramento, this all-day rager will run from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. and will feature well over 20 performances from DJs, bands, producers and rappers.
“It’s been two years since we’ve descended on the streets of the Capital City to rage in the name of a good time,” the HOF team recently wrote on Hofisbetter.com. “Quite honestly, we’ve missed your crazy asses,” they went on to say. “We miss the excitement that leads up to a HOF party. We miss seeing everyone get hyped when they park their cars, finish their personal-sized bottle of whiskey and walk through the gates of a HOF party. We miss cleaning up the aftermath of a HOF Party and seeing exactly how hard you guys went the night before. Finally, it’s time for us to relive those emotions all over again.”
Just some of the artists tapped to perform so far are Jurts, Soosh*e!, DJ Whores, DJ Oasis, Roman Austin, Zyah Belle, DJ Cos the Kid, Lunaverse, J. Sirus and so many more. There will be two stages, multiple watering holes for those of legal drinking age, a water hydration station (remember to bring your own refillable bottle) and you’re also encouraged to bring blankets, umbrellas, lawn chairs, etc. to chill out in the shade to help keep your body temperature low ‘cause chances are it’ll be a scorcher that day. Tickets are available now at Gametime.queueapp.com and start at just $15 for early birds (price will go up to $20 soon!) and run all the way up to $50 for a VIP pass which gets you three drink tickets, VIP entry, backstage access, exclusive viewing areas and other perks.
This event is open to all ages. River Walk Park is located at 651 2nd Street in West Sacramento. For more information, hit up HOF’s website or follow them on Twitter: @HOFisbetter. They’ll be dropping the final lineup, set times and juicy other details as it gets closer. Pro Tip: check out HOF’s promotional video below featuring the ultimate party dude himself, Kenny the Dancing Man. Trust us, it’s freaking gold.
In late 2011, Insight Coffee Roasters first opened their doors in the Southside Park neighborhood. From the get-go, their purpose and uniqueness in the Sacramento coffee scene was obvious. Not only did they accomplish dishing out the highest quality coffee in Sacramento and beyond, but they ensured that every step taken to produce and distribute that coffee was of the highest caliber possible. Insight has given Sacramento an enhanced and more thoughtful coffee experience.
I remember those very first pours of coffee at the Insight Southside café. The café filled a huge void in that part of town, and brought a great business to a diverse neighborhood. Their huge, notable front windows and hand-built wood interior were welcoming and crafty, and early Insight pioneers Lucky Rodrigues (who remains a partner), and Benza Cox-Lance were always bringing the coffee experience to a whole new level with a knowledgeable and approachable presence. In fact, the painting on the side of the Southside café shows Rodrigues at the roaster and Cox-Lance pulling an espresso shot. The smell of coffee roasting, especially on Tuesdays, was enough alone to wake you up. Then there was the constant sound of steam coming out of the gold-plated espresso machine and, for some reason, the faint sound of a boombox blasting in the roastery in the back. Sometimes, you would catch a glimpse of someone breakdancing to the tunes if you were lucky enough. Insight has evolved rapidly since those early days at the Southside café, but the strong aroma of roasting beans and the exhale of the espresso machine still thrive.
{Insight Coffee at Southside café, S and 8th streets}
In four years of existence, Insight Coffee Roasters has multiplied to four locations, with the most recent opening up in the 16 Powerhouse, a new LEED certified development across the street from Fremont Park. The building was built with materials and processes intended to leave the smallest carbon footprint possible. The building is a mixed living/retail space. Chris Ryan, one of the owners of Insight, says that this was a large factor in wanting to place an Insight café at the location, even with a Starbucks right across the street.
“Despite that, we have been doing quite well,” says Ryan about the new location. “Starbucks is a completely different business and the menus are completely different. I think a lot of diverse coffee drinkers have been exposing themselves to our menu. People are coming in and wanting to learn more, and from there they learn to appreciate coffee more.”
The 16 Powerhouse Insight follows suit with Insight’s older cafés, with the exception of also serving Sun and Soil fresh juices. Ryan adds, “This is a bustling part of town, and our way of approaching coffee is really catching on.”
{Insight Coffee at their new location on 16th between P and Q streets}
Insight started, and continues to grow, with three principals of focus: source, roast and brew. “Our goals are straightforward; to source quality seeds directly from producers, roast to accentuate inherent flavors and brew to highlight different attributes,” reads the company’s website.
“One of the main goals of Insight has been to spread our passion for coffee education.” says Ryan. “Education is key. Hence the name Insight. We want to offer the customer an insightful coffee experience.”
Insight’s Southside location, where beans are roasted, offers various coffee education courses, including home-roasting classes to those more interested in doing it themselves. The café openly sells home-roasting supplies, too. Almost every resource needed for the most amateur of coffee novices is readily available. Also, every second Saturday of the month, they hold a sourcing course. As the course description explains, coffee lovers of all levels can “Explore the origin of coffee and its journey from seedling to processing and roasting,” and, “Learn about our work directly with coffee growers to process quality sustainable coffees.” All courses are provided at an unbeatable price: free.
{Inside Insight Coffee at S and 8th streets}
You will notice that the menus at Insight cafés lack options that have unnecessary additives. “We believe that if the coffee is roasted properly and produced correctly, then sugar and a ton of cream shouldn’t be necessary,” says Ryan. “Coffee should be produced in a way that should accentuate its natural flavors. You will never find a frappuccino or anything caramel on our menu. There are great nutritional aspects to coffee. We roast it in a way that you drink it straight up black.”
The roastery maintains a tight-knit relationship with the coffee plant farms that produce the source of seeds for the café. On a regular basis, an Insight rep—usually Lucky Rodrigues—will travel abroad to regions where the coffee seeds are grown. Rodrigues travels mainly to central America, to stay with and work side-by-side with family-owned farms that sustainably raise coffee beans. The purpose is essentially finding the best coffee before anyone else does and building a lasting relationship with their growers. This ensures that the coffee buyer gets very specific pickings, and the first and best picks at that.
“The desire for the highest quality coffee is higher now,” says Ryan, “Especially in a time where people are more interested in the whole farm-to-fork movement. It is truly about learning more and appreciating more. If you go to the source of the product and believe in that source, you believe in your product and are proud of it.”
{Justin Kerr: Lead Educator and Mike Drake: Regional Café Manager}
To take the education factor to another level, the coffee company has somewhat recently come out with a quarterly newspaper. It is a small and informative collaborative effort, full of diverse coffee news and profiles. The free papers are available at every location, and go in depth about everything from the sourcing and producing of coffee, to the health benefits and groundbreaking scientific research surrounding coffee.
Ryan says that Insight plans on expanding even more in the coming months. They anticipate an expanded coffee program with the new Edible Pedal in West Sacramento, where Insight coffee has already been served in limited forms. Ryan hopes to make the full experience available to that side of town. On top of that, a new café on the 700 block of K street is in the works.
“It will be pretty close to the new arena,” says Ryan, “We are working close with developers and it’s going to be pretty exciting.”
To keep abreast of future Insight Coffee Roaster developments and other info, go to Insightcoffee.com.
Pretty much anyone of drinking age who enjoys an adult beverage here or there can attest to the fact that wine tasting is a helluva good time! Good friends, plus great wine, plus scenic views equals an awesome day by any measure. Here’s one way to take your wine tasting experience to a new level: do it on a train! Yup, that’s right, the Sacramento River Train is proud to present their “Old Vine Express” on Saturday, Nov 1, 2014. Enjoy a leisurely three-hour scenic train ride through some of the best vistas that Yolo County has to offer with 14 local wineries aboard to fill up your glasses! A standard ticket, just $35, gets you six tastes. Upgrade to the VIP ticket ($50) to double your tastings and you’ll also be allowed to board the train early and receive a souvenir wine glass. The wineries involved are all from Yolo County (Berryessa Gap, Carvalho Family Wines, Miner’s Leap Winery, Wilson Vineyards, just to name a few), so you’ll be cruising through the region that the wines you are tasting were produced! Talk about “keeping it local!” The Old Vine Express boards in West Sacramento at 400 N. Harbor Boulevard. General admission boarding begins at 1:45 p.m., 15 minutes prior to departure. VIP ticket holders may board at 1:15 p.m. Visit Sacramentorivertrain.com to get your tickets before they sell out!
Yolo Brewing Company
1520 Terminal Street • West Sacramento
A West Sacramento Saturday at Yolo Brewing Company looks slightly different, and smells slightly different, than you’d imagine for a taproom. A rolled-up warehouse door reveals long tables and stools; a lineup of human-sized kettles at one end, an L-shaped bar in a far corner; and side tables covered in packs of grains, malts and spices. The smell is of a homebrewer’s kitchen—of sweet, simmering roasty grains. This part brewpub, part personal brewery is Michael Costello’s Brew It Up reincarnate in full swing.
Costello first built Brew It Up in 1996 in Davis and was the majority owner. For seven years it thrived purely as a brewing kitchen. The location did some small-scale distribution but didn’t have any food. He then moved it to Sacramento, where it became a personal brewery and grill, complete with a 200-seat restaurant, 24 taps of Brew It Up’s own beer, 30 wine selections and a massive 60-item dinner menu.
The place wasn’t too big to fail—on the contrary, it stayed busy for eight years and pushed out thousands of batches of beers. But like much of downtown in 2011, the economic crash forced the brewery to shut down.
Since then, Costello says, a similar business model for personal brewing didn’t pop up but hundreds of people reached out and asked him what was next.
“It kept the wind under my wings to push forward,” he says. “Yolo is the outcome of that; and not just the outcome of my efforts, but a group of another dozen people who rolled up their sleeves and put their own money in to start.”
The new vision of Costello and his partners includes being a regional brewery that distributes in Northern California and being a destination where people can walk in and try small batches. And, of course, if customers want to get more involved they can create their own beers.
“It has the core elements of Brew It Up, but the vision and direction is not the same,” says Costello one early morning while setting up shop. “It’s 15 to 20 years of learning and making mistakes and doing things right and wrong.”
Beer lovers and their friends may schedule to brew their own batches with a Yolo brewmaster in three-hour sessions on the weekends, taking home their creation after the brewery takes care of all the dirty work (like kegging, bottling and OCD-level sanitation).
The large, open warehouse is starkly different than Brew It Up’s old Downtown Sacramento location, but the beers on tap, atmosphere and experience are just as good, if not better.
“The customers work right alongside our brewmasters, create a recipe and go through the whole brewing process, and we take care of everything else.”
Costello first came up with the personal brewery idea 15 years ago as a homebrewer and UC Davis graduate with a degree in fermentation. He was frustrated with the cumbersome process and time consumption of brewing at home with such small results.
“It was hard to perfect brewing unless I did a lot of it, so I liked the idea of having somewhere you could go with someone with experience,” he says. “Then I or a customer could go in and successfully brew a batch of beer, with relative ease and minimal discomfort, without having to do it six to 10 times a year in order for it to be good. There are homebrewers who are really good at it because they’ve practiced it so much and I don’t have anything to really offer them. But for those who only do it a few times a year, this is ideal.”
Costello notes that even though IPAs, double IPAs and sours take up most of the press in the beer geek world, customers have come in to make all styles.
“That’s a fun checkpoint for us,” he says. “When people are brewing their own beer, that’s a commitment, so it’s a demo for us of what people like and what they might want to drink in the brewery.”
When the brewmasters aren’t helping new and current homebrewers perfect a batch, they’re brewing at least 12 of Yolo’s own beers, including a Scotch ale, double IPA, orange blossom blonde and oatmeal stout.
It seems like a lot of beers for a brewery less than a year old, but Costello says the Yolo team was ready and experienced enough to do it.
“We’re actually restrained at 12 but our tap system is set up to handle 28,” he says. “A lot of breweries that get started, especially the small breweries, for many of them it’s their first time brewing professionally, or running a business and having employees. It may also be their first time going from brewing 5- or 10-gallon batches to production size. Because I’ve been doing this for 15 years we already had the recipes down.”
That’s where the second part of Yolo’s vision comes in. Costello knows that after so long, to keep the business from going stale, it’s important to offer the customer new and different ideas. Using the small batch kettles in the brewery, he and other brewmasters are able to try more seasonal, local varieties.
“There are so many good beer recipes and so many different things you can do that are creative, especially the one-off specialty beers like SMaSH beers that use just one hop and one malt. You could do that 12 times a year and have 12 different beers,” he says.
While the Yolo team gets to experiment in-house, Costello also plans to grow one county at a time in California, brewing larger production as the brewery gains more customers and more success.
His eventual plan is to start canning in the first or second quarter of next year. Prior to that, Yolo will have 22-ounce bottles available at Nugget Markets and Total Wine in the next few weeks. Costello adds a few local pubs and restaurants are ready to take Yolo beer on tap when the brews are ready. Customers can also fill growlers on site, including the new EcoGrowler, a recycled, collapsible container that can hold 64 ounces and looks like a giant Capri Sun.
“But as we scale up, and are able to brew on large production, we can still turn to those small batch kettles,” he says. “The engine for Yolo is the small kettles.”
Here’s to at least another 15 years, and most likely more.
Check out Yolo Brewing Company Thursdays and Fridays from 3 to 9 p.m., Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Food trucks are in the lot for lunch and dinner. Yolo is located at 1520 Terminal Street in West Sacramento.
What used to be known as Launch has morphed into a brand new, even bigger shebang called TBD Fest. From Oct. 3 to 5, 2014, TBD will invade The Bridge District in West Sacramento (hence the name “TBD Fest”), right along the River Walk next to Raley Field. Sweeping views of Sacramento’s cityscape and Tower Bridge will make for a spectacular setting to experience the music, food, art, yoga and more that the festival has to offer. Here we’ve dedicated an entire Submerge Your Senses section to highlight just a few things you can hear, see, taste and touch at TBD. Get your tickets now at Tbdfest.com! Single day tix are $69, or get a three-day pass for just $159.
SEE: Local Artists’ Gig Posters for TBD Fest Acts
Once again, the creative dudes and dudettes behind TBD Fest have collaborated with a few of the many talented poster artists in the Sacramento region to curate a gallery of beautiful one-of-a-kind posters for individual acts playing the festival. Artists Jason Malmberg, Hans Bennewitz, Jonathan Buck, Laura Matranga, Benjamin Della Rosa and many more have created mind-blowing poster art for acts like Justice, The War on Drugs, Explosions in the Sky, Kurt Vile and the Violators and tons of others. The posters are extremely diverse, creative and engaging, very reminiscent of Sacramento’s creative culture as a whole. We’ll bet there are more than a few you’d want to hang on your walls. The best part? You can! Get your hands on high quality prints of select posters at the festival! You can also get an inside look at the concepts and processes behind each artists’ piece by following TBD Fest at Facebook.com/tbdfest, where they will be presenting the posters and some stories behind them in the weeks leading up to the big event.
TOUCH: Get Your Blood Flowing with Yoga on the Main Stage in the Mornings
What better way to get your pre-festival blood flowing than with morning yoga on the main stage at TBD? On Saturday and Sunday starting at 10 a.m. join instructors Ryan Bailey from East Wind Yoga (locations in Roseville and Auburn), Heather Roussos and Joel Strehle from Zuda Yoga (locations in Midtown, Folsom and Roseville), as well as MC Yogi with DJ Sol Rising and last but not least, San Francisco-based instructor Mark Morford. TBD Yoga is open to the public and they are only asking for a $5 to $10 donation for Yoga Across America. Organizers are asking that you also please RSVP at Tbdfestyoga.splashthat.com if you plan on attending. Throughout the weekend there will also be a “Riverside Yoga Play Area” where festival-goers can try Slacklining, Hooping and Acro Yoga. Come get bendy with TBD!
HEAR:The Unsung Heroes of TBD Fest
It’s pretty much a given that the larger headliners at TBD Fest are going to leave behind thousands of melted faces at the end of each night. High profile acts such as Moby, Blondie, Justice, Danny Brown, Empire of the Sun, Explosions in the Sky and other top-billed artists might be the reason you buy tickets, but we’d like to point out a few of the hidden gems that could easily get buried in the huge lineup (there are nearly 80 artists in total!). Here are two acts that we feel are the unsung heroes from each day.
Friday
Kauf and MNDR
Kauf is an electronic artist from Los Angeles whose 2013 EP As Much Again was released on Cutters Records (Cut Copy’s label) to much acclaim in the blogosphere. He’s done a lot of remixing for artists like Labyrinth Ear and Polica. He’s also working on a new album that will be out early next year that will surely be amazing. Definitely an act to look out for if you like groovy, slow-moving, electro beats.
MNDR is the project of singer/frontwoman Amanda Warner and producer Peter Wade. It’s hard to describe how rad MNDR is in such a small space. Think pop-y/industrial/EDM with heavy German vibes, if that makes any sense. SPIN gave their debut album Feed Me Diamonds an 8 out of 10 and just weeks before they perform at TBD, MNDR will be at San Francisco’s famed Folsom Street Fair, an annual BDSM and leather subculture street fair. Warner’s got this underground Lady Gaga-meets-David Bowie art-pop thing going on, and we absolutely love it!
Saturday
Wildcat! Wildcat! and Skaters
Wildcat! Wildcat! is a fantastic new-ish Los Angeles-based synth/indie-pop group that Submerge discovered via Lollapalooza’s live stream earlier this year. Their nearly flawless live set blew us away and we’ve been hooked ever since. Their debut full-length No Moon at All just came out in early August and was co-produced by Morgan Kibby of White Sea and M83.
Skaters are a band you don’t want to miss if you’re looking for something a little more rock-y, garage-y and more guitar based. They have gigged with Cage the Elephant (a perfect pairing in our opinion) and their new album Manhattan is out now on Warner Bros. Records. These dudes could easily blow up, see ‘em first at TBD!
Sunday
Incan Abraham and Flashlights
Incan Abraham is a dreamy pop group from Los Angeles whose members have been friends since kindergarten! They’re debut full-length Tolerance is out now and was produced by Lewis Pesacov (Best Coast, FIDLAR, Fool’s Gold). Its lush layers and textures with hauntingly good melodies make it an absolute joy to listen to.
Flashlights are a gritty young rock band from Florida that have drawn comparisons to greats like Built to Spill and Superchunk. Their new album Bummer Summer is a killer long player with songs about “dead end jobs and lousy living conditions, heartbreaks and hangovers. And, of course, there are also songs about cats,” according to Flashlightsmusic.com. Check the track “Don’t Take Me Seriously.” It’s seriously great.
TASTE: The Pit: A Wood-Fired Cooking Demonstration Featuring 14 Top Local Chefs
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Sacramento’s restaurant scene is booming; after all, we are America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital! To showcase our region’s culinary prowess, TBD Fest is introducing “The Pit,” a wood-fired cooking demonstration zone that will feature chefs from 14 of the area’s most acclaimed eateries. Chefs such as Oliver Ridgeway of Grange, Michael Fagnoni of Hawks, Kurt Spataro of Paragary Restaurant Group, Michael Thiemann and Matt Masera of Mother, Michael Tuohy of LowBrau/Block Butcher Bar and many others will prepare “festival bites” that people will be able to purchase individually, or you’ll also be able to get all-day passes to The Pit. So you best come hungry to TBD! More info at Tbdfest.com/pit.
Not too long from now, in the West Sacramento Galleria Hall (not too far away), is a great time for a celebration! On May 4, 2014, The West Sacramento Civic Center and Community Center will be hosting a Star Wars-themed event from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Come and enjoy the local vendors, comedy shows, costume parade, charity auction, Jedi wars and arts and crafts! Grab your light sabers and be sure to come in costume; if you do not, others may “find your lack in faith disturbing.” Tickets are $11 for adults and admission is free for children under 12. Fifty percent of the ticket proceeds will benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and can be found at Maythefourthws.brownpapertickets.com in addition to other links providing more information on the event.
