Oscar’s Very Mexican Food

1350 Harbor Boulevard • West Sacramento

Amigas, we are lucky to be living here in this land called California. Nowhere else on Earth is it possible to find so much mouthwatering Mexican food. Nowhere. The Midwest doesn’t have it, Texas doesn’t have the same quality, the East Coast doesn’t really try, apparently. And yet, we’ve got a taqueria for every nook and a Mexican eatery for every cranny that our state can provide. Here in Sacramento, things are no different. The offerings are rich and variegated, fast or slow, independent establishments or franchise chains; we’ve got them all.

But only one, and now two, can be classified under the tagline “Very Mexican Food.” That’s right, I speak of the longstanding Oscar’s Very Mexican Food, in all its glory. This small hole-in-the-wall, perched quietly across from McKinley High School, is a sort of rite of passage for generations of Land Park youth. Since it opened its doors in 2001, this restaurant has been doling out some of the most consistent and tasty Mexican food in town, at phenomenally reasonable prices.

Though the Freeport Boulevard location has been closed for most of the past year, Oscar’s did move its staff to West Sacramento to open its second location during the hiatus, where it forges on today. Those of us who live in the city limits are unlikely to make the trip over the river unless we need some wood-particle furniture or something, but we need not worry about this separation any longer: Oscar’s OG location is officially back up and running with a significant remodel to both the kitchen and the dining area. Our personal favorite addition: the lavatory sink is outside of the lavatory, in the dining area, allowing patrons to observe who washes and does not wash sus manos after visiting los baños, and judge accordingly. But we digress.

There are staples that a very Mexican establishment must have. Oscar’s is the California burrito. It’s a burrito with carne asada, guacamole and French fries inside. It suits nicely on a summer afternoon when one might want some weight in their belly. However, our personal favorite is a split between two other burritos. First is the egg, bean and cheese breakfast burrito, which is a simple, filling item that pairs well with coffee or cerveza. Sadly, Oscar’s doesn’t sell booze, which means any adult pairings are best done within the privacy of one’s own casa. The second burrito that we regularly crave is a simple one: chicken. This particular item is a sort of post-university staple that sustained us as we worked odd labor jobs after graduating. It’s cheap, roughly $3.00, and simple (shredded chicken in some red sauce), and yet it continues to satisfy as necessary.

On this occasion, we ventured over the river to try the wares of the West Sacramento joint. Stationed on Harbor Boulevard, the West Sac offering of very Mexican food is a bit more reminiscent of the original in size. There’s a small sampling of tables and the kitchen is visible from most of the dining area. West Sac does, however, come equipped with television, so we were able to watch the kick-off of Monday Night Football. Which is a thing.

The quality of the food was up to the Oscar’s standard. We decided to get out of our comfort zone a bit and tackle a chicken chimichanga, a tortilla that was fried to a crisp exterior, which came stuffed with shredded chicken. Generous portions of lettuce, cheddar cheese, sour cream and guacamole adorned the sides. This item left us wanting little. And yet we continued.

Any Mexican restaurant worth its salt should have a succulent carne asada dish, so we got the combination plate, which came with beans and rice, pico de gallo and guacamole. The meat was seasoned well, cut into tiny bite-size pieces, and when mixed with the sides had the right balance of sweet and savory. This is the sort of entrée that’s great after going to the gym, riding a bicycle or gentrifying a formerly industrial neighborhood.

To go along with this, we also branched out into the carnitas, another standard that can make or break a Mexican spot. The carnitas tacos did not disappoint. The pork was flavorful and juicy, not dried out or overly chewy. Each bite had the right texture and seasoning, and compelled us to finish the tacos. These too, like the majority of Oscar’s Very Mexican Food, are moderately priced. The great thing about Oscar’s is that most of what you order, after having consumed it, seems like it should cost more. At those other Mexican spots—which for the record, we like a lot—it’s like the extra dollar here and there pay for fancy soccer jerseys or something; whereas at Oscar’s, there are no frills, bells, whistles or fancy menus. It’s a proper working-class Mexican spot, and this is why we love it.

The beverage offerings are par for the course. There are fountain sodas that come in solid white Styrofoam, just the way mass production intended, containing neither branding nor care for the environment. There are bottled drinks, composed of a few Jarritos, which when the time is right, are nice to have. And if you like your Coke made with actual sugar cane instead of corn syrup, the Mexican Coke bottles are also available. But our drink of choice, when dining on “Very Mexican Food,” is horchata, a Mexican rice milk seasoned with cinnamon. We’re fairly convinced that the large quantities offered at places like Oscar’s must have some sort of mass-produced recipe, but nonetheless, it’s the beverage to have in a large helping when consuming these delicious eats, especially when cold beer is unavailable.

In sum, Oscar’s Very Mexican Food is the perfect sort of restaurant. It won’t break the bank, it’s easy to get to, it offers a steady and consistent menu that rarely disappoints. There’s now twice as much Oscar’s to go around for both Sacramentos, East and West. Viva Oscar’s!

It seems like breweries are popping up left and right around Sacramento lately. We’re not complaining at all, we love beer. Especially good beer. New-ish local breweries like Track 7, American River Brewing Co., New Helvetia and a few others are creating some really impressive craft beers right here in our region. One of the next to join the ranks is Bike Dog Brewing Company in West Sacramento, a small batch brewery that is celebrating their grand opening this Saturday, Nov. 2, 2013 from 2 to 9:30 p.m. at 2534 Industrial Boulevard. There will be five Bike Dog beers on tap: American Wheat, IPA, Double IPA, Saison and Milk Stout (on both a regular tap and a nitro tap). Drewski’s Hot Rod Kitchen food truck will be there all day to satiate your beer munchies, and if your kids and dogs are friendly, bring them along. As always, Bike Dog is encouraging their patrons to ride their bicycles. Hit up Bikedogbrewing.com or Facebook.com/bikedogbrewing for more information.

Face it. None of us are old enough to remember how it was livin’ in the Old West. Yet, friends and families can touch up on a bit of history right in our own backyard in West Sacramento. The Sacramento River Train’s “Great Train Robbery” departs on Saturday, June 1, 2013 at 10 a.m. taking people on an ol’ fashioned train ride through time. This three-and-a-half hour trip includes going by the Fremont Trestle and through the pretty countryside, but while riding along, watch out for outlaws hiding along the tracks. (I’m sure the marshall aboard will keep things Kosher.) The ride ends with passengers enjoying a Western-style barbecue lunch down by the river. For ticket prices and future rides into the past, visit Sacramentorivertrain.com.

Not many bands sport a badge of longevity inching toward eight years, but plenty of musicians can include their names in the pages of Be Brave Bold Robot’s local history. With roughly 23 former players fondly dubbed “Forever Members,” BBBR is a staple in the folk scene for good reason. If mad scientist, Dean Haakenson, hears you can play an instrument and likes you as a person, you can write your way into his project…forever.

My night with Be Brave Bold Robot did not begin with an unsettling ride to West Sacramento in Haakenson’s Technicolor Volkswagen Bug, but a few points of interest are worth a mention prior to him offering a lift in his shrunken, two-seater Partridge Family bus of a VW. As follows: I snuck into an empty warehouse along with the band and a photographer for a photo shoot. Cut my hand lifting a giant disco ball. There was a potato sack race. Haakenson sweated through two shirts. No one discovered us. No one was handcuffed or fined for trespassing. No vandalism occurred. My palm only bled for a minute.

But in Haakenson’s gutted and rusted VW, I sat shotgun to a man who rolled down the driver side window with a pair of pliers and casually talked of how his car, a present from his mom, stalled regularly as we took the Highway 50 on-ramp headed toward West Sacramento. I thought of the band’s moniker as he shimmied the VW into traffic and it strained its way to the speed limit. Be brave.

We arrived safely to Haakenson’s home, and I was ready for a beer, for there is no finer way to gain a stranger’s trust or settle one’s nerves after relinquishing your own fate into his hands. Haakenson and his drummer Michael Ruiz claimed two of the four mysterious wheelchairs on the back patio–why does one man have so many? The rest of us (bassist Matty Gerken, viola player Catie Turner and saxophonist Jacob Gleason) sat in metal chairs or benches with microbrews in hand. Like all interviews, the awkward phase deteriorated and stories were flung freely, which led to how one becomes one of those Forever Members listed on Facebook. Over the years Haakenson developed a simple criterion: play four shows. It may take four consecutive shows, or it could take eight years, but until you’ve played four you are not an official Forever Member.

“It’s a credit to Sacramento to have so many people I’ve met over a number of years join me,” he said and he was right.

To my left sat Jacob Gleason, soft spoken most of the night, but he was first to share his admiration for Dean that led to joining Be Brave Bold Robot. It began with loving the first self-titled record and led to Gleason “[bugging] Dean enough that he finally started letting me play with him.” Going around the table, Catie Turner joined after seeing BBBR live and striking up a post-set conversation with Haakenson, who upon learning she played viola gave her a recording and let her write herself into the music. She’s been a member since.

“He was like, ‘You should play on my record,’ and I said, ‘You’ve never even heard me play,’” she recalled.

“It’s a Dean thing,” she said. “He’s so hands off. He didn’t know me, didn’t know my playing. It was unlike any experience I’ve ever had with an organized band.”

Matty Gerken offered an anecdote on the BBBR’s rotating cast: “One time we played a show at Sac State and in order to play that show we needed to have one Sac State student in the band. So we brought in Chuck; good student, he’s from Iowa, like me. He had enough parts in the songs to get us qualified to play. He was a member for one show.”

Gerken saw Be Brave Bold Robot play based on the name. He caught a Fox and Goose show, went to an after party with the band, which resulted in him mastering the first record. “I sort of learned all the songs from listening to them over and over while mixing them,” Gerken said. “When Tommy [Minnick] the former bass player decided he didn’t want to play anymore, I said, ‘Well, I know all the songs incidentally.’”

Haakenson’s lackadaisical approach stems from understanding his friends and band mates have their own lives and careers. Without the pressures of commitment, being in a band can always be as fun as it sounds. No one’s government job is at risk, no one’s missing PTA meetings and no one’s on heroin to deal with the pressure of stardom. Members come and go and come back again when they have time or miss the fun of being in BBBR.

“It changed my life here,” Turner said, who hadn’t played in a band since leaving San Francisco.

Haakenson exudes gratefulness beyond his once a member, always a member attitude. The tape recorder clicked; side A was over. With everyone in good spirits, we agreed to call it and begin band practice. While guitars were tuned and more beers were emptied into mason jars, Haakenson handed me a copy of 2010’s Take a Deep Breath. He directed me to the living room where the original artwork of Kyle Larsen hung; he had two of Larsen’s pieces. Local writer Josh Fernandez probably doesn’t know it, but he is a cherub muse for BBBR, coining intoxicating limericks that echo through Haakenson’s mind. The new album’s title was partially lifted from Fernandez’s 2008 review, which was recited to me nearly verbatim during our hang out. Fernandez referred to Haakenson as “under a thin sheet of madness,” it led to the title of the band’s upcoming album Under a Thin Veil of Madness.

Under a Thin Veil of Madness began with sessions at Expression College for Digital Arts in Emeryville. “They offer free recordings to bands in exchange for being guinea pigs for their audio recording classes,” Haakenson said. “We went in there for an eight-hour session and got four songs done that are new to this album, and had plenty of time left to record four other songs.”

Going in there was concern of the album being in the hands of pupils, but by the end of their session the band was so close with the students that a kid named Willie Ramsey is doing the Under a Thin Veil of Madness artwork, expanding Dean’s collection of art and adding an honorary band member once again. “I was concerned that we were getting learned on,” Gerken said. “They had an experienced instructor there and it was clear that guy was all business.”

In the eight years of having one of the most recognizable band names in Sacramento, the true source of the moniker eludes Haakenson. He loves that about his band. Before it was his band it was his ‘zine. Prior to the ‘zine it was a graffiti tag by a girl in Arcata, Calif., who claims she saw it done by a San Francisco artist. Some theorize it was lifted from the Isaac Asimov’s science fiction series I, Robot. “I’ll put out a call right now,” Haakenson said. “I’ll pay $100 for the documented source.”

May it always be obscured and tucked in mystery to preserve the legend of Be Brave Bold Robot. It’s apropos to a band that tucks mementos to childhood in its song lyrics and sneaks away from families and responsibilities into a West Sacramento living room to drink, chat and practice like a discovered teenage Never-Never Land.

“I have a child-like way about me, which I think is maybe what makes me endearing to the people I meet on a regular basis,” Haakenson said. “I think I’m OK with confrontation, but I’d much rather make people happy.”

Catch Be Brave Bold Robot when they play Beatnik Studios in Sacramento on Oct. 26, 2012 and celebrate the release of Under a Thin Veil of Madness. Also playing will be Appetite, Cold Eskimo and Buzzmutt. The music for this Final Friday show gets underway at 9 p.m. and there is a $5 to $10 suggested donation.

Sacramento artist taps into a childhood obsession for his latest show

Pop art in the ‘60s and a growing critique of consumer culture at the end of modernism led art into an aesthetic of mash ups, parodies and pastiche. Pulp art, comic books, baseball cards and the developments of global branding strategies all collided into Wacky Packs, a series of stickers that mocked consumer goods through parody, produced by Topps Trading Company in 1967, and originally illustrated by Art Spiegelman (writer/artist of the graphic novel Maus) and Norman Saunders. Fast forward 45 years, the influence of these seemingly benign stickers can be found in the artwork of Bruce Gossett.

Gossett’s works have been seen at a few select galleries around Sacramento and sold at various car shows over the past decade, but his current work draws specifically on the playfulness and base impulses of a childhood fascination: Wacky Packs. His artwork follows this tradition of plagiarism and parody, using existing advertisements and iconography from the custom car world to create tongue-in-cheek fine art works that connect an adult world of masculine custom hot rods with the juvenile playfulness of puns and gore.

Gossett has developed his art over the years working with multiple graphic forms, all of which have influenced his relationship to the canvas, his preferred medium. He’s printed T-shirts, rock and car show posters, stickers and done customized airbrushing and detailing on cars. He once tried his hand at stand-up comedy, only to realize he didn’t like the spotlight and has since found his calling in a small, insulated shed-studio in the back yard of his West Sacramento home. Gossett spent years going up and down California, attending car shows, selling his works: T-shirts, posters, stickers, fine arts. And the influence of this culture has been foundational to his development as a graphic and fine artist.

But it’s not just car culture in general that Gossett finds alluring, it’s a specific subspecies of that broader category, those custom car creators, the seedy underbelly of that combination of Detroit automobiles and California counter culture. This DIY renaissance of the automobile, the material object that transported America from farmlands to urban spaces, appears in the work of Gossett as an image set to be appropriated and employed according to a particular set of aesthetics.

These counter culture references are manifest in his current work, the Speed Equipped series, which will be shown for Second Saturday in October at So-Cal Speed Shop on Del Paso Boulevard. The Speed Equipped show focuses specifically on parodies of logos for hot-rodding companies like Moon Speed Equipment, from which the show takes its name. Gossett has created a set of produce brands with the low-brow humor of those Wacky Packs, and he has even been tapped by Anti-Hero Skateboards and local John Cardiel to create the artwork for a pro-series of decks. Gossett’s works span multiple culture groups and as such he’s a significant contributor in the battle against bourgeois ideals and high-art. He’s a working class artist, and that’s just why we like him.

Tell me about your new show, Speed Equipped.
I was obsessed with Wacky Packs in the ‘70s. They were parodies of national products. You know, household products, Windex and stuff like that. They basically mocked them and made fun of them. They were stickers in chewing gum packs. I remember kids covering their closet doors with them, much to the chagrin of their parents. I got obsessed with them. It was funny. The imagery was so base and crude, like it was painted with a broomstick or something. The humor was just great.

Finally, I thought about it one day, and I’ve never seen parodies of the speed equipment. I’ve always been immersed in the car thing, and I thought why not make fun of the icons of the rod and custom world. It’s something I’ve been working on over a two-year period. I’d like to get them out there and get them seen. I think there’s a generation that grew up in the ‘70s around Wacky Packs, skateboarding, punk, irreverence and that audience totally would get it.

I’m also showing some of my Builders Series. It’s the guys that build cars that I dig, but they’re the new generation of builders as opposed to the old generation. It’s not fair cars and Sunday drives, lawn chairs and car shows. There’s a new generation of builders and hot-rodders and the vast majority of them are coming out of the skateboarding world.

Can you explain how that series is different for you? How it’s a change of direction from your previous work?
The Builders Series is more photo-based. Sometimes it’s the vehicles they build, and I’ll focus on that. Other times I’ll start introducing images of the builder, so it’s a little more personal. It’s difficult, painting portraitures and capturing likenesses. It’s more representational, photo-realistic, but I’m making them psychedelic, lots of drips, lots of maneuvering of the surfaces so that you know it’s a painting as opposed to an airbrushed, photo-realistic work.

What’s the best and worst parts about being an artist?
Being locked in the studio is boring, frankly. There’s nothing more I’d like to do than be in the studio for 10 hours and paint. But by that eighth hour, I’m probably pretty sick of it. The days are weird. There are times when it’s fun; there are times when it’s work. I think I like the beginning and the end best. I like when it hasn’t been touched and I first lay in backgrounds, working from the rear forward. You’re establishing a mood when you first start, so it’s fun. Anything is possible. And in the end, it’s always nice to finish something. You’re happy it’s out of the way.

Once I finish something, I don’t want to look at it for a while. Then a week later I’ll obsess over it for about a week, and then I’m usually pretty good with it. For that reason I always have half a dozen paintings going at any given time.

How do other forms, graphic design, T-shirt printing, etc., influence your work?
These are like complex graphics really. My knowledge and experience over the years from different industries, sign painting, pin-striping, graphic applications for hot rods, on vehicles, I get a lot of influence from those other forms. To produce really clean graphics you work rear forward. Do your infill colors and then hit the black lining. It’s really the cleanest way of producing stuff.

When did you decide to take your artwork seriously?
After about the first year, I took it seriously. I started in 1989. I’ve always designed stuff and did things with paint. We stole Testors paints from Thrifty’s and pay for a ten-cent ice-cream cone, and we’d customize our skateboards. I’ve always been around cars, my family was in the car industry. I wanted to get away from it, so I actually tried my hand at stand-up comedy. That didn’t go real well. Then I took a class at City College, the material was stale but I took to it real easy. I realized not only that I had an aptitude for it, but that I enjoyed it. And I was useless in other areas. I just had a short attention span, and the art thing seemed limitless. It really took off in the mid 90s when I really started pursuing more of a car based or an automotive bend.

What is it about cars and hot rod culture that you find so alluring?
I’ve always had old cars. My first car was a 1972 Chevelle I fixed up before I had my license. It seemed like a meathead world to me. You’ve got to understand the ‘80s. It was the dark days for this car thing. There was a renaissance in the ‘90s, and I got introduced to Big Daddy Roth and that whole world. It was like the thinking man’s hot rod. It was the Bad News Bears, and I missed that from when I was a kid. I realized there were these weirdo hot-rodders, and it totally clicked with me. I decided to get back into it. I built a few cars. I just jumped in.

Even if it doesn’t have cars, I still call some stuff hot rod art. It’s just got an aesthetic. Even a portrait or something, just the way the paint’s moved, it screams hot rod to me. I like a lot of aggression in my art, a lot of action and movement.

How’d you get hooked up with Anti-Hero Skateboards and John Cardiel?
Cardiel saw my Fresh Ripe and Delicious show at A Bitchin Space. He saw the preview in the University Art window, and he totally got it. He totally remembered the Wacky Packs. He said, “I’ve got six riders and I want you to personalize a piece for each one.” I got where each rider was from, their hometown, where they were born. I did a bit of research and developed ideas. It was crude, tounge-in-cheek, vulgar, but it was a skateboard company, no holds barred, and he totally got it. He’s a squirrel; he’s cooler than shit. It was the most perfect client you could ever ask for.

Bruce Gossett’s Speed Equipped opens at So-Cal Speed Shop in Sacramento on Oct. 6, 2012 from 4—9 p.m. The Second Saturday reception will take place the following week, Oct. 13, 2012 from 5—10 p.m. While there, check out a preview of Gossett’s Builders Series. For more info, contact Gossett via http://www.facebook.com/BruceGossettStudios.

The Eatery
2155 Town Center Plaza #E110 – West Sacramento

Words by Adam Saake | Photos by Nicholas Wray – http://nicholaswray.com/

It’s easy to forget how spread out Sacramento is in terms of our city’s layout. I’ve said this before, but dining isn’t just limited to our downtown and Midtown areas and in fact (although not for long) it doesn’t even make up a good chunk. The surrounding neighborhoods offer so many great options for cuisine that it really pays to venture out and see what you can find. An easy destination is West Sacramento, which is just over the river and home to such notables as The River Cats, Whitey’s Drive-In and “Tongue and Chic’s” most recent visit, The Eatery.

Owners Jess Milbourn, who is also head chef, and wife Monda Korich who holds down the front of the house, opened just shy of a year ago in August 2011.

“Business has been great,” says Milbourn, a tall and friendly-faced chef. “Ups and downs like anything else, but overall people seem to enjoy it.

And the packed house last Tuesday afternoon was proof that people are enjoying the food at The Eatery, an inconspicuous restaurant squished between other businesses in the West Sacramento shopping center, Town Center Plaza. West Sacramento is still developing its dining options, and The Eatery is one of the trailblazing restaurants serving food of a higher quality with local and seasonal in mind. That should be a given, considering that West Sacramento is home to some of the most fertile farm land on the West Coast. Milbourn, like a lot of Sacramento chefs and restaurants lately, has partnered directly with West Sacramento’s Humble Roots Organic Farm.

“We get a real one on one connection with the farmer and the land,” says Milbourn.

Both Korich and Milbourn had worked in the restaurant biz since they were teenagers and as Milbourn puts it, “We were of the mindset that we could do the same job we were doing for someone else for ourselves.” As residents of West Sacramento, they decided to keep their hunt for a space close to home and after looking at a few places in and around town, they eventually settled on their current location mainly out of financial necessity as well as the convenience of the space already being built out as a restaurant.

“The Eatery was our interpretation of what you might find as a true bistro in France, but in America,” explains Milbourn. “‘Mom and Pop,’ and serving simply prepared, high quality food in a casual setting with a beverage selection to match.”

Simple is the key word here. The term “comfort food” is often thrown around in this business of eating, and I often wonder if the definition is a general one. Are the same dishes that make me feel at home, at my mother’s table, equal to the ones that bring you close to home? I don’t have the answer to that but I think it’s safe to say that it’s a feeling more than anything. I get that feeling by just looking at The Eatery’s menu. There are quite a few hearty, stick-to-your-ribs-type options like the risotto with asparagus and mushrooms. Meatloaf with mashed potatoes and gravy or rib eye steak with creamed spinach and scallop potatoes will surely tame your appetite. The gut buster of them all (I dared not attempt) were the disco fries ryan, a heap of French fries topped with bacon, melted cheddar cheese, chicken gravy and a sunnyside up egg. Yowzers! But, never fear all ye light eaters. Sautéed mussels with tomatoes, garlic, lemon, white wine and herbs may tickle your fancy. Sandwiches are also available and considering the source of the produce, salads are a must have at The Eatery. The spinach with grilled pineapple, chipotle cheddar and toasted almonds stuck out from the list and were fresh and cool; perfect for a hot summer day. Keep your eye out for fish specials that have included halibut with bacon consommé and cauliflower, and Passmore Ranch sturgeon pops up on this menu as well.

“We really love what we are doing and are amazed every day that we get a chance to make people happy with our restaurant,” adds Milbourn. “Ultimately, the eatery is for its patrons. We want our guests to have fun, eat and drink well, leave full and want to return.”

Dave’s Pumpkin Patch in West Sacramento is just minutes from downtown Sacramento and is the only full-sized themed corn maze in the area. Grab some pumpkins to take home and carve and stay past sundown and venture into the corn maze. Every Friday and Saturday night in October, Fright Night will even “haunt” the maze with some of their actors all dressed up in character, as if getting lost in a giant corn maze when it’s pitch black isn’t freaky enough. Don’t forget your flashlights (unless you are really hardcore). Also notable: on weekends they do their “Punkin’ Chunkin” every so often where they cannon pumpkins over 500 yards through the air! Take an old-fashioned hay ride, get your little ones’ faces painted, watch pig races and more. Dave’s Pumpkin Patch is located at 3010 Burrows Avenue, West Sacramento and can be reached at (916) 849-9450 or online via Davespumpkinpatch.com

Local professional wakeboarder Shelby Kantar has talent and smarts

Twenty-four-year-old professional wakeboarder and West Sacramento native Shelby Kantar has led a bit of a double life the past few years. Arguably one of the top female riders out there, Kantar has traveled to compete in contests all around the world. She was the Pro Wakeboarding Tour women’s champion in 2007, she’s been in magazines and videos, she even jumped out of a helicopter into Lake Powell during last year’s Brostock event. Adventure, excitement, risk and reward: all part of the rock star lifestyle Kantar lives while with her fellow riders.

On the other hand, Kantar is extremely focused on school and furthering her non-wakeboarding-related career. She has already completed her undergrad studies in Kinesiology at Sacramento State, where she is currently working on her masters. “Yeah, it’s like a double life, its kind of crazy,” Kantar says during a recent interview. In fact, when Submerge caught up with her, she was in Redding, working a 40-hour-a-week internship. “It kind of got to the point where I was like, ‘Should I go to grad school or should I do one more year of competing and trying to do well?’” Kantar remembers. “It was kind of like, ‘Well, the girls that are coming up now, their parents buy them a $100,000 boat and they ride four times a day in Orlando and they work out and have personal trainers.’ So I was like, ‘OK, let’s go back to school.’”

Photos by Forrest L. Doud

Kantar brings up an interesting point. In the world of action sports, there are the “rich kid” sports and the “normal kid” sports. Think about it: to go skateboarding, you need a complete board setup from your local skate shop, which will probably run you around $100, give or take, and that’s about it. To go wakeboarding, you’ve got to have a boat, and those are a whole heck-of-a-lot more expensive. It seems impossible, then, for an up-and-coming wakeboarder to make a name for him or herself if their family isn’t well-off enough to buy the latest MasterCraft X-Star or Malibu Wakesetter, right? Wrong. Kantar is a perfect example. When she was 14, her parents bought a boat, but not a flashy, expensive wakeboarding boat that you’d see in magazines; they got a run-of-the mill family vacation-style boat and it was behind that that Kantar was introduced to wakeboarding.

“The only way that I got to ride behind a good boat was because I met someone who was well-off and had one,” she says. “They’d take me out and I’d just pay gas money.” Either that, or she’d hang out on a dock or near the river with her board in hand, waiting for someone to give her a pull. “We would walk down to the river and skim board,” remembers Kantar of her earlier days in West Sacramento. “I would just bring my wakeboard, and I met so many random people that way. I had nothing else to do, and I wanted to get better.”

Kantar started competing in Northern California competitions. Not long after, sponsors came knocking. Now, some of the biggest companies in the world back this local ripper: Liquid Force, Body Glove and Osiris, just to name a few. She has competed at the professional level not only throughout our own country, but also abroad in Egypt, Singapore, Qatar and Australia. Her favorite competition of them all? She claims the Egypt World Cup, even though it was a bit of a flop. “That contest was probably the most fun, because they kind of messed up and didn’t check out the site that they were going to throw it at. It ended up being like in the ocean with waves and the boat hit coral and couldn’t drive the contest,” Kantar remembers with a laugh. So, they found a little pond, rounded up a jet ski to pull the riders and made some makeshift obstacles for them to hit. “They found these galvanized steel posts like on the side of the road and they made a little rail. It was so sketchy, but they ended up splitting all the prize money, and I just drank beer and hit these sketchy rails,” she says, adding, “And I got to see the pyramids!”

This sums up Kantar’s laid-back outlook on contests quite well. Even though she’s done well in them in the past, placing 3rd in the 2007 Wake Games, 2nd in the 2008 Egypt World Cup, 2nd in the 2008 Singapore World Cup, 3rd in the 2008 Qatar World Cup and 2nd in the 2008 U.S. Nationals, she’d rather be out with her friends shooting for a magazine or a video spot any day. “Contests are such a joke,” she admits. “The expectations are kind of ridiculous.”

For the past year or so, Kantar hasn’t been competing, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t been progressing. “I’ve been having a ton of fun just improving my style, making tricks look better, learning tricks that I want to do, not necessarily what will win me a contest.” She says she and her friends like fellow Liquid Force teammate Danni Petraitis (with whom Kantar was living while up in Redding), would rather stay and film on Lake Shasta or go on a cool trip to ride rather than “sitting around a contest all day and getting like a two-minute pull.”

Kantar’s about to reap the benefits of some of her hard work when Body Glove drops their first ever wakeboard video titled Slick City, in which she is the only female rider. Slick City will be available for world-wide purchase starting July 7, 2010 through action sports media giant VAS Entertainment. The DVD will be available for purchase at local wakeboarding shops and for download on iTunes shortly after. The video has already earned rave reviews from people at Wakeboarding and Alliance, the industry’s two largest publications, making Slick City one of the most highly anticipated wakeboard films of the year. The film follows some of the biggest names in the sport: Rusty Malinoski, Harley Clifford, Bob Soven, Jeff McKee, James Balzer, Daniel Doud (Kantar’s boyfriend) and of course, Shelby Kantar.

Photo by Mark Kawakami | Courtesy of Body Glove

“I didn’t really get to film as much as I wanted to for that, especially my wake section,” she says, noting that since Body Glove is such a large, global company, coordinating the video shoots was hard. She did get a lot of footage sliding rails, though, an aspect of the sport that she is particularly good at and likes. “We built some rails and got quite a bit of rail footage. I really like riding rails, so I’m glad we got that, but as far as my wake riding, I wish I could have done a little bit more for that video.” Regardless, appearing in Slick City will surely introduce a whole lot of people to the style and charm of one of Sacramento’s best-kept secrets.

Kantar has another year and a half of graduate school, after which she plans on buying herself the nice wakeboarding boat she never had when trying to come up in the industry. “I kind of wanted to set myself up to have a normal career so that I can afford all this stuff and I can just free-ride, maybe do some more shooting even though I’ll be pretty old by then,” jokes the young, bubbly Kantar. “The girls that are competing and coming up now are so young, I feel pretty old, as sad as that is.” Contests or no contests, old or not old, Kantar says one thing is for certain: “I’m going to get my Malibu boat, and I’m going to shred.”

Body Glove’s wakeboard film, Slick City, featuring local Shelby Kantar will be available July 7. Kantar can also be found coaching lessons at the Delta Wakeboard Camp.

Deftones are back at the top of their game

Sacramento’s own marquis band, Deftones, have come quite a way since their inception in the late ‘80s. From gigs at backyard barbecues to sold-out shows at the Cattle Club, to landing a record deal and headlining huge tours all around the world in support of chart-topping, genre-busting albums, these guys have been through thick and thin and have maintained momentum, as well as a rabid fan base, along the way. During a recent interview with Submerge, drummer Abe Cunningham reminisced on the old days. “We’ve surpassed any expectations,” he said with a chuckle. “We wanted to play the Crest Theatre; that was the huge goal.” After agreeing that they’ve achieved that goal and then some, he went on to say, “Every day from this point on, not to be corny, is a blessing. We’ve been so wild over the years and just fucked off so much and just been out of our minds fucked up on everything, just having the rock ‘n’ roll time of our lives. And I’m not saying that we’re angels now, we certainly have a blast to this day, but we’ve chilled out a bit.”

In the following interview, Cunningham chats about their new record, Cheng’s current status, the band’s new lineup and more.

I’m curious, who in the band still calls Sacramento home?
Stephan [Carpenter], our guitarist, he moved down to the Los Angeles area a while ago. Chino [Moreno, vocals] lives in the L.A. area too. He moved down there maybe about three or four years ago. Frank [Delgado, keyboardist] and I are still here, and Chi is here. Sergio, our buddy who is playing bass with us is from New York. But I mean, we’re still a Sacramento band, we still claim it.

That’s cool because you guys have become such an international force over the years. It’s nice to see you still claim Sacramento. I feel like some bands that blow up from here end up claiming the Bay Area or L.A. or something.
I am sporting a Giants hat, but hey, you know? [Laughs] I mean shit, it’s where we’re from. Everybody’s from somewhere. And it’s not even that bad, so what the fuck, you know?

How is it performing the material off of Diamond Eyes? The record was conceived, produced and released in a very timely fashion, how does that affect the way the songs are translated in the live setting?
I mean everything is new still; the songs are still all very new. This is really the first record that we went in [to the studio] with the material all done since probably Around the Fur, actually really since our first record. Since then, we’ve mostly written everything in the studio, which can be really cool, but it also can be just fucking crazy because it’s super expensive and if you’re not gelling and getting shit done, it can just be insane. It can be a really costly, mentally draining experience all around. So that’s the way it’s kind of been for the past four records, at least up until this one. We just went in and blasted it out. We wrote it so quick and had a blast doing it despite everything that had been going on with Chi. It was a catalyst for us getting down to it.

So it was a more organic approach than you took with previous albums in that you guys were able to completely play all of these songs live in your rehearsal room before ever hitting record, right?
Yeah, dude! We can’t even play some of the songs on some of our records [laughs]. We’re actually like, “Wow, we’re a real band again. We can play our own shit.” Not that we couldn’t play all our other shit. In the studio we’ve never tried to do anything so outlandish that we could never really perform it live. Studios are great for that. You can get down and you can make the most insane masterpiece, but can you pull it off live? That’s why we always tried to limit ourselves a bit, because we’ve always wanted to be able to do it live. This time around we just blasted it out and had a great time doing it.

If you don’t mind, I’m sure it’s a touchy subject, but I’d like to talk briefly about Chi and that whole situation. When’s the last time you saw him?
Chino and I went down right around Easter; we were taking off for tour for quite some time. He’s back down in Stockton.

So he’s at home now, not in a hospital, right?
Yeah, he’s been home for a while. It’s way better than being in a hospital somewhere.

How is he doing? I read on www.oneloveforchi.com that he is undergoing some crazy “wake up protocol” and being looked after by top-notch doctors. What can you tell me about that?
These doctors that took him on are apparently involved with a lot of people coming back from the Iraq war and Afghanistan. There’s been a skyrocketing number of people coming back with traumatic brain injuries–roadside explosions and shit like that. Anyway, these doctors I guess have had tremendous success with people that are in exact or similar states that Chi is in, bringing them back to some degree. Because, I mean, he’s awake, he’s there, but he’s trapped. It’s kind of like the Metallica “One” video.

I just got the goose bumps, because I was thinking the exact same thing. It seems like he’s come a long way already, though, like his eyes are open now and he looks more aware and you can talk to him and he engages, right? How encouraging is that, being one of his closes friends and band mates?
All I want is the best for him, man. I think about his son, he’s got a son. I think about his whole family obviously, but he’s got a 12-year-old son who’s just the raddest kid and that’s really on my mind. He needs his dad back. Fuck him playing in the band again, that would be awesome if that could happen, but…

When it came time to make the call to bring in Sergio on bass and to continue playing and writing music without Chi, was that a tough decision?
I mean not really, and I don’t mean to be insensitive. Obviously we took time off to just try and figure what the fuck we were going to do and why this happened, and you just realize that some things you can never ever no matter how hard you try find an answer for, and this is one of them. Well, I’ll tell you why it happened; he wasn’t wearing his fucking seatbelt. So, of course we were trying to figure out what’s up with the band, and we took a couple months just to breathe and figure some stuff out. We just said, “Shit, this is what we do, we play music, we make music and we play it. We’ve been doing it for a long time now and it’s really what we do.” It was as simple as that. It’s what we do.

Was everybody in the band on the same page or was there some struggle between members?
Well yeah, it eventually came back to that struggle. At first Stephan wanted to just like start over again with a new band and all this stuff. Hey, I can dig that but come on, you know? Everyone was just kind of juggling ideas around, and it just came down really to getting back into our little spot out in West Sacramento. We have this studio we’ve had out there for a really long time. We just wanted to get out there, and we started jamming again, just for the sake of playing music. We actually had a record pretty much done called Eros. We’d been working on that for over a year already, and that was pretty much done. The whole thing with Sergio is, we had a show booked and we had this one thing we needed to fill, this one obligation. He had played with us before, he’d filled in for Chi way back, but he also came from this band Quicksand that we loved and was totally a huge influence on us, so we were all buddies over the years.

Was there ever anyone else in the running or was it Sergio all the way?
Yeah, it was kind of funny. He’s all neurotic, all New Yorker and shit. He came out here and I think he thought in his mind there was going to be 50 or 100 people in line to try out like that Metallica movie. He came out and he was all nervous, and we were like, “Dude just come out here, fuck this, come kick it.” We kind of shot the shit for a little bit and in actuality we were like, “Dude, you’re the only person we had in mind. There was nobody else.” He was just like, “Phew” and took a deep breath.

Can you tell me a little about the decision to put Eros on hold and start the writing process all over again for what would become Diamond Eyes?
It was really a huge decision for us. When it was brought up, I was like, “Yeah, I’m down,” when inside I was like “Fuck, I really don’t know.” I knew we could do it, but I had some reservations. We had just done this Eros thing. We were totally tapped creatively and all this shit. I was like, “We can do it! But wait, can we really do it?” But everything just came, you know? And with Eros, honestly, if we would have put that record out right now, it just was not the right time for that record. It’s not that it’s bad, there’s some good stuff on it; it just wouldn’t be good for us, man. And really it was out of respect for Chi, too. We spent all this time writing and recording and making these songs with him, and for us to go out on tour with those songs without him would be a trip. We just said, “Fuck it, let’s not shelve it, let’s put it on simmer on the backburner and let it chill a while and Chi, hopefully he can join us.”

You worked with a new producer on this one, Nick Raskulinecz. How much of an influence did he have on this record? Was he there during a lot of the writing?
Oh yeah, he was in there every single day with us from the get-go until we finished the record.

Was that new for the band, to sort of have that outside influence when crafting a record? Have you ever let anyone in creatively like that?
Never. We did most of our records with Terry Date, who is a dear friend. He’s a producer, but he’s more of an engineer. If he had an opinion, of course he’d say it, but he never was hands-on up in our shit. Normally we don’t like that shit, we’re like, “Fuck man, we can do this. We’re doing OK, leave us alone,” but Nick is just a rad dude and is so much fun to be around. He was right up in there with us. Everyone totally gelled and trusted him. Our biggest hang up is we’ll be jamming for hours and hours and hours and have cool shit come out, but nobody will ever stop and say, “That was tight, do that.” What he did was just float around the room and encouraged us to do what we were already doing. He just made everyone confident, like, “Wait, I’m doing rad shit, cool!” It was like fire, man.

It seems like everything was in place, you know? Nick was a fan of the band and on board to produce, Sergio came out and fit right in, you all started creating music again together in your old band room. It’s pretty uplifting, and frankly I think Chi would be pretty proud.
That’s our whole goal; there will always be some people that don’t get it. They ask, “How could you? How dare you?” You know what, fuck you, you have no idea how this works. You can sit on your keyboard on the Internet and talk shit. It’s really not been like that though. For the most part everyone’s been very supportive. We’re out doing our thing in Chi’s name, in his honor. He’s right there with us in spirit. I know he’s around.