The Conical Glass: Tilting at windmills

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Tilting at windmills

I realize that June has been an extremely poor month for blogging -- I've only managed to scrape together four entries so far. But July is shaping up to be a veritable sweeps month for The Conical Glass! Next month, you'll read about:

The shameful secret obsession that's been taking up way too much of my spare time -- and keeping me from blogging!
A stunning attempt to cure a longtime phobia!
My shocking(ly expensive) plan to achieve a lifelong desire to "divide my time" between two locations -- is the Bay Area not enough to fulfill me?
My life as a stalker! Am I turning into Mel from "Flight of the Conchords"?

You won't want to miss a single entry!

Meanwhile, I toddled over to Berkeley to check out the new run of Josh Kornbluth's latest monologue, "Citizen Josh," which I reviewed last year. (Hey, did I mention that I designed Josh's brand new web site? Oh right, I did.) "Citizen Josh" will be playing through July 20 and I urge you to see it because it's funny and delightful and entertaining. As a bonus, after every single performance, Josh will be doing a "talkback" with various people from the community in which they discuss issues raised in the play. Today's guest was Robert Hurwitt, the theater critic from the San Francisco Chronicle. As a theater nut, of course I pay close attention to Hurwitt's columns and frequently go see shows he recommends, and I was rather tickled to note that I had been seated right next to him. (I wouldn't have recognized him, but Josh's stage manager came over and introduced himself to Hurwitt a few minutes before showtime.) I thought about saying hello but was too shy, but then his wife asked me if I lived in their town -- she thought I looked familiar -- so we struck up a conversation. (I don't live in their town, but it turns out that I do live near their son -- he's a theater critic, too, for the East Bay Express.) The Hurwitts seemed like extremely nice people and I was pleased to note that Robert seemed to really get caught up in the show, chuckling appreciatively at all the funny lines, even though I think Josh was a teensy bit miffed last year when the critic gave "Citizen Josh" the "polite applause" rating, instead of the "wild applause" he bestowed upon Kornbluth's previous effort, "Love and Taxes."

A large part of the monologue deals with a neighborhood park in Berkeley and a local group's efforts to install new playground equipment there. Coincidentally, Hurwitt played an instrumental role in the creation of the park -- the open space had been eyed by Peralta College for an administration building -- and he had some fascinating stories to tell about his lobbying efforts to turn the land into a recreational area. At first it might have seemed like a quixotic effort -- the word quixotic appears several times in Josh's show, and its logo appropriately depicts the monologuist tilting at a windmill -- but today Ohlone Park is there for all to enjoy.

When Josh opened it up for audience questions, someone in the front row tried to convince Hurwitt to do an investigative piece on Cody's Books, the Berkeley institution which closed super-abruptly a few days ago. It seems like a lot of folks think there's some kind of dark conspiracy at work when to me it seems more like a case of really, really bad mismanagement. First the bookstore, famous for its Telegraph Ave. location, opened a second outpost in Berkeley's tony Fourth St. shopping district; then it expanded further into San Francisco, which I thought from the get-go was a horrible idea (expensive real estate, plus it was only a few blocks from another venerable independent, Stacey's, and a big Borders). The SF store didn't last long, and the last time I went to the Fourth St. store I couldn't help but notice how bare the shelves were. By that time, the Telegraph store had also closed. Finally, the Fourth St. location shut down and Cody's relocated to Shattuck Ave. in downtown Berkeley. I never even had a chance to check out that store because it barely lasted a couple of months before abruptly calling it quits, to the shock of customers and staff alike. Now a Berkeley landmark is gone forever, and I don't think it can completely be blamed on the popularity of chain stores and the Internet -- it just seemed like there was a lot of incompetence in the decision-making there over the past few years.

posted by 125records @ 10:04 PM

1 Comments:

At 9:26 AM, B said…

The incompetence at Cody's was widespread and neck deep. I used to work in an office that shared a little balcony with former Cody's owner Andy Ross, and in the summer when both our windows were open I overheard some stunning conversations that painted a pretty unhealthy picture of how that store was run. It was heartbreaking for all of us who work on Telegraph when that store went down -- and there's still a big, dark empty building to remind us every day. Makes me mad.

Love your theater posts, by the way. I haven't been to the theater since high school, probably, but I love reading about it!