Bryant

Karen reminded me this morning that Elizabeth was three when she started at Dance/10.

Elizabeth was unsure, there at the beginning, how comfortable she felt having to shake her little booty in front of a lot of strangers - even if those strangers were primarily other three-year-old girls.  Everyone at the studio, though, was encouraging - though none was as warm and vibrant as Bryant.

Bryant taught Hip Hop and one of his classes ended at the same time as Elizabeth's.  Elizabeth would stand at the bottom of the stairs, after her class, and watch the older teens hippity-hop.  I don't know who was having more fun - the rapturous dancers, following the lead of Bryant, or Elizabeth.  Elizabeth, grooving her little body to the tunes Bryant had chosen.

Early on, Bryant saw Elizabeth off to the side - watching.  When his class ended, he glided over and dropped to his knees.  Hey, girl, he said.  You look like you want to join my class!

If people could fly, Elizabeth would've flown.  Such was the power behind Bryant's smile, accompanied by his willingness to take a moment in the craziness of pickup - with multiple dance classes letting out - to stop and give encouragement to a shy little girl who didn't know exactly what she wanted to do, not yet, but that maybe it had something to do with what she saw this man just do.

Bryant?  I never saw Bryant without a smile.  Bryant walked around each day like he'd just won the lottery - and he wasn't going to tell you about it, but he'd show you what it meant to feel so good about the world that maybe you, too, might pass some of that good will on to those around you.

Happy?  That man defined happy with his grace and effortless moves - in the studio and on the stage.  I'm sorry I didn't know him outside Dance/10 - I'm pretty sure he was as joyful outside it as in.

If you were lucky enough to ever see Bryant leap?  Ever see him jump?  You saw the world jump, joyful.


Bryant Cash-Welch passed away early this morning of a heart attack.  I don't know any more than that.  I do know that the music softened everywhere because of his passing.  Bryant - you will be missed by all those you touched in word, deed and dance.  Thank you for having a kind smile for Elizabeth and Kristina and for bringing joy into their lives.  Into all our lives.  Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Happy New Year with a Hangar Banger!

This was concocted for an event on January 19th at The Chapel in San Francisco with Armistead Maupin to commemorate the publication of his final tale in his Tales of the City.

The Harvey Wallbanger is probably the most '70's of all '70's drinks, so I went with that and tarted it up just a bit.

More on the event later, but for now, Cheers!

Hangar Banger:

1.5 oz. Hangar One Mandarin Blossom Vodka

4 oz. fresh orange juice

.5 oz. Galliano

Stir vodka and orange juice in a tall, chilled glass.  Add ice.  Float the Galliano on top.  Garnish with an orange wedge.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Last night - with the wine in crystal goblets glistening in the light of the green candles running the length of our Christmas table - we remembered those who couldn't be with us.  Like my dad.  My dad and his brothers.

I was a pallbearer this year in Salt Lake City for both of those brothers, my uncles.  Two men I loved, the last direct link to my father.  The last people who could answer the questions I still have about their childhood, about growing up in the coal-mining town of Hiawatha, Utah.

Salt Lake City was beautiful both times I flew there in 2013.  Beautiful but sad.  First in early May, then in October.  And now it's already Christmas - the year nearly over.

This time of year always finds the picture rails in our front room lined with holiday cards.  One of the first we received was the Christmas card from my Aunt Ursula.  Aunt Ursula whose husband, my Uncle Pete, died in April.  Inside the card:


Dear Family Petrulakis, she wrote.

I hope all your wishes come true, she wrote.  Have a happy and healthy New Year.

She continued, of course.  How could she not?

I am missing Pete something awful, she wrote.

We spent 45 years together on Christmas, she wrote.

I put the Christmas decorations up just like he liked them, she wrote.

May his memory be eternal.

Love you all.  Ursula.

Tony in front, Dean behind him, then Pete.
Circa 1944

And the enormity of her loss almost became plain.  I knew at the funeral how much she missed her husband, my uncle.  At the next funeral, for my Uncle Dean, Ursula was beautiful in black, and missing her husband, my uncle, something awful.

So - on one very superficial level - I understood how much Aunt Ursula must miss her husband, my uncle.  The same way I know how much my mom misses my dad.  How much Judy misses her partner, my Uncle Dean.

But I still don't really understand, right?  The degree of the loss?  Of spending 45 Christmases with someone, and then not?

The love that leads you to decorate your home with Christmas decorations because he - her husband, my uncle - loved it so?


When my mom walked into our house yesterday, the first thing she saw was the grand rocking horse she bought my Elizabeth for her first Christmas in 2004.  My mom stopped short, looking at our mantle, at the horse there, and then turned, her eyes already wet.

Is that...? she said.

She'd never seen it displayed before.  The last time she saw it was when we opened it at our house, the largest package under our tree that year.  I hadn't put it out before because - though beautiful - it's full of sharp angles and so heavy that little toes under the horse's treads could be hurt so easy.  Then a few years later Kristina came along so we continued to not display the horse because of our caution, our worry.

The rocking horse stayed in its box, in our garage, Christmas after Christmas.  Until this year when we were again hosting my family on Christmas Eve and I thought, even though we'd have two visitors even more little than our own - thanks to my brother Dean and his wife, Laura - maybe I could finally display the rocking horse if I put it up high, on our mantle.

Is that...? my mom said.

It is, I said.

And with her eyes getting more wet my mom said she remembered seeing that rocking horse on display at Keller's in Modesto.  It was too dear, though, too expensive to pick up on a whim for her first grandchild.

When my dad came home from work that night she told him about the rocking horse, the rocking horse that played Silver Bells, and he asked where it was.

Oh, Andoni, she began, ready to explain why she hadn't bought it that afternoon.  But before she could get past the words, Oh, Andoni - my dad interrupted.

Anna, he said, smiling.  Just go get it for her.

My dad who had so much love for my mom.  Who adored her so much.  Who had realized so quickly how much he loved our Elizabeth.  Elizabeth named for his mom, my YiaYia.

Anna, he said, smiling.  Just go get it for her.


As we sat around the table last night, remembering those who are no longer with us, we realized, Karen and I realized, that the rocking horse would be on display every Christmas from now on.

Just like he liked them, Aunt Ursula wrote.  Just like he liked them.

Merry Christmas to everyone near and far - and to those who aren't with us.  Set out a plate, or a glass, and remember how they liked it.  How much they liked it.

Merry Christmas.

Kermit Lynch at the Chapel, today at 2pm

And then sometimes you get thrown a fat one right over the plate.  Gotta swing, right?  Gotta swing.


Today at two, Books Inc. presents Kermit Lynch in conversation with Rajat Parr.  Kermit Lynch, purveyor of fine wine, importer, wine maker, author - just so happens to divide his time between Berkeley and France - so those of us in the bay area are fortunate to have him so close, so often.

Have you been to his shop, Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant, on San Pablo in Berkeley?  It's just ridiculously wonderful to have someone with such exceptional taste so near.  I will admit that I am not an oenophile - if the definition of the word is a connoisseur.  If, though, you define it as someone who's simply a lover of wine, then I'm your guy.  I used to be a slave to the ratings-cards that wine shops provide - 87 points!  I used to be in.

Now, though, I talk to the people behind the counter.  That's what we do at ye olde bookshoppe, right?  If you have a question, I can answer it.  Same with wine.  Good shops employ knowledgeable people, and Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant is full of good people with great advice.

So there's the fact that Mr. Lynch is a recognized and influential wine expert - as this piece in the New York Times wonderfully demonstrates.  Then there's the book.  When Adventures on the Wine Route came out in 1988, critics as diverse as Roald Dahl, Hugh Johnson and the Financial Times praised it mightily.

It's idiosyncratic, funny, informative.  A wee bit different than the stodgy wine writing you might be used to.

Adventures on the Wine Route is a great pleasure to read.

It’s this idea of pleasure, I think, that separates Mr. Lynch’s book from the others, and that also illumines his taste in wine.  Wine is, he writes, above all, pleasure.  

What’s he a fan of?  Good wine.  He’s not a fan of filtration – which, though it makes more wine safe from spoiling, also makes it impossible to achieve the heights unfiltered wines can achieve.  We would not castrate all men, he writes, because some of them go haywire and commit rape.

Thank god for that.

But today - the event at the Chapel.  Not only is it Kermit Lynch, he's going to be in conversation with Rajat Parr, wine director for the Mina Group

At Parr’s restaurants - like Michael Mina - he says his concern is with showcasing the wine itself – not necessarily its reputation, but what’s in the bottle.  He says to taste with your heart, not your mind – which might give you a clue as to why they get on so well.

He also is the author of Secrets of the Sommeliers – bestseller and winner of a James Beard Cookbook Award.

Plus, he loves PDT, a speakeasy in New York which is one of my favorite bars, ever – in addition to his own Clock Bar here in the city, meaning you don’t have to travel 3,000 miles to get there.

Both men would agree that the great occasions of our life are celebrated with food and wine.  So, today, a celebration of an amazing author, a terrific book – and great wine.

Oh, and that fat one that was thrown over my plate?  It was the request to introduce both men at the Chapel - something I will gladly do.  Here's me, then, swinging away.

Join us if you can.

Introducing the Jenny Bonnet - Jenny to you.

One of the perks you get as a bookseller is being able to peek at books before they're published - we sometimes see these advance copies so that we're good and ready to tell you about them when they do come out.  Such is the case with Emma Donoghue's Frog Music.

You'll know Ms. Donoghue from her previous writing including her last novel, the bestselling Room - that desperate, claustrophobic and brilliant story about the ends one mother goes to in an attempt to shelter her son from their unthinkable crisis of circumstance.  Have you not read Room?  Go, ok?  Just go do that.

As is her wont, she has jumped from the contemporary to the historical in Frog Music.  It's the United States' Centennial and brash and dynamic San Francisco is where Blanche Beunon will be run over - literally - by Jenny Bonnet, a frog hunting, oft-arrested (for appearing in the apparel of the opposite sex), bicycle stealing twenty-seven-year-old who will spirit into your consciousness even quicker than she can snatch frogs.

More's the pity that Jenny is shotgunned on page three.  Leave it to Ms. Donoghue to introduce a woman you'll fall in love with as soon as she sings a lullaby to Blanche - leaving the rest of the novel to show how they met and why they ended up ambushed at Eight Mile House.

But all that's for next year - April of 2014 when Frog Music hits our shelves.  In the meantime, I'd like you to enjoy a drink inspired by Jenny.  I started with genever - gin before there was gin - because, yes, alliteration, but also because it's something Jenny and Blanche might've shared at the Pony Express Saloon.  It'll keep you warm through the winter - until spring when you can meet Jenny for yourself.

Another perk booksellers sometimes receive is breaking bread with authors during pre-publication tours.  I'm lucky enough to meet Ms. Donoghue tonight in San Francisco - and though we may not get to sample a Jenny, we will be able to talk about the real life Jenny Bonnet who inspired Frog Music.

The Jenny Bonnet:

 2 oz. Bols Genever
.75 oz. simple syrup
.75 oz. fresh lemon juice
.5 oz. Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
2 drops Cherry Bark Vanilla Bitters

Combine all - except bitters - and stir with ice.  Strain into chilled glass.  Add bitters & garnish with maraschino cherry.

Mrs. Poe

First there came the book, and the book was Mrs. Poe by Lynn Cullen.  I was seduced by the novel because it gleamed like a diamond in gaslight, its facets glittering.  Look, there's a love story.  Over here, a tale of 19th century Boston and New York with their cobbled streets and sinister corners.  And sparking over it all, Edgar Allan Poe.  So part masterful biography, too.

But always glinting, first here, then there - the two woman that would complete Poe's triangle.  Their love story wasn't innocent, of course.  Is seduction ever innocent?  And who - there at the beginning - was I supposed to like more?  Mrs. Poe, the frail and dying wife of the poet?  Or Frances Osgood, a writer herself, laboring to support her children after her husband left her for a brighter bauble?

So the book came first.  Then came the dinner.

Booksellers are sometimes treated to pre-publication parties in celebration of an author or authors.  This dinner took place in July and Ms. Cullen was one of the authors being feted.

The gatherings are almost always a delight and this was no exception.  The hope is that you meet the author - putting the proverbial face to a name - but also, just maybe, something more.  Something that sometimes happens when you're able to talk to an author over bread and wine - about the book and how it came to be or about some interesting morsel that dropped to the floor but that's still illuminating.

I'm lucky to sometimes be included in those gatherings.  On that San Francisco night, we talked books and booze and writing.

The drink came next.

I have a bit of a thing for Poe -  and for cocktails - and so there was some mingled talk that night about both.  I was delighted, then, when I was asked by Ms. Cullen to create a drink for the book.  Mrs. Poe had been chosen by Book Movement to be their Book of the Month for October.  Book Movement is a great resource for book clubs and they requested food and drink suggestions to accompany the discussions the book would generate.

If the drink had been called Edgar, absinthe may have played a role, but for Mrs. Poe it seemed something lighter was in order.  Although, even when good cocktails taste that way, they're never really light.

Mrs. Poe would begin with St. Germain, a wonderful liqueur that's light and aromatic, made from frail elderflowers.  Perfect for her.

Maybe that and a little gin - I said cocktails are never light, right?  Some Benedictine, too, because that's something that Poe - Mr. and Mrs. - could have sipped in their New York, and I wanted to include something contemporaneous.

After some mixing and matching, Mrs. Poe became:


1.5 oz. Hendrick's Gin
.25. oz. St. Germain
1 barspoon Benedictine
1 dash Peychaud's bitters

Stir all with ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon twist.


Then we decided (this had become a collaboration and Lynn is as much the author of these drinks as she is of Mrs. Poe) some punches would be fun, too - since punches were all the rage in New York society in the 1840's.  Like, for example: 

Mrs. Poe's Punch:

  

2 cups apple juice, chilled
Juice of 8 lemons, about 1.5 cups
1 cup sugar
Fresh mint
1 or 2 bottles champagne, chilled
Frozen raspberries

Lightly muddle mint leaves with apple juice and sugar.  Add lemon juice and stir until sugar dissolves.  Chill until it's time to talk about Mrs. Poe.  Pour into punch bowl.  Add champagne to taste.  Garnish with frozen raspberries and mint.

As you can imagine, this was a joy for me.  Here I was, mixing two of my passions.  Terrific, yes? 

And that would have been enough, but then the wonderful people at Gallery Books (hello Stephanie DeLuca and Simon and Schuster) created a terrific broadside with the recipes for the punches and the cocktail. 

I've been called a number of things in my time, but never a mixologist, and yet there it was - in print - so it had to be true, right? 

So we made some drinks, and others have now made some drinks, and the drinks are good but the book?  The book's marvelous. 

For me, a favor?  Please purchase Mrs. Poe - I'd prefer that you bought it from your favorite indie bookseller, but what I really want is for you to own it, to read it.  So get it.  And if you have time, stop by ye olde bookshoppe tonight because Lynn Cullen will be there and we'll be talking Mrs. Poe and sipping more of those drinks. 

Stop by, yes?  I'll save a seat for you.

Dean Petrulas: August 10, 1936 - October 23, 2013


When the phone rang fifty minutes past midnight this morning, I knew my Uncle Dean had died.  Phones don't ring at that hour for other reasons.

I was supposed to be on a plane later in the morning - flying out to Salt Lake City to visit him.  We spoke briefly yesterday, the last time we would speak, and our conversation was short and heartbreaking.  Short because he didn't have the strength to talk very long, heartbreaking because his words were so labored but so soft that it was clear my uncle was passing.


Dean Petrulas, 1943

I held out arrogant hope that because I let him know I was on my way, he would be alive today, would be there waiting for me.  Would be present for one last visit.

I can be a smug, foolish man.

Dean Petrulas (yes, his name was shorter, yes) was the last member of his generation from the Petrulakis family.

My Papou and YiaYia had long since left us.  My father's sister, Sylvia, was the first of the four siblings to pass away - shortly after our own Elizabeth was born.  Elizabeth, named after my grandmother, my YiaYia.

This family, my family, was so loud - though my father was the most quiet - but so loud, so Greek.

This family, my family - and now they're gone.

My Papou, the coal miner - the man who would begin this family, my family.  George Anthony Petrulakis.  Why did he leave Crete as a teenager?  The stories vary.  There may have been a sister, avenged, and the need to flee.  There may have been a land of opportunity turned to when there were no opportunities at home.

Maybe it was just wanderlust.

My strongest memory of Papou is from my last summer with him, our last visit together.  After our annual drive - 714 miles from Sherwood Avenue in Modesto, California to Ramona Avenue in Salt Lake City, Utah - Papou met us outside his brick bungalow.  With a huge smile, he beckoned his grandchildren into his backyard, his yellow dahlias ablaze, and there, in front of the ramshackle detached garage, was a plastic tub filled with sand.

Carefully placed among the sculpted dunes?  Plastic cowboys and Indians.  Green ones and blue ones, red ones and yellow.  Attacking, retreating.  A tableau of the old west, of old time Utah, created for three boys from Modesto.  And YiaYia just stood there smiling at the love this old man showed for his young grandchildren - the only grandchildren I thought he had.

YiaYia.  YiaYia who was raised in Dawson, New Mexico.  YiaYia who, in my mom's kitchen, cooked the best Mexican feast I've ever had - homemade tortillas and enchiladas and re-fried beans.  Everything made from scratch.  Great Mexican cooking from a Greek YiaYia.

YiaYia.  YiaYia and her ridiculous affection for Kitty, her Siamese.  Kitty who hissed at everyone but YiaYia.

Well, at everyone but YiaYia and my Thea Sylvia, my dad's only sister.  Thea Sylvia who sent my brother George a silver letter opener for high school graduation, who sent me a gold tie pin.  What did she send my brother Dean?  I forget.  I forget so much.  But not her laugh.  Thea Sylvia's laugh?  Oh, Thea.  I miss you.  I'm so sorry you and YiaYia never met Elizabeth, never met Kristina.

Uncle Pete at least met Elizabeth.  Uncle Pete who passed away this year in that cruel month of April.  Uncle Pete who, one summer night, grabbed a grasshopper for me in front of his house in Sandy, Utah.  Held it in his fingers and gently pinched its head until it spit out what he said was tobacco.  And since he said it, I believed it.  Believed it and tried to replicate the pinching back home in Modesto - never successfully.

Uncle Pete who showed me the framed painting of the raccoon that he sheepishly said he spent too much money on, but that he loved.  Uncle Pete who came into my bedroom after I ran from my family, crying.  Crying because they'd just mentioned - this family, my family - they'd just mentioned, in passing, that Uncle Pete had been married before, had a daughter I never knew.  Everyone knew, it seemed, but me.  And Uncle Pete came into my room, quiet, and just talked to me.  Man to man even though I was a boy.  Talked and then explained to his brother, my dad, why it was important that we had talked.

My dad?  Ah, Dad.  Dad, I miss you.  Dad, I love you.

And Uncle Dean was the last, the last of this family, my family.  Uncle Dean who I spoke with more in the few years since my father passed away than in all the time before.  Uncle Dean, the last repository of the stories, of the knowledge, of the tales of this family, my family, the family Petrulakis.

Uncle Dean, who died at 1:52 am.  Judy called me then, right then, and we talked and we cried and I told her to tell Uncle Dean that I loved him, and she did, whispered to him my words while I apologized for not being there - I was supposed to be on a plane later this morning to visit.  My visit was going to keep Uncle Dean alive for a few more hours, I had that power, didn't I?

Didn't I?

And then, with Uncle Dean already gone, my flight would be canceled.  Oakland fog and gray, mocking skies would cancel my flight.  What power do we have?  We have no power.


Can I tell you a story about my Uncle Dean?  About the thing that comes to mind first when I think of him, of that tall, powerful man?

It must've been, what, 1975?  Was that when Glen Campbell sang about his Rhinestone Cowboy?  Uncle Dean was soon to arrive at the house, his parent's bungalow on Ramona, and when he did, the three Petrulakis boys would line up inside the front door, practically ready to salute when he came in.

And come in he did, Uncle Dean - confirmed bachelor, owner of a new car (seemingly) every year.  Did he once own a yellow Lincoln Continental with suicide doors?  Oh, he did.

So Uncle Dean walked in, and we've dutifully lined up for him, standing there in the living room of YiaYia's house, that brick house with the porch we'd jump from onto the small patch of grass, the grass where we'd drink cream soda during those Salt Lake summers - the three of us, the three brothers, in the new sneakers we'd get each year before making the trip to Utah.  And Uncle Dean walked in, and we saluted and smiled, and he looked at us, and down at our new shoes, and up at my dad - and by this time Uncle Dean was laughing.

"Tone," he said, calling my dad by one of the many nicknames he'd earned in Hiawatha - Wheels being my personal favorite - "Tone," he said, shaking his head and looking back down at our new shoes, "that is the exact reason why I'll never get married and have kids."

And that incident became shorthand for my thoughts of Uncle Dean.  I admired him for it.  Here was a man, part of this family, my family, who knew himself so well, who was so comfortable in that knowledge, that he could admit to his brother that perhaps he was selfish enough never to want children - but that he was content with the realization.  Happy to go about his life with his new cars and terrific condo on the golf course without the encumbrance of kids.

But then - a funny thing happened.  Life happened.  Life happened and Karen and I got married and then Karen got pregnant - though this took too long, the time between the one and then the other, much too long according to many of the Greeks in our life.

But after Karen became pregnant, we made our calls to share the news - and Uncle Dean was one of the first calls I made.

We talked for a minute about nothing - and then I said, "Uncle Dean, I've got some news."  And after I told him, that Karen was expecting, that we had a little girl on the way, the line got very quiet.

Very quiet.


Karen, Nick, Uncle Dean, Dean, Wheels
1989

"Nick," Uncle Dean said, "the best thing you ever did was marry Karen.  That young woman," he said, "she is so smart."

"I know," I said, "I keep trying to figure out what she sees in me."

"That's not what I'm talking about right now," he said.  "What I'm talking about right now is the fact that it's the best thing you ever did."

He became quiet again.

"But the best thing the two of you will ever do is what you just told me.  It's a blessing, Nick," he said.  "Your family is a blessing.  And you remember that, ok?  Because I made a mistake.  Never getting married was a mistake.  Family is so important and I made a mistake."

We talked more after that, but not much.  My conversations with my uncle were always short, then.  Not like they've been lately.  But his revelation was a surprise - because "Uncle Dean" was a story that I told, a story about a man - when he was younger than I am now - who admitted to his oldest brother that he knew what was right for him, for Uncle Dean, and a wife wasn't right for him and kids certainly weren't right for him.

But here he was, my Uncle Dean, this important part of this family, my family, upending the convention that I had created.  Upending and exploding it with a simple declaration that I had done right where he had done wrong.

My Uncle Dean was an amazing man.  An amazing man who was fortunate to find an amazing woman - Judy - with whom he spent the last ten years of his life.  Not married, no - but happier together than many who are.  And we were happy, too, everyone was happy that Uncle Dean had found his family with Judy.  Each of those boys that he ribbed my dad about almost forty years ago had found their own families, and Uncle Dean had found his, too.

My Uncle Dean was an amazing man.  Hardworking and proud.  The way he talked about my dad these last few years, the delight he demonstrated in displaying the pictures of his nieces and nephews - the gratitude in his voice when he talked to Judy, or about Judy.

My Uncle Dean was an amazing man, such an important part of this family, my family.

I'm sorry I wasn't there with you yesterday, Uncle Dean.  I love you.  I miss you.

Eternal be your memory.