Gordonzola

Available for pre-order, finally

2009-11-12T18:14:27Z

Ok, People keep asking when the book is coming out so here it is. Not available until March, but it’s never too early to pre-order. And check out the new low cover price since we’ve done away with the pretentious hard cover edition. ;)

(Photo by awesome local photographer Myleen Hollero)

You can order direct from Chelsea Green.

Or from the bookstore of your choice (like your neighborhood worker-cooperative perhaps)

For some reason, Amazon is the only place that is posting the blurbs (though I have a few more now) and they are pretty good.

OK, self-promotion time is over (for the day).

Anyone post this yet?

2009-10-20T01:30:49Z

smallstages and I got off MUNI at Church st. right before the closed the whole system down from flooding. Crazy!

p.s. the rain also killed my phone which was in my pocket. Don't bother calling for a couple of days until I can get a new one.

Last day in Wisconsin

2009-10-14T13:31:21Z

Our Wisconsin trip ended with a min-coop tour since our flight didn’t take off until about 4 hours after all the South Bay folks. Luckily, we were in Madison so we got a tour of Madison in a Union Cab!

Union Cab is a worker-owned cab company that started during a taxi strike in Madison during the ‘70s. John is currently president of Union Cab, a member of the Board of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives (I met him because I hosted him in my apartment during an annual BOD meeting held in SF) and does a great co-op blog here: rochdale

Look, Union Cabs even has an ad in the Madison airport baggage claim! (security questioned me nicely after I took this picture)

First we went to Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative where we stocked up on books for the plane. John tried to sell his buddy who worked there on my (not yet printed) book and we discussed the contrast in the new interest in food books between the buy-your-way-out-of-the-system folks and the true politicos. Still, I don’t think he was impressed with the idea of a cheesemonger memoir. Oh well.

Then we drove past the Willy St. Co-op and to union Cab where we saw the state-of-the-art computer tracking system and a lot of yellow automobiles.

I wish I had more time to spend in Madison. Every visit I have had there has been quick and rushed. It seems like a really awesome little college town. Oh yeah, we went to Fromagination earlier in the trip. It’s a pretty awesome little cheese shop. I happily spent $20 (full retail!) on cheese ( Blue Mont Dairy’s bandage-wrapped Cheddar) and the folks working there definitely know what they are talking about. I have never seen a store give out smaller samples, but they were happy to give as many as you want.

Has anyone checked with Nostradamus?

2009-10-11T17:03:55Z

In a big blow to CalenderFail 2012, actual Mayans say the "end of the world" is a just more New Age B.S.

"If I went to some Mayan-speaking communities and asked people what is going to happen in 2012, they wouldn't have any idea," said Jose Huchim, a Yucatan Mayan archaeologist. "That the world is going to end? They wouldn't believe you. We have real concerns these days, like rain."

What I've been up to

2009-10-07T00:43:30Z

What an awesome cultural leftist weekend I had with smallstages!

Thursday: “Capitalism a Love Story”
We went to a special showing that was a benefit for the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and The Network of Bay Area Cooperatives. How was it? It was a Michael Moore movie. Incredibly awesome to see someone address class issues in a movie with mass distribution, also frustrating to watch the cartoony history and missed analysis.

Still, it was his best movie in years and I learned a few things (I didn’t know about corporations cashing in on early employee death through mass life insurance policies, for example), saw a couple of decent politicians, and got to see our co-op buddies at Alvarado St. Bakery and Isthmus Engineering.

Sunday: Sins Invalid: an unshamed claim to beauty in the face of invisibility
Disabled POC-organized collection of pieces on disability, sexuality, and collective liberation. Sometimes intense, sometimes funny, the whole performance was amazing, but Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha* deserves special mention. I’ve seen Leah perform a bunch of times, but this piece broke new ground for her as a writer and artist. Amazing. One of the best group productions that I had seen in years.

Monday: Billy Bragg
Awwww, a night for us older lefties. A sit down show at the Great American. I don’t know what it says that we chose to pay to see BB at a nice venue instead of fight the crowds at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, but there ya go. Except for his anti-NFL rants, I enjoyed everything about his performance (though I would have loved to hear “Price of Oil” which is my favorite song of his.) Diggers, unionists, and lovers: together at last.

Sometimes it’s great to be in a big lefty bubble.

* Leah obviously did not renew her website. Unintentionally funny!

Capitalism: A Love Story

2009-09-30T12:55:27Z

Bay Area folks!

Special early screening to benefit the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives and the Network of Bay Area Cooperatives. This Thursday, 7:30 PM at the Embarcadero.

Two things I love besides cheese

2009-09-25T13:07:31Z

I know that just last week I was talking about my fascination with hotel carpet, but I’ve had two longer-running fascinations:

1. Signs in bathrooms, especially in the “don’t pee on the floor” and “wash your hands” genres

2. International symbol death/injury-warnings

(This is evidently a warning that stairs are ahead and one must lift their feet.)

Who wouldn’t want a coffee table book of both those?

Last images of Austin (non-cheese)

2009-09-19T17:02:43Z

I will leave you with some non-cheese images that summed up Austin.

Flower wilting in the heat:

My agent may not like this, but I think my next book may be about hotel carpets. They fascinate me

People... how come no one told me the largest colony of bats in North America? In Austin? Under a downtown bridge? And they come out at the same time every day like the Disneyland Electrical Parade or something?

AWESOME

Wisconsin here I come

2009-09-19T16:51:19Z

Hey folks,

I will be on a whirlwind Wisconsin (cow milk) cheese tour so don’t expect any posts from me this week. Hopefully I’ll have good pictures and stories when I get back.

I will be back in town in time for the California Artisan Cheese Guild Benefit (held at the San Francisco Cheese School) on Friday night. If you want an evening of cheese eating, cheesemaker schmoozing, and/or something to do before the clubs open, this is well worth the $35. Reserve your spot through the Cheese School (and check out their other classes while your there!).

Saturday morning

2009-09-12T16:51:11Z

I am not quick to embrace new technology. When I first got itunes I didn’t really know anything about downloading music so I just borrowed friends CDs and burned them. At first I was very active, then I had enough music to shuffle so I stopped for awhile. When I realized – a few months later – that I could burn all my CDs and then sell them and still have the music, I started doing that in earnest.

But I made a playlist of the music I had listened to all the time in my early days of computerized music (and, for that matter my early days on LJ). I forgot all about it, but I’ve been listening to it on shuffle for the last few days. It is the perfect music for sitting in my “office” with the rain hitting the roof and my windows shaking from the thunder.

It’s impossible to convey to others how music can feel but it was incredibly comforting to hear all these songs I hadn’t heard for awhile – one after another songs I know all the words to and wanted to hear. Cozy apartment. Being warm when it’s stormy out. Listening to old music.

I wish I didn’t have to go to work later.

* The last five songs: Mekons – “The Flame that Killed John Wayne”, Feelings on a Grid – “Trevallian Zed”, Stiff Little Fingers – “State of Emrgency”, Leonard Cohen –“Suzanne”, Anti-Pasti – “no Government”

Healthcare

2009-08-17T15:50:55Z

Here's Bee Lavender's piece on the current rationing of US healthcare and her comparison of dealing with the US system and the UK's NHS. Definitely worth a read

Austin

2009-08-03T15:00:43Z

The say you are not really Texas, but you are still 100 degrees on the weather forecast. Sigh.

I haven't done a poll in awhile.

2009-07-28T18:44:30Z

View Poll: Do you still read LJ?

Co-op developement

2009-07-14T16:24:10Z

I start a course in co-op development today: “From Workers to Owners: Steps to Start Worker Cooperatives”. It’s part the economy and part the recent press our store has gotten, but we are getting calls or emails multiple times a week from people wanting to start co-ops. In addition to the cheese buying, one of my jobs is to field those calls. It’s an online course – and not a free one -- and I heard that 83 people are signed up.

I don’t want to out anyone before they are ready so I won’t name any places or details, but I talked to two incredibly different groups last week. One group of African Americans from an urban area in another state who want to do something – anything – that will help provide jobs and better health in their community. They were information gathering in general, without a specific plan of the type of model they wanted.

The other was an API ethnic group with a very specific idea of taking an existing, successful franchise model and converting it into a worker-owned version of the same thing. I don’t know that business model well, but they seemed pretty sure they could make it work.

It’s almost unfair to have people come for a tour and answer questions about our modes of operation since our blueprint for success is uncopyable. They see the result of nearly 35 years of work, starting in a totally different economy and era, with the good luck to be starting in an industry that – at that time – wasn’t an industry. I think there could be a blueprint. (The Cheeseboard/Arizmendi model is certainly a very good one) We just haven’t figured it out yet.

Historically-speaking I also speak to about 25 groups for every one that actually starts a co-op. I hope that this course – and two other Rainbow workers are taking it as well -- helps provide some groundwork to increase that ratio.

Roseanne Riot Grrrl

2009-07-08T03:58:03Z

Ha! The Roseanne episode where they pick up the riot grrrl hitchhiker (Jenna Elfmann) and listen to Bikini Kill. (thanks to kristy_chan

Awesome

Maggots and Men

2009-06-29T19:01:29Z

I saw “Maggots and Men” last week at Frameline. It was amazing. Like seriously amazing.

When I go to see art produced by people I know, and starring people I know, my expectations are low. I don’t mean that my friends aren’t talented. I mean that I’m already on their side and pre-disposed to be positive. I’ll laugh at the in-jokes. I’ll forgive hammy behavior. I’ll wince with them at hard moments, not be thinking “someone else might have done this better”.

“Maggots…” however, exceeded every expectation I had.

When I moved out of my apartment on Valencia St. 15 years ago, Cary (the Director) moved in. We had known each other through Epicenter and the punk scene. Indeed, the house I was moving out of, and that he was moving into back then in 1994, was a hub of the queer punk scene. My housemates had helped found Q-TIP (Queers Together in Punkness) and also produced shows under the name “House of Failure” (our phone number was 552-FAIL… what a happy coincidence for the “beautiful loser” generation). I’m not aware of any touring queer punk bands of that era didn’t drop by at some point, even if just to change outfits or use the bathroom before the show since we were only a half block from Epicenter.

When I saw that his movie was finally finished I knew that it was the one thing I couldn’t miss in this year’s film festival, even if it was just to see what an old friend had done over the last 5 years. “Maggots…” is the re-telling of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921. The last hope of the real Russian Revolution, sailors at the Kronstadt naval base made 15 demands to the revolutionary Bolshevik government, which might have altered history and prevent the Soviet Union from becoming the tyrannical, farce of a revolution that it became. After a few minor victories, the sailors -- many of whom had fired on the Winter Palace during the 1917 revolution -- were killed, jailed, or forced to flee over ice to Finland. (Kronstadt, like the Spanish Revolution of 1936, has always been an anarchist talking point.)

“Maggots…” certainly owes a debt to Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin”. While I don’t know if anyone has every been a better visual filmmaker than Eisenstein, “Maggots..” is a beautiful, beautiful film. And brilliantly scored.

Cary also made the incredibly smart decision to make the film narrated by a rebel sailor in Russian, with English subtitles.* In this way, the film could be made with its mostly transgender/gender queer cast of friends and not have the varying levels of acting ability affect the final product. ** I was overjoyed to see lots of people I knew on the big screen of the Castro, (including House of Failure housemates) but this film rose above the art-of-friends category and is seriously a film I would recommend to anyone. It’s gripping, assumption-challenging, and, in the end, tearfully sad. Of course, the place to see it is at a film festival because it’s only a 50 minute movie and it deserves to be seen on the big screen. Watch for it! Request it from your local festivals!

While the movie does not have much humor, the funniest part of the screening was when asked a question about the maggots filmed in the movie, Cary told how they had to grow them for the film a number of times. He said that his relationship to them really changed after all that. After all, they’re really only “going through their own transition”.

The film doesn’t over-polemicize. With its mostly trans cast, it draws out questions between revolutionary moments in history and a time when gender can be revolutionary transformed, but doesn’t try and make them direct parallels. It’s a beautiful look at the potential of revolutionary moments to be beautiful, perhaps even challenging folks to appreciate that beauty before stronger social forces can organize to take back control. It's also a love letter to rebels who have the courage to take up these fights.

*There is an agitprop retelling of the history of Kronstadt by a theater troupe in English as well
**An example of this is the Bratt Brothers’ early film “Follow Me Home”. It’s a masterpiece in some ways, painful to watch in others. The Rainbow Grocery joke was hilarious though.

Big cheese announcement!

2009-06-25T13:49:51Z

Hey folks, as of now I am posting all my cheese content over to my personal website Gordonzola dot net. I am posting cheese stuff there more or less regularly. If you are an LJer, and you really want to keep reading me on LJ, someone has already made a feed: gordon_edgar.

Sorry for the change of venue. See you there!

Report from work

2009-06-21T02:48:44Z

They're filming a movie on 13th St. outside the store. They seem to be blocking our parking lot. It is very slow here.

Rainbow in the news again

2009-06-18T17:38:31Z

Now Channel 5 thinks our coupons are newsworthy!

Best part is our Rainbow person plugging my book while talking about the cheese department.

Otherwise there are some factual inaccuracies (we started the coupons originally because we were trying to make the weekends less crowded, not because we were having hard times), and it would have been nice to hear the word "cooperative". But you can't get mad at free publicity.

The return of Pinky the clown

2009-06-15T22:05:34Z

Long time readers may remember my ex-co-worker/clown stripper entry from a few years back.* Well, Pinky showed up the other day at the store. She was all hunched, tweaky, and sniffly and was trying to quietly pass by the cheese section and into the backstock area. She had a bag, but I couldn’t tell if she had any products in it. I yelled out to her to stop as she shuffle-sneaked past.

“Don’t you remember me? I used to work here.” Pinky said. “I just need to use the bathroom.”

“Oh, I remember you. But you can’t go up there. You don’t work here anymore.”

She had every intention of just blowing past me, but four or five other workers -- who had just finished dinner – were blocking the stairs. Actually, she was blocking them too. Impasse. One of them, who just happens to look really, really tough, said, “This is workers only.”

Pinky saw that she wasn’t going to get past and that she was all of a sudden drawing a lot of attention. She also, between me, the workers on the stairs, and the people doing produce prep, was outnumbered 10 to 1.

“Whatever, Show-off!” she yelled non-sensically as she huffed away.

Luckily on of the produce workers followed her and saw her trying to get into our other backstock area across the store. This made her excuse even less believable since – as an ex-worker -- she knows there is no bathroom on that side of the store. She left then, before we had to officially kick her out.

Sigh. Another day at an urban grocery store…

*It's a very good story for context. I recommend this link.

Gordonzola.net housekeeping

2009-06-15T20:17:09Z

If any of you folks are using my gordon at gordonzola dot net email, you should go back to an old one or this username at LJ. That email no longer works and I'm not sure if/when it will again.

I do still own the domain which (except for links) I have updated. If you want to mutual link, (especially if you write about cheese/food/farming/ag issues) let me know in the comments.

I haven't decided exactly how to handle it, but I wanted a non-LJ web presence for when my book comes out. Right now I am duplicating my cheese entries here and there. I like it here better, but gordonzola.net is let confusing for the non-LJ literate. Go make some comments over there if you want. It's lonely.

Here's the link: gordonzola.net. Feel free to spread that link around the internet. It even has an rss feed if you use a different aggregate page than LJ.

Thanks!

Rainbow in the Chron

2009-06-13T18:44:57Z

Ha! Awesome and big front page article on our crazy coupon days. Coupon days will be even more insane now. For non-coupon shoppers, I can wholeheartedly recommend Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays for calm, peaceful shopping. It’s like going back in time a decade on those days cuz everyone is coming Wednesdays and Thursdays.

This is my favorite picture. Both Stagey and I independently thought of those old Mervyn’s ads.

“Open… open… open…”

Next year will be different so enjoy the insanity until October when the coupons end. Hey, since I’m doing an ad anyway, we’re having a customer appreciation day today. 3-6 there will be giveaways, Rainbow bands, and other stuff. It’s at the 13th St. entrance (My total pet peeve is my co-workers who insist on calling it “Division”. Especially on the website. Grrrrrr.)

And don’t forget: closed on Pride, open on July 4.

Neko Case sets the tone

2009-06-11T16:52:51Z

We had a big cheese contingent at the Neko Case show last night. Neko was amazing. I actually left liking her music more than I did when I went in, and I liked it plenty upon arrival. It’s poignant, sad, hopeful, nostalgic, and filled with the detail of every day life, sometimes all in the same song.

When we all got to the BART/MUNI stop after the show I was struck by something. Maybe it was a reflective mood inspired by an hour and a half of Neko Case. While we once all lived in walking distance from Rainbow, now I was the only one left in San Francisco. This entry/article/rant has been said many times before, to be sure. But I felt the sadness for a moment. Our communities that once existed and the way they could have grown – and we could have grown old – together.

It didn’t help when the first song that came on this morning as I sat down to the computer was J Church’s “The Satanists Convene” which is a song about everything this city has lost. And of course we’ve lost Lance too. His songs occasionally made me cry when he was alive. While his songs were also part sappy/part serious, some certainly have become more poignant since his death.

Perhaps returning to the Warfield also contributed. I hadn’t been these since (I think) a 1992 Cramps Halloween show. Just to prove how old we are, I attended that show with friends whose youngest daughter was one-ish. These are wonderful people that I’ve been friends with since the ‘80s who fled the Bay Area for more affordable living in rural Pennsylvania, but returned last year. Earlier this week that daughter won a $10,000 scholarship for her singing from Beach Blanket Babylon. You can’t predict these things. And some of these things are good.

I suppose poignancy was the theme of the last 24 hours. I didn’t choose that theme. It just happened.

Early morning cheese thoughts

2009-06-10T13:16:23Z

Well, it’s 6 AM. I’m getting so used to getting up early every day (while subbing anarqueso’s receiving shifts for her vacation) that I’m waking up before my 6 AM alarm now. I don’t know what to think about that. Except that I’ve already made tea, washed dishes, and cut a dozen day-old bagels in half and stuck ‘em in the freezing.

Going to see Neko Case tonight with Stagey, Dairryiere and Dairryiere’s boyfriend (who I think had a nickname at one point, but I forgot it). I hope I can stay awake to a real adult bedtime.

Oh well, off to welcome the cheese to our store. Get on little Gouda. Welcome Winsome Washed-rinds. Bienvinidos both basic and bodacious Bries. Join us so-low-priced-that-you are-probably-driving-farmers-out-business-until-enough-cows-get-killed-to-lower-production Jack! Hop off those trucks and settle in to the walk-in!

Puffy

2009-05-28T16:27:03Z

After 15 years of cheese selling (my anniversary was May 18!), it’s not like I think I’ve seen it all, but I feel like I have a general handle on the questions I will get. Last weekend however, one threw me for a loop.

A guy walks up to me and says, “What’s your margin on cheese?”

“Are you asking as a customer or as a food professional?” I respond. Something about his manner is odd, not the least of which is that there’s no lead up to this question at all and he asks as if it were just as normal to ask this as “where’s the brie?” I ask this question mostly because I want to know if he understands the difference between margin and mark-up,* and also because I want to try and figure out where he’s coming from.

“Food professional.”

“I’ll answer your question, but I find it strange – if you are in the food business – that you can’t tell by looking at the prices. There are not a lot of secrets in the food world. We pretty much all know what each other pay for things. Where do you work?”

“I work at a company that sells products online.”

“Ok, so you want me to tell you how we do our pricing but you won’t tell me where you work or why you are asking. I mean, I’m standing here at my workplace so you know where I’m coming from but you won’t give me any information about yourself and you expect me to tell you what are generally considered trade secrets. Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd?”

“I didn’t mean it that way. I work on the computer systems.”

“Ok, for what company?”

“…” Clearly this is a secret for some reason.

“Ok, here’s the deal, our cheese margins are between 35-50% which is low for the industry. What our margin is depends on how much labor goes into a cheese. Does that answer your question?”

“(Looking at a two-year aged gouda) I just find it strange that you can sell cheese for $15/lb. Why don’t people just buy it at Costco?”**

It’s certainly not limited to selling cheese, but this is how people get themselves into trouble. If he had identified himself as a customer I would have been much friendlier, answering the question after I generally explained the issues behind cheese pricing: high labor to sales ratio, higher cost of refrigeration that regular grocery, need to cover shrink, etc. as well as the fact that pricing also reflects that people can ask questions to workers who get paid a living wage (with benefits) and therefore tend to have more knowledge and experience than people at other stores.

By puffing himself up, he unknowingly violated the unwritten rule of the food trade which is that the first thing you do when asking questions to someone else in the food trade is identify yourself. He thereby put himself in the category of people like the sales rep who once called me up pretending to be a customer asking me about Cheese X*** and saying that we really needed to carry it and that he and all his friends would buy it etc. Liars and time-wasters are the most reviled people in the business. That doesn’t seem like an unusual concept.

*Margin is the percent you make after subtracting the wholesale price of a product. It is related to – but different from – the mark up. For example, if we pay $1 for something and our mark up is 50% we charge $1.50. Since .50 is the amount we net, 33% is the margin because .50 is 33% of $1.50.

**It’s not that this is not a valid question. It’s simply that a cheese professional would know the answer to this. This is food retail 101.

**Since they dealt with him quickly and appropriately, I will not ID the company.