SPIRIT OF THE PENINSULA APRIL 25 En Garde Sword Play Loretta’s Lounge Stirring Things Up Coastside Quilting Patchwork Passion Joan Baez & Earl Scruggs Make Musical History Fresh Ideas for Exploring the Wine Country PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM sprung
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16 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} Peninsula Culture 31 Great News 36 Perfect Shot 38 Diary of a Dog: Buster {due west} Travel & Wellness 41 Beyond the Tasting Rooms 50 Sword Play IN EVERY ISSUE 20 Editor’s Note 22 Sloane Citron 25 QuickPUNCH PHOTOGRAPHY: PAULETTE PHLIPOT / COURTESY OF: CHRISTOPHER STARK / MONTAGE HEALDSBURG / JIM GRIFFIN {food coloring} Eats, Drinks & Scoops 59 Mediterranean Vibes 64 Evening Star 70 The Beat on Your Eats {home & design} Style and Substance 73 Building Longevity 78 Patchwork Passion {punchout} Features 114 Jamming with Joan Baez {landmark} 122 Woodside Community Museum {april 2025} contents 73 41 59 114
18 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM “Everything has been figured out, except how to live.” —JEAN-PAUL SARTRE FOUNDER/PUBLISHER Sloane Citron EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Andrea Gemmet CREATIVE DIRECTOR Britt Johnston SENIOR EDITOR Johanna Harlow CONTRIBUTING EDITOR Sheri Baer COPY EDITOR Carrie Lightner PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTORS Annie Barnett Paulette Phlipot PHOTOGRAPHERS Gino De Grandis Robb Most Irene Searles Robert David Siegel WRI TERS Lotus Abrams Jennifer Jory Loureen Murphy Elaine Wu EDITORIAL INTERN Margaret Koenig ASSOCIATE PUBLISHERS Sally Randall Georgina Fox SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE David Fenton CREATIVE SERVICES DIRECTOR Airiel Mulvaney ADVERTISING COORDINATOR Alexa Randall PUNCH is an idea about how to live a life that is more engaging and authentic, from personal adventures, growth and what we feed our bodies and souls to the culture that fulfills us and the traditions and new discoveries offered by the Peninsula. It is about appreciating and exploring the richness of where we live and how that understanding can enhance our lives and make them more fulfilling and happy. FOLLOW PUNCH: @punchmonthly PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM FOR EVERYTHING PUNCH, COMPLETE CALENDAR, INSIDE SCOOPS & MORE: punchmagazine.com PUNCH MAGAZINE ADVERTISING Please call 650.383.3636 or email hello@punchmonthly.com PUBLISHED 1047 El Camino Real, Suite 202 Menlo Park, CA 94025 ©2025 by 36 Media, LLC Members Sloane Citron, David Arfin hello@punchmonthly.com punchmagazine.com PUNCH® is a registered trademark of 36 Media, LLC
AlysGraceMP alysgracebayarea A L Y S G R A C E . C O M MENLO PARK 899B SANTA CRUZ AVE SAN FRANCISCO 3490 SACRAMENTO ST LOS ALTOS 208 MAIN ST SAN RAMON 6000 BOLLINGER CANYON RD ALEXA LEIGH AMO DENIM APIECE APART APOTHEKE ASKKNY ATM AUTUMN CASHMERE B. BELTS CHAN LUU CIRCOLO 1901 CLARE V. COLLABORATION COSABELLA COTES OF LONDON FRAME FRANK & EILEEN G1 HARRIS WHARF LONDON ILLESTEVA JAO BRAND KAI FRAGRANCE KUTJEN LOEFFLER RANDALL MANSUR GAVRIEL MICHAEL STARS MOTHER MOUSSY NEST FRAGRANCES NEVER A WALLFLOWER NILI LOTAN ONCEPT ONE GREY DAY REPEAT CASHMERE RIDDLE OIL ROYAL NOMAD SAINT ART SAVE THE DUCK SEA NEW YORK THE GREAT TROVATA ULLA JOHNSON URBAN APOTHECARY VALSPORT VELVET WHITE + WARREN XIRENA
20 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM If you’ve been around long enough to remember the Summer of Love, we’ve got a couple of fun flashbacks in our April issue. Award-winning documentary filmmaker David Hoffman takes us behind the scenes on the day he drove up into the Peninsula hills to record a poignant jam session with Woodside’s iconic singer-activist Joan Baez and visiting bluegrass star Earl Scruggs and his two talented sons. (Page 114) And we head down the road to Menlo Park to get the lowdown on Loretta, an elegant new downtown cocktail bar with a surprising connection to the Grateful Dead. (Page 64) Looking for a new way to get the most out of a trip to wine country? Find a host of immersive experiences that go beyond the tasting room, from punching down grapes at the annual crush to savoring a winery’s farm-totable feast with expertly matched wine pairings. (Page 41) In this month’s pages, you’ll also find a sword-wielding Ukrainian couple who share their love of fencing in Los Altos. (Page 50) We peek inside a pair of Stanford professors’ 1920s Tudor-style house that’s been lovingly remodeled to maximize its timeless charms (Page 73) and the owners of two popular Indian restaurants—Saffron and Rasa— explain why they chose to make Amara, their newest eatery, an homage to everything they love about Mediterranean cuisine. (Page 59) With so much in store, here’s hoping that you’ll make this an April to remember! Andrea Gemmet andrea@punchmonthly.com {editor’s note} something deep inside of me. After that ninth-grade revelation, I never seriously considered pursuing a different career. Even if I hadn’t accidentally found my calling as a result of switching Spanish classes, I still wouldn’t have regretted that decision. I adored my excellent second Spanish teacher, a nononsense polyglot with a handlebar mustache and a mischievous twinkle in his eye. Señor Macias even helped me learn some Italian before I spent a summer as an exchange student and kindly bestowed upon me his battered old Italian grammar book, which I’ve kept to this day. That’s not to say that I don’t sometimes wonder what my life would be like if some other seemingly unimportant decision had sent me pivoting in a different direction. Being in the business of telling other people’s stories, I often find myself thinking about those serendipitous moments that change a life’s trajectory, revealing a path that we otherwise might have missed. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since sitting down to interview Linda Hubbard for a story in this month’s magazine. One of the first things I did when setting up my PUNCH email account was sign up for daily emails from InMenlo, the community news site Linda’s been running for 15 years. It’s one of a number of local news resources I rely on to stay up-todate on all things Peninsula. Like me, Linda discovered a love of journalism when in high school, and while her career took a different trajectory, it’s safe to say that we share a deep love for the people and places that make this little slice of the Peninsula so special. Find out more about Linda and the (almost) all-volunteer operation that keeps InMenlo humming along. (Page 31) I owe my journalism career to my first high school Spanish teacher. Frustrated by his lax attitude and despairing of learning the language, my friend Leslie and I decided to drop out and start over the next year with the other Spanish teacher. With a gap to fill in our schedules, we transferred into one of the only classes willing to take us mid-year. Despite my inauspicious entry into the journalism class, I quickly found my place on the school newspaper and became hooked. Something about the constraints of constant deadlines, the freedom to ask questions and the satisfaction (and potential peril) of sharing ideas with a larger group of people sparked
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22 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {sloane citron} that I don’t really need? It’s like when I get an emergency text message from one of my kids and the emergency is that they need me to babysit that evening because there’s a PTA meeting and these days, it is imperative that both parents attend so that you can show the teachers how much you care— so much that one parent can’t possibly communicate the PTA message to the other parent. Maybe to them that is an emergency, but of course, it’s not an emergency at all. I’d rather they save those bold statements for when one of their crazy sons attempts to jump across a rock pond, misses and breaks two teeth. Then someone needs to watch their other kids while they both go to the emergency room. Now that’s an emergency I can get behind. Ideally, if I got a real emergency call from my daughter, right about then I’d get a dubious call from my dentist labeled “HEALTH CARE.” I could answer the phone and simply say, “Please hold while I connect you” in my most officialsounding voice, press ADD CALL and then merge the two of them. Then, before hanging up, I’d tell the dentist woman that I’m giving up my cleaning appointment and gifting it to my grandson with the broken teeth. In those cases, I’m happy for them to use the “HEALTH CARE” moniker when they call. But, otherwise, my nagging prefrontal cortex, where stuff like this gets digested, concludes that I don’t think my dentist should be using the “HEALTH CARE” label since I don’t want to think that it’s Stanford telling me that my heart needs critical attention when it’s simply my dentist trying to get me to come in for a deep clean. After all, I’m trying to keep my lying under control. Iwas in PUNCH’s conference room when my phone—located somewhere on my desk—started ringing. I got up to see who was calling so that I could decide if it was answer-worthy. “HEALTH CARE” appeared on my screen in bold capital letters, making itself seem important, perhaps even urgent. When Stanford Medicine is calling to schedule, say, a CAT scan for one of my breaking parts or to tell me my doctor has an opening right away, “HEALTH CARE,” is what comes up on my phone. I’m not sure why Stanford does this; either they want to block their number or they want to grab my attention so that I won’t think it’s spam. I make a quick attempt to answer the call before it goes to voicemail. It might be important, and if I miss it, I’m forced to make the tedious effort to get back in touch with said medical people. So, as my screen flashes “HEALTH CARE,” I slide that little button over to answer. “Hello, is this Sloane?” an anonymous voice asks. And in a merry, upbeat voice she says, “It’s time for your teeth cleaning and I wanted to see if I could put you down on the schedule.” I mumbled something about not having my calendar in front of me and that I would call back, which was a lie. I was not planning to call back at all. I don’t mind a cleaning, but I have good teeth. It’s one of my better traits: no cavities ever and no braces. Though, because I used to clench my teeth in my younger, stress-infused days, I somewhat destroyed my back molars and now have three implants. But besides all that, I have good teeth. When I go for my cleaning, they always say the same thing: “You have great teeth and wow, it’s amazing that you don’t produce much plaque at all.” Because of this repetitive statement, I decided that I don’t really need to go twice a year—once a year is fine. But, instead of explaining this to the woman making the calls that morning, I just lie instead. I could have been honest with her, but sometimes I find myself lying for no real reason at all. It just happens. In this case, the lie at least served a purpose of sorts. Later that night, I started thinking about this dentist’s use of “HEALTH CARE” on my phone screen and I decided I didn’t like it. No sir. No ma’am. Just didn’t sit right with me, like an email that tells you that the IRS wants to discuss something and you open it to find a bunch of malarkey about you not paying your taxes for the past five years and that you’d best call back immediately so that you don’t go straight to prison. Certainly, dentistry is part of our health system, but was it okay, I asked myself, to use the “HEALTH CARE” message to get me to answer the phone so that they could convince me that it was time for a teeth-cleaning health care
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PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 25 APRIL 2025 + 30 DAYS + SPRINGING + OUR 81ST ISSUE {quickpunch} Start Up + Will Tiger play in the historic 89th Masters Tournament starting April 7? + Pass the gefilte fish and a bit of crunchy matzah with a rousing Seder on April 12. + Get your scattered numbers in order as the taxman cometh on April 15. + Dye the eggs, unwrap the chocolate bunnies and head to church: Easter is April 20. Venture Out + TAKE OFF down the San Carlos Airport runway for Hiller Aviation Museum’s Airport Runway Run on April 13. Participants get free museum admission. + TUNE IN at Palo Alto Players’ performance of Jersey Boys, the story of four blue-collar kids making pop music history. Opens on April 18. + TRACK DOWN treat-filled eggs at Los Altos’ Spring Egg Hunt on April 19, and stay for music, carnival games and craft activities. There’s no certainty about the origin of the name April, other than the Latin word Aprilis, related to the verb aperire, meaning “to open.” You can see the connection, if you think of this month as the time when flowers and leaves unfurl from their winter slumber and open up. April is when the weather and nature are clearly heading in the direction of summer. It’s one of the best months of the year, with resurgent life in all of its beautiful aspects on full display, from the wildflowers that show up so unexpectedly to the trees that again find their color. It’s the perfect time to hike the splendid hills of the Peninsula and rediscover your inner sense of awe. “April hath put a spirit of youth in everything.” — WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE welcome back
26 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {quickpunch} Dash to Dine + LA BODEGUITA DEL MEDIO—Friendly, trendy spot with delicious Cuban fare and a tropical atmosphere—463 California Avenue, Palo Alto + THE BARREL BISTRO AND WINE BAR—Fun, lively vibe with excellent food. Exceptional wine selection—246 South B Street, San Mateo + CALLAO RESTAURANT—Authentic Peruvian food with a twist. Cute spot with wonderful service— 376 First Street, Los Altos Carpe Diem + WANDER amidst wildflowers at Edgewood Park & Natural Preserve with a free, docentled hike that spans three miles over three hours. Wildflower Hikes will be offered in April and May, before flowers like the checker lily, hound’s tongue, blue witch and warrior’s plume retreat from the summer heat. Sign up at friendsofedgewood.eventbrite.com. + DELVE into the Peninsula’s rich history with a visit to the Half Moon Bay Coastside History Jail Museum. There, attend free speaker events on local history topics and inspect artifacts and exhibits from California’s past, from the indigenous Ohlone to the construction of the state’s first railroads. Then, stop by the old jail for a behind-bars photo op—or as the museum puts it, “cell-fies.” Isola by Allegra Goodman—Gripping story based on accounts of a French noblewoman marooned on a tiny island in the 1500s. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman—In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly to investigate unsolved murders. National Geographic—You read it as a kid and there’s still so much left to discover. nationalgeographic.com WHO KNEW? Rob Minkoff grew up in Palo Alto and at age 15, while babysitting, opened the book The Art of Walt Disney and discovered the world of professional animation. After Palo Alto High, he studied character animation and met the legendary Chuck Jones, who guided him into the Disney Studios where he led animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Rob’s career skyrocketed after this, and he became a leader in the world of movie animation. Well Read Unscramble NA S AIRFNCOSIQUT CK E R E Finally, some half-baked advice: The best place to hide a body is the second page of Google search results.
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28 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {quickpunch} Where do you sing? I’m a cantor at St. Raymond Catholic Church in Menlo Park and perform with two Bay Area choral ensembles: Peninsula Cantare and the San Francisco Bach Choir. Did you attend the Grammy Awards? For “Best Choral Performance” nominees, the artistic director and the composer attend. While I was watching from home, my phone was blowing up with texts and pictures from my fellow ensemble members and folks at the ceremony sharing pictures and memories of our performance. How do you approach singing solo versus as part of a chorus? You really have to change the way you listen. In an ensemble, you have to make sure that you blend with the singers around you and move as one unit. When you sing as a soloist, you alone are vocally responsible for the emotion and direction of the piece. What do you collect? Vintage sheet music. I treasure the arrangements I have of pop music from the 1940s made famous by Doris Day. Tell us about your first time at Carnegie Hall. It was with The Oratorio Society of New York for the world premiere of Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road. The performance made me feel like I had finally arrived as a New Yorker and my “commute” from my apartment was a short subway ride to one of the grandest concert halls in the world. It all felt very fabulous and surreal. THE Q & A CHARLOTTE REED Is there a piece of music you could listen to again and again? The second movement of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. The first time I heard the French horn solo, I was on a plane and was so moved that I started sobbing. Can you share a childhood musical memory? When I was a little girl, I sang “Edelweiss” from The Sound of Music in front of a live audience for the first time at the local library talent show in my hometown of Darien, Connecticut. What’s the dumbest way you’ve been hurt? I was playing a pick-up soccer game in middle school, barefoot, against someone wearing Doc Marten steel-toe boots. Guess who ended up breaking their toe? What’s your favorite venue for performing? Madison Square Garden. I performed there several times with Andrea Bocelli during his North America tours and the energy of 20,000 people reacting to your music at once is electrifying! What age would you choose to be again? I would be six years old because I loved kindergarten and have so many happy memories. My favorite was going to The Plaza hotel in New York City for tea for my sixth birthday, like Eloise from the Kay Thompson books. What are you looking forward to this summer? I’m singing the National Anthem at games for a couple of Bay Area professional sports teams. I’ll have more info on my website, thecharlottereed.com. The Grammy-nominated ensemble singer from Menlo Park sounds off about her first time at Carnegie Hall, why she doesn’t play soccer with bare feet and the song that made her cry on a plane.
Gain a powerful Real Estate Partner with Pacific Trust Pacific Trust Real Estate is a real estate broker licensed by the State of California and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. License Number 02014153. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only and is compiled from sources deemed reliable but has not been verified. Changes in price, condition, sale or withdrawal may be made without notice. No statement is made as to accuracy of any description. All measurements and square footage are approximate. We’ve got this. In real estate, relationships are as important as market knowledge and expertise. When you’re ready to make a move, rely on our insights as well as our strong reputation, broker and community ties. When it comes to local real estate, we’ve seen and covered it all... Nick Granoski | 650-269-8556 nick@pactrustrealestate.com DRE 00994196 David Weil | 650-823-3855 david@pactrustrealestate.com DRE 01400271
FOR HOME . . . FOR HER . . . FOR LESS
PROFILE great news words by ANDREA GEMMET • photography by IRENE SEARLES PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 31 {punchline} PENINSULA CULTURE
32 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM neighbor giving you the scoop on all those little things that make your hometown unique. Which house has the best Halloween decorations? Is there a good event to take the kids to this weekend? And did you hear about the married couple who are both 100 years old? InMenlo is here for you. Daily emails from InMenlo tend to have a handful of short items. Sit down with Linda Hubbard, and you’ll be struck by how quickly it feels like you’re talking to an old friend. Her friendly tone infuses InMenlo, the hyper-local community news blog she’s been running since 2010. Covering the Midpeninsula communities of Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley and Woodside, it’s the online equivalent of a chatty, well-informed COPYRIGHT © 2024 {punchline} The tone is light—you won’t find stories about politics or crime— but the website’s origin story is a little less rosy. InMenlo started as a passion project born of necessity. Though she’s a longtime journalist, Linda wasn’t the founder of InMenlo, which launched in 2009. That honor goes to Linda’s late husband Chris Gulker. After a terminal brain cancer diagnosis derailed his high-profile career in photojournalism and tech, Chris wanted to do something that accommodated his newly limited mobility. He launched the platform with his good friend Scott Loftesness. Linda’s involvement was modest at first—she still had a day job—but after Chris died
PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 33 readers. “Our biggest post ever was when Steph Curry was going to be at Safeway,” she says of the Golden State Warriors star’s 2024 promotional appearance in Menlo Park. “That got 11,000 views.” Linda keeps up the website and sends out daily email digests with only one paid staffer—the IT guy. Everything else is the work of her small team of volunteer contributors and of Linda herself. As many a media organization has discovered, keeping a crew of unpaid “citizen journalists” engaged and productive is no mean feat. Neither is replenishing their ranks when they drift away. “People raise their hands, and that leads to more people,” she says simply, adding that she doesn’t think she’s had a volunteer yet who didn’t have a connection to some other InMenlo contributor. Anyone who subscribes to InMenlo’s emails might wonder if Linda ever takes a day off. The in 2010, she made the decision to keep InMenlo going. “I could make my way around Menlo Park and be a journalist, not a widow,” she says of that first difficult year. “It was something I could do, and something that I liked doing.” While Chris created what’s widely considered to be one of the very first blogs (gulker.com), Linda’s journalism career was more traditional: writing and editing for newspapers and magazines, then transitioning to marketing. Among the suite of skills Linda’s picked up over the years, her ability to connect with people just might be the glue that holds InMenlo together. As an avid walker and restaurant patron, she’s always out and about, talking to people. “I get a decent amount of tips,” Linda says. Mostly, they come from InMenlo answer is: not really. “The good news about InMenlo is that none of my posts are lengthy,” she says modestly. On a recent day, Linda had two interviews that still needed to be written up, and plenty of other newsy items in the works. The time demand varies, but her commitment to posting items seven days a week does not. Even on vacation, she says she can always carve out a few hours to work on it. Linda’s love of the news business dates back to MenloAtherton High School. She learned from a “terrific journalism teacher” and worked on the yearbook staff, then continued taking journalism classes while majoring in history at UCLA. One of her professors got Linda a job interview at the LA Times with “a fabulous crusty old editor” who hired her on the spot for an entry level job on the newsroom’s copy desk. “I guess he thought I could “My favorite story about Linda is when she was on vacation in New Zealand and there was an earthquake that blocked the road to exit the town. After a few days, they got out by boat. This never stopped her from posting InMenlo stories every day she was there.” — ROBB MOST, PHOTOGRAPHER AND INMENLO CONTRIBUTOR PHOTOGRAPHY: ROBB MOST ABOVE: Robb Most and Linda Hubbard tour the world’s largest camera at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in 2022 for an InMenlo story.
34 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} handle it,” Linda says. By assisting the reporters and witnessing their conversations with that old editor, she learned what it meant to be a journalist. “The cool thing about journalism is that I have met so many interesting people,” she says. After college, Linda stayed in Southern California, eventually leaving the LA Times for Modern Maturity (now called AARP The Magazine). When Chris got a job offer from San Francisco Examiner publisher Will Hearst in 1990, Linda says she jumped at the chance to move back to the Peninsula. “I was happy to be home.” The publisher of the Palo Alto-based Peninsula Times Tribune—a former boss and friend from the LA Times—offered Linda a job heading up the marketing many accomplishments, and equally warmly about her second husband, Dennis Nugent, and the life they’ve built together. Dennis is one of Linda’s many connections from her Menlo Park school days. The two shared mutual friends from elementary school and got to know each other while at Menlo-Atherton. After reconnecting decades later, they proudly display photos of their blended family in their cozy home. As for what’s next for InMenlo? More of the same, as far as Linda is concerned. She has no plans to retire from this labor of love. “InMenlo evolves along with the people who contribute to it,” Linda says, admitting that “It feels good to give something back to the community.” Especially a community that she clearly adores. department. It was her first foray into the business side of news, and led to roles with a string of small marketing companies after the struggling newspaper finally folded in 1993. When InMenlo turned 12 in 2021, the Menlo Park City Council took notice, issuing a proclamation declaring Linda a beloved local institution “as an ever-present and studious chronicler of the community.” It lauded her many roles, including editor, reporter and occasional photographer, and praised her “commitment to providing a reliable, impartial and detailed news source during a period when many communities have experienced the demise of local news sources.” InMenlo is studiously apolitical— not for lack of interest in local politics, Linda says, but because she doesn’t have the resources to cover it properly. Linda has a tendency to deflect attention from herself by talking warmly about her late husband’s neighborly news inmenlo.com “Linda has been a great supporter. I can always tell when she’s released a story about my bird or owl photography, because I start getting multiple hits on my website, inthewildwithrick.com.” — RICK MORRIS, WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER AND INMENLO CONTRIBUTOR ABOVE: Linda meets with restaurateur Jesse Cool at Flea Street Cafe in Menlo Park.
36 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} PERFECT SHOT reflections In early 2025, Joel Simon was wandering the Stanford University campus and pondering the year ahead when he stumbled across this pool of rainwater. It got the photography instructor thinking about seeing familiar scenes in unfamiliar ways. “With a simple change in your point of view, a rain puddle can ‘invert’ our typical perceptions,” muses Joel. “As you encounter reflections in your surroundings, consider their invitation to appreciate familiar facets of your lives, including family, friends and community, with a sense of discovery and renewal.” Image by Joel Simon / joelsimonimages.com
PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 37 Calling all shutterbugs: If you’ve captured a unique perspective of the Peninsula, we’d love to see your Perfect Shot. Email us at hello@punchmonthly.com to be considered for publication. calling all shutterbugs
38 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {punchline} calling all dogs If you’ve got quirky habits or a funny tale (or tail) to tell, email hello@punchmonthly.com for a chance to share a page from your Diary of a Dog in PUNCH. buster DIARY OF A DOG as told to MARGARET KOENIG • photography by ROBB MOST I’ m Buster, a terrier mix of many talents, including (but not limited to) snuggling, frolicking and delighting everyone I meet. With my scruffy good looks, outgoing nature and boundless energy, it’s hard not to fall prey to my charms. Three years ago, I bounded out of the Humane Society Silicon Valley shelter in Milpitas and into the lives of Hilary and Ed—and I haven’t looked back since. My love of cuddling delighted my new family, who happily let me squeeze between them on the sofa when they watch television. As for me, I enjoy their fondness for petting me (you know, you can never get too much of that). But you don’t get a name like Buster just by being affectionate—I have a frisky streak as well. We split our time between Palo Alto and Los Gatos, where I enjoy brisk walks with Ed, playing ‘keep away’ with Hilary and chasing squirrels in the backyard. I haven’t captured any squirrels yet, but I have mastered the art of pilfering biscuits. If I’m presented with a dog treat, I’ll snatch it and dash away so easily that I sometimes suspect people are letting me have them. But be careful, because I won’t just steal your dog biscuits or your spot on the sofa—I’ll also steal your heart.
PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 39
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PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 41 WINE COUNTRY beyond the tasting rooms {due west} words by LOTUS ABRAMS TRAVEL & WELLNESS PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: BELLA UNION WINERY
42 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: JORDAN WINERY / BELLA UNION bounty and roots of the region. Go beyond the tasting room with these immersive wine country experiences. DISCOVER THE PERFECT PAIRING In recent years, many Napa and Sonoma wineries have elevated their tastings by introducing culinary experiences that highlight how wine and food can be enjoyed together. At St. Helena’s stunning new Bella Union Winery, which opened last year, the Jewel Box Tasting pairs the label’s limited-production cabernets and cabernet blends with seasonal dishes in a glass-walled room showcasing sweeping views of Napa Valley. Offerings at nearby Clif Family Winery feature ingredients from the 100-acre Clif Family organic farm, including the Pasta e Vino lunch, paired with the winery’s full- {due west} It’s not even 11AM yet, and I’m already elbows-deep in wine—or what will become wine after the fermentation process is complete. It’s all part of the experience at Harvest Crush Camp at the Wine Foundry, a custom winemaking facility in Napa, where I’m learning how to “punch down” the skins of red wine grapes in their juice using a heavy metal tool to aid fermentation. Before this trip, I knew little about the grape-to-bottle transformation that my favorite wines undergo, despite my many visits to wine country over the years. Offered annually during harvest season, this hands-on bootcamp gives aspiring winemakers as well as neophytes like me the chance to participate in the process. In Napa and Sonoma, opportunities abound for visitors to gain a deeper understanding of—and appreciation for—the beauty,
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44 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {due west} PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: JORDAN WINERY / CLIF FAMILY / DAVID WAKELEY years ago, and a visit to Buena Vista in Sonoma, California’s first premium winery founded in 1857, brings the past to life. Sample wine directly from the barrel in the historic caves during the winery’s barrel tasting and tour experience while listening to tales of the winery’s colorful founder, the self-proclaimed “Count of Buena Vista” Agoston Haraszthy, who emigrated from Hungary in 1842. Explore more winemaking history at the free 1881 Napa Museum, located on the second floor of a beautifully restored Victorian house adjacent to Oakville Grocery. There you can peruse the exhibits under an enormous Baccarat crystal chandelier while sampling wines from the selfserve stations on the lower level. bodied Howell Mountain and Oak Knoll District reds, and a seasonal aperitivo-style pairing experience (a mocktail flight is also available). The lavish Estate Tour & Tasting at Jordan Winery in Healdsburg, offered May through October, includes a scenic tour of the 1,200-acre estate, alfresco library tastings of the winery’s Russian River Valley chardonnay, Alexander Valley cabernet sauvignon and Jordan Cuvée by Champagne AR Lenoble; an estate extra virgin olive oil tasting; and a hilltop lunch prepared using ingredients from the onsite culinary garden. Other standouts include the five-course, farm-totable pairing at KendallJackson in Santa Rosa; the seasonal tasting at Ram’s Gate in Sonoma; and Shifting the Lens, the guest chef series at J Vineyards & Winery in Healdsburg. For a unique alternative to more formal experiences, try the Comunità wine and Alpine food pairing at the unpretentious Overshine winery in Healdsburg. There, sample rare-tothe-region varietals from the northeastern Italian Alps served with regional cheees melted on a raclette grill and drizzled over Black Forest ham, tater tots and pickled vegetables. STEP BACK IN TIME Winemaking got its start in Napa and Sonoma more than 150
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46 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM GO BACK TO SCHOOL Want to learn more about how to make wine? In addition to Harvest Crush Camp, the Wine Foundry offers Vineyard Camp during harvest season, inviting participants to learn about grapegrowing onsite at a local vineyard. To learn more about blending, sign up at Raymond Vineyards in St. Helena or Meadowcroft Wines at Cornerstone Sonoma for a chance to blend, bottle and label your own wine to take home. Bouchaine in Napa also offers education-driven experiences. Sample wines aged in concrete eggs, large French oak casks, acacia barrels and clay amphorae to learn how the vessel affects aroma and flavor during the Vine to Vessel tasting or find out how fierce raptors help to protect the grapes during the harvest (and have a falcon photo op to boot!) with the Falconry in the Garden experience. HIT THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT Festival season extends from springtime through fall in Napa and Sonoma, unlocking access to some of the region’s best wine, food and entertainment—all in one place. Among the standouts are the Healdsburg Wine & Food Experience (May 15 to 18), encompassing celebrity chef-prepared winery luncheons, curated wine seminars, Guy Fieri’s legendary Big Bottle Party at The Matheson, the Vintner’s Plaza PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: JORDAN WINERY / MEADOWCROFT WINES / KENDALL JACKSON {due west}
Featuring Tiffany Austin and her Quartet with over 50 california wineries pouring also Larry Vuckovich Quintet featuring Grammy Award Winning Vocalist Jamie Davis opening with sundra manning organ quartet with marcus shelby, artistic director saturday, May 10 12-5pm get tickets www.hmbjazz.com HALF MOON BAY festival 2025 Main street, Half Moon Bay from napa valleyto paso robles join us at the VIP LOUNGE with exclusive wines, elevated appetizers served throughout the day.
48 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM drink it in visitnapavalley.com sonomavalley.com Grand Tasting featuring more than 150 wine and spirits makers plus culinary bites, and more. There’s also BottleRock Napa Valley, wine country’s largest music festival held every Memorial Day weekend, and Festival Napa Valley’s summer concert series (July 5 to 20), which includes the Taste of Napa, offering the chance to sample food and drink from more than 70 wineries and restaurants. SAVOR THE SCENERY To appreciate the beauty of the Napa and Sonoma landscape, sometimes it’s best to ditch the car. Ride the rails on one of the Napa Valley Wine Train’s many wine-and-dine experiences; explore Bartholomew Estate Vineyards and Winery on a guided horseback ride with Sonoma Valley Trail Rides; or hop on a bike to cruise a segment of the paved Napa Valley Vine Trail, which, once it’s complete, will stretch 47 miles from Vallejo to Calistoga. If you really want to change your perspective, take to the sky just after dawn on a hot air balloon ride offered by companies like Napa Valley Aloft and enjoy an unmatched opportunity to view the region’s undulating hills, valleys and vineyards from above. With so many new ways to play in wine country, your biggest dilemma may be how to squeeze it all into one visit—all the more reason to come back. IMMERSIVE OVERNIGHTS Guests at the Montage Healdsburg can enhance their stay with offerings like a honey tasting at the property’s own apiary; yoga or stargazing in the onsite vineyard; a farmers market bike ride; or a treatment at the spa, featuring new Skin Design London facials. Cycling trips with pro rider Pete Stetina, hands-on harvesting with Chef Duskie Estes, and the Ridgetop Olive & Vineyard Adventure (offered in the fall) ATV tour and tasting at Trattore Farms are among the experiences available at the chic Hotel Healdsburg. And the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Napa Valley can arrange hot air balloon rides, a visit to onsite Elusa Winery, a Calistoga mud treatment at the spa or even an outing in an exotic sports car for overnight guests. The new Knoll Hotel Napa Valley and midcentury gem the Flamingo Resort & Spa in Santa Rosa are two moderately priced, conveniently located alternatives. {due west} PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: NAPA VALLEY WINE TRAIN / MONTAGE HEALDSBURG
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50 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {due west} PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: MAXIMUM FENCING Épées and practice masks are neatly tucked away and waiting. Before joining the fray, fencers need to choose one of three disciplines: foil, épée or sabre. Maximum Fencing offers all three. “Most of the clubs offer one or two,” says Olga, explaining that here, in their downtown Los Altos location, students learn épée, while foil and sabre are taught over at their El Camino Real site. “Maybe one day we will have a separate something for sabre,” she adds hopefully. Unfamiliar with the three disciplines? Olga gives a quick rundown of their differences, starting with where fencers strike to score. “In épée, we have the whole body, even toes, feet, masks, gloves—everything,” she describes. “In foil, we have only the vest without shoulders. And in sabre, we have a target area of everything higher than the waist.” She adds, “Èpée is the easiest kind of fencing. It is the heaviest in weight and the longest in length.” It also doesn’t have “rightof-way” like the other two do, a rule stating that whoever initiates an attack gains priority in scoring. Olga once competed in épée, the sport she now teaches. “My father was a fencer. He was a pentathlon athlete,” Olga says of Do you remember watching your first cinematic sword fight? Maybe it was a duel between two nobles wielding gem-encrusted rapiers or pirates with rusted blades. After the film, you probably replayed those scenes in your head, maybe even imagined yourself holding the hilt. Good news: you don’t have to be in the movies to join the fight. “Until recently, fencing was a little niche, but recently fencing grew a lot,” says Olga Petrova of the sport’s popularity in the Bay Area. Olga runs Maximum Fencing in Los Altos with her husband, Maksym Petrov. In a few hours, the club will come alive with the clash of combat, shouts of “En garde!” and the squeak of sidestepping shoes across the floor. Flashes of silver swords. Lightning-quick thrusts and parries. But for now, the facility is quiet, the wall-mounted electronic scoring boxes switched off, their attached bodycords dangling. words by JOHANNA HARLOW FENCING sword play
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52 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {due west} her childhood in Ukraine. “From a young age, I saw my dad’s épée in the closet.” She started lessons at 12. “Pretty soon, I got to the National Cadet team and Juniors team. So I fenced in the European championships, world championships, got some world cup medals, a European championship medal,” she says without freedom in their choices. I try to teach them the basics in the beginning … And then they try to style and to progress in the way that works best for them.” She also peppers lessons with well-timed jokes and tales from her own experiences as a young fencer to keep the class engaged. Beyond their coaching responsibilities, Olga and Maksym divvy up tasks to keep their club thriving. While Olga organizes schedules, oversees the coaches and handles construction projects, Maksym develops the business and plans for upcoming competitions. “My husband travels a lot internationally because we have students who compete internationally. Our daughter, every two or three weeks, she goes to Europe,” Olga says, adding that their son also competes in regional and national competitions. “Fencers, they travel a lot.” There are plenty of opportuniPHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: MAXIMUM FENCING much ado. The competition circuit was also where she met her husband. A fierce competitor in his own right, Maksym holds 25 national titles and six Ukrainian National Championship victories. Maximum Fencing’s international roster of coaches mirrors the sport’s popularity in Eastern Europe. “We have a lot of coaches from Ukraine and one from Jordan,” shares Olga. She adds that on the Peninsula, “most of the club owners are Ukrainians, or somehow connected to the Soviet Union, because after the Soviet Union broke up in the 1990s, a lot of coaches immigrated here and opened clubs.” Olga herself earned her doctorate in sports from the National University of Physical Education and Sport in Ukraine, and later coached Division 1 athletes on Stanford University’s Varsity Fencing Team. As for Olga’s coaching style? “Very democratic, maybe even liberal,” she says. “I give kids a lot of
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54 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {due west} stand & fight maximumfencing.club PHOTOGRAPHY COURTESY OF: MAXIMUM FENCING lessons is in her 70s. “She’s in great shape!” Over her own lifetime, Olga’s appreciation for the artistry involved in this sport of swords has only deepened. “It’s art because you have to create—you have to create every touch … Also you trick your opponent. It’s like the art of theater, the art of tricking,” she reflects. “And it’s very important to be physically fit. So it’s also the art of making your body perfect for the sport.” For those ready to join this dance of steel, Maximum Fencing has a blade for you. ties for athletes to shine in a sport that spotlights speed, strength, strategy, flexibility and coordination. When steering students toward the discipline best for them, Olga looks at a few criteria. Often, it’s “tall to the épée, short to the foil, super-fast to the sabre,” she says. This lets students play to their strengths. Typically, “If you’re not very tall, but you’re short, your coordination is better. Tall people, they have advantage in the length of their arms and reaching their points first.” But then you’ve got to factor in the mind games. “Sometimes you can compensate for your physical abilities with your mental abilities,” Olga observes. “So if you’re not so fast, but you’re very smart, you can still beat an opponent who’s very fast.” A sharp-witted competitor, “sees you. He understands what you are going to do, he understands your actions,” she describes. “So you have to overthink, like in chess.” Recently, Maximum Fencing’s competitive students traveled with Maksym to level up their skills at a training camp in Poland. The camp drew athletes from as far as Great Britain, Italy, Finland, Ukraine and Cyprus—meaning they confronted vastly different styles on the fencing strip. “When you come back and compete nationally here, it’s pretty easy for you,” Olga notes. And it’s never too late to start. “Fencing, actually, it’s a lifetime sport,” says Olga. Unlike gymnastics or football, it doesn’t take a toll on your body. One of her students taking weekly private
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