With its comic-book set and toy-piano background music, Auctioning the Ainsleys, the new production at TheatreWorks, creates a mood of absurdist unreality before the first words come out of the first character’s mouth. The fast-paced comic drama by Laura Schellhardt (directed by Meredith McDonough) opens with second-generation auctioneer Avery Ainsley (Heidi Kettenring) selling the last possessions of her domineering mentor father—a Stetson hat, a man’s coat and a pair of size-10 shoes.
Search results for - page 343
One of the best places to experience birria is east San Jose’s aptly named La Birrieria, even harder to pronounce than the restaurant’s namesake dish. La Birrieria is 100 percent Mexican. The tidy, family-run restaurant is located next to a liquor store off South White Road and can be easy to miss. Inside, the wood-paneled walls, handwritten signs and family photos give the place a welcoming, friendly appeal. But most appealing of all is the birria.
Dave Douglas and Joshua Redman will perform at this year’s Stanford Jazz Festival, which features tributes to the music of Ella Fitzgerald, Dave Brubeck and Django Reinhardt, as well as a performance from blues legend Mose Allison.
The 1930s had their glitzy side, which Foothill Music Theatre has recaptured with its lavish production of Cole Porter’s 1934 musical Anything Goes. Complete with a 45-member cast and a live band, and in the capable hands of award-winning director Jay Manley, the show displays that era’s more glamorous aspects:
PakistaniI food is not as common as Indian food in the Bay Area, but here’s a tip on how to spot the few restaurants out there: Look for the letter “N.” For some reason, Pakistani restaurateurs have settled on a naming convention that leans heavily on the 14th letter in the alphabet. There’s the excellent Kabob N Curry’s in Santa Clara. Milpitas has Naan N Masala. Up in Berkeley, one can find the cheap and delicious Naan N Curry. My new favorite is another Milpitas “N” restaurant: Tandoori N Curry.
What’s $650 worth these days? Four vacation days eating and drinking wine in the Santa Cruz Mountains? Promoters of the region’s local wineries hope so. The Aptos Chamber of Commerce is partnering with the Santa Cruz Mountains Winegrowers Association and Santa Cruz Travel in hopes of attracting 50 wine lovers willing to plunk down for people the “Santa Cruz Mountains Wine Trail to the Sea” tour package Sept. 7–10.
Belle Yang’s ‘Forget Sorrow’ (W.W. Norton; $23.95) exemplifies the graphic novel’s strengths as a strategy for telling family history. The local author and illustrator, who once studied at UC–Santa Cruz, has published books for both adults and children; this is her first graphic novel.
The spicy soup of Spam, hot dogs, American cheese, cheap ramen noodles and kimchi is known as Johnson Tang and, more literally, ‘army base stew.’ In spite of Santa Clara’s vibrant Korean restaurant scene, the dish is not widely available here, but I found a hulking bowl of the stuff ($12.99) at Jang Su Jang.
William Trost Richards’ best paintings, on display at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, depict depopulated seascapes with horizon lines that seem to stretch to a humbling infinity beyond the edges of the picture plane.
Instead of jumping on the issue as Councilmember Pierluigi Oliverio suggested in March—looking to other cities’ medi-pot regulations for guidelines and nipping the issue in the bud (so to speak), San Jose has taken months to draw up a medical marijuana ordinance from the ground up.
