By Rachel Levin, Sunset senior editor

Anyone read Amy Wolf’s post last week about the West’s best places to swim—and then, like me, immediately need to find the closest spot for a quick dunk? Amy and I are usually on the same wavelength (no pun intended), and this summer we’ve both been obsessed with pools and swimming. Could be the fact that the U.S. Olympic swim team is training for Beijing mere minutes from Sunset over at Stanford University’s state-of-the-art aquatic center. Or, could just be the warm summer weather and that carefree, invigorating feeling that only comes from a nice, cold (but not too cold) dip.

On a hot, sunny day, I’ll usually jump in anywhere: from swimming holes and lazy rivers to community pools and the chilly Pacific. When it comes to swimming laps, though, I concur with Amy that not just any pool will do. “There’s nothing worse than a pool too short for real swimming,” she wrote. 

Agreed. And so, I feel compelled to tack one more pool on to her well-curated list: the 130-foot-long pool at Solage Resort & Spa in Calistoga, California.
 

It’s geothermally heated to an oh-so-pleasant 82 degrees and surrounded by comfy chaise longues which—combined with canvas umbrellas, private cabanas, attentive wait service, and a healthy pool menu—make it easy to lounge around all day.

Huachuca

Which I did—diving into the pool every half-hour or so to swim as many marathon-length laps as I could, before dragging my body back to the chair, only to warm up again and jump back in.

The pool is open to resort guests only, unfortunately. But if you’re as obsessed with pools as I am these days, Solage’s starting room rate of $350 is well worth it.

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

Miracle fruit — how could anything live up to that name? Especially something that looks a little innocent cranberry. But, ah, miracle fruit's miracle will amaze you.

It's a West African plant with one very particular characteristic: After you eat it, everything tastes sweet. It's like the sour and bitter receptors on your tongue are switched off.

You can try it if you're in San Francisco on Monday, Aug. 4 at a evening tasting run by a group called Flavor Tripping.

Here's what they've got to say about it:

"It’s like a candy Willy Wonka would have invented — after eating one, stout beers taste like chocolate milkshakes, grapefruits taste like pixie sticks, cheeses taste like frosting, it will make even the crappiest tequila taste like lemonade (and strangely enough, it will make all wine taste like Manischewitz)."

Tickets are $20 — and you only get one berry. But one is enough for the effect to last all night, they say, as you taste your way through their buffet of "regular everyday food items".

It takes place at Temple, 540 Howard St., San Francisco. Click here for full details and to buy tickets.

Or, if you'd like to cultivate your own miracle fruit, which is grown as an indoor tropical by gardener-foodie hyphenates, get thee to the Logee's Greenhouses website to put your order in. They're way, way on backorder, but the sooner you order, the sooner you'll get one.

Thanks to Logee's for letting us use their photo.

By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

Especially if you live in the Bay Area, chances are you’re a bit of a snob when it comes to food and drink. Don’t feel bad—it’s not your fault; everything’s so darned expensive these days that it’s hard not to have really high standards.

But once in a blue, blue moon, it’s still possible to stumble upon a restaurant or bar that doesn’t seem hip to the fact that it could charge a fortune if it wanted to. And so it doesn’t.

That’s the case at the Presidio Yacht Club, a cozy old military-era bar in historic Fort Baker, smack on the north side of San Francisco Bay. This is the view from the window. I kid you not.

My husband, an avid fisherman, has been raving about this place for years. I finally let him take me there the other day, since we were staying nearby at the we’re-charging-a-fortune-because-we-can Lodge at Cavallo Point, San Francisco’s first national park lodge. (Which I must admit is so fabulous it is worth every cent of the $250-plus-plus splurge for a room.)

Maybe it was because we were starving, having just hiked the Coast Trail in the Marin Headlands with 30-pound kids on our backs, or maybe it was because we had zero expectations, but somehow this little yacht club joint—which charges $4–$5 for a beer on tap and $5 for a very plain-jane hot dog or grilled cheese or veggie burger—quickly earned a place in our book as the Bay Area’s absolute best and most underappreciated post-hike lunch spot.

We sat there eating our burgers and dogs and drinking our beers while watching an outrigger canoe race framed by that view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The man who served us our beers was nice and explained the history of the place, which was built as a boat house in World War II, servicing submarine nets. Can you imagine? (The above, by the way, is an exterior shot of the place.)

I know what you’re thinking because I had the same thought. No, you can’t buy the joint and turn it into an upscale restaurant or wine bar or whatever else you had in mind, because it’s owned by the military and they like it just the way it is.

And so do I.

by Matthew Jaffe, Sunset senior writer

“My whole life is this escape, my whole life is this wave I drop into...”
--Miki Dora

These are good days for anyone interested in the world of surfing beyond the brand names and fashions. Just this weekend, the documentary Bustin’ Down The Door opened, a look at the Australian and South African surfers who invaded Oahu’s North Shore in the mid-70s.

Last week I wrote about David Rensin’s new book All for a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora, the definitive biography of the definitive surfer.

I met Rensin for breakfast recently at CiCi’s Café in Tarzana, on the other side of the Santa Monica Mountains from Malibu and Dora’s sacred Surfrider Beach, and across the San Fernando Valley from Granada Hills, where Rensin and his family settled after moving from New Jersey in 1964. “Everybody on my block had a surfboard,” he said. “I got my first one for $25. Probably a stolen board.”

We talked about Dora and surfing and why the fascination and “Dora Lives” graffiti endure six years since his death and nearly 60 years after he first rode the waves at Malibu.

One point Rensin makes in the book is that surfing is by definition ephemeral—a wave rolls toward shore, breaks, and is gone forever. And Dora existed in a pre-ESPN world, pre-internet world. Forget the 1080 high def: Type in “Miki Dora” on YouTube, and you’ll see only grainy glimpses of his unmistakable style, whether it’s riding at Malibu or slaloming between the pylons at Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica.

But no matter the resolution, Dora's joy  is still tangible. “Dora was addicted to the sensation, and at peace on the water. He was so relaxed and put all the little pieces together and made surfing look easy,” says Rensin. “And everyone wants it to be easy.”

Life outside the water wasn’t nearly as simple. Dora traveled the world— Biarritz, South Africa’s Jeffreys Bay, New Zealand and Chile were all stops along the way—looking not only for those perfect waves but seemingly the purity that once existed in Malibu.

“The individual is being pushed out and the clones are taking over,” he said.

At one point in All for a Few Perfect Waves, Rensin quotes this adage from the John Ford movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Reading about Dora, I’m also reminded of a quote that actor James Stewart said about the legend that was Ford.

“Take everything, you’ve heard, everything you’ve ever heard…and multiply it about a hundred times—and you still won’t have a picture of John Ford.”

That goes for Dora too. The waves may have been perfect but he certainly wasn’t. And maybe that’s where the fascination lies. Or as Rensin put it, “Saints are boring, aren’t they?”

Well, there aren’t many saints in surfing, which is one reason that there’s so much good writing about it. Here are some of Rensin’s recommendations, broken down into categories. Have any favorites of your own? Just let us know:

MEMOIRS AND BIOGRAPHIES
Stuart Holmes Coleman
Eddie Would Go
The Story of Eddie Aikau, Hawaiian Hero

Daniel Duane
Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast

Jeff Hakman and Phil Jarratt
Mr. Sunset, the Jeff Hakman Story

Greg Noll and Andrea Gabbard
Da Bull, Life Over the Edge

Allan Weisbecker
In Search of Captain Zero: A Surfer's Road Trip Beyond the End of the Road

NOVELS
Fred Reiss
Gidget Must Die

Kem Nunn
Tapping The Source
The Dogs of Winter

REFERENCE AND ANTHOLOGIES
Bill Cleary and David H. Stern
Surfing Guide To Southern California

Matt Warshaw
The Encyclopedia of Surfing
Zero Break: An Illustrated Collection of Surf Writing: 1777-2004

Drew Kampion
Stoked! A History of Surf Culture

By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

One of the best things about working at Sunset is that we all get to bring home occasional bottles of wine that our wine editor rejects. Our wine editor's office, by the way, is a virtual wine cellar. Check this out.

What's more, our wine editor keeps a stash of really good wine glasses close by her desk for impromptu tastings some afternoons. (Research for stories as well as for Sunset's wine club, which you should check out if you haven't.)

But I digress. The point I was leading up to is that I'm spoiled when it comes to wine. For me, it's wine, wine everywhere, and lots of drops to taste. In other words, I cringe when I have to pay retail prices for what I consider a staple as basic as water.

Which is why I was so excited to come across a no-frills wine shop in the no-frills town of Calistoga: the Wine Garage. What makes this place so cool is not just the bargains housed within—no wines over $25 is their claim to fame—but also the variety of limited-production wines from lesser known regions like Lodi, Amador County, and the Sierra Foothills.

The staff is truly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about helping the kind of customer who doesn't really know what they want but just want something interesting. (That would be me.) When I asked for some recommendations I was presented with a Vermintino Uvaggio ($14.99), said to be the only Vermintino made in California. (If you want to know how it tastes ask me in a few days; I plan on uncorking it asap.)

The other thing I like about this place is that they're making it hands on. Next month they're planning to offer their own "jug" wines, a Rhone-style blend and a Zinfandel blend, and letting customers fill their own bottles using gas pump nozzles (in keeping with the garage theme). Based on the popularity of the jug wine at Preston Vineyards, in the Dry Creek Valley, I can only guess this will be a big hit.

Do you have a favorite wine shop? Do tell...

By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

50 bucks for anyone who can guess where this kite was spotted. (Hint: see the headline of this blog.)

You guessed it! Berkeley! This is a shot from last year's Berkeley Kite Festival, which takes place at Cesar Chavez Park on the Berkeley Marina both days this weekend. (I was kidding about the 50 bucks. Sorry.)

Talk about a Berkeley phenom. This annual free-admission event mixes Berkely-style passion for all things odd (witness the giant creatures contest, shown above) with multiculturism (the Sode-cho Kite-Flying Society of Hamamatsu, Japan will be in attendance demonstrating Japanse-style Rokkako kite battles) with an admirable dedication to a cause (Tom McCallister, owner of Highline Kites in Berkeley, has single-handledly organized this event, which draws up to 25,000 people, for the past 22 years—fathom that!)

This is your chance to meet some of the most dedicated, even geekiest, kite enthusiasts in the world. I mean, the official festival website lists this as one of the top 10 most frequently asked questions: "Can I fly a dual-line or quad-line aerobatic kite at the festival?" Why of course you can. If you know what that is. (I don't.)

Did I mention it's free?

Parents (or grown-ups with a sweet tooth) can take part in the "candy drop," which involves a giant, pinata-like kite rigged with candy showering sweets to hysterical kids on the ground. Thankfully, they can run it off afterwards.

Happy flying.

By Amy Wolf, Sunset travel editor

I’m obsessed with swimming pools. Not just because I wish I could swim like Dara Torres, but also because I love fantasizing about the early days of swimming pool bliss, the turn-of-the-century era when natatoriums were where people hung out, dressed in their unbelievably ornate (and prudish) swimsuits, loving the freedom of being without all those ridiculous fancy dresses and suits. I love how pools were considered health-giving, and how entire towns sprang up around natural mineral baths that people would flock to in search of health. I especially love pools that capture some of that history. Just back from a weekend in Calistoga (a town whose history can be directly traced to exactly those health seekers), and slammed with a mountain of deadlines, I’ve got pools—and the need for a therapeutic soak—on the brain more than usual. (Calistoga, take me away!) That's why I'm sharing three of my favorite pools of the West with you.

Note that all three of these are long enough for a good lap swim. In my book, there’s nothing worse than a pool too short for real swimming.

1. Indian Springs Resort and Spa in Calistoga. (Combine this with a weekend of wine tasting.) It’s a gorgeous, Olympic-size, mineral-springs-fed pool that you can access for free if you stay overnight or get a spa treatment, or for $25 (or $20 Sunday through Thursday) if you go with a friend who’s getting a spa treatment. The sunny, cozy cottages are surrounded by palm and olive trees and a giant bocce court, are your best bet for lodging (in the $250–$350 ranch per night); there’s also a relatively new lodge, but I myself would opt for the cottages. They’re more private and feel more special.

(Trivia tangent: did you know that Leland Stanford considered building the Stanford campus on this property, where Indian Springs Resort now exists? A Stanford grad myself, I sort of wish he had. Think of all the good wine I could have drunk back in my college days.)

Photo by Viky Nash

2. Glenwood Hot Springs Lodge & Pool in Glenwood Springs, Colorado (pictured above). The pool, which is fed, of course, by the town’s famous mineral springs, has views of the Rockies and is over two blocks long. That’s what they say on their website. I have no idea how that compares to an Olympic-size pool, but suffice it to say it’s long. More family-oriented than Indian Springs, it’s got slides and a kiddie pool. The accommodations here are more ho-hum, motel-style, but the rates are cheap (from about $200). Combine this with a trip to the new Glenwood Springs Whitewater Park, the newest manmade whitewater park in the Mountains, and you've got a fun, stress-draining weekend.

3. Kitsilano Beach Pool in Vancouver, BC. Don’t even get me started on this place. I would move to Vancouver just to swim in this pool. It’s smack next to the beach so you feel like you’re swimming in the ocean but without having to battle boats and waves. Not only do you see the ocean, but also mountains, Kits Beach, and the skyline of the West End. At 137 meters (150 yards), three times longer than an Olympic pool, it’s Canada’s longest pool, so by the time you’ve swum two laps you’ve put in a good day’s work without even really noticing it. And it’s saltwater! Heated saltwater, no less. which means no nasty chemicals. How cool is that?

Happy swimming. And when you come up for air, tell me about your favorite pools.

by Matthew Jaffe, Sunset senior writer

Not long after I moved west, I read an article by David Rensin in California magazine about surfer and international fugitive Miki Dora.

Riding inflatable air mattresses on nothing bigger than the waves on Lake Michigan, my exposure to surfing up until then had been decidedly limited: Gidget, Beach Blanket Bingo, The Beach Boys, and the like. Bubblegum stuff. To my rock and roll sensibility, surfing was frothy pop.

But Dora, now he was another story. In his day maybe the greatest surfer in the world. The dark knight of the endless summer and the King of Malibu back when Malibu was still Malibu and surfing was a way of life not a lifestyle.

(For a taste of just how big  surfing has become, head down to Huntington Beach this week for the Honda U.S. Open of Surfing).

Rare is the article that opens up your eyes and changes perspectives but that piece hinted that the California I had idealized through cold Midwestern winters was a more complex place than I had ever imagined.  And somewhere beneath surfing’s fun fun fun image was a soulfulness and authenticity that I had completely missed, one that fit perfectly with a post-college world view shaped by Born To Run and On The Road.

Rensin has returned to what he calls DoraWorld (really a universe unto itself) with the biography All for a Few Perfect Waves: The Audacious Life and Legend of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora. Faced with such an elusive subject, Rensin chooses to reject a traditional biography, opting instead for a looser narrative assembled of first-person accounts from interviews, letters, and other sources.

As he writes, “What I discovered is that many possess a piece of Dora’s complex saga, holographic bits that suggest the whole. But always the master compartmentalizer, he wanted no one to have it all.”

The result is a surfing Rashomon—300+ times over. That’s the number of interviews that Rensin conducted for the book. To the extent that there is an answer to the question “Who was Miki Dora?” it can only be hinted at by combining all of these often contradictory takes. Dora was a legend. Dora was a grifter. He “was an artist in the art of living” or simply “a guy who just loved to surf.”

At 475 pages, it’s a big, dense book but not nearly as big as it was before, as Rensin describes it, editor Mauro DiPreta demanded cuts to “coax the statue out of the stone.” And the statue that emerged is both heroic and human-scaled.

When you consider how prominent surfing’s cultural role has become and Dora’s own embodiment of an uncompromising hope-I-die-before-I-get-sold ideal, it’s clear that he has his place in the pantheon of American originals and anti-heroes where some in the book enshrine him. Right alongside Dylan, Kerouac, Brando.

Or as Rensin puts it, “Dora was Sid Vicious meets Cary Grant, in board shorts.”

Legends are one thing, and what I took from that magazine article 25 years ago was the Dora myth. What I have taken from All for a Few Perfect Waves is more complex.

It’s hard not to revel in descriptions of Dora’s artistry on the waves and to imagine what it must have been like out at Malibu back in 1949. There’s even pleasure in the boldness of Dora’s scams.

But I’m a bit past my hero worship days. Beyond that, to simply elevate Dora to icon status is to somehow reduce the man. Rensin’s achievement is that you get both, side-by-side and inseparable from one another.

(MORE NEXT WEEK, INCLUDING GREAT SURF BOOKS TO TAKE ON VACATION)

(Top image is  Miki at Malibu 1966, photo by Pat Darrin)

By Margo True, Sunset Food Editor

Last Saturday, a team of a dozen or so Sunset staff got down and dirty in front of San Francisco's City Hall. No, we weren't misbehaving; we weren't protesting, either. In fact, Mayor Gavin Newsom joined us, smiling big—along with some 100 other Bay Area people. Together, we planted an edible garden right below his office that will not only look beautiful, but also help feed the hungry. (Swing by and take a look; it's open to the public during the day.)

Pre-planting: Team Sunset gathers around its plots at the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden.

A sense of history permeated the day, because we were putting in our tomatoes, lettuces, pole beans, squashes, and fruit trees on pretty much the same spot occupied by a victory garden just after World War II.

There was a sense of the future, too: Today's planting was the kickoff for Slow Food Nation, a big juicy four-day food and wine extravaganza coming to San Francisco this Labor Day weekend. (Slow Food was founded in Italy in 1989 "to counteract fast food and fast life," and the Labor Day event will offer some truly excellent food experiences--everything from street vendors selling homemade tamales to workshops on artisanal cheese to farm field trips. And all of it with a mind to what's fair for workers, good for the earth, and good for everyone eating the food...a bouquet of such fine ideas that Sunset has decided to sponsor the event, and we hope we see you there.)

The hard work had mainly been done before we arrived. Scads of volunteers and SFN people had already gotten rid of the lawn (and distributed plugs of it all over the Bay Area, so as not to waste it). They'd designed and installed burlap-bordered planting circles, filled them with truckloads of dark, loamy, rich soil, and installed drip lines. All the seedlings were arranged by type on the side of the garden for easy transport, and the burlap borders were soft and plump--pillows for our knees! Even the sky was considerate--overcast, so no one needed to worry about sunburn.

Team Sunset was given two circles: one for basil of various kinds, and another for other edible herbs. Led by Johanna Silver, Sunset's test garden coordinator, we arranged the little pots in the pattern we wanted first, staggering them along the drip lines. All around us, other groups were doing the same. Actually, some of the others were conducting elaborate pre-planting prayer rituals, holding each other and swaying. Hey, whatever works.

Team Sunset looks over the layout of the seedlings.

Johanna Silver shows us how to bury seedlings up to their necks (the first leaves) so that roots develop all along the underground stem, helping anchor a tiny plant in the wind.

Speaking of prayer and the city...while chants to Mother Earth rose from the Victory Garden, fiery, amped-up sermons from an open-air church service on the corner tore up the airspace. We kept planting, and put in a hundred or more seedlings in a little over an hour. Frankly, the soil was so soft we didn't even need tools--hands would have done the trick too. The rich deep smell of moist earth rose from the beds as we worked.

Once we'd finished, we wandered around and admired other groups' handiwork--gorgeous rings of lime and magenta lettuces, tepees of pole beans--a flotilla of green circles backdropped by the massive columns of City Hall.

Then the Mayor (with his fiancee, Jennifer Seibel) and Alice Waters, Slow Food Nation's founder, arrived. The many, many reporters and videographers at the scene rushed toward them, trampling a few beds as they went.

Alice Waters and Mayor Gavin Newsom before the cameras.

The Mayor planted a seedling. Then he took to the stage at one end of the garden, along with Alice; John Bela, the garden's manager; Anya Fernald, executive director of Slow Food Nation;  Willow Rosenthal, founder of City Slicker Farms; and Amy Franceschini, the garden's curator and founder of Victory Gardens 2008+. Short speeches were given to much applause and smiling and thank-yous all around.

Alice Waters at the mike; behind her, left to right, are Anya Fernald, John Bela, Mayor Newsom, and Willow Rosenthal.

Listening to the speeches and looking back at the garden, we felt good about what we'd done: create a living symbol of communal self-sufficiency. This garden probably won't stay here long, but we're all hoping that it inspires and lends weight to more projects like it, in the Bay area and beyond.

When the garden starts producing, in early August, Slow Food Nation will start harvesting and distributing its fruits and vegetables to local food banks. September 21 is community harvest day: to see how you can participate, click here.

So how did we end the day? With a good lunch of organic salads and sandwiches, provided by Bon Appetit Management Company, and a sense that we might be seeing a lot more gardening going on in San Francisco.

Team Sunset at table.

Read about Sunset's own harvest garden

By Christine Richard, Sunset senior editor

Is it a desert mirage or is it real?

Decide for yourself. Go east on Cave Creek Road from Scottsdale Road (which turns into Tom Darlington), then turn on Bartlett Dam Road (about four miles). You’ll enter the Tonto National Forest. Follow the signs to Rattlesnake Cove (don't mind the name--all the best places are labeled unappetizingly to keep the crowds away), where there is public access to the beach.  The entire drive is less than an hour drive north from downtown Phoenix. 

You'll pass Arizona Territory in Carefree on the way to the lake. Hodgepodge of fun indoors and outdoors this and that: i.e., mosaic planters, wood doors from India, wire birdcages, art, life-sized statues. This storefront is deceptive; there are hundreds of items.