Food and Lifestyle

Group behind 'urban farm stand' to celebrate fifth year

2009-11-03T02:19:52Z

A local non-profit organization that purveys fresh produce in some of the city’s underserved neighborhoods is hosting a celebration this Thursday Nov.7, marking their fifth anniversary serving the community.

Alchemist Community Development Corporation is the group behind the “urban farm stand” idea – selling fresh, farmer’s market-style fruits and vegetables in areas like Alkali Flat and Oak Park. The event, which is open to the public, will be held at the Beatnik Studios near the city’s Tower district and will include live music and food from some of Sacramento’s top restaurants.

“With strong community involvement and support from residents, urban farm stands have demonstrated success and motivated supporters to grow the concept,” said Alchemist executive director, Davida Douglas, in an email to the Sacramento Press. The event is designed to help raise money for new farm stands to be opened next year.

Thursday’s event is backed by a multitude of Sacramento’s neighborhood and business associations, along with two city councilmembers – Ray Tretheway and Rob Fong.

According to the event flyer, food will be provided by several of the city’s gastronomical institutions like the Waterboy, Amarin Thai Cuisine, Taylor’s Market, and more. Music will be performed by Musical Charis and Caribbean Jazz. Wine and locally brewed beer will also be served.

“As a quirky aside, at the end of the evening, guests get to leave with a winter squash from our event decorations, donated by organic grower, Soil Born Farms,” added Douglas.

Tickets are priced from $15 to $30 to accommodate different contribution amounts and can be purchased online or at one of the urban farm stands.

For more information on tickets or where to find the nearest urban farm stand, check out www.alchemistcdc.org

Ali Tabatabai is a volunteer contributor to the Sacramento Press, reporting on assignment.

Tour de Sac ends with Pub Crawl

2009-07-25T05:52:44Z

“If you fall off, I’ll cut you off,” warned Cline Moore, semi-jokingly to a group of bike riders who had signed up for his evening long pub-crawl around Downtown Sacramento.

It was his brief disclaimer to the modest-sized crowd on this Wednesday night, before embarking on a mobile eating and drinking event marking the end of the month-long cycling celebration – The Tour de Sacramento.

A laid-back homage to the famous race in France, the first ever Tour de Sacramento featured three weeks of neighborhood rides, bike clinics, and on this night – food, fun, and beverage.

This last stage of the tour was the natural merging of two things that Sacramento residents do well – drink and ride bikes – occasionally at the same time.

“Bikes allow us to pair [together] more restaurants that aren’t next to each other,” said Moore, a local entrepreneur and promoter extraordinaire.

He’s organized over 15 pub-crawls in Sacramento, tonight being the first on bikes. He charges $25 for registration and gets the restaurants to provide the food for free – knowing the customers he brings through their doors will buy plenty of drinks.

Moore’s tall, slender frame almost isn’t a match for his booming and commanding voice. A business minded version of a merry prankster, Moore has found a way to make a buck while having a good time.

It’s this ingenuity and flow that inspired him to organize his “Grub Crawl” idea with the Tour de Sacramento.

And he’s good at organizing. If you are out on any given evening in Sacramento, you are bound to run into him. Bike crawl participant, Tina Pruett, was at the Blue Cue club the night before, when Moore convinced her and a friend to sign up for the bike crawl.

At the ride’s starting point at Bikes & Bites on 12th street, Moore waves in his customers while barking orders to his hired help for the evening. Even Assembly Member Dave Jones stops on his walk to the capitol to see what Moore is up to this time.

About 70 people registered for the bike crawl said Moore, but about only 20 made it to the starting point. In a scattered formation, the group saddled up and took off down L Street, heading for 4th Street Grille. They turned heads and earned honks from the traffic as they hugged the curb, and were brave enough to take up the whole right lane on occasion.

At 4th Street Grille, the group sucked down their drinks and munched on an array of pulled-pork sliders and grilled chicken skewers. It was like a normal night out at the bar, except with a more eclectic and diverse group of sweaty people.

Heading towards the Fox and Goose pub, the ride got its first reminder of what the evening was billed for – to celebrate Le Tour de France. Actually, only a small subsection of the group included avid cycling fans.

Decked out in full cycling gear, 40-year-old Carmichael resident, Stacy Scranton, said she has watched every stage of the Tour de France on television, and is the only participant to make it to every event of the Tour de Sacramento.

“It’s been a lot of fun,” Scranton said, “If [they] were looking to inspire one person to get into cycling, that one person would be me.”

Scranton, who said she wants to train in order to participate in longer cycling marathons, was particularly thankful of Dawn Dais – the co-organizer of Tour de Sacramento – for getting her back on her Giant OCR1 road bike.

Dais has written a book on cycling training for the average Joe, and said the Tour de Sacramento was a way to promote her work and get people thinking about riding their bikes.

“Sacramento is a really big city and bikes are great way to explore it,” said Dais, “We’re planning for something even bigger next year.”

But just as the sub-group settled into a cozy booth in the corner of the pub, Cline Moore began rousing the group again. It was time to hit the road, down R Street and on to Hangar 17.

Moore, with his ambitious attitude and self-described verbose character, sees himself as one-man stimulus package, a savior of sorts of Downtown Sacramento’s nightlife economy.

“I get my inspiration from Obama,” Moore says, “We are the leaders we are looking for. Restaurants and people are struggling; I get to bring people together.”

Local restaurants owners and managers definitely appreciate his effort.

“The pie has shrunk,” said Hangar 17 co-owner James Lombardi, “Everyone is fighting and clawing for business here; when someone brings people to your doorstep, it’s always welcome.”

A few drinks and several servings of appetizers into the evening, the bike crawl had picked up a few late-comers before making its way to its final scheduled stops for the evening – Hot Italian for gelato, and Tokyo Fro’s for sushi and free admission to its nightclub.

But as the peloton of riders made its way down 16th street, albeit sloppy by this time, the group voted on an impromptu stop at de Vere’s Irish Pub for what Moore called, “Just one shot.”

It should be mentioned that the Sacramento Police Department said it wanted to remind everyone that drunk cycling is always illegal.

“We ask that if you participate you drink responsibly, just as if you were driving," Sergeant Norm Leong said in a telephone conversation.

Nevertheless, the night rounded out without major incident. Tina Pruett was the only crawler to take a spill, sinking in an ant hill while trying to lock up her bike. She also got a flat tire, but luckily, fellow rider Karl Alexander – who used to give guided mountain bike tours through Costa Rican jungles – grabbed a spare tube from his apartment around the corner.

It was just the kind of interaction between two people who were previously strangers Moore would have loved to see.

But he was busy inside working the crowd and promoting his next big idea.

Eventually, Moore says he would like to expand the crawl idea to Denver and San Francisco, but remains busy building his reputation in this town.

“If Sacramento offered this on a regular basis,” Moore said, “We could be the friendliest city. We could own that moniker.”

Farm Stand Offers More than Food

2009-06-18T00:21:07Z

On a relaxed and breezy Tuesday evening in Alkali Flat, residents trickle in and out of J. Neely Johnson Park to check out the fresh produce on sale at their local Urban Farm Stand.

Just like a typical farmers market, the Urban Farm Stand opens up once a week to sell a variety of organic and conventionally grown fruits and vegetables from nearby suppliers. In fact, the Urban Farm Stand is just like a farmers market, but operates on a much smaller scale with just four tables.

The only big difference is there are no farmers here.

Instead, the stand is run with help from community volunteers like 15-year-old McClatchy High School student, Kellan Thomas, who lives with her mother in subsidized housing not far from the park.

Thomas began working at the stand about two months ago and says she has been learning a lot about the business.

“Some things here I didn’t know existed, like pluots,” she said. “I didn’t know what those were, but now I do.”

Thomas says her mother asked her if she would like to volunteer at the stand after seeing a flyer at a local neighborhood mini-mart. She agreed thinking the experience would help eventually lead her to a paid part-time job and some pocket-money.

“I’ve learned sales experience and how to interact with people,” Thomas said. “I was shy when I first got here, now I’m asking questions and people are really nice. It’s like one big family.”

Thomas added that she thought she already knew most of the people in her neighborhood, but said she is getting to know a lot more new faces at the stand.

She also acknowledged the service that is being provided to her community.

“It gives access to more variety of vegetables and the prices are manageable,” she said. “A lot of people here are middle class and lower income.”

As Thomas explained the types of meals her mother has prepared with ingredients from the stand-- including stir-fry, her favorite--a spider crawled across the collard greens laying in front her. She backed up, keeping a steady eye focused on the tiny arachnid while her supervisor, Davida Douglas tells her not to worry.

Douglas is actually in charge of the stand. She is the sole employee of Alchemist CDC, the non-profit community organizing group that runs this stand and another, busier one at McClatchy Park.

Business is slow in Alkali Flat tonight, but Douglas says average sales for one night at J. Neely Johnson range from $200-300, and as much as $900 at the McClatchy site.

Douglas says the stand offers goods that are hard to find in a neighborhood without any grocery stores nearby —the closest store Albertson’s on F and 23rd Streets closed in 2006 and re-opened as a Rite-Aid.

“It’s a service the community can use and it makes [shopping] more convenient, as opposed to convenience stores that may just sell items like beer and candy,” Douglas said. “As a non-profit we can take the financial risk of selling perishable goods.”

A wireless machine also allows Douglas and her team of volunteers to accept food stamps via Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards. Recently, the federal government has made an effort through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to improve healthy food access and promote nutrition.

While it may be quiet at the stand tonight, its presence has brought a peaceful mood to a park that Douglas says has been notorious for drug dealing.

Next to the stand, a young man plays his acoustic guitar at a folding table and is later accompanied by man, much his senior, toting a harmonica.

Not much further off, a woman mentions to the masseuse performing her chair massage that she just may fall asleep.

With operating hours of 4:00p.m. to 7:00 p.m., the stand creates a calm place of respite during the habitually frantic after-work exodus from downtown.

Tonight the stand makes itself just as much part of the park as the community garden is directly behind it.

Despite Alkali Flat’s notoriety, 47-year-old attorney, Mona Tawatao says she thinks the neighborhood remains “vibrant and pleasant.”

With her office located just around the corner, Tawatao routinely visits the stand after work. Today, she has picked out a handful of apricots and heirloom tomatoes and says she appreciates the stand’s proximity.

“If more neighborhoods did this it would have a good impact on emissions and global warming,” said Tawatao.

For more information on the Urban Farm Stand and Alchemist CDC, including sites, seasons, & hours visit: www.urbanfarmstand.org