Road Trips: Bottlerock

Music festivals are all the rage these days. Chances are that if you know a few people under the age of 40, at least one has been to OutsideLands, Coachella, or EDC. Bottlerock is the adult version!

I love going to Bottlerock. It’s a 3-day festival in Napa that offers a small camping option (about 20 minutes from the grounds), but is a close enough drive that you can sleep in your own bed each night, as long as you’re willing to brave traffic on the way in. Fridays are my favorite day because the crowds are smaller and the traffic lighter. This year I am again going on Friday, because I love Imagine Dragons and One Republic.

Image result for bottlerock 2019 — Credit: JamBase

This year, they’ve announced the lineup and it looks pretty good again. They usually attract big names to the headliner’s stage, and they pair it with a unique Chef’s Stage experience that brings out the biggest celebrity names! It takes place May 24-26 this year. Last year, Shaun White was on the Culinary Stage with his mom (see attached video) and the cooking was a snow theme, they threw out snowballs – those Hostess cupcakes you had as a kid – and did some crazy stuff with cotton candy. Always interesting. This year, I think Alice Cooper will be a fun experience.

One really awesome thing about BottleRock is that, being in Napa Valley, the food and drink options are unbelievable. You’ll spend a little bit extra on your meals, but you’re getting legitimately delicious food instead of your typical festival fare and a place to sit down and eat it.

I’d highly recommend trying to snag last-minute tickets if any are still available. If not, make plans for next year! It’s always around Memorial Day weekend. If you are going on Friday, let me know! Maybe we’ll see each other there.

Road Trips: BottleRock

We touched on this event in my recent music festivals blog, but I had to expand it into its own feature. Because BottleRock is constantly the best day of the festival season each Spring! This was my third year going and what I like about it the best is that for the most part, it is a laid back concert scene. People either hang out on their blankets in the back, sit it the wine lounges or jostle to get up front. Even if you are up front it is still fairly chill

This year’s lineup included Bruno Mars, The Killers, Muse, Incubus, Snoop Dogg, Halsey, Earth, Wind & Fire, Billy Idol, and dozens more. I did one day at BottleRock (Friday) and took in Incubus (the lead singer Brandon Boyd has charm and sex appeal; I couldn’t stop looking at him! Did you know Incubus means “a male demon believed to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women?” I also saw The Struts (a band I hadn’t heard of, but the singer reminded me of Freddy Mercury), FLOR (the long-haired redhead pictured below was a great new band), and The Chainsmokers. In hindsight, we maybe should not have gone with The Chainsmokers instead of headliner Muse – I didn’t realize The Chainsmokers were a DJ duo, but they rocked it and that was the one place where the people were very pushy. It was a younger crowd and lots of lights and smoke as shown above. We got a little bored with Earth Wind & Fire, but really liked the jam of Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue.

One of the best things about BottleRock is that it’s a combination of music and culinary excellence for an entire weekend. Being in Napa makes it a requirement to have awesome food and wine to go with the music (but they really do come up with an awesome music lineup every year). So in addition to seeing some great shows, we saw Shaun White, a 3-time gold medalist in snowboarding on the Culinary Stage. It was awesome – they had a winter-themed cooking show that included cotton candy made into huge snowballs and they were tossed into the audience where the promptly broke apart spreading blue cotton candy around. At the end, they were tossing Hostess snowball packages out to the audience.

Words can barely do this experience justice. Check out the art and experiences created by various vendors in the following photos. You can’t beat sitting in the grass under the sun with a glass of red, watching a famous band play live music to thousands of people. If you haven’t been yet, plan ahead for next Memorial Day weekend – it is always Friday/Saturday/Sunday and tickets sell out quickly. So, prepare to make that short drive up to Napa to experience BottleRock!

New rooftop bars – behold!

According to this story, there are two new rooftop bars in the Bay Area! You can add this to the list of cool Walnut Creek spots, like Rooftop and Teleferic. We’ve touched on Teleferic before, but Rooftop is just one floor higher and also an awesome spot to eat and get a drink!

First, the bars in the story I linked above. Rooftop25 at Twenty Five Lusk in San Francisco is sure to be the latest addition to the San Francisco rooftop bar scene to make some noise. It’s from acclaimed chef Matthew Dolan. In Napa, Sky & Vine at the Archer Hotel, which is apparently the only rooftop bar in downtown. There are supposed to be amazing views and plenty of seating to complement amazing food and cocktails.

Now, back to your regularly-scheduled Walnut Creek bar scene. If you’ve been to Teleferic, you may have also seen Rooftop. As the name implies, Rooftop is on the top of the three-story building and it takes full advantage of that location.

With a snazzy retractable roof over the dining room, a large bar and a deck that wraps nearly all the way around the building, you can’t find a better atmosphere in Walnut Creek from which to take in a sunset on Mt. Diablo while enjoying cocktails.

RooftopFinal1-1024x277 — Credit: RooftopWC.com

Rooftop has the best view and patio, stealing customers from other classy, late-night spots in Walnut Creek who want to enjoy the views. So far, I have been there a few time. Once for dinner and a couple of times to enjoy a drink and appetizers in the bar. I sampled many of the “bar bites” which were all fantastic along with the designer cocktails.

The Buster Brown cocktail (bourbon-infused) was my favorite and Tuna Tartar with puffy rice crackers is divine. If the food tastes familiar, that might be due to Justine Kelly, former Chef de Cuisine at The Slanted Door, leading the way. According to the Rooftop website, Chef Kelly has competed on Iron Chef and cooked for President Bill Clinton.

Rooftop is a great, albeit slightly pricey, night out with friends and one of the must-be spots in downtown Walnut Creek. And if you’d like to go slightly outside your hometown, give these new spots in San Francisco and Napa a shot!

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Make sure to register for emergency notifications

When those devastating fires in Napa and Sonoma started spreading through the wine country, most people outside the immediate area probably only found about it by seeing a story on the news or social media, or seeing a lot of hazy smoke in the sky.

While there’s nothing wrong with that, it always helps to have immediate notification of an emergency, sent right to your phone. Walnut Creek is part of Contra Costa County’s emergency notification system, which alerts members to all local disasters and emergencies in a very timely manner.

Listed and unlisted landline phone numbers are already included in the database and do not need to be registered. But to get them instantly on your cell phone, to your email or on a VoIP phone, you can go to https://cwsalerts.com/ to register.

Once you’ve signed up for those free alerts, you’ll know exactly what, when and where a disaster or emergency has struck. That way, you can help spread the word, reach out to people you know in the affected areas, and clear out of danger yourself.

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How to send help to the fire victims

Last week, a record-setting wildfire decimated the picturesque Napa, Sonoma and Santa Rosa areas. There are 40 people dead, at least 16 wineries destroyed, thousands homeless and hundreds still missing.

It is one of the most gruesome, saddening natural disasters in California history. If you’re like me, and want to help out the victims of these fires and do whatever you can to restore those areas to their former selves, there are plenty of ways to donate.

One way is to send a box of fresh fruit and vegetables from Farm Fresh to Redwood Empire Food Bank. So far, they’ve donated more than 200 boxes to evacuation centers throughout Sonoma and Mendocino Counties.

For every box donated to Redwood Empire Food Bank, Farm Fresh to You – who we wrote about last week – will match that donation. Just click here if you’d like to help. I did and when I don’t want a box delivered to my house, I will click to donate.

There have also been numerous drives and charities springing up on social media in the wake of the destruction. One specifically mentioned on the TV briefings was Napa Valley Community Foundation. Or if your heart is with helping all the animals, Jameson Animal Rescue Ranch is an Amazon Smiles recipient.

These give assurances that your donation is going where it will be most useful. If you don’t want to get involved with those, many who have friends and family that have lost everything are taking up carloads of specific donations.

My friend’s parents and sister both lost their houses and she specifically asked for certain sized clothes and non-perishables. I rummaged through my home for clothes and supplies, plus gave a gift card to Trader Joe’s.

In the news briefing, they specifically requested to temper our donations, meaning they will still be needed two months from now, so maybe one day in the near future when you are feeling grateful for all that you have, you might think, “I would like to click on one of these links and donate $25.”

Road Trips: Raymond & Buena Vista Winery

I’m a wine member with the Boisset Collection which includes Raymond Vineyards, Buena Vista Winery, Deloach, Frenchie, JCB, Lockwood, Wyeth, Amberhill, and Wattle Creek which makes heading to Napa or Sonoma a really fun weekend road trip!

Jean Charles Boisset has his roots in France where his parents had wineries; he has bought a few in the U.S. (see above) and in 2009 married Gina Gallo. Some of the rooms have a wild slant (think of the French Court in the 1700). There are costumes, wigs to play dress-up in some of the private tasting rooms, and some crazy art.

Back to the road trip – I went up for the day to Raymond & Buena Vista with a couple of girlfriends. Raymond was fun and whimsical – French is next door and we did the tasting all at Raymond. Buena Vista is rich in history and has a wonderful bubble lounge. It was the only working winery during prohibition.

Raymond Vineyards (founded 1970), has been a family business for five generations now. They originally came in 1933.

Now, they and Buena Vista are inspired by famous proprietor Boisset. Also, they are certified organic and Biodynamic and the winery is entirely powered by renewable solar energy. Very Bay Area of them!

At Buena Vista, “The Count of Buena Vista,” Agoston Haraszthy de Mokesa, immigrated from Hungary in 1840 after growing up among his local vineyards. He was the first to plant hops in Wisconsin and became an important pioneer in the American beer industry.

His love for wine continued as he moved around California (San Diego, then San Francisco, then Sonoma) looking for the perfect atmosphere in which to grow great grapes. Finally, he settled in Sonoma in 1860 and hit it big.

Since then, Buena Vista has gone through multiple owners (including the Catholic Church), and currently is part of the Boisset Family Estates a measly 150 years after the Count first made it over.

Weather you belong to a wine club or just want to go up for a day of tasting with a picnic, the wine country is so close with great restaurants and beautiful scenery, it is well worth a trip at least twice a year if not more often!

The story behind Civic Park’s “Hand of Peace”

We continue our tour of Walnut Creek’s public art scene with one of the more recognizable sculptures in the city: “Hand of Peace,” located just outside the library in Civic Park. The aptly-named sculpture is a monument to peace by Italian-born artist Beniamino Bufano, who passed away in 1970.

Legend has it that Bufano cut off his trigger finger and sent it to President Woodrow Wilson to protest World War I. He was a peace activist who taught at the San Francisco Institute of Art, UC Berkeley and Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts, according to a 2012 San Jose Mercury News story. Bufano has other prominent pieces in the Bay Area, including a sculpture in Chinatown, one at Mondavi Vineyards in Napa, and one at Lake Merced.

According to the San Jose Mercury News article, Bufano originally created the “Hand of Peace” for the San Francisco Arts Commission, but when the piece was put up for sale, developer Bill Swigert paid $50,000 to place the sculpture in Walnut Creek, outbidding Fox Plaza and Ghirardelli Square.

The sculpture sat in an office park in Walnut Creek from 1967 to 2009, when it was taken down for restoration. Now, it’s up for display for many years to come in Civic Park. The sculpture weighs nearly 5 tons, stands 30 feet tall, and is made of copper, mosaic and stained glass.

Oh, and it’s a PokeStop, by the way…