News in the News Pt 2: The Once and Future Chronicle

For years I'd been considering painting the San Francisco Chronicle building at 5th and Mission. I 'd hesitated because the location seemed so difficult. When the Hearst Corporation announced it was shutting down the Seattle Intelligencer and eying the San Francisco Chronicle for closure, I hurriedly set up my easel on what Leah Garchik would describe as a “boomerang shaped traffic island”. This was one of the busiest sites at which I've worked. It was also one of the most interesting.

Storm Clouds over the Chronicle

I started Sunday, March 15 . There was a strong wind and heavy clouds. I got soaked and my easel very nearly blew over into the traffic but I managed to block in an ominous sky.

Monday, I'd just started painting when I caught sight of Joel Selvin striding towards me in a maroon overcoat. Like everyone that I would talk with, Joel was concerned about the future of the paper, but, unlike most, he was not upset about leaving. “I'm 59 and I have a book deal. So I'm taking a buyout. I started here as a copy boy when I was seventeen. It was so different then. You know, the presses used to be down there.” He pointed to the far end of the building. “When they started to roll the building would rumble and shake. You felt the building lurch and you knew we were going to press. There were grates over those windows. Hot air would be driven out by the machinery. After work I'd stand on the street below inhaling the smell of the presses.”

Over the next few weeks, as I talked with reporters, columnists, editors, copywriters, and teamsters about the crisis, I had the sensation that I was standing in the eye of a storm. Of course, the Chronicle's drama was unfolding against the backdrop of collapsing economic institutions, and the huge brouhaha over "retention bonuses" at AIG which added a surreal dimension to this local event.

An insurance agent “between jobs” stopped to chat. Referring to AIG, he volunteered his opinion of management in the insurance industry. “These guys at the top, four rungs above me, with their Yale and Harvard degrees, all they know how to do is play golf, walk around in expensive suits, and tell you where to eat that'll cost you $ 300 or more. They couldn't run a hot dog stand!” When I asked him about his chances of finding another job. He replied confidently.”Oh I'll find another job. I know how to talk.”

Chronicle writers and staff were less sanguine. Being in the newspaper business they had a sense of the “big picture” and they could see that that if they took a buyout or were laid off they would probably never have a job like this again. I became aware of a real esprit de corps which in the current circumstances was accompanied by gallows humor: I was told that the joke making the rounds was that the paper must be going under because it was having its portrait painted.

Photo courtesy of Maryly Snow, www.snowstudios.com/artist.htm

Kenneth Baker passed by on several occasions. One day he remarked on the ominous clouds in my painting. I told him that they had taken this form almost by accident. That I was pleased with the 'fissure' in the clouds falling diagonally towards the silhouetted Chronicle building. “More like slow lightening.” he replied.

Just about every afternoon, around the time that I put on the clock, the Executive News Editor, Jay Johnson, would stop on his way to work. One afternoon, observing his long face, I asked him how he was doing. “Not so well. Last night I had to say goodbye to a hundred and twenty employees.”

Friday, March 3, was the last day for many of the 120 who'd opted for buyouts. Steve Rubenstein and a number of other reporters paused to chat with me on their way to a final lunch. Steve posed for a photo next to my painting. An associate told me that Steve was brokenhearted to be leaving, but that staying was too risky.

This last observation was reinforced by a younger reporter, Jonathan Curiel, with whom I had a stimulating conversation about the Middle East and about Robert Fisk whom he had interviewed. I inquired if he had taken a buyout. “No, but maybe I should have. The paper needs to shed another 30 people. They could fire me next week.”

Shortly after he left, a gentleman stopped whose wife was completing her last day at the paper. “Who's going to monitor our local and national government if we lose our newspapers?” He asked, “ It's newspapers that generate most of the investigative reporting. I don't think Americans realize what the loss of newspapers will mean for our democracy.” “A democracy that we barely salvaged in the last elections.” I added. He nodded grimly and crossed the street to meet his wife at the entrance on Mission.

A lifetime subscriber, who'd overheard him, shared her concern. “ I'm so upset. Every time I receive my paper it's a little thinner. It's like watching someone on chemotherapy. I just hope it survives and recovers.”

Those who remain at the Chronicle, and many good people remain, must strive that much harder to reinvent it. To somehow link it effectively into cyberspace while remaining a tangible paper of record. Non profit institution, investigative reporting by subscription, these and many other ideas swirling around probably need to be explored.

Whatever our criticisms of the paper (and Chronicle readers are a diverse and critical bunch) the paper functions as our public square. It is a place. It leaves a permanent record. The mercurial internet is everywhere and nowhere. Words cut into stone in the ancient forum. Words printed on paper today. Ok, so I can print words from the internet and pass them around to my friends. But will they be in news stands on the street, in coffee houses, on breakfast tables all over town? Will they remain as part of the common historical record in ten or twenty years?

Friday, April 10 my last day on the street I spoke for a few minutes with Deputy Editorial Page Editor, Lois Kazakoff. She had no doubts as to the value of the Chronicle. “ It tells our stories.” she declared.

Like it or not, over the years the Chronicle's reporters, editors, columnists have laid the cobbles or bushwacked the trails that constitute much of the intellectual landscape that we navigate in the Bay Area. We should all work to keep this institution alive.

I am offering a special of $5 Shipping & Handling on all prints on paper. Prints on canvas are also available online. To purchase the original painting please inquire: [email protected]

Shoeshine at 13th and Franklin, downtown Oakland

"Interesting painting." the old man said as I was working on this canvas today. "Well it's an interesting place to work. Shoeshine stands are like barber shops. Always good conversation."

"That's what I tell my friends. Forget the soaps on TV. Go to downtown Oakland: it's a lot more entertaining."

The old man is right and here are a few excerpts from my diary which prove it.

Holdsworth Painting Shoeshine 13th Franklin Oakland Jim Hines
Holdsworth Painting Shoeshine 13th Franklin Oakland Jim Hines

January 14th

I started my painting of the shoeshine stand today just a block away from the site of my last Oakland painting. Early afternoon a handsome, elderly gentleman sat down to have his shoes shined. Glenn had barely started when an older guy, a retired shoe shiner, came up and started criticizing his work.

"Not like that! You gotta clean em properly first!"

He began working on the customer's other shoe. Two shoes. Two shoe shiners. Quite a sight. Glenn finally stepped aside and let him finish the job. The handsome gentleman stepped down and looked approvingly at  his sparkling shoes.

I'd only been partly attending the conversation but my ears perked up when I heard the retired shoe shiner say "...two Olympic gold medals right?"

"Right."

" This man was the fastest man in the world at the Mexico Olympics in '68. He held the record for fifteen years. We both went to McClymonds High School here in Oakland."

Turns out the man with the sparking black shoes was Jim Hines.

The conversation moved on to his running against race horses in '85.

"I won four out of the five races. The fifth race was at Golden Gate Fields. If I'd won that race I would have collected a large jackpot. But they set me up. You see I was supposed to run on a wooden track next to the horse. There's no way a man can run on the same surface as the  horses at the track. But when I got to Golden Gate Fields they told me the trucks carrying the wooden track had been delayed. Delayed. Can you believe it? I lost that race. Golden Gate Fields got a full house and they never had to pay me the jackpot."

January 20th

It's Obama Day in Oakland. People are in a festive mood. There's a preacher who stops by everyday. He's explaining the numerical significance of Obama's election.

"Forty years from Martin Luther King's assassination to the election of Obama. We've been wandering in the wilderness like Moses for forty years, but our time has come." He goes on to cite the forty days and forty nights that led to Noah's flood." Then on to many other instances that illustrate the significance of this number. His numerological musings become abstruse, talmudic. My head starts to spin and I turn all my attention back to the painting.

Feb 3rd

Today, just back from Clearlake, I hurried out onto the street to continue the shoeshine painting. I'd been interrupted by rain and couldn't finish it before I left. I was hoping to put Glenn in the picture but neither he nor his stand were here. People told me he wasn't here yesterday either. Someone suggested he might have gone to visit relatives in Chicago. How am I going to finish this painting? A shoeshine stand with a customer already in the seat and no shoeshine man. I suppose I could title it "Waiting for Glenn."

Feb 4th

I phoned Blade, the barber, this morning. His business is a couple of doors down from Glenn. He told me Glenn was back so I returned to my site. While he posed I asked him where he'd been.

"I was asleep."

For two days?"

"Yeah."

Turns out he wasn't feeling so good Sunday night so he took a Tylenol and a Vicodin to relax and go to sleep. The preacher arrived as he was explaining this to me.

"Did you know Glenn just slept for forty eight hours?" I asked him.

"Yes, I had to tell him what day it was this morning. He thought it was Tuesday."

Painting at Ceago Vinegarden

For a year and a half I have been painting a series at Ceago Vinegarden on Clear Lake. Completed six years ago the vineyards, gardens and winery were designed, planted and built by Jim Fetzer with the help of his son Barney, as well as a contractor and four or five workers. The buildings are Jim's  interpretation of Mission architecture. Substantial and  beautiful they give the impression of having stood here for generations. The Mission flavor of the buildings and gardens is tempered by an imaginative but natural eclecticism that evokes memories of Provence and Italy. Walking from the main courtyard to the long dock on the the lake one passes through a large field of lavender which is bounded by a stands of hundred year old olive trees. The vertical accents of cypress trees are used to great effect throughout the property. Behind the vineyards the cypress are interspersed with the blue-green whorls of agave. This bio-dynamically farmed property sets a standard of beauty that makes me wish the whole shoreline of Clear Lake were subject to such mindful development. I've included a couple of excerpts from my diary to give you a sense of what it was like working here .

Holdsworth painting Ceago vineyard tree and mountains

1.28.09

This morning I was painting a view through an opening that overlooks the entrance to Ceago when Jim called me over. He indicated the white head of a bald eagle glinting from the crown of a tall oak. Jim says they come in winter to fish the lake. He thinks they are nesting around here somewhere.

In the fields this afternoon I could hear the beat of 'banda' music on a pruner's radio. I couldn't see them through the vines. They're still half a field away. I'm set up in the same location I worked a year and a half ago when I painted the grape harvest. It's a different scene in winter. In place of the exuberant foliage and bunches of grapes there's a delicate tracery of reddish vines among rank on rank of poles and guy wires. The two paintings will make an interesting contrast at the exhibition.

Ceago vineyards during pruning holdsworth painting

1.30.09

The pruners have reached the rows where I'm painting. There's a strange twanging sound. It's the sound of them pulling cut vines free from the metal guy wires as they advance up the rows from the direction of the lake.

Ramon, the supervisor, has agreed to pose as a pruner so I can put a figure in the painting. The other workers joke with him. There is something surreal about his standing so still while they move quickly from vine to vine. After he's posed he brings over the orange water container and hangs it in my view.

'That's so everyone can see we give our workers water."

The full series of paintings will number about twenty-two. They will be exhibited at Ceago Vinegarden next September. Until then none of them are for sale.

For further information about Ceago Vinegarden log on to: http://www.ceago.com