Dumpster Diving in Berkeley

Where are the best dumpsters in Berkeley?

According to Novella Carpenter, whose new memoir Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, is getting rave reviews, the award goes hands down to Eccolo, the upscale restaurant on Fourth Street. Carpenter is in a position to know as she scavenged through East Bay dumpsters a few years ago to find food to feed her ravenous pigs. She recounted those adventures Thursday night at a Berkeley Arts and Letters lecture with author Michael Pollan.

Carpenter, whose urban farm is on 28th and Martin Luther King streets in Oakland, at first fed her pigs fish guts found from dumpsters in Chinatown. But the pigs rebelled, and refused to eat the fish carcasses, forcing Carpenter and her boyfriend, Bill, to travel to more rarified eateries.

They started going to the dumpster behind Semifreddi’s in Berkeley. That dumpster was locked, but Carpenter soon figured out that the combination was the same as the store’s address. One time she crawled in and was joined by a young man. He kept tossing out entire baguettes. When Carpenter asked him why those loaves weren’t good enough, the man replied that he was looking for Semifreddi’s famous cinnamon bread, which was wrapped in plastic. Sure enough, he found a few loaves.

Carpenter then trolled other dumpsters where she found huge chunks of gourmet cheeses, including brie, slightly-over-cooked pizza from one restaurant’s wood-burning oven, and a whole container of Spanish rice and beans. Her pigs loved the food.

But then Carpenter heard rumors of the fabulous food in Eccolo’s dumpster. She and Bill went there late one night. When she opened the lid, the smell of roasted chicken wafted through the air. It smelled so good that Carpenter was tempted to eat it. She climbed up and loaded two whole chickens, some roasted fennel, and other greens into her bucket. Suddenly a voice rose up: “Please explain what you are doing?” Carpenter turned around to see a man in a blue suit on the ground below her.

Interestingly enough, when Carpenter explained she was looking for food to feed her pigs, the man suggested she directly contact Chris Lee, the owner of Eccolo, as he might be willing to help her. Carpenter did that, and the two developed a close relationship. Lee gave Carpenter food for her pigs. When the time came to kill them, Lee helped arrange their slaughter, and then helped Carpenter make salami and prosciutto from the meat. Lee hosted Carpenter’s book release party at Eccolo as well.

Pollan has had his own adventures killing chickens as part of his research for The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He read a short segment about slicing chicken arteries and his inability to eat chicken for days afterward. Pollan also confessed he had raise a pig as a child. The pig’s name? Kosher.

The lecture with Carpenter and Pollan was the last of the spring season for Berkeley Arts and Letters. The speakers series was started in the fall of 2008 by Melissa Mytinger, who booked the author events at Cody’s for 26 years. After Cody’s closed in June 2008, Mytinger teamed up with Praveen Madan, the c0-owner of the Booksmith in San Francisco, to start the series.

While Berkeley Arts and Letters might seem like it was patterned after San Francisco’s well-regarded City Arts and Lectures, Mytinger said is it not. The artists and authors who come are a bit edgier than those in the city, reflecting Berkeley’s less mainstream views.

The fall line up already looks promising: Sherman Alexie, Orman Pamuk, Rebecca Solnit, Mary Karr, and Peter Richardson and Robert Scheer, who will talk about Richardson’s new book on Ramparts Magazine.

Submersion Journalism

Is it ethical to disguise yourself as a businessman and interview Washington D.C. lobbyists about how they can help promote a totalitarian government? Is it okay to tape those conversations?

Can a reporter sign up for a poetry conference, attend without identifying he is a reporter, and write about it for Harper’s Magazine?

Is it okay to spend a year as a prison guard and not tell your colleagues that you want to write about life inside Sing Sing?

These were some of the questions that came up Monday night at a panel discussion put on by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. The event was tied to the release of a new book called Submersion Journalism: Reporting in the Radical First Person, a collection of pieces from Harper’s Magazine.

I went because I wanted to hear Ted Conover, the author or numerous first person books, including Newjack, about the year he spent as a corrections officer at Sing Sing prison in New York. Other panelists included Michael Pollan, Roger D. Hodge, the editor of Harpers, and Jake Silverstein, who has a piece in the collection and is currently editor of Texas Monthly. Cynthia Gorney, who is a professor at the grad school with Pollan, moderated the discussion.

I didn’t get to hear enough about Conover’s techniques or what he is working on now. I did learn, however, that when he was an undergraduate at Amherst he went to visit Neil Henry, then a reporter at the Washington Post. (Henry is a professor at the j-school and emceed the event) Henry had done two pieces of immersion reporting for the Post, one where he disguised himself as a homeless man for two months and one where he worked as a migrant worker. Conover wanted to ask Henry about his techniques. Who would have guessed in 1980 that Conover would one day become master of the form?

There were really two different discussions going on. One involved more general reporting where the journalist is a subject of sorts. Michael Pollan’s attempt to grow opium and his subsequent troubles with the law fall into that category. Pollan also bought a steer cow and followed its life cycle for a story.

The other category involves outright deception or acts of omission. Roger Hodge talked about a story Ken Silverstein did for Harpers where he pretended to want to hire a lobbyist to work for the corrupt government of Turkmenisten. Silverstein wanted to find out how lobbyists manipulate reporters and the government, so he pretended to be part of a fictitious group called the Maldon Group. He set up a website for the group, got a cell phone with a London phone number (where the Maldon Group supposedly was located) and then made appointments all over town. The result was a 2007 expose that showed how lobbyists have no compunction about working with governments that terrorize their own citizens.

Some of the best reporting comes from deception but most reporters and papers claim they only use it as a last resort. Cynthia Gorney tried to generate a discussion about the ethical issues around submersion reporting, but the panelists did not disagree. All said they were generally opposed to deception but thought it could be used in certain circumstances.

The panel discussion was only marginally interesting. However, I bought the book and read Silverstein’s article. While I am uncomfortable with the fact that he taped all his conversations with lobbyists (in Washington D.C. it is legal to tape a conversation if just one person knows it is happening) the piece is enlightening. Those lobbyists really are scumbags. (Big surprise) But to hear their words and strategies is downright frightening. It is clear that with the right amount of money, any reprehensible organization can put a positive spin on news and events.

Monday Musings

Michael Chabon’s and Michael Pollan’s fundraiser for Barack Obama in Berkeley on Friday raised more than $50,000, according to Chabon.

As I drove by the scene on the Uplands in the Berkeley Hills around 6:30 p.m., cars and valet attendants were so stacked up that the street was nearly impassable. Some of those who attended apparently donated $4,600, the maximum permitted by law, according to Chabon. Alice Waters, a longtime supporter of the Clintons, was supposed to attend.

The evening was billed as “Fine Talk, Fine Food, and A Fine Candidate,” and was one of a series of Obama fundraisers put on by Chabon and his wife Ayelet Waldman. Months ago they pledged to raise $25,000 for the candidate; they have been so successful that they have upped their goal to $75,000. Their website says they have raised $65,000 but I think Friday’s event puts them over the top.

The party took place in one of the most generous, politically-minded parts of Berkeley. The 94705 zip code has donated $415,000 to Democratic candidates this election and only $17,000 to Republican candidates. No surprise, as this is Berkeley.

Mary Roach, whose new book Bonk is coming out next month, had a sweet piece in Play, a New York Times magazine, on Sunday, about learning to swim as an adult.

What in the $$%@#&*%$# Did Binky Urban Mean?

Amanda "Binky" Urban

The acknowledgment section in Michael Pollan’s new book In Defense of Food is very curious.

After he thanks a long list of people, including his researcher and former student Adrienne Davich, (who is a friend of mine) he praises his literary agent Amanda “Binky” Urban. Now Urban is one of the most powerful agents in New York. She is so well-connected, so sure of her place in the publishing world, that she never puts a listing of any of her book deals in Publishers Marketplace. Many, many other literary agents and publishers list their deals, either to show the world what they are up to, get some buzz going for a book, or just to let aspiring writers know what books are selling.

Not Urban. Not Ever.

Pollan praises Urban for her “sage and unvarnished advice.” I’ve heard him talk about her and he says she is incredibly smart and very helpful in crafting ideas. “Binky is almost never wrong about anything,” he writes.

BUT … Pollan goes on to say that “when I left New England for laid-back California, she predicted I would never complete another book. Here’s number two.”

Now when I read that acknowledgement it made me wonder. Did Urban tell Pollan he would never write again because 1) there are no stories in California? 2) People are so lazy in California that can’t be bothered to write books. 3) Pollan would be too busy teaching at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism to have time to write another book. 4) California is a wasteland and all of the above apply?

Coming on the heels of the NBCC events in San Francisco, which were specifically designed to try and break down the notion of an East Coast bias, I find Urban’s attitude disturbing.

What do people have against California? How can everyone insist we are all just a bunch of vapid blondes? Even vapid blondes have an occasion interesting thought.

Of course, I can’t really know what Urban thinks just based on Pollan’s comments. I may be totally off-base. But I just want to insist to her and all the other East Coast-centrics that there are lots of good stories worth making into books in California. In fact, we think we start most social movements and then they move East toward New York City, not the other way around.