Editor’s Mixing Bowl
Three summers ago, we noticed an empty spot on our cover above Wendy Yoshimura’s watercolor painting of cherries. For some compelling reason, it called out for the word “pleasure” to be added.
No such spot exists on this cover, but if it did, we might add the word “visionary.” This issue is filled with people whose vision and tenacity have led them towards new ventures with powerful and sometimes unexpected results.
Some visionaries spend years knowing just what they want to accomplish. For others, an idea might evolve over time, or it might hit like a bolt of lightning. Our cover story features Gloria Retzlaff Taylor and her husband, Bob Taylor, who started out with a fairly modest plan to grow grapes in the Livermore Valley. They certainly didn’t expect to become winemakers stewarding one of California’s first certified-organic vineyards.
Likewise, Cal student Mackenzie Feldman thought she’d come to the university to study business and play on the beach volleyball team. Yet an unexpected encounter with a toxic herbicide near the volleyball court set her on an urgent mission to end the use of toxins on the Berkeley campus. Her work is now starting to reach well beyond Berkeley.
In these pages, we also introduce two women who have taken their vision of a neighborhood bar as a safe haven and made it into reality at Albany’s Ivy Room. And we share the tale of an Alameda fishmonger living his dream of running his family’s fourth-generation seafood business.
We hope these stories launch you into a summer filled with optimism about what people can do and create. Perhaps they’ll even spark your own path of discovery.
Summer also means we can all look forward to the seasonal bounty at local farmers’ markets—cherries, berries, peaches, melons, tomatoes, and on and on. We encourage you to indulge in sweet frozen pleasures, too. For that we have help from artist Margo Rivera-Weiss with their latest map: Favorite Scoops of the East Bay. More maps are in the works, so read on and make sure you get in touch when the spirit moves you.
Enjoy the season, and watch out for those groundbreaking ideas you might discover!
Rachel Trachten
Associate Editor
Edible East Bay
