DIY Crabbing


How’s fresh crab for dinner sound? Just make a beeline for your favorite fish counter and load up, right? Well, maybe. Or why not go crabbing?
    Kevin and Bryan Gorman prefer to personally pluck their crabs from the sea. They love taking their boat just outside the Golden Gate Bridge for crabbing. And after five years of doing so, they’ve honed their technique to perfection.
    What do these DIY crabbers say is the secret to their success? First off, use the right bait, and they insist frozen squid is the ticket—the crabs just can’t keep their claws off it. But don’t just hang that squid inside a circular crab pot. Instead, put it in a plastic bait jar with a perforated lid.  The holes allow the squid scent to circulate, but the jar prevents the bait from being eaten. Toss a fish carcass into the crab trap if you want the live crabs to have something to munch on—a good idea, because the goal is to keep the crustaceans busy until the trap is retrieved. Otherwise, they might slip out and shuffle off sideways en route to a better buffet.
Some crabbers place their traps then go fishing near the Farallon Islands for a few hours before returning to pull up the traps. But the Gorman brothers’ strategy calls for letting the pots sit for extended day soaks. This means making two trips, but they don’t mind. Part of the fun is motoring across San Francisco Bay in their 22-foot Boston Whaler Revenge. And besides, as the proprietor of the Outboard Motor Shop, Bryan, 42, needs to spend quality time with his merchandise.
    The first two weeks of the crabbing season in November—before the commercial guys get going—are the best, the brothers say. So that’s when they headed out in November 2005, borrowing a bigger boat to take seven friends about nine miles north of the Golden Gate. Everyone aboard had the required sport fishing license—$34.90 for the season or $11.30 for a single day. When the crew pulled up 120 Dungeness crabs in seven traps, each permit holder went home with the full 10-crab quota and big smiles.
    Recovering the traps is hard work. They’re placed in 80 to 150 feet of water at the end of 200 feet of line, and a full trap can easily weigh 60 pounds.  Hauling traps up would be a cakewalk with a power winch, but the Gormans rely on good old-fashioned hand pulling.
    Back at the dock, the crew hoses down the boat, and then it’s time to cook the crabs. Kevin, 41, mans a steam cooker outside. Purists say the best way to eat Dungeness crab is to crack it open and swab it in a little lemon juice and melted butter. Some crab-lovers insist on making crab cakes, salad or bisque, but how the crab is prepared really doesn’t matter. Add some sourdough French bread and wash it down with generous amounts of beer or white wine for a meal worthy of any gourmand.
    Crab season this year runs Nov. 11 through June 30, though the pickings are slim late in the season. Check out the Coastside Fishing Club’s crabbing tutorial at www.coastsidefishingclub.com and the California Department of Fish and Game’s Web site at www.dfg.ca.gov for more information. Those without a boat can join a charter vessel. For details, check out www.emeryvillesportfishing.com.

Alameda Theater Hits the Small Screen


The Alameda Theater restoration has been the subject of many news headlines and some controversy for the past year. In an effort to shed light on the value of the project, the city of Alameda asked Alameda Power & Telecom to help create a documentary about the historic downtown theater, which opened back in 1932. The resulting 23-minute film, Let’s Go to the Movies—Restoring Alameda’s Movie Palace, traces the early heyday of the theater, its demise and its future.
Designed by Timothy Pflueger, the same architect who designed the Paramount in Oakland and the Castro and Metro theaters in San Francisco, the Alameda Theater was one of the grandest “movie palaces” around. “The height of its glory was really the 1930s and ’40s,” says Ed Schneider, Alameda Power & Telecom’s media director, who wrote the script for the documentary and shot it along with co-worker Mathew Wolfe.
The theater finally closed in the 1970s. Since then, it’s been used as a roller rink, a gymnasium and band practice studios. With the city’s final approval of the project—which includes the restoration of the main lobby and the addition of an adjoining seven-screen cineplex and a 350-space parking structure—the theater will see some of its former glory again.
The documentary is currently airing on Public Access Channel 31. For show times, check Alameda TV’s Web site, www.alamedatv.org.
 —Keri Hayes Troutman

TAKEFIVE with Mayor Beverly Johnson

1 Lincoln Park


Lincoln Park is a place I will always associate with summer and my childhood. When I was a kid, my siblings and I rode our bikes there every day. My mom taught swimming at the pool, and that’s where we learned to swim.

2 The Old Alameda Theater


It was a definite hangout spot in my day. I remember seeing the Exorcist there and being scared to walk home afterwards. One of my last memories of that theater was a series of five James Bond movies—I saw all of them.

3 Ole’s WAFFLE HOUSE


Ole’s is a place that my whole family loves to frequent. If I let them, they would eat breakfast, lunch and dinner there. My daughter’s favorite dish is their BLT, which is what I usually order, and for my son and husband, it’s a toss up between the French dip and a burger.

4 Edison Playground


When I was a park director at Edison, it happened to be the most popular of all the parks at the time. One summer, because it was so popular, other park directors joined us on a trip to Great America—I’m glad they did because that’s how I met my husband.

5 Kofman Auditorium


Kofman Auditorium, which we used to call “the auditorium,” will always trigger great memories for me. When I attended Alameda High, besides attending student body meetings in that building, I played the clarinet in the orchestra there many times.
—Gina Jaber

Grease Lightning


When John Grimaldi drives by in his 2002 Volkswagen Jetta, the smell of tempura fills the air.
Grimaldi, who lives on Encinal Avenue, fuels his car entirely with used cooking oil from Kobe Ya, the Japanese restaurant a couple of blocks from his home. “I want to do something to help the environment,” he says. “I know this is where these movements start—at the grassroots level.”
    Running automobiles on vegetable oil has two benefits, proponents say. One, it reduces the amount of harmful carbon in the atmosphere. And secondly, it eliminates the need to import oil, a non-renewable resource. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has yet to give the green light for grease cars, primarily because it has no regulations in place regarding the fuel emissions of the cars.
    Grimaldi learned about grease cars from Alan Pryor, a local roofing contractor and the founder and president of the Alameda Bio-Diesel Co-op, a group of six members who run their cars on vegetable oil obtained from different local sources. With Pryor’s guidance, Grimaldi invested about $200 into two large barrels and the equipment to build an area to process the oil in his garage. He makes about 40 gallons of biodiesel at a time, and it takes Grimaldi about a week to process the fuel.
    The car runs fine, Grimaldi says, and he gets about 40 miles per gallon, which comes in handy, considering he commutes to his job as a firefighter and paramedic in South San Francisco. He reckons he’s saved $1,600 in the past year by not buying petrol for his Jetta. And, he’s doing the owners of Kobe Ya a favor, too. Grimaldi takes all of the restaurant’s used cooking oil, which the business would have to pay to dispose of, otherwise.
    Grimaldi is spreading the biodiesel message. In June, he submitted a proposal to South San Francisco to run the city’s 18-passenger diesel buses for the elderly on a biodiesel and diesel fuel mix. The project is now in the works.
—Mary McInerney

About a Jeopardy! Winner


Answer: Theater box office manager and part-time actor who brought wealth and fame to hometown after TV game show win. Question: Who is Alameda’s Jeopardy! success story, Jonathan Spencer? That’s right! This past spring, Spencer, 46, joined the elite group of contestants who’ve emerged triumphant from Jeopardy!’s fast-paced intellectual showdown.
    Spencer’s dreams of game show stardom began years ago when his UC Berkeley squad qualified for College Bowl but lacked the funds to travel to the national championship. Good dreams die hard, if ever, and last year, Spencer leapt at the opportunity to audition for the upcoming season of Jeopardy! in Los Angeles. There was only one big problem: He was going to sneak down to Southern California without telling his wife, Vicky, whom he wanted to surprise with good news if the tryouts went well. “I can’t keep a secret,” he says. “I finally had to say, ‘Honey, I have something to tell you. I’m going to try out for Jeopardy!’ ”
    After close to 80 hopefuls completed a paper test, just a dozen were left to prove their minds—and fast fingers. When Spencer finally got word that his date with Jeopardy! destiny was set, he reviewed his strategy and studied common categories. Then, he came up with “five funny short stories” about his life for host Alex Trebek to use during introductions. During his second night on the program, he told the audience about meeting his wife in a production of The Pirates of Penzance. “I was playing the Pirate King and Vicky was in the women’s chorus,” he says. “Several years later, on our wedding day, she surprised me by singing the line, ‘For he is my Pirate King.’ ”
    Spencer, a one-time winner, walked off the set with $20,000, but his favorite payoff was the way the Jeopardy! staff treats the winners. “When you win a game, your name is ‘Champ,’ ” he says.
 Pirate King and Jeopardy! champ, both memories worth a fortune.
    What is, take that to the bank?
—Noelle Robbins

Where the Sidewalk Ends


   
For local writer James Douglas Gamble, the idea for his recent book, The Sidewalks of Alameda, arrived with the ease of a Sunday stroll. “I walk a lot and kept seeing these stamps and thought, ‘This is interesting,’” says Gamble, a six-year Alameda resident who traversed the Island on foot to photograph, catalog and research 108 Alameda sidewalk stamps—the signatures of contractors who laid sidewalks throughout the city—cut into the cement from the 1910s to the present.
    Gamble, 62, calls himself a “talented amateur” writer. He penned three books on another unusual subject, battle axes, then took his knowledge of the weapons to the Discovery Channel (as an expert) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (as a curator). With experience researching and publishing these books, it was simple to learn about local concrete and contractors for Sidewalks. Currently, there are 100 copies of Sidewalks in existence, and Gamble plans on updating the book because mere weeks after the first edition’s release, it’s already outdated. “I’ve found 15 more stamps,” he says.
    The Sidewalks of Alameda is available for $12 at the Alameda Museum, Spellbinding Tales, Books Inc. and the Frank Bette Art Center.
—Christopher Danzig