A Key Move

Piano Man’s Business Finds New Home at Alameda Point


Keith Gleason

John Callahan is not a musician but a devoted technician who first learned piano tuning as a teenager from his father. “I was fascinated by the technical side,” says Callahan. Over the past 30 years, his obsession with the king of instruments has led him to expand Callahan’s Piano Service to piano restoration, rebuilding and appraisals. He also employs five talented technicians in his workshop. Callahan’s brothers, Michael and Matt, also tune pianos, while oldest brother, Jim Jr., is president of the Piedmont Piano Company. As a family, their motto could be, “We are pianos.”
    The large workshop at Alameda Point usually has about nine grand pianos in various states of repair, rebuilding or restora ion, a meticulous process that takes 250 to 300 hours. In a back room, keyboard units, which are pulled out of the bellies of the pianos and worked on separately, await repair. Since the action of each key on a grand piano requires approximately 100 parts to produce a sound, it takes 120 hours to complete the restoration of any grand piano’s 10,000 keyboard parts.
    Callahan says the business had outgrown its old workshop on Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue. He’s pleased to be at Alameda Point in a larger space that features an entire wall of windows, which floods the room with light and offers views of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco. “I had my eye on this space for several years,” he says.
    Callahan tunes pianos for the San Francisco Opera and Ballet and can count Alameda’s resident opera star Frederica von Stade among his happy customers. She had her father’s 1904 Steinway Model A grand restored and rebuilt in Callahan’s workshop. “I had never really imagined that it could look so good and that it could sound so magnificent,” says von Stade. Before she got it back, though, von Stade loaned the restored instrument to Bay Area composer Jake Heggie, who composed much of his acclaimed opera, Dead Man Walking, on it.
    Callahan also provided technical advice to Thad Carhart, author of the 2001 bestseller, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, which tells the story of expatriate Carhart’s rediscovery of a lost childhood passion and reentry into the world of the piano and music while living in Paris. “The passion behind their craftsmanship is something rare to behold,” says Carhart of the workshop.
    Callahan has tuned thousands of pianos over the years, but still remembers the surprise he found in the bass strings of a customer’s piano in Oakland. “I heard this ter ion, a meticulous process that takes 250 to 300 hours. In a back room, keyboard units, which are pulled out of the bellies of the pianos and worked on separately, await repair. Since the action of each key on a grand piano requires approximately 100 parts to produce a sound, it takes 120 hours to complete the restoration of any grand piano’s 10,000 keyboard parts.
    Callahan says the business had outgrown its old workshop on Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue. He’s pleased to be at Alameda Point in a larger space that features an entire wall of windows, which floods the room with light and offers views of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco. “I had my eye on this space for several years,” he says.
    Callahan tunes pianos for the San Francisco Opera and Ballet and can count Alameda’s resident opera star Frederica von Stade among his happy customers. She had her father’s 1904 Steinway Model A grand restored and rebuilt in Callahan’s workshop. “I had never really imagined that it could look so good and that it could sound so magnificent,” says von Stade. Before she got it back, though, von Stade loaned the restored instrument to Bay Area composer Jake Heggie, who composed much of his acclaimed opera, Dead Man Walking, on it.
    Callahan also provided technical advice to Thad Carhart, author of the 2001 bestseller, The Piano Shop on the Left Bank, which tells the story of expatriate Carhart’s rediscovery of a lost childhood passion and reentry into the world of the piano and music while living in Paris. “The passion behind their craftsmanship is something rare to behold,” says Carhart of the workshop.
    Callahan has tuned thousands of pianos over the years, but still remembers the surprise he found in the bass strings of a customer’s piano in Oakland. “I heard this terrible rattle. “Do you know what’s in the piano?” I asked. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘That’s where I keep my gun.’”

 

About a Musician


SINGING HAS ALWAYS BEEN A PASSION FOR CYNTHIA WEYUKER. BUT IT WASN’T UNTIL COLLEGE THAT SHE BEGAN to take her desire to make music more seriously, obtaining a bachelor of music in music therapy from the University of the Pacific.
    Since then the 40-year-old Alameda resident has worked as a music therapist and performed with a variety of local companies, including the City Opera of San Francisco, Contemporary Opera in Marin and the Sacramento Opera Chorus.
    She spent seven years working at several prisons in Vacaville, helping to rehabilitate inmates through music. Currently she works as a licensing program analyst for the state of California and does musical therapy volunteer work at a new grassroots organization in Oakland, helping people with neurological disorders.
    She recently performed off-off Broadway with Larry Beau in The Last of the Lonesome Bards, and completed recording a CD, Weapons of Mass Destruction, at Skywalker Studios with the well-known Punk Rock Orchestra. She has also done vocal parts in a couple of independent films shot in San Francisco.
    “My goal is to combine a creative musical path with a therapeutic edge,” says Weyuker, who plays several musical instruments, including the musical saw, guitar, piano and concertina.  –Debbie Cohen

Zine Girls


    Enterprising local girls have published a magazine for teens called Out Loud: Thoughts of a Teenage Mind. The first issue came out in June, and the next issue is expected in fall.
    The collaboration of participants from Girls Inc., the Home Project and Alameda Collaborative for Youth, Children and Their Families, the teen zine is “created by young people for young people,” according to the first issue. The magazine contains movie and music reviews, poetry and short stories, tips for dating and where to eat and hang out, all written by members of the “Zine Team.”
    The editorial staff, which includes students from Alameda and Encinal high schools, Alameda Community Learning Center and Chipman Middle School, hopes to focus on the diversity of teens on the Island with a wide variety of topics and “to represent the voice of youth in Alameda,” according to Jane Sperling of the HOME Project.
    Putting a magazine together was a real learning experience the first time around, and contributors expect new lessons to come with each successive issue. “There will always be a challenge,” says Yulanda Do, one of the editors. “Especially when the deadline comes.”
    Watch for Out Loud to be published four times a year. Copies are available through the ACCYF at (510) 749-5816 or via e-mail, alord@ci.alameda.ca.us.

Beachy Keen


We know West Alameda calls its annual street fair and music festival the Peanut Butter Jam because Skippy Peanut Butter was invented and manufactured there. But why are they trucking seven tons of sand to the event on Saturday, Sept. 10, for a luau and beach party?
    The answer is simple: Neptune Beach—the “Coney Island of the West”—attracted people from all over the Bay Area to the shore at the southern end of Webster Street for more than six decades.
    It began with four bathing houses near the foot of Webster Street in 1877. Resort hotels—including what is now known as Croll’s—came next. By 1917, Neptune Beach amusement park’s 100-foot Moorish tower was a beacon for a daily crush of 20,000 visitors (twice that many on Sundays) who swam in the pools and the Bay, rode the roller coaster and Ferris wheel, watched vaudeville, baseball and boxing, visited the House of Mirrors, cheered the “Monkey Speedway Races” (with real monkeys) and drank lots of beer. Two new summertime sweets were introduced there—the Popsicle and Sno-Cone. Boxer John L. Sullivan and writers Jack London and Robert Louis Stevenson were among the visitors—as were 200 unlucky draft dodgers who were caught up in a Slacker’s Raid one sunny day during World War I.
    The end came in 1939 when the park went bankrupt, but after a decade as an officer’s training school, it became the Robert Crown Memorial Beach, named for the state assemblyman who championed its cause. -Alan Mann

ALAMEDAMADE


    West Teak co-founders Michael Robertori and Dennis Landau have been friends since they met in woodshop class in high school. Their hobby later blossomed into a successful business, making Alameda one of the hubs for outdoor teak furnishings in the nation. Robertori says while their clientele are from all over the United States, Alameda fans are their fondest. Alamedans say that West Teak is “the little buried treasure in their backyard.”
    Natives of New Jersey, Robertori and Landau left San Francisco behind to start their business in Alameda where they found a warehouse big enough for the task. A former airplane hangar at Alameda Point is now home to this booming business.
    Since 2001, West Teak has been making individually crafted teak chairs, tables, mailboxes and more. The company uses 100 percent plantation-grown teak, kiln-dried and humidified to prevent warping and splitting, that should last for three generations. “Our teak is heirloom quality,” says Robertori. Call (866) WEST-TEAK or visit www.west-teak.com. -Ashley Burns
              

Trick or Eat

 
    WHICH IS MORE ABSURD: THAT AMERICANS SPEND MORE THAN $1 BILLION A YEAR PURCHASING Halloween candy and costumes for one night? Or that U.S. food banks have to struggle year-round to feed hungry children?
    Pete Halberstadt of Alameda’s West Advertising has found a way to level out the equation. Last year he asked his friends and family to match every dollar they spent on Halloween candy with a dollar for hungry children. He sent the proceeds to the Food Research and Action Center (www.frac.org), a leading national organization working to improve public policies in order to wipe out hunger in the United States. Halberstadt got more than he intended—$100 donations started rolling in from people who don’t even buy Halloween candy. 
    Now Halberstadt is working toward nonprofit status, so he will be ready for this year’s donations. Visit his Web site, and if you’re feeling charitable, hand out treats this year where they’re needed most, www.trickortreatgang.org. -Ashley Burns

Be Prepared


    Do you know what to do in case of an emergency—an earthquake, a major fire, a terrorist action? Although Alameda recently received the Good Neighbor Award from the Bay Area Chapter of the American Red Cross for its community preparedness, the task is not finished yet.
    The Alameda Fire Department, American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter
and Alameda Power and Telecom have partnered to create a short film on being prepared, called Together We Prepare: A Disaster Resistant Alameda. The film premiered in April on the 99th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire.
    The film is available on DVD and some 5,000 copies have been distributed around Alameda through schools, civic and social organizations. The half-hour DVD shows steps to take to get prepared (store water and food, make a plan, etc.) and what to do after a disaster occurs. City officials hope to prepare at least 25 percent of the population of the Island for an emergency with first aid training and more. Distributing and showing the film is part of that goal.
    Program information is available on the AP&T Web site, www.alamedapt.com and the Alameda TV Web site, www.alamedatv.org. Learn more about the Together We Prepare: A Disaster Resistant Alameda from AFD’s Disaster Preparedness Officer Rick Zombeck at (510) 337-2131.