We all face it. It could do us some good to talk more about it. That’s the premise behind the Death Café, where people meet without a program, agenda, or speaker, to talk about death. The next Death Café in Davis is Nov. 6, and on today’s show we talk with two people organizing the event: Elizabeth Banks, senior minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis, and Kristi Dvorak, community outreach director of the Davis Cemetery District and Arboretum.
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More people are coming to Davis to study, work, or live, but the supply of housing isn’t keeping pace, especially with UC Davis adding thousands of new students. Today we talk with Davis real estate broker Steve Boschken about current prices, rents, the spillover to Woodland, other trends, and potential options. Boschken has roots in town -- he grew up here, and also studied environmental design and urban planning at UC Davis.
“I don’t think that the way we patchwork new subdivisions in, when they do finally get in, is the best way to plan a community,” he says. “They’re planning it only on what’s here in front of them today, instead of what Davis is going to look like 100 years from now. |
Today we conclude our interview with Gene Parsons, 72, who was part of The Byrds from 1968 to 1972 and performs with David Hayes in Davis this Saturday, Sept. 10 (here's part 1 of the interview). We hear more about his songs, The Byrds, the note-bending Stringbender device he invented in the 1960s, a steam engine he built in his shop, new music he’s recording with Hayes and the Mendocino Quartet, a long-ago trick in a Yucca Valley bar & grill that tapped his skills with an acetylene torch, and what's coming next. “We have a few other performances that are on the books. We don’t do a lot. We’re kind of basically semi-retired in the music biz,” he says. “We’re kind of just letting it unfold.”
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Gene Parsons, son of a classical pianist, grew up in the Mojave desert, practicing banjo and guitar in an empty 10,000-gallon water tank on his father’s homesteaded ranch. One day, as a teenager playing banjo in a music shop, he was invited to join a recording session by Gib Guilbeau—a Cajun fiddle player who would later play with Parsons in at least three bands. The experience set Parsons on a path that led to him playing in The Byrds from 1968 to 1972. On Sept. 10 he joins David Hayes, an equally accomplished musician, in concert at the Davis Odd Fellows Hall (that's Hayes on the left in the photo, with Parsons), and today we present the first of a two-part interview with Parsons (here's part 2). The conversation includes memories of fellow Byrd Clarence White, Gram Parsons, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow; his songs Gunga Din and Yesterday's Train; and the “oddball story” about how a kid who had wanted to play fiddle grew up to play drums for one of the top bands of the 1960s, contributing to its revival after most of its original members had left.
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Most people in Davis live in rentals, the vacancy rate is well below 1 percent, and enrollment at UC Davis keeps growing, further stoking the demand for places to live. That’s the context for a new rental ordinance Davis is developing this summer, and today we talk with Brett Lee and Lucas Frerichs, City Council members working on this project, about what the new ordinance would do, why it treats apartments differently than rented houses or granny flats, and why they're pursuing this change.
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Paul Wilbur manages Armadillo Music downtown. Not too many years ago it would have been one of several record stores in our college town, but the big shift to downloads and streaming has decimated the ranks of traditional record shops. On today’s show Paul (shown here holding a Ramones LP at KDRT) talks about how they make the store work, why people still buy CDs and vinyl, types of music that sell well in Davis, and why the Scorpions are his favorite band. “Music makes us feel good,” he says. “Any bad day [for me] can be instantly corrected if I just put on Love at First Sting.”
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Kari Rundquist is the new chief executive of Davis Roots, a 4-year-old nonprofit that helps fledgling companies get started in Davis—it's a Silicon Valley kind of ambition, except based here. The idea is that if these companies emerge and grow in Davis, they will add jobs, opportunity, money, and variety to the local economy.
"We have an opportunity to create commerce for entrepreneurs, and for innovation, and for economic development, sort of on our own terms," she says. The opportunity is often based on research that emerges from UC Davis. "So much of the science coming out of the university is really inspiring, altruistic kinds of science," she adds, "[and] is very aligned with our kind of community values." On today’s program she talks about the possibilities ahead.
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Brett Lee won a second term on the Davis City Council June 7. On today’s post-election interview, recorded June 11, we talk about whether Davis is likely to see a revised version of the Nishi development that voters narrowly rejected last week, the revived Mace Ranch Innovation Center, growth, and why only four people ran for the council when there were three open seats—the cost and time required, he says, are just part of the reason.
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