Still Waters

I never thought I would be able to say it, but I appear to be made of sterner stuff than Mr. Badthings himself:

Also, Kim? Thirty years ago called, it wants its "revolution" back.

[No, I couldn't read it, are you fucking kidding me? I was just assaulted by the video link while frolicking in the gloriously liberated MoDo archives.]

I actually read the thing, though not having a Badthings-sized Dowd jones, I missed the video link.* The article can be, and has been, parsed rather thoroughly. I learned, for instances, that when all else fails, the adjective "lovely" moves any article on Waters forward. You can do this sort of close reading on your own -- the phone call Alice places to her daughter to tell her how lovely pretty the groceries are might be a place for novices to start.

But the more serious question is what is Alice Waters doing? More particularly what is she doing, big as life on the front of the New York Times in 2007?** What was revolutionary in 1977 is commonplace in 2007. Just ask Richard Hell. If Chez Panisse were a New York nightclub, rather than  a Bay Area restaurant, it would be CBGB's,and NYU undergrads would be living in its ruins.

Waters's goals are laudable, but Severson makes out her failure to make much progress towards these goals as part of her charm:

Earlier this year Ms. Waters announced an ambitious gathering called Slow Food Nation, planned for next May in San Francisco. She wanted it to be the Woodstock of food, drawing people from around the country. Slow Foodies would erect architect-designed street restaurants and green kitchens serving low-cost food. There would be a film festival and, if all went well, the dedication of a wholesale sustainable farmers’ market on a city pier.

Much of the work of raising the estimated $5 million budget fell to Ms. Waters, who is not great at it. And like many of her visions, it ran up against the reality-based system under which much of the world operates. So, earlier this month, the Slow Food organization decided to do a little less.

If Alice fails, it is our fault for creating such a cruel and harsh world. Reichl chimes in with “She’s relentless in that way revolutionaries are.” This equation of Waters=Revolutionary is in the headline, and permeates the article. But where is the revolution, televised or no? She runs a popular restaurant in the Bay Area, and has been delivering jeremiads about the need to reform our food supply for years. And evidently, whenever Alice comes west of the Rockies, it's news.  This may make her quixotic, and it certainly makes her an institution, and one that has contributed profoundly to changing the way some Americans eat. But it does not make her a revolutionary. You cannot be a revolutionary and an institution at the same time. Revolutionaries make shit happen, and at this point, Waters is kicking against the pricks while resting on her (locally and sustainably grown) laurels.

*I found the video link. I made it to the 49 second mark. How long can you hang on in the Alice Waters Video Rodeo?

**Yes, she does have a new cookbook coming out, the first sans Panisse brand, but if flogging books is the rationale, it suggests a convergence of talk show booking policies and journalism.

Comments

[Marco Romano]

I would not want to go the market with Alice Waters. I prefer it to be an enjoyable experience.