Latest news with #Kon-Tiki
San Francisco Chronicle
4 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
This chef ran one of the Bay Area's best popups. Now he's opening his own spot
An Oakland popup known for late night eats is graduating into a full-blown bar and restaurant. Chisme is moving out of its sultry lair inside Oakland's Low Bar and over to 347 14th St., where the Kon-Tiki shook Mai Tais until its closing in December. Chef Manuel Bonilla said the new Bar Chisme will be more of a dive bar, with a small cocktail program with a few original drinks to complement his Filipino-Salvadoran cooking. Gone are the tropical trappings of the previous tiki bar for what will be a more casual, yet eclectic look. 'We're going for 'abuelita's house on acid'. Very homey and very chill,' he said. The owners of the Kon-Tiki, Christ Aivaliotis and Matt Reagan, shut down their popular spot late last year after seven years in business. Bonilla is familiar with the new location: He was the Kon-Tiki's opening chef. But his choice to return to the space amounts to a bet on the future of downtown Oakland, as Aiviolitis wrote in a profanity-laden screed that business in downtown Oakland was nearly impossible. Aivaliotis and Reagan approached Bonilla and his business partners to take over their old corner space. Bonilla is keeping the operation as minimal as possible to protect himself from increasing costs. Unlike its predecessor, there won't be any servers and all orders must be placed and picked up at the bar. The vision: 'Straight up no-frills, but with Chisme's food,' he said. Bonilla's resume isn't just dive bar food. It includes Oakland's two Michelin-starred Commis, and he currently works at modern Salvadoran restaurant Popoca. At Chisme, Bonilla's dishes have included yucca smothered in black beans, rich sisig pupusas and handmade chicken nuggets. Bar Chisme's menu will lean in a similar direction with the addition of a smashburger and a grilled burger. The house cocktails will feature ingredients like rums and agave distillates, also reflecting that influence. Chisme took over Low Bar's kitchen in March of last year after the venue's owners announced they were ending their kitchen program. Chisme had made appearances as a popup before settling into its residency. Bonilla's cooking and being the only open kitchen until close to midnight made Chisme a magnet for late night diners or an excuse to stick around for another drink. Chronicle restaurant critic Cesar Hernandez praised Bonilla's vision, which went from playful to layered. Dishes like tortas stuffed with lechon fuse cultural cues from his Filipino and Salvadoran background. 'His style is loose and fun but never misses a chance to impress, like the family member who steals the show on the dance floor,' he wrote. Chisme was ranked among the best new restaurants of 2024.
Miami Herald
17-05-2025
- General
- Miami Herald
Andrew Cassell, daring sailor who won Paralympic gold, dies at 82
In the early 1950s, Andy Cassell, a 9-year-old boy on the Isle of Wight in England, read about the Kon-Tiki expedition, Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's voyage across the Pacific Ocean on a primitive raft. Andy began to dream of sailing, although it seemed an unlikely prospect: He had been born with malformed hips and no legs. Still, he built a raft with pine logs he found on the beach, and his grandmother helped by fashioning a sail from a tablecloth and a mast from a clothesline pole. His mother allowed him on the raft, so long as he remained tied to the shore with a 60-foot rope. After a few weeks, he cut the rope. Soon enough, he was racing a secondhand Albacore dinghy that his grandmother bought him. And at 18, Cassel won a national dinghy-sailing championship. He went on to become a skilled competitor in national and international races in various classes, including keelboats and yachts. In August 1979, at the age of 37, he helmed a crew of six in the Fastnet Race, a roughly 700-mile yachting competition from southern England to Ireland and back, named for the Fastnet Rock, a rugged Irish islet in the middle of the course. They set out in sunshine, but it wouldn't last. A severe windstorm killed 15 sailors in what is now considered the deadliest race in modern yachting history. During those perilous hours, Cassell discovered that his youthful sailing experience -- the hardship of learning to sail without legs and the subtleties of piloting a rustic dinghy -- had prepared him to survive. After steering his boat to safety, he went on to lead the first crew to win a Paralympic gold medal in sailing. He later established a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping disabled sailors compete in races open to everyone. Cassell died March 18 at the age of 82, in a hospital on the Isle of Wight. The cause was sepsis following heart surgery, Matt Grier, director of the Andrew Cassell Foundation, said. It was about two days into the Fastnet Race when a fog descended, Cassell recalled in a 2018 post on his foundation's website. The wind picked up, eventually reaching over 55 knots, and the waves soared to 60 feet high. The boat's engine and radio malfunctioned, and a critical piece connecting the mast to the boom broke. Cassell's crew took down the mainsail to prevent the boat from capsizing. One man suggested that they head into the wind. Cassell objected, saying their rudder would be ripped off. They tried going downwind but then shot forward so fast that Cassell warned the boat was about to go under a wave and 'disappear forever.' Then he had an idea. He remembered a technique he had learned while sailing a dinghy: Frequently recalibrating the direction of a vessel at fine angles enabled smoother sailing. Trying that now, however, would require the finesse of handling his 30-foot sailboat as if it were just 6 feet long. For hours throughout the night, without stopping to sleep, and rejecting a tow from a lifeboat -- 'they told us that we were mad, rather more strongly than that,' Cassell remembered -- he steered the boat as he would have a dinghy, while his crew stayed below deck. His upper-body strength, gained from decades of moving around on crutches with prosthetic legs, was a matter of some lore; he was able to haul himself, hand grip by hand grip, up a mast to retrieve a rope. More than 24 hours after the storm began, Cassell skippered his boat into port at the coastal Irish village of Dunmore East. Local residents were waiting and broke into applause. Andrew Cassell was born July 14, 1942, in East Sussex, England. His father, Clarence Cassell, was a farmer who moved the family to East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, where he had found work as an estate manager. His mother, Dulcie (Bull) Cassell, was a pianist. At 14, Andy Cassell left school to work as an apprentice at Ratsey & Lapthorn, a sail-making company, where he remained employed for the rest of his career. In the 1990s, he was convinced to join sailing races for people with disabilities. His crowning achievement came in the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games, where sailing was a trial event. Cassell won the gold and with it, growing acclaim. Local papers called him the 'legless helmsman' and the 'disabled yachting hero.' Propelled by his Paralympic victory, Cassell created a foundation with the goal of training disabled sailors to compete with everyone else on a 'level playing field.' Ian Wyllie, one of those sailors, had severely injured his spine during training with the British navy. Until he took up competitive sailing, he thought he had lost the chance at a life on the sea. But thanks to the Cassell Foundation, he said, he discovered that he could zip around a boat wearing his leg braces, by sliding, gripping rails and other handholds, and relying on his savvy and strength. 'I owe him, and the foundation he began, my second go at life,' he wrote in a memorial for Cassell. Cassell's first marriage, to Chris Wimball, ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Sue Burgess, whom he married in 2001; a daughter from his first marriage, Zoe Barnes; three stepdaughters, Debbie Heryet, Vicki Lachlan and Lucie Banks; and several grandchildren and step-grandchildren. Another sailor mentored by Cassell, Duncan Byatt, recalled that before they sailed together for the first time, Cassell mentioned that he had just broken his leg. Concerned, Byatt asked how long it would take to heal. 'Oh, don't worry,' Cassell said. 'I'll get a new one in the post on Monday.' This article originally appeared in The New York Times. Copyright 2025
New York Times
15-05-2025
- General
- New York Times
Andrew Cassell, Daring Sailor Who Won Paralympic Gold, Dies at 82
In the early 1950s, Andy Cassell, a 9-year-old boy on the Isle of Wight in England, read about the Kon-Tiki expedition, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl's voyage across the Pacific Ocean on a primitive raft. Andy began to dream of sailing, although it seemed an unlikely prospect: He had been born with malformed hips and no legs. Still, he built a raft with pine logs he found on the beach, and his grandmother helped by fashioning a sail from a tablecloth and a mast from a clothesline pole. His mother allowed him on the raft, so long as he remained tied to the shore with a 60-foot rope. After a few weeks, he cut the rope. Soon enough, he was racing a secondhand Albacore dinghy that his grandmother bought him. And at 18, Cassel (pronounced CAS-ul) won a national dinghy-sailing championship. He went on to become a skilled competitor in national and international races in various classes, including keelboats and yachts. In August 1979, at the age of 37, he helmed a crew of six in the Fastnet Race, a roughly 700-mile yachting competition from southern England to Ireland and back, named for the Fastnet Rock, a rugged Irish islet in the middle of the course. They set out in sunshine, but it wouldn't last. A severe windstorm killed 15 sailors in what is now considered the deadliest race in modern yachting history. During those perilous hours, Cassell discovered that his youthful sailing experience — the hardship of learning to sail without legs and the subtleties of piloting a rustic dinghy — had prepared him to survive. After steering his boat to safety, he went on to lead the first crew to win a Paralympic gold medal in sailing. He later established a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping disabled sailors compete in races open to everyone. Cassell died on March 18 at the age of 82, in a hospital on the Isle of Wight. The cause was sepsis following heart surgery, Matt Grier, the director of the Andrew Cassell Foundation, said. It was about two days into the Fastnet Race when a fog descended, Cassell recalled in a 2018 post on his foundation's website. The wind picked up, eventually reaching over 55 knots, and the waves soared to 60 feet high. The boat's engine and radio malfunctioned, and a critical piece connecting the mast to the boom broke. Cassell's crew took down the mainsail to prevent the boat from capsizing. One man suggested that they head into the wind. Cassell objected, saying their rudder would be ripped off. They tried going downwind, but then shot forward so fast that Cassell warned the boat was about to go under a wave and 'disappear forever.' Then he had an idea. He remembered a technique he had learned while sailing a dinghy: Frequently recalibrating the direction of a vessel at fine angles enabled smoother sailing. Trying that now, however, would require the finesse of handling his 30-foot sailboat as if it were just six feet long. For hours throughout the night, without stopping to sleep, and rejecting a tow from a lifeboat — 'they told us that we were mad, rather more strongly than that,' Cassell remembered — he steered the boat as he would have a dinghy, while his crew stayed below deck. His upper-body strength, gained from decades of moving around on crutches with prosthetic legs, was a matter of some lore; he was able to haul himself, hand grip by hand grip, up a mast to retrieve a rope. More than 24 hours after the storm began, Cassell skippered his boat into port at the coastal Irish village of Dunmore East. Local residents were waiting and broke into applause. Andrew Cassell was born on July 14, 1942, in East Sussex, England. His father, Clarence Cassell, was a farmer who moved the family to East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, where he had found work as an estate manager. His mother, Dulcie (Bull) Cassell, was a pianist. At 14, Andy left school to work as an apprentice at Ratsey & Lapthorn, a sail-making company, where he remained employed for the rest of his career. In the 1990s, he was convinced to join sailing races for people with disabilities. His crowning achievement came in the 1996 Atlanta Paralympic Games, where sailing was a trial event. Cassell won the gold and with it, growing acclaim. Local papers called him the 'legless helmsman' and the 'disabled yachting hero.' Propelled by his Paralympic victory, Cassell created a foundation with the goal of training disabled sailors to compete with everyone else, on a 'level playing field.' Ian Wyllie, one of those sailors, had severely injured his spine during training with the Royal Navy. Until he took up competitive sailing, he thought he had lost the chance at a life on the sea. But thanks to the Cassell Foundation, he said, he discovered that he could zip around a boat wearing his leg braces, by sliding, gripping rails and other handholds, and relying on his savvy and strength. 'I owe him, and the foundation he began, my second go at life,' he wrote in a memorial for Cassell. Cassell's first marriage, to Chris Wimball, ended in divorce. He is survived by his second wife, Sue Burgess, whom he married in 2001; a daughter from his first marriage, Zoe Barnes; three stepdaughters, Debbie Heryet, Vicki Lachlan and Lucie Banks; and several grandchildren and step-grandchildren. Another sailor mentored by Cassell, Duncan Byatt, recalled that before they sailed together for the first time, Cassell mentioned that he had just broken his leg. Concerned, Byatt asked how long it would take to heal. 'Oh, don't worry,' Cassell said. 'I'll get a new one in the post on Monday.'
Mint
03-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Books: Upamanyu Chatterjee is master of the absurd in his new collection
In the titular novella from Upamanyu Chatterjee's The Hush of the Uncaring Sea: Novellas 2018-2025 , a racist sea captain from Apartheid-era South Africa is talking himself into abandoning an accidental stowaway aboard his ship—a naïve Bengali young man named Abani who boarded in Calcutta (now Kolkata) to see a relative off and took a nap at the wrong time. The passage is vintage Chatterjee, not just because of the black humour but also because of the way he presents evil as a tragically banal phenomenon; the idea that given the right circumstances, any of us could nonchalantly carry out the worst atrocities. Like leaving a helpless young man in the middle of the ocean on a threadbare raft with meagre supplies. 'Kon-Tiki covered seven thousand kilometres of the Pacific in three months on just some logs of balsa. In contrast, our guest would only have to commune with the dolphins for an hour or two before someone picks him up. The Indian Navy, a sister merchant vessel, a deep-sea fishing trawler, a smuggler's ferry being chased by some coastal patrol—somebody is sure to notice our lad on the raft, swoop down on him and take him in." Among the four novellas collected here, The Hush of the Uncaring Sea is the one that represents a departure in style for Chatterjee, and it is unyieldingly strange in the best of ways. After all, being at sea for extended stretches of time exposes the body and the soul to scenarios and challenges that end up reshaping them forever. At once a comedy-of-errors, a survival story and a twisted parable, Abani's journey is presented as neither wholly spiritual nor entirely secular but as the saying goes on X (formerly Twitter), 'a secret third thing". On more than one occasion I was reminded of the works of William Golding, especially his novel Rites of Passage (1980), where a line hits upon this same dialectic tension between religion/philosophy and maritime survivalism: 'Philosophy and religion—what are they when the wind blows and the water gets up in lumps?" The Stink of the Red Herring is perhaps the most genteel of the four novellas, despite it involving a murder mystery—and the founding of India's first detective agency circa 1961. Prem, the protagonist, leaves what could have been a promising engineering career in the US, to pursue his ambitions as a private investigator. Once again, Chatterjee leaves no stone unturned to highlight the many absurdities a man in Prem's position might encounter. Like many procedurals, this is a dialogue-heavy story and you can tell Chatterjee is having a lot of fun here, like when we're in the middle of a story about a gardener who loses his sense of smell in an accident. ''Poor fellow. To be a gardener when you can't smell the roses.' 'Or the stench of dung for that matter, in the manure.'" Of course, humour, especially in Chatterjee's fictional universes, often hides something darker and more ominous underneath. In The Hapless Prince , the longest of these novellas at just over a hundred pages, we meet an Indian prince named Hariram who has been nursing resentments against the British in general—and his bullying British schoolmates in particular—for a while. But when he sets up a plot to assassinate the British Resident and take out his old nemeses, a series of farcical events conspire to derail his plans. The Hapless Prince sees Chatterjee in peak 'dramedy" mode and contains some unforgettable passages, like the one below where Hariram is ranting about the British withholding permission to build a school. 'And yet when we want to set up, not a mammoth white-marble Temple Trust, not a religious camp for astrologers and soothsayers, but a school, our first school, not for the scions of the polo players of the nobility, but for the poor, you put a spanner in the works because you feel that when ready, it just might make you take a five-minute detour every morning when you want to canter off to Dumraon Hill for your horse-riding. You forget, you know, that we refer matters to you merely out of deference to your paramountcy. You are paramount, of course, but so is that new motion picture company in Hollywood." I had read The Revenge of the Non-Vegetarian in 2018, when it had been published as a standalone book. Seven years later, it has lost none of its urgency and in fact reads like it might have been written yesterday. In 1949, a Muslim family of six (and their dog) is burnt to death inside their own home by a Hindu man driven homicidal by hunger and jealousy. Madhusudan Sen (incidentally, the father of Chatterjee's famous IAS character Agastya Sen from the novel English, August ), the town's magistrate who cannot complete breakfast without sausage, eggs and liver, vows to turn vegetarian until justice is done. Of course, with the legal and bureaucratic bottlenecks characteristic of the nascent Indian state, the process ends up dragging its feet until 1973. This kind of plot is perfect for Chatterjee to tap into his vast reserves of gallows humour—in this case rather literally when the convicted murderer finds himself locked up with two rapists and one child-killer. But because his three cellmates are vegetarian, they are quite comfortable making fun of this man's meat-eating, calling him 'Gomaas Kumar" ( gomaas is the Hindi word for beef). This novella also reminds us that over and above his full comedic bag of tricks (satire, farce, parody), Chatterjee is also one of our finest exponents of the sprawling multi-clause sentence. Notice how he effortlessly conjures a vital, throbbing-with-humanity mis-en-scene of the murdered family's domestic life here. Everything the flames lick adds something new to our mental picture, and what a poignant picture it is, too. 'It had consumed everything, the dragon's breath, and found fodder in every nook—the curtains that partitioned off one half of a bedroom, the boy's schoolbooks, the mother's saris, the vats of mustard oil and ghee in the kitchen, the rice in the storeroom, the straw cushion that had been the dog's bed and most of all, the wood and coal kept at hand to stoke the kitchen fire." The Hush of the Uncaring Sea sees one of our finest writers in crackling form. Like a true master of the absurd, he's at his funniest when he's being deadly serious. In their convictions as well as their fragilities, Chatterjee's characters are painfully, undeniably Indian. Aditya Mani Jha is a writer based in Delhi.
Associated Press
28-04-2025
- Associated Press
Today in History: April 28, Abu Ghraib torture images made public
Today in history: On April 28, 2004, the world first viewed images of prisoner abuse and torture by U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, via a report broadcast on the CBS television news program '60 Minutes II.' Also on this date: In 1789, mutineers led by Fletcher Christian took control of the ship HMS Bounty three weeks after departing Tahiti, setting the ship's captain, Lieutenant William Bligh, and 18 other crew members adrift in the Pacific Ocean. In 1945, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans after attempting to flee the country. In 1947, a six-man expedition led by Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl set out from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day, 4,300 mile (6,900 km) journey across the Pacific Ocean to the Polynesian Islands. In 1967, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was stripped of his WBA title after he refused to be inducted into the armed forces. In 1994, former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had passed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pleaded guilty to espionage and tax evasion, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. In 2001, a Russian rocket lifted off from Central Asia carrying the first space tourist, California businessman Dennis Tito, and two cosmonauts on a journey to the International Space Station. In 2011, convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido and his wife, Nancy Garrido, pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping a California girl, Jaycee Dugard, who was abducted in 1991 at the age of 11 and rescued 18 years later. (Phillip Garrido was sentenced to 431 years to life in prison; Nancy Garrido was sentenced to 36 years to life.)
