Arts DEVO

Damn, kids! Y’all got grown and took over and stuff! Three former locals are out in the big world doin’ Chico proud these days, and are very deserving of some loudly shouted props!

First up, Sophie Speer, daughter of retired CN&R Editor Robert Speer, who was featured on MSNBC on Sunday night. The feature was on the greater “sharing economy” movement, and the segment begins in Sophie’s kitchen/dining room in her Mission District home in San Francisco, where the “microentrepreneur” was serving a gourmet home-cooked meal to a group of people who had paid $52 apiece to come eat dinner in the young chef’s home. Sophie is one of a growing number of cooks—from amateurs to professionals—who have joined Feastly (www.eatfeastly.com), an online marketplace in the same vein as alternative-lodging site Airbnb.com, where home chefs post menus for meals they’ll be preparing in their homes, and diners pick out whose home they want to visit and pay for a meal for the evening.

And her online reviews are stellar. Next time you’re visiting the city, look up Sophie on Feastly and book a one-of-a-kind dining experience. Also, visit her own site, www.7ssupperclub.com, where Sophie posts her recipes as well as her weekly Sophie Serves Supper to Seven Strangers on Sundays at Seven events.

Hey, remember that Chico band Holocene? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Well, Rob Reeves, another local out getting props in the real world, was in that band, I swear. A longtime friend of Arts DEVO, and an impeccable, dry-witted smart ass of the highest order, Reeves was also in a couple other much more well-known old-school Chico crews—Slow Down Theo and Team Shark Week—before moving to Oakland to become a super hip photographer.

In addition to doing commercial photo work, Reeves has been working on some very intriguing fine-art projects. One of them—his Tilt Shift Terror series—caught the attention a Huffington Post writer, who interviewed Reeves for an Oct. 20 feature. Read the interview about the spooky-looking photos Reeves creates using a tilt-shift lens at tinyurl.com/TiltShiftTerror, and check out Reeves’ work at www.wrytoastphotos.com and send me a note explaining what the hell tilt shifting is! I can’t figure it out and it’s got me all Scheimpflug over here.

And finally, one-time local musician and music writer Robin Bacior (who wrote a few stories for the CN&R back in the day) has announced that she will be releasing her latest album, Water Dreams, on Jan. 15. And in anticipation, National Public Radio’s excellent “All Songs Considered” show previewed one of the tracks on a recent show! Of the song—the airy and gorgeous “If It Does”—the show’s Stephen Thompson says that Bacior’s “honeyed but vibrant voice … is laid atop a spare but shimmering bed of piano—and paired perfectly with Dan Bindschedler’s cello.” Nice! And nice work, Robin!