Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Fall 2012 - (Page 26)

CONTRIBUTORS CHRIS SILAS NEAL In the work of Chris Silas Neal, scenes of everyday life take on a dreamlike quality. His illustrations for The New York Times and his numerous book covers blend a surrealist invention with a delicate, childlike eye. He credits his development as an artist with a somewhat peripatetic childhood, moving around the United States, an only child obliged to entertain himself. “Boredom and loneliness can be inspiring and motivating, fueling the imagination,” he says. “It is something I would hope for my own children.” Eschewing art school, he studied music and advertising before apprenticing in graphic design. The publication of some early drawings in The New Yorker kick-started a career that now includes magazines, record covers, gallery shows and a position teaching illustration at Pratt in New York City. Last year, he collaborated with author Kate Messner on a children’s book, “Over And Under The Snow,” which was praised for his “stunning retro-style illustrations” (The New York Times). IN THE FRAME The artist and two recent book projects. COLBY BIRD Golf By Katrina Heron PHotoGraPHS By aya BracKet t Wellness FA L L I N G I N L O V E W I T H … SAN FRANCISCO ALAN DEUTSCHMAN REPORTS ON HOW SAN FRANCISCO’S HIGH-TECH BOOM HAS PRESERVED THE PLEASURES OF ITS LOW-TECH PAST beauty’s new ecoluxe N at u r a l b e au ty p r o d u c t s t h at g iv e s u p e r Nat u r a l r e s u lt s m ay N o lo Ng e r b e a faN ta sy, r e p o rt s a N N a b e l I l lust rat Io n s by j o r da n awa n O T 32 FARM TO FABLE Island Greens 78 w w w. r i t z c a r lt o n . c o m W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M T H E R I T Z - C A R LT O N M A G A Z I N E 33 84 AidAn BrAdley Organic beauty products, of course, are nothing new. They’ve been with us since antiquity, had a resurgence in the 1960s — think henna and patchouli sold at health food stores — and had, by the turn of this century, gone mainstream. By 1990, Estée Lauder had unveiled its first green line, Origins. Seven years later, the company acquired Aveda from ecopioneer Horst Rechelbacher for a then-staggering $300 million. L’Oréal bought the Body Shop for an estimated $1 billion in 2006 — the same year corporate behemoth Clorox attempted to earth-up its hyperchemical image by nabbing Vermont-based Burt’s Bees. But even while these brands bloomed, natural beauty regimens remained, for the most part, something of a fringe phenomenon. Products formulated with cutting-edge chemistry, and backed up with clinical research, retained their popularity. Plus, synthetic products had silkier textures and more enticing scents. That’s changed, and happily for today’s green-leaning consumers, skin care is one piece of the ecopuzzle that’s markedly improving. Pure, organic ingredients and effective formulations are no longer mutually exclusive, and women don’t have to choose between their ethics and their appearance. “Most Twenty years ago, when I left my position as a writer for a national magazine in Manhattan to become its correspondent in San Francisco, the move mystified my colleagues back at headquarters. When I arrived in my new town, I was quickly befriended by the handful of fellow reporters for other national publications, and we drank together at North Beach cafes and jokingly called ourselves The Foreign Correspondents’ Club. To our editors in Gotham we might as well have been in some rather minor capital in the developing world, since SF seemed to them an exotic, remote locale where we enjoyed enviable lifestyles but wouldn’t come across much of global importance that we could report about. While New York had Wall Street and Los Angeles had Hollywood, San Francisco’s claim was its proximity to Silicon Valley, but computers were still boring and microchips were unspeakably geeky. Then, of course, everything changed. Al Gore was elected vice president and told us about the “information superhighway,” which became a dazzling reality as the Internet and turned the Bay Area into the perpetual Big Story, the new locus of innovation and power — and utterly astonishing wealth. Such a sudden infusion of fast money could easily threaten the unique character and fragile aesthetics of an old city, but San Francisco has handled it all with remarkable grace, preserving its cozy neighborhood enclaves with their thousands of Victorian and Edwardian houses while creating gorgeous new parks, museums and public spaces. Where San Francisco once was undeniably sweet but somewhat sleepy, now it’s spectacular. W Wr it er thom a s Du nne tees h igh o n maui golf’s g r a n Dest P la ntat ion Cou r se BAY WATCH Crissy Field, once an abandoned naval airfield, has been transformed into a vibrant urban waterfront park. In the background, the Warming Hut and Golden Gate Bridge. Home stretcH From pineapples to par putts, the Plantation Course is famed for its tropical beauty and unique design. Here, the 18th hole. Watching the 2012 Masters, it was easy to be impressed by Bubba Watson’s miraculous, tournament-winning wedge from the trees, but fans of golf in Maui were probably among the least surprised. After all, the shot-making genius from Florida’s Panhandle turned in one of last year’s top highlights at Kapalua’s Plantation Course. On the 663-yard finisher, a marvelous ski slope of a hole, Watson carved a driver off the deck, playing a 40-yard slice and using the natural ground contours short of the green to funnel the ball close to the hole for an easy eagle putt. For golfers on the mainland, the PGA Tour’s season opener at Kapalua is one of the most powerful fantasies that HD television has to offer. The course seems like a dream world, with its emerald fairways, towering Cook pines and — set against the glittering waters of the Pacific — views of the neighboring island of Molokai. And yet, TV doesn’t do it justice. Visitors’ first impressions of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw’s design often involve shock, because of the absolute beauty of the place, and awe, over its size. On this course, carved from the mountainous slopes of a former pineapple plantation, we feel dwarfed by our surroundings, and sometimes humbled by the elements. Hawaiian golf is often stereotyped as a manicured lark, lush and easy, but Kapalua is ruled by the San FranciSco cheF ron Siegel FindS daily inSpiration in the organic FarmS and locavore traditionS oF northern caliFornia PAN AMERIC AN Clockwise, from top: Garden mint , zucchini blossoms and blackberries make an impromptu amuse-bouche; Chef Siegel at work in the Parallel 37 kitchen; Kampachi awaiting the chef ’s knife. It’s a sunny morning just north of San Francisco as the Marin Farmers Market hums to life. The growers, who’ve been up since well before dawn, have finished pitching tents and hanging scales, and their fresh-picked wares are laid out on long tables like some riotous picnic. Striding toward a stall at full tilt is a sandyhaired man in a running jacket and jeans. He looks a lot like Sean Penn, right down to the amused expression playing around the eyes. Greeting the vendors with a smile, he makes a beeline past their orchestrated display to a jumble of crates around back. A moment later, he’s reaching into one to take a bite of an haricot vert. A customer takes the man for a farmer and starts to ask a question, but he pivots away, oblivious, to inspect a box full of sungold tomatoes. Then he stops and scans left and right, giving the impression that he might be about to take off. The farmers know better: He and they are about to engage in a gastronomical pas de deux, a quick-witted and detailed appraisal of every fruit and vegetable, every edible flower and bouquet of herbs, on offer today. There will be rapture in this ritual — wherein the man’s smile will broaden to the accompaniment of a brash, “Incredible!” — and there will also be rejection, with little margin in between. He will put his powers of smell and taste and feel to work and also probe to see if anything delectable is hidden from sight, perhaps forgotten in the rush to set up. And when the dance is over, the man’s Chevy pickup will be laden with treasure from the verdant sweep of organic farms in the Bay Area. Now, follow that truck southward as it crosses the Golden Gate Bridge and makes its way through the bustle of city traffic to the delivery dock of Parallel 37 restaurant at The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco. The man watches like a hawk as his cargo is transported into the kitchen, taking care to carry some of the more fragile items himself. He will brook no accidents, for each deliciously ripe nectarine, each bunch of impossibly sweet carrots, has been hand-selected with a keen eye to its culinary destiny in a gorgeously prepared dish that will be delivered to the dining room within a matter of hours. One might assume that here in San Francisco, proud epicenter of the resurgent American farm-to-table movement, such exorbitant attention to food sourcing would be the norm. And indeed, the hype about area restaurants seeking out fresh and local ingredients is largely w w w. r i t z c a r lt o n . c o m 116 w w w. r i t z c a r lt o n . c o m t h e r i t z - c a r lt o n m a g a z i n e 117 WRITERS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS An illustrator based in Brooklyn, N.Y., JORDAN AWAN (“Beauty’s New Ecoluxe,” page 78) also works as an art director at The New Yorker. He has received recognition from The Society of Illustrators, and in 2011 he was awarded the prestigious Young Guns 9 by the Art Directors Club. Among his influences are Rousseau, Balthus, Max Ernst and Philip Guston. ALAN DEUTSCHMAN (“Falling In Love With San Francisco,” page 32) rubbed shoulders with many of the great techno-pioneers as the San Francisco correspondent for Fortune and Fast Company. He’s the author of two books about the visionaries of Northern California: “The Second Coming of Steve Jobs” and “A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth, and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma.” THOMAS DUNNE (“Island Greens,” page 84) played the legendary courses of Kapalua for this issue. He writes about golf for Departures, LINKS, Golf World and others. When he’s not on the road seeking out the world’s greatest golf experiences, he enjoys a quiet round with friends at the Course at Yale in New Haven, Conn. A career journalist, KATRINA HERON (“Farm to Fable,” page 116) discovered the riches of edible gardens on moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in the mid-1990s. In addition to editing Wired magazine and writing for publications such as The New York Times and Vogue, Heron has long been involved with Alice Waters’s Edible Schoolyard Project, a hands-on kitchen and garden classroom for kids. 26 W W W. R I T Z C A R LT O N . C O M http://WWW.RITZCARLTON.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Fall 2012

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Fall 2012
Contents
Contributors
Editor’s Letter
President’s Letter
Falling in Love With ... San Francisco
Design
Technology
On the Boulevards
Shopping
Jewelry
Watches
Art
Gourmet Travel
Wellness
Golf
Okinawa
Culinary
Let Us Stay With You
Heritage

Ritz-Carlton Magazine - Fall 2012

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