At the end of a four-year passion project, Molly Welton has become the proud owner of a vintage Layton motorhome from the shelter-in-place. It was rebuilt in stolen moments between parenthood and work. For Welton, calling their 1960 Layton a motorhome, or worse, a trailer, it smells like laziness, togetherness. There is nothing pedestrian about her ship, nor the business she runs from her retro walls, which she calls California Kahve.

Welton feels strong these days. Your son is at school. Her husband does what electricians do all day. And she has the day to herself. So she’s working on the autumn menu: cookies, donuts and all kinds of coffee drinks.

In January, when Welton got the vehicle up and running, she ran into the Tiny Footprint Coffee Company. The goal is to plant a tree in the Mindo cloud forest in Ecuador for every bag of coffee sold. The group is climate neutral, which Welton regards as a must for coffee procurement. Among the brands offered by coffee distributor Welton, Welton has chosen Cafe Femenino, a medium roast that is grown by an all-women group in Colombia.

Welton says it is not always easy to make ethical business decisions. When you buy coffee in bulk, you can make more than a dollar for every mug sold. Buying fair, sustainably grown coffee has much tighter margins. She hopes the San Franciscans will think it’s worth it.

“It comes down to the cost,” Welton said. “Nine months later, I understand.”

Welton’s 10-foot trailer with a custom-made wooden window and bar stands by a rusty gas station on Lincoln Avenue near the wind-blown sands of Ocean Beach. It is difficult to get a parking space there every week. The Department of Health issues permits to mobile food facilities in The City that allow on-the-go stores to sell on private property or on a “public right of way”.

Despite spending thousands on a permit and surviving both the Department of Public Works’ and Public Health’s temporary extermination processes, Welton is not guaranteed parking for her drill rig.

“I actually paid someone to live down the street,” Welton said. “He’ll move his car for me when I text him at 7 a.m., which is incredible.”

This helpful local is moving house at the end of the month so Welton isn’t sure what will happen then. As a fan of San Francisco’s mobile food facilities program in general, the need to rely on the randomness of finding sustainable parking spaces is driving Welton a little crazy.

She has never worked in a coffee shop, but she was responsible for making large pots of coffee and the occasional espresso in the breakfast lobby at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, where she worked for five years. She was employed at the Four Seasons in the Civic Center when the pandemic hit Earth, making her income, at best, unreliable and sometimes non-existent.

In search of the perfect spot for morning coffee on a weekend trip to Petaluma in the spring of 2000, Welton’s husband said to her, “You’ve already gone to five cafes this morning. Why don’t you start yourself? “

The business owner, 42, attended Burlingame High School and enjoys hiking in Samuel P. Taylor State Park. Her husband came to the Bay Area from New Zealand to pursue a short-lived, semi-professional rugby career. They have called San Francisco home for 14 years.

California Kahve owner Molly Welton and her son on one of their hikes in the Bay Area. (Courtesy Molly Welton)

Welton does not believe that the business is worthwhile if it does not serve their values. Since California Kahve is only open on weekends, she spends her free time balancing her prices (a cup of drip coffee at California Kahve is $ 3-4) and morale. Instead of commercial bottles of Hershey’s chocolate syrup, she makes her favorites, like her mocha, with locally made TCHO chocolate.

“It feels different when you have a drink with fresh ingredients,” says Welton. “And people talk. They say, ‘Oh my god, this is so good.’ If you want to make a contribution to the gastronomy and beverage scene, then it’s worth it. “

She urges cafe and restaurant owners – as well as locals – to buy spices in San Francisco instead of hitting Amazon for the millionth time. She uses, for example, Rishi Tea & Botanicals and Portland Syrups, because she knows that the quality “carries over to the taste”.

“It’s night and day,” Welton said. “And it’s important to me. I want to offer something valuable and special. “

Welton has always loved food and drink, unlike many in the “industry”, as service people call hospitality. Her voice shines like a lighthouse in the windy gray when she speaks to customers. Your eyes pierce the mist. She remembers her family, all of Irish descent, sitting in the living room drinking tea and talking through the afternoon and into the night.

“Eating and drinking affect how we feel,” Welton said. “I don’t want to tell people what to or shouldn’t drink, but I’m not proud of giving people trash ingredients.”

Welton is all too aware that their business appears to be a testament to Instagram coffee culture. She sells this infamous Starbucks coffee creation, the much maligned stepson of the pumpkin latte, the Pumpkin Spice Latte. When it comes to these popular concoctions, she is thoughtful and patient.

“I’m anti-mainstream,” Welton said. “The syrups contrast with all the work coffee machines put into growing and harvesting great beans. You get choked in syrup and it’s so gross. “

But their pumpkin latte contains more fennel, ginger, and black pepper than the disgustingly sweet caramel torpedo that many are used to. She also offers a moonrose latte, a delicate rose and nutmeg drink for those unlucky enough to not drink coffee. The Afghan biscuit, a familiar treat from her husband’s homeland made with corn flakes and walnut, differs from other baked goods sold on the beaches of San Francisco.

Long time friend and coffee enthusiast Michelle Griffith says Welton doesn’t compromise on quality, which is important in understanding California Kahve’s business.

“She has a keen sense of detail and sustainability,” Griffith said of Text. “She is true to herself and the brand she creates.”

Food and drinkFood and wine

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Can Hollywood Fix Itself? Has that happened yet? Let’s go to the cinema together and find out.

It has to be my local everyman – a posh chain that broadcasts many productions live from the National Theater and sells yogurt-coated nuts instead of minstrels. Might not be your thing. On the plus side, you can get a cup of tea too. It has to be this place because the journey has already taken place.

I want you to join me on my trip that I took last week to see Molly’s Game. The experience was complicated and generated unexpectedly intense thoughts on the current issue of women in Hollywood, and I would like to discuss it with a larger group. As my chimney sweep friend said, “Let’s have a mass debate!”

The sweep was actually in my cinema. He and I have been hosting a weekly game of poker for nearly 20 years, so you can imagine why we might be interested in this biopic of Molly Bloom, who played high-stakes games in New York and Los Angeles. The sweep loved her book. I found the font too small. So we were both excited in our own different ways when Aaron Sorkin announced a movie version.

Take into account that my own poker memoir, For Richer For Poorer: Confessions of a Player, had been “under option” for five years without anyone figuring out how to film it, and I was so interested in watching Molly’s Game that I could hardly sleep at night. Though maybe that was just the sound of my teeth grinding.

I watched it with the chimney sweep so that we could have fun hours afterwards discussing poker and the accuracy of its portrayal. Knowing it couldn’t be better than The Cincinnati Kid or worse than Runner Runner, we stuffed our smuggled minstrels into a backpack and rushed inside.

Before the main feature, there were two refreshing – even exhilarating – trailers. One was for The Post (which just opened), in which Meryl Streep plays the acclaimed 1970s newspaper publisher Katharine Graham in her battle against widespread government corruption.

The other was for I, Tonya, which opens in February, about controversial figure skater Tonya Harding, played with defiant defiance by Margot Robbie, and her mother, played with wild comedy by Allison Janney (“I made you a champion, when I know that you I hate myself for it, that’s the sacrifice a mother makes. ”…) Even in the promo, mother and daughter managed to be both unappealing and likeable at the same time. Historically, women are only allowed to be one or the other in most films. Interesting.

And these two trailers were in the lead up to a movie about Molly Bloom: a clever, determined, greedy ex-world ski champion who hosted an illegal game of poker! Neither a sweet girl who runs a pastry shop in a romantic comedy nor a crazy, wise cracking friend; not a steadfast / scared woman in a thriller; not a brave virgin in a horror movie; a really strange and uncategorizable person.

I was really excited. At home on TV we saw Feud: Bette and Joan on BBC iPlayer, a cheerful series that enjoys all the nuances of reminding Joan Crawford and Bette Davis of a Hollywood where “everything was written for women was broken down into three categories – ingenues, mothers or gorgons, ”when the roles of Crawford and Davis on the 21st show.

With the Graham and Harding trailers and the promise of Molly’s Game, which happens to be hot on the heels of the Golden Globes protests, it all felt like a real change in the type of stories that are told.

Whether you think it matters or not – and maybe it doesn’t – there has been an ongoing problem with how women are portrayed on screen before you even got the strange idea that it is such an honor to embody a lame and hackneyed “ingenuity” that actresses can hardly complain about one or the other rape while waiting in line.

On British television and radio – while it’s embarrassing how little power or equality female performers remain – at least no one argues that you shouldn’t mind if you want to be one of them if people jerk you off.

By the time Jessica Chastain flew onto the screen in the whimsical, multidimensional figure of Molly Bloom, her own golden spheres of healthy splendor, I was already full of hope and optimism for a more interesting and realistic world.

And it’s a great movie! Great performances, great dialogues, great portrait of a modern poker landscape. I loved it and recognized it.

And then Molly Bloom was beaten up. Just when I was feeling very excited and happy: punch, punch, scream, bleeding. I mean zzzzzzzzz.

It’s an important part of Molly’s real story, of course. But did we have to look at it in such detail? Could the attack have been portrayed with metaphors or sounds? With something weird, surprising, new or imaginative?

Whether it could or not, it wasn’t. The attack went on and on. Fists in the face. Boots to the belly. Beautiful, proud Molly helpless on the floor. It definitely showed her. And we all have to watch.

What instinct does this play on? For whom is that? I love the movie, but I really hated that section. Will we ever get away from shiny, sexy violence?

But maybe I’m wrong. Was it actually a good and honest way of showing the terrible truth about what happens to women? Maybe that was it.

After the beating, Molly strips and takes a long and painful shower. As always in front of the camera. She doesn’t just stay shocked where she is. Or go to a safe place. Or grind under the covers. Or sit with your back to the door and make sure it is locked. Nope. Kit out and under water.

Let the mass debate begin.

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