As announced at last night's Festa del Fondo fundraiser at St. Francis Winery, race organizers at AEG are planning to make Santa Rosa the starting city for the 2012 Tour of California.

This comes directly on the heels of yesterday's announcement of the 2011 ToC route, which bypasses Santa Rosa entirely. Concurrently, local cycling star Levi Leipheimer immediately took to Twitter to promise Santa Rosa that the ToC was "planning big" for 2012.

At last night's function, an AEG representative gave an equally vague promise, leaving the crowd hanging, sources say. Goaded on by Leipheimer to finally break the news, the AEG rep confirmed Santa Rosa as 2012's start city.

Though his comments were intended as "off the record" to the large crowd, bike blogger and Leipheimer nemesis Fat Cyclist immediately went online with the news before receiving a good-natured noogie from Levi himself.

I first heard about the Heirloom Tomato Festival at Kendall-Jackson sometime after it started, in the '90s. "That sounds neat and all," I thought, as much a fan of heirloom tomatoes as the next guy, "but a whole festival?"

Yet each year I kept hearing about it, and seeing billboards, and dodging cars backed up on Fulton Road. I'd talk with people about my own tomatoes, and they'd invariably ask if I'd been to the festival. It became a hot ticket, always selling out. I just couldn't understand it.

Well, I finally went for the first time, and now I understand.

The Heirloom Tomato Festival isn't just bunch of people sitting around eating tomatoes, as I'd imagined. Although a large tent with myriad varieties ready for the toothpicking is a nice centerpiece (see above), mostly, the festival consists of 55 of the area's best restaurants crafting bite-size foodstuffs using heirloom tomatoes grown in Kendall-Jackson's gardens, and you, the patron, get to vote on who creates the tastiest thing to stuff in your mouth.

I chatted with a few of the chefs. Here's what they came up with.

Brandon Guenther from Rocker Oysterfeller's won my vote for the day. Although Nectar Restaurant's booth was also doing waffles, I loved the way the cornmeal in Guenther's waffles paired with his choice of tomatoes—Cherokees for the relish, and Sungolds for the syrup. I literally chuckled when I popped one in my mouth, it had such a unique taste, and that was even after Guenther had run out of the bacon he'd been using as well. I asked him why he chose waffles. "'Cause they're fun!" he said. "I mean, why not?"

Of course I had to check out The Girl and the Fig's booth, where Chris Jones had mini quiches with gruyère cheese, marmalade and Early Girls grown in the restaurant's own gardens. They were outstanding. "The tomatoes are kind of a disappointment this year," Jones told me, echoing the sentiments of every local grower who dealt with this year's unusually cold summer. "It seems late to be using the Early Girls, but actually they're happening now. I also wanted to use them because they're high in sugar, which goes well with the marmalade."

Let's face it—some booths phoned it in, like the sausage purveyor who slopped some scalding hot boiled tomatoes on a plate next to their regular sausage and called it good. But Adam Mali, from Nick's Cove, faced a slight dilemma when using heirlooms to top Nick's famous oysters: "I didn't have to think too hard," he told me of the simple concept, "but the tricky part was using the tomatoes without overpowering the oysters. I used purple, red and yellow varieties; I stayed away from the green ones." It worked out well.

By far, the longest line of the day, especially as the temperature climbed, was for Fiorello's Gelato. Owner Anthony Bonviso has been making the best gelato around for 29 years, but he can't take credit for the idea behind the Watermelon Tomato Mint Gelato he was serving. "Paul Schroeder, at Monti's," Bonviso told me. "He's the one who gave me the idea." As the 42 people waiting in line found out, it proved to be a good one, and was a cool way to cap off a nice, hot day. I've always bought Fiorello's at Traverso's in Santa Rosa, but this past year they've expanded into Whole Foods. Look for the plain, white-labeled pints!More Photos Below.

It was 8:45am at Rialto Cinemas, and Ky Boyd, who hadn’t gotten much sleep, couldn’t remember how many hundreds of people he’d hugged the night before. In the lobby, a vase of flowers still sat on a table, next to an overturned table, next to another jumble of tables and chairs all set for the moving truck. In the main auditorium, a five-man crew with ratchet tools were removing theater seats, and outside, pylon cones on Summerfield Road steered traffic around a giant orange crane tractor, the arm of which extended to the Rialto’s large marquee sign. Today, the sign would come down.“Last night was overwhelming,” said Boyd of the Rialto’s final night of operation, the 'Last Night at the Rialto,' which over 800 people attended. “So many people have embraced this dream of mine, to operate an art house. What has happened, it didn’t just happen to us, it happened to the audience. That’s why they’re so passionate about it, and so upset. They have ownership of this. They helped make the Rialto. They are an essential part of who and what we are, and so it’s personal to them. It’s not just about me. It’s personal to them, and that’s huge.”

Boyd added that he is in talks about an existing building—he wouldn’t say where—that may prove suitable for a relocated Rialto Cinemas, rather than building from the ground up as previously hinted. But one thing was certain, and that’s the city where he wants to reopen. “For it to really, truly be successful,” he said, “it needs to be in Santa Rosa.” (“There are a lot of sophisticated transplants here,” mentioned Padi Selwyn, who since March has worked public relations for the Rialto’s closing. “Not all of us grew up growing prunes and hops.”)

Surrounded by handwritten testimonials in the lobby from patrons, and knowing this day would come for six months, Boyd’s was the face of emotional exhaustion. Last night he’d personally addressed all five auditoriums, thanking his loyal clientele for their support. In introducing the screening of To Catch a Thief, he reached the part where he thanked his staff and his partner, Michael O'Rand, “and I kind of started to cry," he said, visibly holding back emotion simply in the retelling.

Just then, Michael Burch, a principal at ScottAG who designed the marquee sign, approached. “So when you’re ready, we’re ready,” he said, with delicate avoidance of the task.

Boyd joined a small group on the sidewalk. On the roof, a worker removed the last bolt, and in the tractor, another turned the key and pulled a lever. The Rialto Cinemas sign levitated from the mansard roof, hanging on the crane arm, and then gently descended from the building. Cars slowed. A jogger ran past. A young girl across the street waved. The sign came to the ground. The theater officially no longer belonged to the Rialto, and Burch put his arm around Boyd, who turned and buried his head in his shoulders.

Those old eyes don’t deceive you, downtown Santa Rosans: after several years of stalled silence, the clock on the façade of Mark Allen Jewelers is up and running again.

Mark Allen himself, who estimates that a clock face has adorned the building since the '20s or '30s, was as dismayed as anyone that the hands had been stuck at 4:54 for the past few years. After spending "$500 here, $500 there" to make temporary fixes over the last 20 years, he's completely replaced the old motor—which still had a five-digit telephone number printed on it—with a state-of-the-art clock motor connected to GPS to always tell the exact correct time.

Installed by a company from Missouri who's also done similar projects at the San Francisco Botanical Gardens in Golden Gate Park and the Pentagon in Washington D.C., "it should hopefully last," says Allen, literally knocking on wood, "another 10 or 15 years."

Though the new clock doesn't have a second hand ("It was almost $3,000 just for a second hand," Allen laments), it's got a heck of a lot of admirers in downtown Santa Rosa. What with the U.S. Bank building clock being fixed and now this, all three clocks in Courthouse Square are running! So stop by and say thanks to Mark if you get a chance—especially since he paid for it out of his own pocket without any help from the landlord.

(In other clock news, there's a new post clock in Railroad Square that was installed two weeks ago but has yet to work. Waiting for an electrical hookup? Meanwhile, a similar clock that used to be in front of the Old Clock Shop on Santa Rosa Avenue continues to tick away in front of the Union Hotel in Occidental. Did you notice that Traverso's brought that old green clock to their new location? Yes, I like clocks.)

Fourth of July. Pedaling down the creekside. "On your left." Couples out for a stroll. People drinking at 10am. Stony Point undercrossing. Another ride out on the Joe Rodota Trail. Beautiful day. Fulton Road, swing a U-turn to cross over to Hall and WAIT A SECOND WHAT IN THE WORLD?!!?! Can it be?! YES!

Ladies and gentlemen, the creek trail between Fulton and Willowside is now paved.

[Three cheers to Sonoma County Regional Parks.]

Well, that was quick! Due to a constant flood of listener complaints to the station over his untimely layoff, local radio veteran Steve Jaxon will return to host The Drive on KSRO starting next week.Laid off three weeks ago by the East Cost owners of Maverick Media, KSRO's parent company, Jaxon said today that he and station management have agreed to a win-win model to keep Jaxon's timely variety of daily interviews on the air. "I'm bringing my own sponsors, the same way we do our Swingin' With Sinatra show with KJZY," he told me today. "It's not costing KSRO anything."

The show's format will stay exactly the same, in the same time slot, from 3-6pm. Right-hand man Mike DeWald will stay on as producer. The Drive's focus might occasionally expand to the greater Bay Area and state, but Jaxon says there's no way he'll ignore "all the major Sonoma County stuff."

Mostly he's excited to be back behind the microphone, humbled by the community support he's received. "The main story here," Jaxon says, "is that Sonoma County speaks, and management listens."

We previously expressed our own disappointment with the situation here, and offered a ridiculous Muffin Street commercial from 1989 to cheer everyone up. We're glad it worked, and wish Steve the best.

And so Steve Jaxon has been let go from KSRO. My colleague Daedalus Howell writes an excellent overview in this week’s Bohemian about the circumstances surrounding his departure, which in a nutshell, is this: Some suits from Maverick Media’s parent company in Connecticut came out to Santa Rosa, took a look at the station’s finances and said, “This guy makes too much money. Get rid of him.”

It’s a sad story about local media that’s not locally owned. Out on the East Coast, KSRO’s new owners simply had no idea how he’s completely transformed that little station into a vibrant central hub of up-to-date information and community discussion. They just let him go.

I’d like to say KSRO will weather the media landscape without Steve Jaxon. After all, it’s Santa Rosa’s longest-running radio station. Old-timers will remember when KSRO’s studios sat at the corner of Humboldt and College, a building that’s now George Peterson Insurance. Open up copies of the Press Democrat from 1938, and you’ll see daily program guides for 1350 AM. KSRO even made a cameo in The Birds—one of those inimitable moments of Hitchcock’s attention to local detail.

But without Jaxon, the birds will be circling at KSRO. When he came on The Drive, everyone tuned in—it was like hearing the pulse of the county each afternoon. You'd hear candidates in the supervisors’ race. You'd hear movie theater owners, authors, local schoolteachers. You'd hear a band playing on the air, or a four-star chef talking recipes. Anything that happened in town, Jaxon would seize the moment and get key people in the studio to tell their stories with the personality and imagination only the radio can supply.

How did he do it? Jaxon just has a certain magnetism, a cool detachment which inspires guests to loosen up and talk freely. Case in point: Once, while I sat in, he remarked to the listening audience that he had ice in his pants. I thought it was a joke, but then he cut to commercial and pulled a bag of ice out of his pants. How can you be uncomfortable around a guy who’s totally comfortable having a bag of ice in his pants?

I often brought in weird reminders of history the few times I came on Jaxon’s show. "Jaxon and Wells" were the first radio DJs I ever heard growing up in Santa Rosa on the Top 40 station of the ’80s, 93-KREO, and a few years ago, I actually unearthed a 93-KREO bumper sticker. I promptly stuck it on my car. One of my proudest moments was leading Jaxon and Wells out to the station parking lot, to my car, to show that someone actually still cared about KREO.

Another time, I whipped out a KSRO letter-opener from the 1950s, seen above; later, I brought in a vinyl rip of Jaxon’s old band, The Mix, and secretly gave it to his producer Mike DeWald to play as surprise bumper music. I was looking forward to the next time I sat in so I could play a KREO commercial I recently discovered on a cassette tape, but oh, what the heck, I’ll just embarrass him now. Here’s Steve Jaxon starring in a weird-ass commercial for Muffin Street . . . in 1989!

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Anyway, best of luck, Steve. Hope you land on your feet.

Going away:

Finally opened:

Coming soon:

Never gonna close!

Today is the last day in business for Sawyer's News, a beloved institution in downtown Santa Rosa. Since its move from San Rafael to Santa Rosa in 1945, and now at its longtime location at 733 Fourth Street, it's been an invaluable resource to the city, and personally, I know all of us around the Bohemian office have been pondering how we'll get by without them.

Sawyer's News closes at 6pm today for good. Here's what I'll always remember about the place.1. It’s Where I First Found Out About 9-11

I was living in an apartment on Beaver Street at the time, about a block away. I woke up about 10 minutes before I had to be at work—like I usually did in those days—and left the house oblivious. “Hey Stacy! How’s it goin’?” I said as I cruised through Sawyer’s. Her reply: “You haven’t heard?”

She told me what had happened. I was pretty confused, and the day got even more confusing as events unfolded. Newsstands are a great community hub to discuss what’s going on in the world, but I gotta say, that morning in 2001 took the cake.2. They Wouldn’t Let Bruce Willis Use Their Bathroom

True story! Bruce Willis was in town filming Bandits when he double-parked on Fourth Street in front of Sawyer’s and walked up to the front counter. “Hey man,” he casually said, “You guys got a bathroom I could use?” Dustin, the employee behind the counter, recognized the blockbuster movie star, but rules were rules. “I’m sorry sir,” he replied, “but our restrooms are for employee use only.” Willis gave him an incredulous look. “Really?” he persisted.“You can try the library or Barnes & Noble,” replied Dustin, and with that, a defeated Bruce Willis walked out of Sawyer’s News.

Dustin then told his co-worker Delee what had happened. “You WHAT?!” she cried, running out onto the sidewalk after her idol. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Willis,” she hastily said, “You can use the bathroom here.” She led him into the Old Vic, and to this day Chris Stokeld loves to brag that Bruce Willis peed in his bathroom. (Dustin now runs the Santa Rosa Tool Lending Library.)3. They Even Had A Magazine Called 'Crappie World'

Yeah, sure, it’s about fishing. But come on! It’s called Crappie World! I first noticed it on the shelf once when I was having a particularly lousy day. It was $4, but something told me that if I purchased it, I would be acquiescing to and therefore rising above all that was "crappy" in life. Donovan, working behind the counter and knowing that I didn’t fish, very nearly refused to sell it to me on principles of common sense alone. I insisted. I took it home. My day got better.

Of course, that’s just one of countless magazines they carried.

There’s something about a newsstand that carries the first issue of Wax Poetics, before the hype. Or the first issue of Found, also before the hype. Juxtapoz, before the hype. Tiny little music magazines that wouldn’t have a chance at Barnes & Noble. Ridiculously priced French fashion magazines that every girlfriend I’ve ever had loved to buy anyway. Remember when you first found Interview there? Or Transworld Skateboarding? Or Good Magazine? McSweeny’s? Cometbus? Make Magazine? Entire worlds opening up before your eyes. The list goes on and on.4. The Great ‘Candy Bar Cool-Down’ Day

It was a sweltering summer day, right in the middle of a heat wave. I walked in to Sawyer’s and they had arranged dozens of candy bars on the floor, in the middle of the store. Multiple fans were set up, blowing at full blast on Snicker’s bars, on 3 Musketeers bars, on Mr. Goodbars. “What in the world’s going on?” I asked. “Oh, our air conditioning’s broken and all the candy bars are melting! We’re trying to save them!”

An unforgettable image.5. It Was A Great Place To Put Up Flyers

The back hallway. So primo. Every flyer was always taken down and tossed out on the first and fifteenth of the month, so it was good news if your show was on the 14th. I found out about so many shows just by looking at that bulletin board, and I still have the first flyer I ever saved from Sawyer's—for the Red Hot Chili Peppers playing at the Phoenix Theater in 1989.6. The Art In The Front Window

It's pretty unbelievable that for all these years, John and Dan found a steady stream of local artists and committed themselves to showing their art in the front window. Every once in a while there’d be dull pastel landscapes, but for the most part it was all intriguing, quality stuff. It was an afterthought, usually, that it was even there—a cool little “P.S.” on your way out of the store.7. Wrapping Paper For That Special Someone

It was expensive, that top-notch wrapping paper! But when you had to get a killer present at the last minute and you didn’t want to wrap it in the same chintzy MacFrugal’s wrapping paper you’d been using all year, you went to Sawyer’s and plunked down the five bucks for thick paper and a bow, just to make your gift look sharp.8. All Books 20% Off

The whole reason Sawyer’s expanded and took over the “greeting card” half of the store in the early 1990s—previously a separate storefront occupied by a hair salon, and before that, Flaky Cream Donuts—is because they planned on selling books. Then Barnes & Noble moved in right across the street, effectively killing the idea. People loved the card selection at Sawyer’s, and I myself bought plenty of cards. But I appreciated that Sawyer’s still stocked a few books, and I was glad they were always 20% off.9. The Vices: Cigarettes and Porn

The unnoticed underbelly of Sawyer's News! I didn’t mind paying a little more for my Lucky Strikes at Sawyer’s; that's the trade-off for not having to see cigarette advertising everywhere inside the store. I also never bought a porno mag there—honest!—even though it was always funny to see someone you knew browsing the section.

It enraged a lot of people in Santa Rosa when Spice, a lingerie shop with a selection of sex toys in the back, was shut down by the city over decency issues while at the same time John Sawyer, a councilman, openly sold pornography. Ultimately John didn’t have final say over the situation, but the whole thing made him look bad. Even thought the pressure was on, he didn’t shut down the “adult magazine” section just to look good.10. The Gang at Centro Espresso

Last but definitely not least, a special mention for Susan, Loretta and the whole Centro Espresso gang, who rented space in Sawyer’s to sell the best espresso drinks in town. (Always double shots!) One morning I stumbled bleary-eyed to the counter and ordered a mocha. “How’s it goin’, kiddo?” Susan asked. “Well, you want the truth of it,” I said, “me and my girlfriend broke up last night after four years.” She gave me the mocha for free as consolation. I always remembered that small, sweet gesture.

Centro quickly took up the role of community hub and complemented Sawyer’s impeccably. While fly-by-night downtown debutantes got their fix at the chains on Fourth and D, it seemed like all the true movers and shakers of Santa Rosa convened at Centro. Even Alberto Contador got coffee there once! A Tour de France winner!

-Thanks, John and Dan, for everything. You've meant more to us than you can possibly know. Best of luck to you both.- Gabe Meline

We'd gotten a call about the wheatpaste mural freshly slapped up on the Todd Road exit sign—speculation ranged from it being a Bansky piece in the wake of his maybe-it-is-maybe-it-isn't presence in the Mission District over the weekend to an homage to some forgotten ballplayer. Either way, I knew I had to drive down and check it out.

Well, it isn't Banksy, naturally, but it's still pretty great. It's "Yankees Cap Guy," by Hugh Leeman, an SF-based street artist whose work can be seen here. The Yankees Guy is Leeman's trademark, and he's put it up all over the world, from SF to Brooklyn to Tel Aviv to Bogota to Varanasai to London to Palestine. What was he doing in Santa Rosa? Who knows?