Nirmala NatarajSF Station Writer |
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Nirmala Nataraj's Articles
 | Wellness Beckons For harried city-dwellers, Oakland’s Piedmont Avenue is like a sojourn to another time -- one where residents stop to greet each other to chat about the weather, and it’s safe enough to keep your doors unlocked. But the quaint, small-town feel is assuaged quite a bit by the spattering of chicness: hip yoga studios, used book stores, antique shops, and stylish fine dining populate the area with a relaxed elegance that make Piedmont Avenue an apt backdrop for a place like Meditrina World Healing Spa. More » |  |  | A Dark Rendition If you’ve never actually read Charles Dickens’ [b]Oliver Twist[/b], which is perhaps the most paradigmatic rags-to-riches story ever written, well…consider yourself at home. As adulated as Dickens is among the populist echelons and the fusty literati set, his erudite moral fables of industrial England gone bad are a little timeworn, a little too simplistic in our postmodern era of six billion people and clashing metanarratives. And with all the sentimental stage and screen revivals (particularly the 1963 film version, with its hum-worthy ditties and loveable rapscallions), it’s easy to write [b]OT[/b] off as just another feel-good yarn. More » | |  | Open for Interpretation Walking up the stairs to the Intersection for the Arts gallery, potential spectators might be somewhat bewildered at the sight that greets them; coating the steps is a sheet of white felt, covered with ostensibly Persian names, in dispassionate block letters. Among the more obscure appellations, one can pick out “Saddam” and “Osama” almost instantly, as the eye’s natural tendency is to wander to what’s recognizable and fill it out with familiar meaning. In some ways, you can say that’s the very crux of Taraneh Hemami’s collection of installation work, "Most Wanted". More » | |  | Forget About the Wine-Tasting Evidently, spring is in the air, romance is upon us, and throwbacks to the tried and true dinner-n-a-movie combination just won’t make the cut anymore. That’s no secret to jet-setting young urbanites and seasoned weekend lovebirds who flock to Gaige House, a cozy Sonoma County hamlet that can’t help but inspire its inhabitants to turn their cell phones off and their taste for the finer things in life on. More » | |  | Exotic Indulgences Novella Spa and Imports is one of those places -- you know the kind. As soon as you step in, you’re immediately smacked with an urge to buy the entire store, particularly if your tastes tend toward the exotic and rare. It’s also one of the prime spots in San Francisco for decadent beauty rites to make you feel like a sultana of yore. More » | |  | Inspired Spontaneity I’m at CounterPULSE ten minutes before Renaissance man/theatrical swashbuckler Jess Curtis’ highly anticipated show, "Under the Radar". As I’ve gathered from the website and tight-lipped program material, a kaleidoscopic assortment of dancers and performance artists will be entertaining the audience with genre-liberal food for thought: that includes concepts like beauty, normalcy, and preconceived notions of (dis)ability. All very heady stuff, but at the time being, I’m more interested in what’s going on right now. More » | |  | Put Your Load Down Rest and relaxation. Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? Given our society’s terrible penchant for scheduling everything from requisite weekend getaways to quality time with loved ones, the time-honored idea of a little R&R has become little more than a bromidic gesture towards a removed, future indulgence, the lowest task on our collective to-do list, it would seem. But try to imagine a world in which time for silence -- a literal “waking up to smell the roses” -- is way more than a hypothetical priority. More » | |  | Treatments for a Charmed Life Ever since I was old enough to appreciate those 80s Calgon commercials and young enough to have only a meager comprehension of the word “stress” I was wholly entranced by the concept of pampering. I got my first manicure at age 16 and was 21 when I got my first facial (and the rest is, as they say, history), but the delayed gratification was out of this world. After all, I grew up daydreaming about perfume bottles with glass stoppers, mysterious fragrant potions that lay beyond reach in my mother’s armoire, and tubs fitted with frothy beds of bubbles. More » | |  | A Bit of Schadenfreude You Can Live With Fifty years ago, playwrights like Harold Pinter were amassing scathing reviews and death threats, but now the thespian trademark of self-conscious menace and making spectators squirm in their seats is just par for the course. After all, it’s inarguable -- awash as we are in pop culture froth and the constantly impending threat of censorship -- that schadenfreude and shock value are the unspoken standards of modern theater. More » | |  | A Refuge for the Old-Fashioned Romantic Weekends away from the city are too often tailored for the harried professionals. Wagering a guess that there are loads of you out there who feel the same, I’m about to let you in on a little secret: there is, indeed, a place where you can momentarily shelve your stresses, breathe deep some blessed “there’s no one around for miles” air, and take comfort in the fact that your mobile phones are completely useless here. It’s a little cul-de-sac tucked just off Highway One, and they call it Elk Cove Inn. More » | |
Nirmala Nataraj's Articles
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