Sebastopol City Council race shifts slightly
The Registrar of Voters updated their numbers on Friday. According to the unofficial results, Sandra Maurer, Ian Hoff and James Woodruff are still the winners of the last city council election. Things have changed in terms of the number of votes they’ve received, however. Hoff is now in the lead, with Woodruff on his heels, and Maurer about 90 points back.
This won’t have any effect on who becomes mayor for the upcoming year. Maurer, as the sitting vice mayor, will become the mayor for 2027, with Neysa Hinton as the vice mayor.
What these recent changes do affect, however, is who becomes vice mayor two years from now, since, according to a council policy adopted in Oct. 2024: For Vice Mayor, “Rotation based upon the total vote counts received in the election year held two years prior.” That means the person with the highest number of votes in this month’s election will be the vice mayor in two years and mayor the year after that.
Here are the current numbers:
How many votes are left to count for Sebastopol? Only the Registrar of Voters knows for sure, but we asked political consultant Denny Rosatti to take an educated guess, based on the number of votes yet to be counted countywide and several other assumptions. His number? Roughly 200, give or take.
Mansoor’s Opening Night
The new Mansoor restaurant opened officially on Saturday night at 8050 Bodega Avenue.
The restaurant is a family business, with father Matt Sadati and daughter Sufi as partners. Matt has had 11 restaurants in East Bay communities such as Walnut Creek and Martinez. Sufi said that Mansoor is about “fine dining, not just having dinner.” Head chef Samuel Lee offers continental cuisine, but Sufi said that there are a few Persian dishes that reflect their Iranian heritage, such as Kuku Sabzi. “It is like a frittata with walnuts but more herbaceous,” she said. Sufi, who just graduated from law school, is excited to be running this restaurant.
Matt really liked the restaurant’s building, calling it historic. Previous occupants have been The Gravenstein Grill and The French Garden and before that, Marty’s Top of the Hill. Asked why he chose Sebastopol for a new restaurant, he said with a warm smile: “I love Sebastopol. It’s an old hippie town, but people who live here have money.”
Sufi has been busy getting old photographs of Sebastopol on the walls of the restaurant. Matt hopes that groups will come and use their large community room for events.
Tim and Marianne Moore were among the first customers on Saturday night. They were very much enjoying their food and hoped others would come out to experience Mansoor.
Asked where the name Mansoor came from, Sufi said it means “triumphant” or “victorious.”
Ukrainian/American benefit a “huge success”
Friday night’s “Ukrainian and American Friendship: A Musical Celebration” at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center was a “huge success,” according to organizer John Namkung. Over 250 people attended, and the event raised over $23,000, which will go to children who lost their parents in the war. The evening of music by Ukrainian and American groups was wonderful.
Nina Gerber’s performance of the Ukrainian National Anthem as an instrumental on guitar was exceptional. One Ukrainian teenager was moved to get up from his seat, and with his hand on his heart, he quietly sang the words to the anthem with great pride.
A reckoning at Retrograde
By Bryan Bryson
Editor’s note: We saw this post on Brian Bryson’s facebook page, and it was too good not to share. Brian said this story is an amalgam of experiences he’s had around town, so consider this a lightly fictionalized bit of humor with a hard nugget of truth at its heart.
For years, I’ve been trying to figure out how so many of my fellow liberal friends and I—people who used to agree on just about everything—ended up living in completely different realities.
After a few recent Facebook exchanges, I think I’m starting to understand.
Apparently, some of my friends have decided the best way to stay informed is to avoid listening to people they disagree with.
Or people they think they disagree with.
Which seems like a backwards approach to learning things.
Anyway, I’m in line at Retrograde Café in Sebastopol, listening to Ben Shapiro on my headphones, when suddenly the Bluetooth switches to the JBL speaker in my bag.
And now Ben Shapiro is loudly addressing the entire café. His nasal voice is complaining condescendingly out of my backpack.
His stern face is on my phone.
I’m looking at him. Everybody’s looking at him.
This is not good.
I’m stabbing at my phone—fuck fuck fuck fuck—trying to shut him up. Smothering the speaker with my wadded-up hoodie, trying to snuff the life out of that annoying sound.
Damn it! I’ve been caught listening to Ben Shapiro.
In Sebastopol.
At Retrograde Café.
I might as well have walked in wearing a MAGA hat and carrying an AR-15.
People are waiting for their turmeric lattes and breakfast croissants, and I’m in the middle of it all, apparently trying to whip up a Trump rally.
So, of course, I immediately feel like I need to explain myself.
“It’s not what you think. I’m a lifelong liberal. I drove a group of teenagers to Standing Rock. I Occupied Wall Street.”
Nobody’s asked me anything. I’m just volunteering evidence.
“I have an autographed 8x10 of Terry Gross on the wall by my bed!”
And then it occurs to me.
Why am I afraid of being caught listening to somebody?
Knowledge is power. Know thine enemy. Ignorance is an obstacle to peace.
Being able to steelman Ben Shapiro’s arguments—to understand and articulate the strongest version of what he believes—makes me a better-informed, more empowered liberal.
We’re drowning in propaganda and horseshit. It’s hard to hear the signal through all the noise.
I want to find the truth. And the only way I know to even begin approaching it is to seek out and listen to liberals, conservatives, libertarians, socialists, communists, anarchists, Islamists—everybody.
Compare their arguments. Examine the evidence. Triangulate.
Remember The Blind Men & The Elephant?
One feels the tail and says it’s a rope. Another feels a tusk and says it’s a spear. Another feels a leg and says it’s a tree. I want to hear them all so I can begin to see what it actually is.
Tragically, being caught listening to the wrong blind man can get you kicked out of the zoo.
The most effective censorship doesn’t require a dictator. All it takes is the fear of what your friends will think if they discover what you’re willing to hear.
And maybe that’s how we ended up so far apart.
Which is a shame, because I love finding out I’m wrong about something.
Seriously. It’s a great feeling. Euphoric.
The dark clouds part. The sun comes out. And suddenly you realize you’ve been lugging around an 80-pound sack of Wrong for the last ten years.
And you can just put that sack down.
Ahhhhh.
What a relief.
But you can’t have that experience if you refuse to hear anything that might challenge what you already believe.
And I’m certainly not going to deprive myself of that pleasure just because somebody at Retrograde might look down their nose and whisper to their friend, “White supremacist.”
Although I am going to figure out how to turn off that Bluetooth.
Brian Bryson, who is not a white supremacist, is an artist, educator and community builder based in Sebastopol. He is the founder and artistic director of Broken Theatre.
Sebastopol launches its First Turkey Trot this Thanksgiving
Sebastopol has a new way to start Thanksgiving. On Thursday, Nov. 26, at 8 am, runners, walkers, and families will gather at the Sebastopol Community Center for the inaugural Sebastopol Turkey Trot.
There is a 5K course for serious and casual runners, and a Little Legs 2K for younger participants. Registration is $20 for the 5K and $10 for the Little Legs.
The Kiwanis Club of Sebastopol, Sebastopol Grange #306, and the Sebastopol Lions Club are presenting the event together, and they aim for it to be a Sebastopol tradition. All three groups are composed entirely of volunteers, and 100% of net proceeds will go to local youth programs, grants, scholarships, and community service projects.
Local businesses can sponsor the race at levels from $50 to $1,000. The TurkeyTrot has already received strong sponsorship support from The Barn Fitness Collective, Wylde Provisions, Sports Basement, Retrograde Coffee, Andy’s Market and Gold Ridge Organic Farms. All sponsors get race entries and recognition on the sponsor banner, website, and social media. Donations of food, prizes, raffle items, and services are also welcome.
Runners and walkers can sign up at HERE.
For sponsorship information, email sponsors@sebastopolkiwanisclub.org or call 707-849-1622.
Corrections
FROM OUR STORY ABOUT SEBASTOPOL’S NEW ORCHESTRA: In our story about the new Sebastopol Harmonia Orchestra, conductor John Maas mispoke about the qualifications of one of the musicians. “I meant to describe Lisa Doyle as a professional violinist — not semi-professional,” he wrote us, noting that “Lisa was a good sport about it, but I want to respect her level of musicianship!”
FROM OUR STORY ON THE GUERNEVILLE VETS BUILDING: Our Nov. 7 “Guerneville Gab” column said the Guerneville Veterans Memorial Building went up on First Street in 1957. That date came from a 2021 county staff report, but a reader pointed out that the building is much older, having been built in 1924 as Guerneville's grammar school. Sonoma County bought it in 1948 for a war memorial, according to county records, and the school moved to Armstrong Woods Road in 1949. According to a 2019 engineering report, the county did extensive renovations in 1957, extending the auditorium 20 feet toward the river and adding a meeting room beneath.
The same reader who discovered this error had some thoughts about the change: “It was the only Guerneville community center from then [1957] until the county took it during COVID. Everything happened there: vet use, public meetings, community functions and much more. Guerneville now has no place for any of this because of county action … Maintenance on this building has been minimum there for a very long time. Sonoma County Vet Connect was using the building, regularly helping local veterans up until the county took it. Vet Buildings have state rules for veteran access and that has been denied by the county for the last six years. It would take organization and money to fight the county and restore the Guerneville Veterans Building back to the community.”
According to the article published here on Nov 5, 2026 "As usual, voter turnout was higher in Sebastopol. Out of 5,772 registered voters, 2,120 cast a vote in the Sebastopol City Council race, for a turnout of 36.7%, according to figures from the Sonoma County Registrar of Voters. This may grow as the late deciders and other straggler votes are counted."
This has indeed grown. Today's vote total for council candidates is 10,095. Assuming each voter cast a vote for 3 candidates, 3,365 of our 5,772 registered voters participated in the recent election, which puts Sebastopol's participation rate at 58%.
Sonoma County's overall participation rate was 67%, so Sebastopol hasn't lived up to its traditional status as a higher-than-average voter turnout center, but 58% is a pretty good participation rate.
For the Turkey Trot, you don't have to be a runner - walkers are welcome to join! It will be a fun way to start Thanksgiving in community and help local youth!