January 7, 2003

TIMES ARE TOUGH , but you can still dream of a job worth getting out of bed for. We interviewed five people who have all found happiness in the workplace, whether that's an international skate competition or an art studio on the grounds of a waste transfer station.

Dana Albany
Artist in residence, Sanitary Fill Co.

A typical workday for Dana Albany starts with a shopping cart and piles of garbage to scavenge through. She's not looking for cash-refund bottles, though. She's the artist in residence at the Sanitary Fill Co., San Francisco's main solid-waste transfer station and recycling center, and Albany's job is to make art out of what's been thrown away.

The only one of its kind in the United States, the Sanitary Fill's artist-in-residency program has been running since 1990 and offers participants unlimited access to waste materials, a studio they can use 24 hours a day, and lots and lots of power tools. Artists get a monthly stipend of $1,700 and are expected to put in at least 40 hours of work a week. At the end of each resident's three-month term, Sanitary Fill hosts an art reception for him or her.

One of the aims of the program is to bring the concepts of recycling and environmental conscientiousness to the public in compelling, creative ways. Residents have to be good public speakers, and they have to work well with children, since Sanitary Fill's Environmental Education Center regularly gives tours of the facility, including the art studio, to schoolkids. "The tours, which I think are really beautiful, are one of the most fun parts of my day." Albany says. "The kids are great. They have a lot of great questions." She kept the kids in mind while completing the first piece of her term, a discarded doll covered with glass mosaics. "I thought it would be great if I used a toy that schoolchildren are familiar with," she says.

For Albany, a self-taught sculptor who never received a traditional art education, every project is a new challenge. "Each time I'm doing something, I'm trying to figure it out. I don't really have a craft or a trade, so each new idea becomes a whole new learning process." Her current project, a boat made mainly out of recycled books, with fishing rods standing in for masts, is called Voyage, because "both boats and books have the ability to take you on a journey."

Obviously, potential program candidates shouldn't mind getting their hands dirty, since they'll be spending their days digging through garbage. As for other requirements, applicants must be professional artists, live in the Bay Area, and take Sanitary Fill's public tour (third Saturdays, 10 a.m.; to reserve a spot, call 415-330-1415). One of the highlights is the three-acre Sculpture Garden, which features works by past residents.

Among the 70-some applications program director Paul Fresina typically receives each year, those that mention previous work with recycled materials are likely to go to the top of the pile. Albany, who refers to herself as "the Dumpster Diva," definitely had an edge in that regard. Her art career began at Burning Man, where she worked as an assistant coordinator for the festival's artistic themes. "I thought Burning Man should have a camel, a 'ship of the desert,' " she says. "So I made one out of recycled materials, just as an experiment." Since then she has consistently incorporated such objects into her work. One year at Burning Man she made a 30-foot tree out of cattle bones, playing on the reversal of life and death.

Being surrounded by mountains of trash, Albany has come eye to eye with our society's culture of waste. "At first I was truly overwhelmed by the sheer abundance," she says. "It's a constant flow. Every day heaps of trash are coming in." Now what the rest of us toss out has some degree of influence on Albany's art. "Sometimes when you're looking for something specific, it kind of limits you," she says. "You have to go with what you find. A lot of the materials that come in are going to dictate what I build. There is a wealth of material out there for any kind of artist." (David Moisl)

Dana Albany's art reception takes place Feb. 7, 5-9 p.m., Sanitary Fill Co., art studio, 401 Tunnel, S.F. (415) 330-1414.

Kelly Chessen
Data-crisis counselor, DriveSavers Data Recovery

Kelly Chessen once picked up the phone to hear a very angry man telling her he'd just shot his computer. Instead of asking, "What the hell did you do that for?" – a tempting response for the average person – Chessen listened. She let the man talk through his issues. She soothed his fears that the data on his failed (and smoking) hard drive was gone and wouldn't be coming back. And when he asked her to help him retrieve it, Chessen was able to convince him to turn the computer off and send the disk in for repair.

Chessen is a data-crisis counselor. As an employee of DriveSavers Data Recovery, she gets paid to help panicky people deal with computer-file losses and work their way toward a recovery solution. Every day she fields an average of 60 calls to DriveSavers' 1-800 number, encountering distraught clients facing the disappearance of anything from business reports to digital baby photos.

Callers to DriveSavers vary considerably, in terms of both their computer knowledge and their psychological state. Some are calm-and-cool information technology guys; others are novices experiencing their worst nightmare. A mom calls in about baby pictures stored on a crashed hard drive. Through hiccuping sobs she explains to Chessen that the photos are irreplaceable. A high-up corporate exec has lost next week's power-summit notes. In a panic he reels off a litany of fears: he'll get canned, he won't be able to pay his mortgage, he'll lose his home. Chessen empathizes with them. She feels their pain. She reassures them of DriveSavers' 90 percent success rate for retrieving lost data.

"It's as simple as listening and letting them talk through their issues," Chessen says. It makes sense that she would put it like that – Chessen comes to data-crisis counseling with five years of experience at a suicide-prevention hotline. "I've done countless hours," she says. "I am used to [dealing with] people in a crisis over the phone."

After graduating from college with a B.A. in psychology, she called her local suicide hotline and asked to volunteer. A few years later she was managing the hotline and spending her time training others to handle stressful calls.

So how did she go from counseling the clinically depressed to counseling the temporarily insane? Two years ago, through word of mouth, Chessen heard DriveSavers was looking for a phone operator with her kind of experience. The company has several operators monitoring the DriveSavers hotline but was in search of someone who could handle the really tough cases – the people who were experiencing emotional as well as technological difficulties.

It sounds bizarre to compare frustration over a crashed computer to the emotional distress of someone contemplating ending their life. But it's certainly true that computers have become integral to modern culture. They're inanimate objects made of metal and plastic, and yet they often hold our lives inside.

"Not many people who do suicide prevention want to work for a big company, but data-crisis counseling is a nice change of pace," Chessen explains. She likes that she can offer solutions to people's problems instead of facing the huge gray areas and unanswerable questions of the suicidal. The most difficult part of the job, she says, is being yelled at by desperate callers. Computers can be frustrating (case in point: the CPU shooter), and clients who think they've lost everything often start shouting into the phone as soon as they get Chessen on the line. "When someone's on that high, it's hard to bring them down off the intense anger," she says.

Chessen has a few words of advice to prospective data-crisis counselors: Make sure you have a solid background in crisis intervention. Keep in mind that no two crises are the same, even though they may seem similar. And lastly, remember that with help and support you can get through just about anything. (Claudia Eyzaguirre)

Marc Villa
"Glorified gatherer," San Francisco Zoo

Sitting inside our office towers, under the spell of flickering fluorescent lights and the soft blue glow of the computer monitors, who among us hasn't looked longingly out the window and dreamed of a wholesome career in the great outdoors? In those wistful moments when the sun's rays reflect off the chrome detail on delivery vans and the wind scatters yesterday's papers across the sidewalk, we have pondered our options. We may have considered being a construction worker, gardener, meter reader, or street sweeper, but most of us have probably never considered Marc Villa's job at the San Francisco Zoo.

As a (self-proclaimed) "glorified gatherer," Villa spends most of his days cruising the city in a cherry picker with a bucket, looking for eucalypti, acacias, and a shrub called coprosma to feed to more than 50 of the zoo's animals.

Villa's largest task is gathering sustenance for the zoo's four koalas. The animals dine exclusively on the tender shoots of eucalyptus trees, and what's more, they don't drink water but quench their thirst with eucalyptus leaves. When Villa spies a preferred tree variety, he and his two coworkers set to work collecting the freshest of the new growth. As it turns out, the world's cutest marsupials are picky eaters: of the 300 species of eucalyptus, koalas eat 30 to 40 kinds, and of those, only 15 or so grow around here. Villa tries to vary what he brings in so the koalas don't get too dependent on a few varieties.

As for the other animals that benefit from Villa's foraging expeditions, the elephants, rhinos, giraffes, elands, and nyalas (which Villa says look like "antelopes on steroids") all enjoy munching fresh branches of acacia, a common long-leafed shrub and tree. The coprosma, often planted on street medians, goes to the primates.

The day I spoke with Villa, he was returning from trimming a few eucs growing in a shopping center in South San Francisco, but most of the "browse" he collects comes from street trees and city parks, where he and his coworkers can count on foliage free from herbicides and pesticides. "We usually don't collect from private property," he says, "because we need permission, and we have to be sure that the trees were not sprayed." By now the zoo has been collecting browse long enough to have a good list of gathering spots.

The subject of zoos is an embattled one, especially in a politicized city like San Francisco, and Villa was reluctant to name any of his foraging locations, concerned that antizoo folks might want to monkey-wrench the operations – though you'd hope that even the most hard-core of animal liberationists wouldn't want to do away with any of the koalas' scant food sources.

Every good job has its fringe benefits, and Villa says one of his is being good friends with the giraffe keeper, who lets Villa's two little boys feed the giraffes when they come to visit. As for the animals Villa spends his days providing for, the keepers get to feed them, but the elands are always happy to see Villa and crew return in their truck loaded with browse. "Elands are great for positive reinforcement," he says. (Apparently not all of the animals are so appreciative of Villa's hard work. The rhinos, Villa's favorite, run around snorting and trumpeting whenever the big truck – accompanied by loud beeping sounds – backs up to their cage.)

Although Villa became a gardener (his official title) at the zoo by what he calls "dumb luck," don't begrudge him his good fortune – he seems like the kind of guy who deserves it. Prior to his zoo gig, he worked for a nonprofit assisting developmentally disabled children and adults, and he met his current boss while sweeping the exterior of the zoo as part of a business the nonprofit started for the adults. "I was a double major anthro-religious studies," Villa says. "That qualifies me for just about anything." As for the great outdoors, when people – myself included – tell Villa how lucky he is, he counters, "Remember that day it was storming? I was out there." (Eyzaguirre)

Shehanna Stevenson
Worker-owner, Cheese Board Collective

Not many people would be too excited by the prospect of waking up before 4:30 a.m. every day to make dough, no matter how much of the green kind ended up in their paycheck. But for Shehanna Stevenson, who joined the worker-owned Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley six years ago, it somehow made sense. "I grew up in a cooperative; my mom worked in a cooperative," she says. "It's an idea of a work structure that not only was I familiar with but I've grown to have a lot of respect for." Stevenson actually looks forward to going to work, where she's surrounded by fun co-owners, supportive customers, and lots and lots of stinky mold.

A Berkeley establishment since the late '60s, the Cheese Board – which was part of a burgeoning co-op movement in the Bay Area that also included Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco – features more than 300 cheeses from around the world and a mouth-watering baked-goods selection. (The Cheese Board Pizza Collective, a few doors down, opened almost two decades later.) While the snack-time perks must be nice, the opportunity to be your own boss under such circumstances is even better. "It's more than not having a boss," Stevenson says. "My input gets valued just as much as anyone else's."

Each worker-owner at the Cheese Board is scheduled to take on certain daily tasks, from bookkeeping to sweeping up the floors at the end of the day. Stevenson's preference is rolling out the dough. "I love the sound it makes when it's in a bowl, and you know it's going to be good by the texture of it," she says. "One of the great things about working with bread is that you can never predict the outcome. It brings out the side of me that would probably like doing chemistry." She talks about making one of her favorite breads, the suburban, a round, batard-shaped sourdough made with a mixture of whole wheat and white flours. "It gets a beautiful rusty brown color when it's been baked, really light and airy, and has these big holes inside it with a great crust outside."

Baker, cheese dealer, dishwasher, and everything in between – it sounds ideal. Cheese Board workers gain experience at every level and avoid the monotony of doing one task day in and day out. And anyone who's ever stepped inside the friendly neighborhood shop can imagine what a pleasant work environment it offers. So it's not surprising that job opportunities there are hard to come by – plus, there's a five-year commitment and an extensive probationary training period of six months, after which the 40 or so members vote on whether the person should join them.

Decisions require a 51 percent vote among co-owners, which can make for a lengthy process, Stevenson says. And sometimes the mind-set of equal decision-making power is infectious. "Long-term customers will come in and feel that they have input," Stevenson says. "The idea of a cooperative extends to the community. Overall it's a really good thing. I like that people come in and feel comfortable, and by extension they feel a part of the cooperative."

In the past few years the Cheese Board has helped other co-ops around the Bay Area get started, a process Stevenson was involved in. The worker-owners of the Arizmendi Bakeries in Oakland and San Francisco (a third Arizmendi is scheduled to open in Emeryville) were all trained by Cheese Board members, and Stevenson devoted her time to the yearlong program before the S.F. Arizmendi opened shop.

Stevenson appreciates the (often idealized) view of a working socialistic concept that fills workers and customers alike with a sense of joy and good grub, but she acknowledges that for the most part it's still just a job to her. "I wouldn't say that 100 percent of the people who work here believe in a cooperative model, or that that's the reason they're here. But through being here, people see that it's a really great thing, and it's good to pass on."

"I've changed a lot since I've been here," she adds. "[I've become] more confident and have an ability to work with other people in a way I never had to before." Aside from the knowledge she's gained as a baker and an entrepreneur, she's sharpened her communications skills in ways she might never have at a company based on a more traditional, hierarchical model – something to add to an already impressive résumé.

In the meantime, other perks of working at the Cheese Board include access to a cabin in Mendocino, an automatic two weeks off a year when the business is closed for holidays, and additional profit-sharing at the end of each year. Not bad, considering Cheese Board workers also have standard vacation time and benefits. "It's the best job I'll probably ever have," Stevenson says. "[Someday] I'll have a different job, but I think in a lot of ways we've got it really good." (Cynthia Dea)

Jessie Van Roechoud
Pro skater

I'll admit I was terrified when I first started skating the hills of San Francisco. Just a week before moving to the Lower Haight, I'd gotten a cast sawed off my right arm – which I'd broken while bombing an embarrassingly low ollie – and I kept having uncontrollable visions of being flattened by one of those murder-bent SUVs that tear up my block of Oak Street every day. It was self-righteousness more than anything that got me back on the board – a little sick of the macho Z-Boy hype, listening to Avril Lavigne fawn over skaters with testicles, and watching their real-life counterparts roll through my hood on Mike Fraziers and Sector 9s. Not to completely dis on skater guys, but even some of them may have noticed a certain dearth of female representation out there in Sk8land.

Which brings me to Jessie Van Roechoudt, a pro skater who could leave Lavigne's cavalcade of boi crushes in the dust. Van Roechoudt started skating at age 14 and didn't buy her first commercial board until two years later, but from the way she executes an ollie kickflip, you'd think she was playin' ollies in utero.

Van Roechoudt's been down with the S.F. scene since long before Union Square got retrofitted into a pristine, overly policed slab of concrete. With a mom who worked for an airline, she would hitch free flights from her hometown in British Columbia to San Francisco, where she'd meet other kids and crash at their houses. "Back then skating wasn't considered a sport so much as a community," she says, speaking to me by phone from her folks' home in Canada. "If I did it the same way today, I'd probably end up sleeping in Golden Gate Park, but skate culture was different in the early '90s."

For years Van Roechoudt skated for the adrenaline rush, with no aspirations of turning pro. But in 1996, when a skate team from San Francisco came through her town, the team manager saw her practicing shifty ollies at a local skate park and handed her a business card. The next time she came to San Francisco, she called him; soon after, she landed her first "flow" job, endorsing products for local shops. After a brief camp counselor stint at a YMCA skate camp in Visalia, she flew down to San Diego for a trade show, where she met the owner of Rookie Boards, her first sponsor. "Once the ball's rolling, it all works together," Van Roechoudt says. "It's easy to find companies that are willing to work with you." Now she's sponsored by several, including Billabong Clothing, FTC Boards, and Genetic Shoes.

One of the perks of her career is the excitement of shuttling around the globe for competitions, Van Roechoudt says – though it put some strain on her course work back when she was studying at San Francisco State University. ("I'd have to rush home and cram my anthro reading after a weekend competition in Brazil.") Pro skating also exposed Van Roechoudt to "artistic communities that overlap with the skating community." After years of posing for magazines, she cultivated a love for photography and has showcased some of her work at SFSU.

For all the glamour of international competitions, photo shoots, and free flights to Brazil, though, Van Roechoudt says the best part of skating is that electrifying moment when she's taking a hill on a San Francisco street at breakneck speed; it's the middle of the night, Muni buses are sparse, and Market Street is pretty much deserted. "At four in the morning the city becomes your playground," she says wistfully. "You're cruising the streets with the mist in your face, going over driveways and bumps. My friends and I bring out lights and a generator and rig it up." Most skaters can identify with that sense of late-night abandon – missioning to those pockets of the city you wouldn't explore in the daylight hours, creeping into empty buildings and scaling the walls, rolling from the Fillmore to Chinatown just to stop and eat at an all-night noodle house.