Smith: Why they’ll move The Living Room

We’ll soon hear much about a big change coming to The Living Room, the bustling and essential day-center for women working to overcome homelessness and other crises.

Having outgrown the space they have leased for 21 years at Church of the Incarnation in downtown Santa Rosa, leaders of The Living Room have purchased some suitable buildings on Cleveland Avenue at Carrillo Street, between West College Avenue and Coddingtown.

Barbara Abbott, a stalwart of The Living Room, says the new space will allow more women and children to be served and, in time, more hours that the center can be open for meals, referrals and other assistance.

The property on Cleveland will need a fair amount of renovation and, most significantly, a commercial kitchen.

The good people who keep up The Living Room will be eager to talk with folks interested in helping to make the new space the functioning, inviting place it needs to be.

ARRIGONI’S, the family market that evolved into the landmark Santa Rosa deli/cafe that will close in a couple of weeks, was a second home to Paul Pasero from 1934 to 1976.

He hired on not long after young grocers in the Arrigoni and Traverso families bought Nate Bacigalupi’s store on Davis Street. “I came in as a delivery boy,” said Pasero, who’s kin to the Arrigonis.

He knew the grocery business pretty well when his uncles moved up into a larger store at Fourth and D streets in 1937. Except for a stint in the military, that was the only place Pasero worked until shortly after brothers Raja and Jacob Naber bought Arrigoni’s in 1975 and began its conversion to a deli restaurant.

Of course, it’s bittersweet for Pasero that the Arrigoni’s name is about to go away.

“It’s one of those things,” he said. “Things change.”

The ex-Arrigoni’s Market ?delivery boy has seen more than his share of change hereabout. He was born in Santa Rosa 100 years ago next month.

THE RED CHAIR reposes for the moment on the Mendocino Coast. The word is, it’s having as much fun as is possible on four wooden legs.

The chair has traveled the U.S., passed from one inn or bed-and-breakfast to another, since an innkeeper found it on a frozen pond in Woods Hole, Mass., in the winter of 2011.

At the moment, the Red Chair is at the Elk Cove Inn, enjoying the company of an adorable rocking chair named Aqua. Innkeeper Elaine Bryant photographed them with martinis alongside a Christmas tree.

Friday, Bryant will drive the Red Chair to the Brewery Gulch Inn in Mendocino. where owner Guy Pacurar has big plans for it.

Keeping up with the Red Chair is tough, but you can try at redchairtravels.com.

Next, Pacurar will pack it off to the Benbow Inn near Garberville. We’ll see if the wooden chair pines for Aqua.

You can reach Columnist Chris Smith at 521-5211 or chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.