Smith: Christo, the artist behind 'Running Fence,' creates floating wonder in Italy

From Allan and Dee Webb comes an email, with photos attached, that's intended for us all. Prepare to envy.

The Santa Rosans wrote from northern Italy's Lago d'Iseo - sounds so much nicer than Lake Iseo. They'd just walked well out onto the lake, onto the glorious, golden, floating walkways that comprise artist Christo's “Floating Piers.”

“We were only up to the first leg, which seemed like a mile or maybe two,” wrote Allan. “Tough enough in 90-degree heat in the open sun with 70-80 percent humidity.”

“But not too tough to keep many, many thousands of curious and admiring vacationers away.”

Back in 1976, the Webbs didn't catch “The Running Fence,” the similarly stunning and grand piece of environmental art that Christo and the late Jeanne Claude erected from near Cotati to the sea.

But they're true fans, and experienced in person Christo and Jeanne Claude's Orange Umbrella Project in Southern California in 1991 and the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin four years later.

Allan wrote that to behold and tread upon the miles of floating fabric that Christo used to link the lakeside town of Sulzano to two islands “is an experience we will not soon forget.”

He and Dee wish we all were there.

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BUSY, BUSY GREENS: Golf buddies since the days they sold Dodges together, Don Zumwalt and Pete Mattioli one day last week shopped for a Santa Rosa course with a decent open tee time.

Mattioli “loves to ask his phone to do things,” shares retired dealer Zumwalt. He listened as his pal directed his smart-phone, “Call Oakmont Golf.”

The phone auto-dialed and a woman picked up. Mattioli asked if he and his pal might squeeze in a round in the next day or so.

The Oakmont employee replied rather apologetically that at present the course was busy with practice play in preparation for the tournament.

Tournament?

Mattioli was talking to a staffer at Pennsylvania's historic Oakmont Country Club, host of the 2016 U.S. Open.

Stupid phone.

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NEIL BLUMENTHAL and some old restaurant friends feasted on memories and vintage dining-room hijinks in Santa Rosa on Tuesday.

Neil's name is near-sacred to anyone he'd greeted and taken care of impeccably at his Topaz Room on Courthouse Square, long the town's finest place to do whatever pairs well with a real drink and a masterly served meal.

Neil owned the Topaz Room from 1958 to 1985, then became maitre d' of a new dinner house at Fountaingrove Inn. He's 81 now and scooted over from his East Bay home after hearing some of his waiters from decades ago were getting together to reconnect and swap tales.

Neil thought back to when he charged $2.50 for an abalone dinner at the Topaz Room.

“That was for everything,” he said. “An appetizer, soup, salad, entree and dessert.”

Through his first 16 years at the Topaz Room, into the mid-1970s, he charged 50 cents for a drink. Then he boosted the price all the way to 65 cents.

He laughed at the video in his head of comic-banker Al Mansoor and a handful of other Topaz Room regulars observing the demise of the half-dollar cocktail by carrying in a full-size casket.

Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com