A porch on the ranch where time seems to stand still. Photo by Todd Hido
“It’s a great party,” says McEvoy, who has salt-and-pepper hair and cornflower-blue eyes, and shows up on his vine-covered veranda ten minutes after the shower episode dressed in blue corduroys, a blue dress shirt, and blue Italian loafers. “We have two bands: Hot Club of Cowtown and my band, Rough Draft. It’s sort of a relaxed sixties cover band. We don’t rehearse much.”
McEvoy knows a good party. His peripatetic lifestyle and eclectic résumé attest to the fact that he has experienced its many forms. He worked as an attorney at the William Morris Agency in Beverly Hills in the early eighties—“It’s hard to be candid about that time period without being slanderous,” he says—then spent a few years practicing Transcendental Meditation at an Oregon commune and bartending at Zorba the Buddha, in Portland.
“But my finest moment,” he says, “was when I played ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ at the Fillmore with Roger McGuinn of the Byrds. That was complete rock paradise.”
The titles found in Chronicle Books’ catalog reflect the boss’s varied interests. He joined the publishing house as an acquisitions editor of its adult-books division in 1986 and 14 years later formed the McEvoy Group to buy the company. Since then, his bestselling titles have included The Beatles Anthology, The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, and Weber’s Art of the Grill.
“It’s not so much about the book itself. It’s an object of pleasure that derives from its physicality,” McEvoy says. “I like to stay close to things—like books, like olive oil—as opposed to the Wall Street economy. I can understand Wall Street as a businessman and a lawyer, but I have no interest in it.”
The ranch is also an object of pleasure for McEvoy. “I let my mother do the work,” he jokes. “We have so many good people who operate the ranch that I don’t have to get involved, except in the financials and troubleshooting. I come out here to relax, hike, and swim in the pool.”
You might expect the 257,000 residents of marin County—the
15th-most-expensive county in the country—to be dripping with
self-importance. But the beauty of this rugged coastal community just
north of San Francisco is that those who live here care more about the
quality of the surf off Stinson Beach or the freshness o...
McEvoy might not officially “work” at the ranch, but it’s evident that both he and his mother work hard to cultivate a pleasurable, salon-style atmosphere for both guests and employees. Every day that she’s available, Nan drives up from San Francisco with her chauffeur, Ali Khatabi, for lunch, a sit-down affair where the staff mingles with whomever Nion or Nan happen to invite along. Today it’s San Francisco–based photographer Todd Hido. Nion, who also happens to be the chairman of photography accessions at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, owns one of his photographs.
The kitchen is flooded with sunlight and filled with art: A landscape painted by Wayne Thiebaud covers one wall. Fourteen guests and employees sit down for a three-course lunch the chefs have created mostly from their organic garden out back. They serve us rock cod in a tangy, red tomato-tarragon sauce and salad drizzled with McEvoy olive oil, then top it off with ice cream and chocolate-covered figs. The accompanying wine is an organic pinot noir from nearby Stubbs Vineyard.
“We normally eat rice and beans,” says McEvoy. “But this is a special occasion.”
The conversation flows from the organic pumpkins surrounding the pagoda to Nan’s days in D.C. as one of the founding staff members of the Peace Corps to photographer Garry Winogrand’s series “Women Are Beautiful.”
“Mum,” says Nion, circling the conversation back to the ranch, “tell her about your Pioneer Award from the California Olive Oil Council.”
“Well,” says Nan, who is wearing a brown pantsuit and a Barack Obama pin, “Maurizio picked 100 trees from Italy, put them on an airplane, and I picked them up.” She tops off my glass. “That’s how we brought a new vegetable to California. If your cow is unhappy, you can now grow olives.”
Silence descends as we devour our dessert. We then sit in sated homage to the chefs, until Nion starts drumming his fingers on the tablecloth, a sign that this CEO’s idle stretch is over and it’s time to move on.
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