Erik Larsen was living in the Lower Ocean area and working in Beach Flats as a community organizer in the ’90s when he got to know Loran “Butch” Baker—a smiling, jovial police officer who took a neighborhood-based approach to keeping people safe.
“He was a really good cop,” Larsen says. “Butch embodies everything anyone would want to know about a community officer. He was a really good guy, and Santa Cruz lost a really good police officer.”
“Our department’s in mourning,” an emotional Kevin Vogel said Tuesday Feb. 26. The Santa Cruz Police chief addressed reporters just after sunset. “This is a horrific day in my career as police chief and for our community and for our police department.”
The artisan food movement has exploded in Santa Cruz, as a growing movement of crafters reclaims the culinary arts.
When most people see a problem, what do they do? Volunteer a few hours of their time? Donate a couple hundred bucks, or perhaps organize a silent auction? No disrespect—these are all great things to do, but it’s safe to say that in Santa Cruz County the gauntlet has officially been thrown.
Nothing fuels a productive and intelligent practice discussion like a crisp beer in one hand, and a pile of Goldfish in the other. This is how the UCSC Ethics Bowl team is preparing for the upcoming national competition in San Antonio, Texas on Feb. 28.
“I guess ‘artisan’ would mean something different to everyone. People tend to know it when they taste it,” says Heidi Hochstrasser, a baker and the co-manager of the pastry department at Companion Bakery on Mission Street. “For us, it means that our bakers approach their craft with the same level of care and attention an artist would to a work of art.”
Kristen Cederquist’s Santa Rosa Plum Preserves taste as sweet and wholesome as a fruit pie home-baked by Doris Day, topped with an American flag and finished off with a swirl of whipped cream. Cederquist, who owns Santa Cruz’s Serendipity Jams, began making jams with grandma at age five and hasn’t looked back.
It’s practically an embarrassment of riches, this delicious wave of artisanal pizza that has swept over our community. Yet the craze for this ancient culinary design of flatbread topped with variations on the theme of tomato, cheese, peppers, meat and herbs just keeps growing. And no one in Santa Cruz is complaining.
When Chris LaVeque says the word “artisan,” he says it like that—with quotation marks around it, as in, “I don’t really consider what we’re doing [finger quote] ‘artisan.’” The owner of El Salchichero butcher shop, 28-year-old LaVeque has a round, rosy-cheeked face, but a voice as deep and authoritative as a professional athlete.
Locals who have watched the Penny Ice Creamery expand to three locations in as many years can be forgiven for thinking that its founders are looking to go “big time.” But the truth is most of the conversations between owners Kendra Baker and Zach Davis are about how to stay small time, even as the business grows.
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