[Sponsored] “The way I stay active, as I was taught long ago, is to read one new recipe every day,” says Chef Art Russell, owner of Your Place Farm-to-Table in Santa Cruz. “It gets the juices flowing. It’s part of my routine.” Chef Art started working in restaurants when he was 12 years old in…
Articles by Lily Stoicheff
Music and Arts Festival Redwood Mountain Faire Returns June 2 & 3
[Sponsored Post] The Redwood Mountain Faire is a remarkable music and arts festival in the Santa Cruz Mountains, an easy drive from anywhere in the Bay Area. The 9th annual festival features 22 bands on two stages, juried fine arts and crafts, great children’s activities, local microbrews, Santa Cruz Mountain wines and ciders, great food —…
Santa Cruz Resident Patrick Perez Rides for AIDS/LifeCycle
When I told people I was riding my bicycle 545 miles for a charity, most people responded with “that’s crazy” or some similar sentiment. And they were right; it takes a certain amount of insanity to devote every weekend for about half a year to train and ride and become a cyclist for AIDS/LifeCycle. AIDS/LifeCycle…
UCSC’s Brain, Mind, and Consciousness Society Opens Art Show at Felix Kulpa Gallery
If the name Felix Kulpa Gallery & Sculpture Garden doesn’t quite ring familiar, the sight of it might. A tall chainlink fence surrounding a white gravel yard, industrial objects strewn about and an unassuming building squatting in the back—it could almost pass for a junkyard if not for its prime downtown location. But get a…
How to Savor the Strangeness of Succulents
Succulent. The name says a lot. But it doesn’t reveal everything about these wildly compelling botanicals that surrender to even the least-green thumb. Thick-skinned and juicy, these intriguing plants sit somewhere on the sliding botanical scale between dry, spiky cacti and delicate leaf-bearing flora. Succulents love to preserve moisture deep inside their curious, pliant bodies.…
Preview: Sylvia Grape to Play Two Nights in Santa Cruz
When Sylvia Grape’s “dear Ma” grounded her for five months in high school, she had no idea it would lead to a profession as a singer-songwriter. The old guitar lying around the house took on a certain sparkle. “I just picked it up and started fiddling with it,” Grape says. She’d found a companion in…
Garden-Inspired Home Fermentation
One Saturday, when the chill had not quite worn off the morning and it was still likely that rain might ruin the weekend, my boyfriend Mike and I started planning what to plant in our garden. He’s the one with all of the know-how and experience, so I just put in requests. We knew he…
Collective Soul: Soquel’s Craftsmen Collective
Anyone who has worked extensively as an artist or maker is probably familiar with long hours spent alone in a workspace with just a dream and maybe a pet or ficus plant for company. Whole days can pass without human contact, and if the mailman or a UPS driver happens by, the eye contact and…
Tiny Home Makeover
I was born in the deep south—Bakersfield, California. The first RV I ever saw had a bumper sticker that said, “Don’t Tailgate Me or I Will Flush.” This early impression of the RV/trailer crowd made me wonder, “Why do space aliens land in trailer parks?” Years later, I’m sitting here in my retrofitted Airstream trailer,…
How Dig Gardens became Santa Cruz County’s hip gardening hub
Come for the ferns, stay for the cheese boards. Dig Gardens is a little slice of paradise that will have gardening geeks leaving their worries and wallet at the door. Whether they get lost in the outdoor succulent paradise, or don’t even make it past the Paddywax scented candles and bath salts, Dig has something…
