“I don’t take credit cards anymore because they’ve made it too expensive,” says Bob Bailes, the owner of Bob’s Stop and Get It, a camping gear and redwood store in Ben Lomond. “They charged me, they charged everybody else instead of cutting back. Not like the old days. In the old days they would say, ‘We better tighten our belts.’ Now they just charge the people.”
Articles by Tessa Stuart
Baaba Maal: Between Worlds
The Sahel is a ribbon of semiarid land, 600 miles at its widest point, that runs the width of Africa from Senegal and Mauritania at one end to Ethiopia and Eritrea at the other. It separates the rippling sand dunes of the Sahara in the north from a more verdant savannah to the south—or maybe it bridges them. In any case, the Sahel exists between two very different worlds, not unlike its most famous native son, the singer Baaba Maal.
African Zombie Movie Opens
The zombie has a rich tradition in literature that dates back as far as The Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the spurned goddess Ishtar rages, “I will knock down the Gates of the Netherworld, I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down, and will let the dead go up to eat the living! And the dead will outnumber the living!”
Forum on A Fumigant
In June 2010, John Froines, chair of the independent Scientific Review Committee convened by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation called “without question one of the most toxic chemicals on Earth.” In December 2010, it was approved for use on strawberries in California.
Santa Cruz Guide: Day Trips
Sometimes even a great town looks better in the rearview mirror. Fortunately, several worthwhile destinations lie within an easy day’s drive from Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz Guide: Sex
If Santa Cruz were a person, she’d be making her way through the Kama Sutra and have the best condom collection ever. Here are some helpful local resources for everybody’s favorite pastime.
Santa Cruz Guide: After Midnight
Eat pumpkins, don’t turn into one. There’s plenty to do after the witching hour—get a cab ride home and order some cookies, eat, drink some more, see a movie… read on for more suggestions.
UC: Home of the Fee
Last week, the UC Office of the President proposed a plan to the UC Regents that would raise tuition at least 8 percent, with the possibility of increases of as much as 16 percent—the difference would depend on state funding—every year through 2016. What are UC fees? Where do they come from? Why do they keep rising? Here is a primer.
First Friday Fever
Mainstays like the Museum of Art and History and Felix Kulpa Gallery can always be counted on to stage stimulating shows, but half the fun is discovering the gems assembled by the amateur curators whose galleries are nightclubs, sex shops and hair salons by day.
The Westsiders
Back in 1996, 11 local artists started getting together on a bi-weekly basis. The figure drawing group they started brought together members from varied backgrounds, the pedigreed graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design sketching next to the self-described “product of local public handouts.”
