Around noon on Wednesday 10-to-12-foot waves brought about 15 brave surfers to Steamer Lane. Waves were expected to reach up to 20-feet as a giant swell headed south from Alaska down the California coast, bringing around an inch of rain to Santa Cruz along with it.
Articles by elgeorge
Women’s Advocacy Groups: Make Santa Cruz Safe
In the misty winter dusk outside the 7-Eleven at Ocean and Broadway streets, Ashley Russell lights a candle in remembrance of Nichole “Nikki” Schrock. It was inside the store, just a few hours into the new decade, when Schrock, an auburn-haired, 24-year-old mother, was gunned down during her morning shift as store clerk in what police are calling a murder-suicide. (Slide show included)
Santa Cruz Sentinel Online Forum Draws Ire
Tired of virtual vitriol, local officials are requesting better monitoring of Sentinel online forums.
A Bamboost From Santa Cruz
Ibrahim Nyampong is a 32-year-old entrepreneur who lives in Accra, the capital city of Ghana on Africa’s west coast, where the average annual per capita income is $600. About two years ago, nationally renowned bicycle designer and Santa Cruz County native Craig Calfee taught him how to build bicycle frames from locally grown bamboo. Today, Nyampong earns about $150 for every frame he builds, shipping the completed frames—some a milky caramel color, others a deep mocha—to Calfee’s La Selva Beach manufacturing shop. (includes slide show)
Late to The Opium Wars
Cold, sweaty and nauseous, Stefan R. burst into the pale green bathroom stall of the Aptos Cinema men’s room to spend his first experience with OxyContin face down in a public toilet.
Pay Grades
It’s been reported by the Santa Cruz Sentinel that the seven members of the Santa Cruz City Council are paid roughly double the salaries of their counterparts in Scotts Valley, Capitola and Watsonville. But what about cities with bigger budgets or fewer services? Turns out, Santa Cruz’s council salaries are still pretty high—but they’re not the highest.
Cayuga Halt: Santa Cruz Loses Longtime Concert Venue
The Cayuga Vault, midtown’s funky, internationally inclined concert hall is throwing its last bash Dec. 20 and shutting its doors for good at the end of the month. Chalk up another victim to the recession.
Junkie Town: Santa Cruz’s Heroin Problem
“Heroin Hill,” as it’s called by addicts and law enforcement, is a roughly 50-acre trash-strewn plot in the southeast section of the city-owned Greenbelt that’s known to addicts and cops as a substance abuse superstore with rock-bottom prices on heroin, methamphetamine, crack, marijuana, cocaine and pharmaceuticals.
Bud Boundaries
When United States Attorney General Eric Holder announced in February that he would stop ordering federal law enforcement raids on medical marijuana providers as long as they complied with state law, entrepreneurs around the country scrambled to open their own pot shops. Santa Cruz, being ahead of the curve on all things cannabis, already had two dispensaries in town, but city officials say they still received more than 60 calls from interested growers between then and June, when a temporary moratorium was put on all dispensary applications. Now, after last Thursday’s meeting of the Santa Cruz Planning Commission, city leaders are one step closer to making the temporary freeze of two pot clubs in town permanent.
Santa Cruz’s Northern Exposure
Softening regulations on what kinds of businesses can occupy downtown buildings took little consideration by city leaders. From 2007 to 2009, vacant office space downtown tripled from about 60,000 square feet to more than 180,000 square feet. Vacant space equals dwindling sales and property taxes for city coffers, and at 2030 North Pacific, Santa Cruz city leaders have an especially high stake in seeing business begin to boom.
