Santa Cruz residents, The Santa Cruz City Council and Santa Cruz Police discuss preventative efforts in place and explore new options for cracking down on crime.
Articles by elgeorge
The Vampires Motorcycle Club
THEY DON’T drink blood. They don’t wear fake fangs or black trench coats. They don’t read Anne Rice novels and they wouldn’t be caught dead watching Twilight. What they do is ride souped-up motorcycles at ridiculous speeds, party like rock stars and occasionally forget to wear clothes while doing either. They’re the Vampires. And they’re Santa Cruz’s most recognizable motorcycle club.
The Repo Diaries
Pressed deep into the front seat cushion of an unmarked Chevy Silverado, Bill Leach grips the steering wheel with pudgy, calloused hands and checks the rearview mirror. In it, behind his doe-eyed wife smiling in the back, sways a wood and steel flatbed trailer loaded with a pair of motorcycles. Neither one belongs to him. Neither one belongs to the men who had them parked in their garages a couple of hours before, either. Both, in fact, belong to the bank, and the only one happy about that at this point is the man at the wheel. Leach is a repo man, and business is booming.
Elkhorn Slough The Problem Child of Monterey Bay
As the midmorning sun burns off the hazy remnants of fog over Elkhorn Slough, the estuary comes to life in the same way it has for thousands of years. Herons glide low over the top of the chilly water, otters scoop up clams from the floor and each step along the reed-edged hiking path sends an unseen critter scuttling loudly into the brush. A visitor might find it hard to believe that, according to a recent report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this is the most damaged ecosystem in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.
Santa Cruz Community TV Dangles By A Cable
On the south end of Pacific Avenue, inside the long, cream-colored hallways and clustered, video-screen-adorned studio rooms of Community Television of Santa Cruz County, you could cut the tension with a knife. Six months past the deadline, Craig Jutson, the studio’s happy-go-lucky interim director, hasn’t been given an annual budget yet. Instead he’s been given access to funds on a quarterly basis and is staring at a cut-off date of Nov. 30 unless city and county leaders approve another few months of financing for the shoestring studio.
New Fairfield Inn Approved for West Santa Cruz
On Tuesday night, Santa Cruz City Council voted unanimously to allow the construction of a new Fairfield Inn off of Highway 1, off the Mission Street Extension.
The Children of Santa Cruz’s Beach Flats Neighborhood
Curtis Cartier photographs the children of Beach Flats.
Health Care Hurdles for Local Entrepreneurs
Ryan Coonerty and Jeremy Neuner, two of the principals of entrepreneur magnet NextSpace, make the case for a health care system that isn’t tied to employment. “Ensuring that entrepreneurs have health care coverage will be a critical ingredient for our economic recovery and our future,” they write.
Sneak Peek With Santa Cruz Geek
I’’m a geek. Not the useful kind that can build a website or de-frag a hard drive, but the worthless kind that can quote passages from Lord of the Rings and kill a level 70 demon lord on World of Warcraft. So when I showed up last Wednesday at the Santa Cruz New Tech MeetUp, a monthly gathering of tech-savvy entrepreneurs and IT specialists, it became quickly apparent that my geekdom was severely outgunned.
Why Santa Cruz Needs Desal
The directors of two local water agencies defend a desalination project in Santa Cruz County, saying it would make up for water shortages, not serve as a Trojan horse for growth. “It is not designed, or intended, to accommodate UCSC growth or higher densities than current land use zoning,” they write.
