This is a golden time of the year for the arts, with the days growing shorter and people drifting back indoors, resigned to early nightfall but not quite ready to stop playing. One by one, arts venues around town turn their lights up a little brighter, inviting people in to linger a while. This fall in Santa Cruz brings the usual markers of the season—the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County’s Open Studios tour, for example—as well as relative newcomers to the calendar, like the Museum of Art and History’s new slate of interactive programs . And of course there’s the monthly explosion of arts appreciation, flaneur-style, known as First Friday. Read on and keep your calendar handy!
Articles by elgeorge
Almost Famous
Two hours into the 152 en route to Fresno, around 7pm, we started noticing a funny bounce in the back of the van. As cars drove by, the occupants would point to our trailer as they mouthed dreaded words that we couldn’t hear but didn’t need to. Dusty pulled to the side of the road next to acres of green fields and, sure enough, there was our first blown tire, ripped all the way around. And that’s how we kicked off the Stellar Corpses 2011 Western tour.
Nerddom’s Gift to Heavy Metal
A scourge has been released upon the land, right here in Santa Cruz, and it’s not the hordes of new graduates. This scourge is of a mythical kind, unleashing a brutal onslaught of epic proportions while raining crunchy heavy metal upon its unsuspecting victims. It fills music halls with ghastly sights and sounds as human legions scream for more fake blood. With battle weapons in one hand, instruments in the other, and tusks—yes, tusks—sharpened, this plague is known as A Band of Orcs.
Great Restaurants
E & O Trading Co. has called it quits after 11 years on South First Street in San Jose. Word is they fell behind on rent and left everything: plates, pots and pans, the works.
‘This Cosmically Pivotal Moment’
In Chapter 5 of their provocative new book The New Universe and the Human Future: How a Shared Cosmology Could Transform the World, (Yale University Press, 2011, $28), UCSC scholars Nancy Ellen Abrams and Joel R. Primack make the case that we are living at the “midpoint of time on multiple timescales.” Against this dramatic backdrop, they write, humanity finds itself at a pivotal moment in the sense that it’s approaching the end of a period of very rapid growth and can now, if it chooses, change its behavior to create a more sustainable future on Earth. Portions of the chapter are excerpted here.
Rise of The Santa Cruz Moderates
The news shows on Kristina Quilici’s television have been saying the same thing for months: “Voters are angry.” “Incumbents are in danger.” “Democrats are done.” She’s watched the rise of the Tea Party and the ouster of longtime pols in brutal primaries. But when she turns off the TV and steps out of her Bay Street home to talk about what issues are important to her locally, pragmatism trumps ideology. What matters to her is what kind of education her three children will get and what jobs will await them when they graduate. It’s the same for Bridget McNeil, Mark Statson and Kathy Donovan, three more working Santa Cruzans. Respectively they list “jobs,” “public safety” and “social services” as their top issues.
Atmosphere’s Elder Slugsman
Sean Daley, a.k.a. Slug, the rapping force behind Minneapolis hip-hop duo Atmosphere, is in Boise, about to walk into a meet-and-greet session at an indie record store when I reach him on his cell phone. He’s already done a block of interviews and he’s got a show in town the following day, plus eight other events and performances lined up before he plugs in his mic at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz on Sept. 29.
Santa Cruz Guide 2010: Live Music Venues
Where to go to feel the noise.
Santa Cruz Guide 2010: Furniture Shopping
Finding a comfy place to lay one’s head and park one’s tookus is the first step in outfitting a dorm room or apartment. It’s a fact, after all, that the hot transfer student on the fourth floor will not sleep over if she’s forced to share a leaky air mattress on cold linoleum. To this end, we’ve pieced together this handy guide to help college students and other impecunious types furnish an abode with minimal abuse to the credit card that just came in the mail.
Santa Cruz Guide 2010: All Things Bicycle
Anyone coming from the sprawl of SoCal and the Inland abyss might not understand Santa Cruz’s love affair with the bicycle. It’s not just a mode of transportation around here, it’s an outlook on life. But don’t let that intimidate you, we’ve got bike lanes on almost every road, a bike freeway that runs along the river (complete with street kid obstacle course) and, occasionally, free breakfast downtown if you ride there.
