In Santa Cruz, city leaders are looking into whether a new 1.5-mile-long bike, pedestrian and horse trail will bring enough residents through the drug and crime nexus of the Pogonip greenbelt to drive out its heroin and meth dealers.
Articles by elgeorge
Tamagotchi: Man’s Best Trend
Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ Co. Ltd, is the original creator of Tamagotchi, which is arguably the most famous virtual pet device ever created, with more than 70 million units sold since it debuted in 1996 and multiple adaptations of the toys into films, television series and video games. Yokoi answered questions from Santa Cruz Weekly via email from his home in Chiba, Japan, about how he came up with the idea for Tamagotchi and what the differences are between virtual pets and real ones.
Unconditional Love 2.0: Cyberpets v. Real Thing
It has to be vomit. Nothing else could explain that wet, meaty stench wafting from the back seat. Pulling the car to a stop, I look back at my dazed 7-month-old golden retriever, Dublin, then down at what is indeed a small but pungent pile of partially digested kibble that the 90-minute trip from Santa Cruz to San Francisco has sent rocketing up from her motion-sensitive stomach and onto the car’s upholstery. With slideshow.
Santa Cruz Pension Talks Move Forward
To call it a “breakthrough” might be premature. But there are now seven out of the city of Santa Cruz’s 762 benefited employees who say they’ll jump on the pension reform bandwagon. Four lieutenants, two deputy chiefs and a captain of the Santa Cruz Police Department agreed last week to temporarily increase the amount of money they pay into the California Public Employees’ Retirement System by 8 percent (all of which will come after they receive a 4 percent annual cost-of-living raise from the city). The city’s finance department estimates the move will save $101,000 next year.
Big Bowls of Bad
There was a point during Tuesday’s “Pension Reform Study Session” at City Hall when even Santa Cruz Mayor Mike Rotkin—a self-described socialist and champion of entitlements—had to admit that “scaling back pensions may be inevitable.”
Santa Cruz Mayor: Smart Meters Not Too Bright
These days, nothing says “I’m a 21st century product” quite like word “smart” in front of it. There’s “smart phones,” “smart cars,” “smart loans,” even “smart toilets.” So it should come as no surprise that gas and electric companies statewide are rolling out new “smart meters” that will replace the old – apparently “dumb” – mechanical usage meters with high-tech digital versions that track energy use down to microscopic detail and beam the info wirelessly to the power company.
A Lohan Ban?
For a time even the break room at the downtown Santa Cruz New Leaf sported a photo of the troubled actress with the words “kombucha killer” scrawled across it.
Stores Yank Kombucha From Shelves in Santa Cruz
The federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, at the behest of the Food and Drug Administration, released a statement saying it had received complaints from Arizona, Maine, Minnesota and Vermont about the tea and that the alcohol-by-volume levels in some instances were found to “significantly exceed” the 0.5 percent allowed for products not registered as beers, wines or spirits.
Santa Cruz Pirate Radio Walks Plank … Again
In a secret broadcasting studio somewhere in Santa Cruz, a ponytailed 62-year-old DJ is speaking crisply into a large, spongy microphone. “That was ‘Heart Full of Soul’ by the Yardbirds,1965, and before that ‘Indifference’ by Moby Grape,” he says. “I’m Uncle Dennis right here at Free Radio Santa Cruz, 101.1 FM and triple-w dot freak radio dot org.”
Pension Tensions in Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz Police Chief Howard Skerry has worn SCPD blue for 29 years. So when he turns in his gun and badge in September to retire, he’ll take home a pension of about $170,000 per year for the rest of his life. It’s the same deal every cop and firefighter in Santa Cruz gets: stay on the job until at least age 50, then retire with 3 percent of your salary for every year spent on the force. That means an officer who retires after 20 years gets 60 percent of his income, one who retires after 25 gets 75 percent, and so on.
