Six liquid amber trees that provide shade outside the Central Library in Santa Cruz are about to be removed.
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PLATED: Santa Cruz Mountains of Wine
Last Saturday saw the grand re-opening of Vinocruz, now the baby of Steve Principe and Jennifer Walker of Network Mortgage. Over the course of the afternoon some 150 guests streamed in and out of the cozy space next to the Museum of Art and History and lounged around tables on the petite outdoor patio, sipping the wines of Alfaro Family Vineyards courtesy the always-charming Richard Alfaro.
Red-Legged Frogs Get Their Closeup
“Smiley said all a frog wanted was education,” the long-winded raconteur says in Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” and sure enough, Dan’l Webster, the athletic amphibian of the title, just needs a little coaching to bring out his greatness. But biologists studying the threatened red-legged frog—long assumed to be Daniel Webster’s breed—would add one or two things to the list of the frogs’ needs. Like habitat, for starters, preferably without bullfrogs.
Ten Questions for Mia Duquet
Parks and Recreation employee on making Santa Cruz look beautiful, a bicycle art parade, and her secret star crush.
Dear Princess: How to Handle International Bank Scammers
How sad it is that His Royal Highness died and your country will not allow you to inherit his vast fortune.
A Writer’s Writer in Santa Cruz
Essay writing is a sideline to Stephen Kessler’s life’s work: the “marginal yet essential” creation of poetry, the translation of Spanish verse and the editing of the Redwood Coast Review, a quarterly literary broadsheet. Kessler’s new collection The Tolstoy of the Zulus: On Culture, Arts & Letters (El Leon Literary Arts, $20) on the whole looks backwards to older writers, artists and technologies: the little magazine, the postcard, the personal letter. The author, a longtime contributor to, and sometime publisher of, Santa Cruz’s many weekly newspapers since coming here to attend UCSC in the 1960s, looks at the scenes of his Southern California youth, at Disneyland and Watts Towers. He revisits Hollywood Boulevard, with its crap icons of Marilyn Monroe (“Marilyn is everywhere, lifeless, and sadder than ever”). There’s also a celebration of the typewriter many of us still have cached in case of worldwide computer crash.
Blackbird Rock
Years before the members of the folk-punk-jug-band Blackbird Raum played their first show, they were squatting in abandoned buildings in Santa Cruz, making art and music and staging political protests. It was the early 2000s and, with no electricity and little money, they picked up whatever instruments they could play around a campfire: banjo, mandolin, accordion, washtub bass, a washboard. “We all started playing those instruments because you could,” says mandolin player Mars.
Santa Cruz To Canvassers: Save This!
It’s a sunny August afternoon in downtown Santa Cruz, and teenagers are strolling to the movies and eating ice cream cones while young mothers push baby strollers down Pacific Avenue. Ken Hietella, 49, is standing on the corner arguing with a college-aged man holding a clipboard about the specifics of Alaska’s fishing regulations. Apparently it was the question “Do you have a minute to save the environment?” that set him off.
National Go Topless Day in Santa Cruz
Sunday was National Go Topless Day and a sizeable group of women gathered outside City Hall with their shirts off to raise awareness of breast cancer. A sizeable group of men gathered around them, but their motives were more questionable. The event took advantage of the fact that Santa Cruz is one of the few cities in the United States where women are allowed to go topless in public.
County Edges Closer to Plastic Bag Ban
At its meeting this morning, Santa Cruz County’s Board of Supervisors will take further steps to introduce a ban on plastic bags, at least in the unincorporated areas of Santa Cruz. It’s a significant step forward. There are an estimated 500 retailers in these areas, and most of them hand out free plastic bags to their customers. The new law would eliminate these bags for everything but frozen goods, produce and meat.
