Mike Rugg, the man behind Felton’s Bigfoot Discovery Museum, says he was four and a half years old when he first saw Bigfoot, and he estimates he is a year and a half from his next encounter. “I wake up thinking Bigfoot, and I go to bed thinking Bigfoot,” says Rugg from the financially strained museum on Highway 9. “All day long, I’m either on the Internet, talking to people here or out in the woods looking for Bigfoot.”
Rugg believes Bigfoot chose Santa Cruz County for its mix of natural beauty and agriculture, and he says he has proof to offer curious visitors—including Bigfoot’s tooth and his fecal matter. “It’s right over there in a plastic container inside the glass case,” says Rugg. He trusts the seven-and-a-half-year-old poop’s authenticity because it shows a diet of pine needles and bugs—and because it used to be much larger before drying up. “You know: double. Someone with very big poop,” says Rugg.
Santa Cruz musicians and musical establishments are banding together for weekend-long “Bigfoot Benefeet” to keep the institution afloat. Things kick off Friday at the Blue Lagoon where Mean Jeans, Personal and the Pizzas, Clorox Girls and the Groggs will perform, followed by a barbecue at the museum on Saturday, 11am-3pm. Saturday night the party moves to the Crepe Place, where Paul Collins Beat, Shannon and the Clams, Red Pony Clock and Garbo’s Daughter will play. On Sunday Behind the Wagon and Devil’s own play at the Jury Room.
THE BIGFOOT BENEFEET runs Friday-Sunday, July 1- 3, at the Blue Lagoon, the Bigfoot Museum, the Crepe Place and the Jury Room. Tickets $15 Friday and Saturday night. For more information visit BigfootDiscoveryProject.com or call 831.335.4478.
