LosGatosObserver.com

Community Sat, March 20, 2010

• Ten Questions For Judi Oyama

  Mar 20, 2010, by Guest Writers Community
  

  What do you do for a living?
  I have a company called Maximum Impact Design, a graphic design studio that specializes in branding, graphic design, print collateral, packaging, logo and web design.

• The Best of ‘Overheard at the Record Store’

  Mar 19, 2010, by Cat Johnson Community

  “Dude, the new Whitesnake kicks ass. It seriously kicks ass, bro.”

  
  “Sir, I know what a train is. Please stop.”

  
  “I smoke outside. I don’t care about my lungs but I don’t want to ruin my records.”

   

• Renaissance Man at the Rio

  Mar 18, 2010, by Andrew Gilbert Community
  

  From prisoner and exile to pioneering pop star and government minister, Gilberto Gil’s musical career has taken him on an extraordinary ride. Since the mid-1960s, when he helped launch the psychedelic Tropicalia art movement, Gil has been at the center of Brazil’s teeming music scene as a composer, bandleader and iconic performer. Often referred to as South America’s John Lennon, Gil defies comparisons to artists in the Anglosphere.

• Kessler’s Santa Cruz Tale

  Mar 17, 2010, by Maureen Davidson Community
  

  The photograph on the cover of The Mental Traveler is an extreme close-up of a young white man of indeterminate age, thick black beard and moustache bristly and unkempt, forehead knotted, head bowed toward the camera. He appears consumed by his thoughts, overcome by deep emotion, his forehead ready to burst.

• Urban Realist in the Far West

  Mar 12, 2010, by Christina Waters Community
  

  Burt Levitsky left New York more than 30 years ago, but the streets of Manhattan still pulse to life in his realist oil paintings. Trained as an illustrator and Madison Avenue ad designer, Levitsky recalls working on ad layouts by day and coming home to paint all night. Studying with Frank Reilly and Max Ginsburg, Levitsky mastered contemporary realist imagery that was always haunted by the moods and hustle of urban life. There’s a lot of George Tooker’s ennui and Thomas Hart Benton’s vitality in his ambitious portrayals of people embedded in their metropolitan landscapes.

• Making Scenes Around Santa Cruz

  Mar 11, 2010, by Jessica Lyons Community
  

  Customers coming into Santa Cruz Stoves & Fireplaces sounded alarm bells. “There’s a kid outside the store with cans of paint,” they fretted to employees. “He looks like he’s going to spray the walls!” Spray the walls is exactly what Elijah Pfotenhauer was intending to do. It was late 2006, and Pfotenhauer had already established himself as a talented Santa Cruz muralist with two other projects, one depicting dancers on the former Motion Pacific building on Front Street and another at the former Santa Cruz Teen Center on Laurel. With slide show.

• Leary Student Comes to Capitola

  Mar 09, 2010, by Gary Singh Community
  

  Berkeley’s paratheatrical Real Astrologer-mystic, Antero Alli, originally discovered Timothy Leary’s eight-circuit brain model of intelligence increase while reading Robert Anton Wilson’s book Cosmic Trigger. Those three characters—Leary, Wilson and Alli—function as a trilateral commission providing a toolbox of modalities that, when applied, might actually help people increase their intellects in a number of ways. The re-definition of intelligence comes in a holy trinity of three words: absorb, integrate and transmit. That is, the ideas in this book must be absorbed, integrated and transmitted—not just absorbed—for the model to have any usefulness.

• Ten Questions for Marina Sousa

  Mar 05, 2010, by Staff Community
  

  The creative genius behind Capitola-based Just Cake and the winningest baker ever to rock a cake on Oprah shares some facts about her life—including one very strange irony.

• Exhibit Examines the Book as a Medium

  Mar 03, 2010, by Maureen Davidson Community
  

  Within the next two decades, books as we know them will likely become curiosities, artifacts of an old way of life. Paper books, which set forth ideas in a linear manner, have already given way to the omni-directional, multi-media internet as a means to reach and teach the rewired human brain in the digital age: goodbye, printed newspapers and textbooks; hello, “Please enter your library card number to download Fahrenheit 451.

• Poem: Goodbye to Santa Cruz

  Mar 03, 2010, by Claire Braz-Valentine Community

  After the last box is packed and the moving truck pulls away,
  I have to face it. I have to say the word, “Goodbye.”
  Goodbye to all the hundreds, maybe thousands of men I wrote with at Soledad prison, at Salinas Valley Prison, who wrote out their pain.

• The Creature From the Backyard Lagoon

  Feb 28, 2010, by Jessica Lussenhop Community

  In the lawn in front of the mother-in-law unit where I live, the tumultuous winter rains of January had filled up a depression where a tree stump had been removed. I’d really enjoyed the way things sprang to life all around after the rains, the way overnight a long dormant bush had suddenly come alive with a hundred thin woody fingers reaching out over my sidewalk, or the abrupt appearance of sturdy mushrooms caps popping up through the wood chips. I’d particularly enjoyed lying in bed listening to the happy guttural expositions of toads, imagining them gleefully loping beneath my windows in the dark.

• Changes in Latitudes

  Feb 26, 2010, by Maria Grusauskas Community
  

  In June 2006, 25-year-old Dominic Gill set out from northern Alaska on a tandem bike named Achilles and headed south. Way south. His goal: to reach the southern tip of South America in 18 months, picking up random strangers along the way. Armed with bear spray, a video camera and a questionable sense of sanity, Gill rolled out of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska and into the bleak tundra with a small British flag fluttering encouragingly behind him. He had just one rule: “I never asked anyone to get off!”

• Ten Questions for Shane Desmond

  Feb 26, 2010, by Shane Desmond Community
  

  What do you do for a living? 
  What don’t I do? I work for Whole Foods Market Santa Cruz, have been a bartender at El Palomar Restaurant for the past 17 years, tend bar at Cypress Lounge and surf big waves for fun.

• Banff Film Fest Slams Into Santa Cruz

  Feb 25, 2010, by Curtis Cartier Community
  

  The Olympic sport of curling involves two teams of players carefully sliding large stones down an icy lane while “sweepers” use brooms to polish the rocks’ gradual paths toward a target.
  There will be no curling shown at the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

• America’s Invisible Immigrants

  Feb 25, 2010, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  Author Gabriel Thompson may have spent two months cutting lettuce (no one says “picking lettuce,” as he discovered) in the blisteringly hot fields of Yuma, Ariz., for his new book, but he had his first glimpses of the backbreaking work of immigrant laborers just outside Watsonville. “I grew up surfing Manresa and Sunset Beach,” says the Cupertino-raised Thompson, a contributor to the New York Times and the Nation. “I’d often drive through the strawberry fields just off of Highway 1, and I would just pull over and watch people work. I would be very curious about what it was like to do the work and who the people were. It seemed like a completely foreign place.”

• In The Elephant’s Flight Path

  Feb 20, 2010, by Tai Moses Community
  

  An Eastside mockingbird, sailing lessons at the harbor and other scenes from a past life in Santa Cruz as recalled by former Metro Santa Cruz editor Tai Moses in her blog,

• The Ukelele or the Grateful Dead

  Feb 18, 2010, by Danny Wool Community
  

  When you think about the Santa Cruz music scene, the first thing that should come to mind is probably the Grateful Dead. After all, UCSC is home to the most important Dead archive in the world. But a Canadian filmmaker found another musical phenomenon that makes Santa Cruz tower above the rest: the ukulele. Perhaps it indicates close ties with Hawaii. After all, another SC icon, surfing, is also associated with that state and Santa Cruz.

• Ten Questions for Robyn McIntyre

  Feb 18, 2010, by Guest Writers Community
  

  What do you do for a living? 
  I’m a writer/artist/social media enthusiast with an interest in a lot of things. I write three blogs and am anticipating the position of Director of Miscellany for a new start-up currently being funded.

• Through The Cellar Door

  Feb 17, 2010, by Curtis Cartier Community
  

  The New York Times Magazine traced the origins of the words “cellar door,” which, it turns out, is considered an exceedingly beautiful pair of words. Local poet Stephen Kessler, however, isn’t convinced.

• Couple Wins Engagement Ring

  Feb 15, 2010, by Staff Community

  What do you do when you win a diamond ring? Propose with it, of course. That’s what Karl Tunis did when he and his fiancée Erica Lund won a 1.02-carat Lazare diamond ring valued at $12,000.

• Tips From Tigers

  Feb 14, 2010, by Traci Hukill Community
  

  Humans having made such a mess of things, it’s natural to suspect animals know something we don’t about almost everything. So in honor of the cosmic alignment that has the Year of the Tiger beginning on Valentine’s Day, we turned to the animal kingdom to see what wisdom we might glean from the swimming- flapping-prowling set on the subject of love.

• Ten Questions for Reyna Ruiz

  Feb 13, 2010, by Guest Writers Community
  

  What do you do for a living?
  I am the program director of the Beach Flats Community Center, where I
  have the distinct honor of working to improve the living and social conditions of families living in the Beach Flats neighborhood.

• The Year of Loving Dangerously

  Feb 11, 2010, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  This year, Valentine’s Day happens to fall on the same day as the Chinese Lunar New Year, so while Westerners are holed up in dim restaurants or sobbing softly into their pillows at home alone, the Chinese will be out blowing shit up and ringing in the Year of the Tiger. Naturally, we had to wonder what year 4707—according to the Chinese calendar—has in store for love.

• Skunk Rescue in Aptos

  Feb 09, 2010, by Curtis Cartier Community
  

  In an email to Santa Cruz Weekly, group founder Rebecca Dmytryk says she responded to a private Aptos residence around 1pm on Monday where the skunk had been trapped for about five hours. With video.

• Santa Cruz Winemaker With Class

  Feb 06, 2010, by Christina Waters Community
  

  Vine Hill Winery’s Sal Godinez makes terrific pinot noirs. But he also knows the secret alchemy of winemaking, and that skill has won him a cult following. Years ago in Napa, Godinez was a young cellar worker looking for extra work to support his family. Scoring a weekend job with one of the top shops for wine reconstruction, Godinez learned to extract volatile acids—the spoilage that can turn pricey wine to cheap vinegar. He soon became an expert wine doctor, the go-to guy to save a winemaker’s investment, much like Hollywood script doctors come in to tweak a film into commercial shape.

• Film Festival Under New Leadership

  Feb 05, 2010, by Staff Community

  As it prepares to launch its ninth season, the 2010 Santa Cruz Film Festival has announced that its founder and current executive director, Jane Sullivan, will be taking a sabbatical this year. Her role will be taken over by a team of festival veterans and members of the Board of Directors.

• Ten Questions for Joe Ferrara

  Feb 05, 2010, by Staff Community
  

  What do you do for a living?
  I own Atlantis Fantasyworld, where I have sold comics and related items for the last 33 years. I also play guitar and sing at the Shadowbrook on Friday nights. 

• The Exotic Is Among Us

  Feb 01, 2010, by Danny Wool Community
  

  When travel writer Eric Hansen wrote Orchid Fever in 2000, the Columbus Dispatch commented that “The exotic, it turns out, is among us.” As it was in Santa Cruz this weekend. Botany, obsession, and plant-politics converged in Soquel for the Santa Cruz Orchid Society’s Orchid Show. “You can get off alcohol, drugs, women, food, and cars,” says Joe Kunisch, a commercial orchid grower from Rochester, New York, “but once you’re hooked on orchids, you’re finished.”

• Midnite Snack Delivers Tasty Tunes

  Jan 29, 2010, by Brian Harker Community
  

  When singer and guitarist Denny Yoints wakes up in the morning, he thinks, “What do I even like about music or playing?” and whatever creative force strikes him he brings to the Midnite Snack. The result might be a pounding post-punk song with scratchy solos and penetrating vocals or a synth-driven number about a freezer and its contents, but whatever it is, Midnite Snack is doing its own thing. 

• County Names Poet Laureate

  Jan 28, 2010, by Danny Wool Community

  The SantaCruz.com team poet commemorates a momentous occasion in Santa Cruz letters.

• Ten Questions For Neal Saiki

  Jan 28, 2010, by Staff Community
  

  Neal Saiki, founder of Zero Motorcycles, discusses efficiency, ceviche tostadas and Seabright Ave.

• Free H1N1 Vaccine Clinics to Open in Watsonville

  Jan 27, 2010, by Staff Community

  Santa Cruz County Public Health officials will be offering two free evening walk-in clinics for H1N1 influenza vaccination in Watsonville on February 2 and 4.

• Snow Business in Tahoe

  Jan 25, 2010, by Curtis Cartier Community
  

  The weeklong storm that brought 4.5 inches of rain to Santa Cruz last week, brought 46 inches of snow to Heavenly Mountain Resort in South Lake Tahoe. With slide show.

• Ten Questions For Eric Thiermann

  Jan 23, 2010, by Staff Community
  

  Eric Thiermann discusses directing, his media agency, and a special place in hell reserved for whoever dreamed up nylon ID tags in shirts.

• Santa Cruz Mineral and Gem Society Rocks On

  Jan 22, 2010, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  AFTER the baby earthquakes two weeks ago in San Jose, it seemed serendipitous that the monthly meeting of the Santa Cruz Mineral and Gem Society was having a guest speaker from the U.S. Geological Survey—though after Haiti, “serendipitous” became entirely the wrong word. Nevertheless, the society met one night last week in the main room of the Masonic Temple on Branciforte. Seated at long tables, members peered through 3-D glasses at posters of famous rock formations.

• A Snitch in The Harvard Psychedelic Club

  Jan 20, 2010, by Gary Singh Community
  

  JUST WHEN everyone thought the final penny whistle had sounded on Timothy Leary and the ’60s LSD spectacle, along comes veteran journalist Don Lattin. Author of numerous articles and books covering both mainstream and alternative religious movements, Lattin now brings us a rigorously honest exploration of interconnected relationships under a fine-looking circus of a title: The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Huston Smith, and Andrew Weil Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America.

• No to Ben Lomond Dam

  Jan 20, 2010, by Staff Community

  Residents trying to revitalize Ben Lomond Park received some bad news.

• Santa Cruz NEXT’s Four Under 40

  Jan 19, 2010, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  Right in the thick of award season, Santa Cruz NEXT is slowing down to appreciate Santa Cruz now, at least insofar as honoring current members who’ve done outstanding work here in the community, with the first annual NEXTies Awards. “We want to emphasize there are people here that are world–renowned, who are making a life here in Santa Cruz and enjoying every minute of it, and having a really positive impact on our community,” says Santa Cruz NEXT member and city councilman Ryan Coonerty, pausing before adding, “and we also hope that it’s going to be the best party of the year.”

• Notes From Classical’s Underground

  Jan 15, 2010, by Traci Hukill Community
  

  It’s nothing like the rest of Remy Le Boeuf’s work. Here in his hometown, the 23-year-old sax player is best known as one half of the formidable jazz duo formed with his twin brother, pianist Pascal. That work has been hailed by the New York Times as reaching for “the gleaming cosmopolitanism of our present era.” But during his jazz studies at the Manhattan School of Music, which awarded him bachelors and masters degrees, Remy had a little side thing with classical composition. This Friday, his piece The Third Elegy, a contemplative, Eastward-looking number for cello, violin, bass clarinet and vibraphone, receives its world premiere as part of the New Music Works concert Night of the Emerging Composers.

• Ten Questions For Eleanor Taylor

  Jan 15, 2010, by Staff Community
  

  Eleanor Taylor talks travel, nature, and orange creme shakes.

• Sprechen Sie Español? Oui.

  Jan 14, 2010, by Staff Community

  New language school opening in Santa Cruz will offer Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, among others.

• Santa Cruz’s Eight Tens @ 15

  Jan 14, 2010, by Traci Hukill Community
  

  In 1994, the only city in the United States with a 10-minute play festival was Louisville, Ky, home of the innovative Actors Theatre of Louisville. In 1995, Santa Cruz became the second.

• Santa Cruz Flips for Fungi

  Jan 11, 2010, by Danny Wool Community
  

  For weeks and months, the status of marijuana has been in the local news. For a welcome shift, attention this weekend switched to ‘shrooms, as Santa Cruz celebrated its Fungus Fair. Over 300 varieties of local fungus and mushrooms were on display at the event, but that’s just a tiny sliver of the 3,000-5,000 varieties available locally.

• Ten Questions For Nina Simon

  Jan 08, 2010, by Staff Community
  

  Nina Simon talks about her job as owner of Museum 2.0, the mysterious Mystery Spot Road and the trick to getting interesting work.

• “Santa Cruz Has Everything—But You,” A Poem By Frank R. Bretlinger

  Jan 06, 2010, by Frank R. Bretlinger Community

  “Santa Cruz Has Everything—But You” was written in the early twentieth century by Frank R. Bretlinger, a Socialist candidate for mayor of Santa Cruz in 1911.

• Ten Questions For Jon Chown

  Dec 31, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Register-Pajaronian Editor Jon Chown is a history buff and avocado lover.

• Ten Questions for Cynthia Edgerley

  Dec 23, 2009, by Staff Community

  The owner of Bingo! Dog Training talks life, pups, and staying awake while reading.

• Cabrillo Stage’s ‘Scrooge’ A Nostalgic Treat

  Dec 22, 2009, by Traci Hukill Community
  

  From the first bars of the Christmas medley that opens Scrooge, the audience understands that it’s in for one plum pudding of a theatrical experience. The chorus members, swathed in bonnets and frock coats straight out of a Dickens storybook, set about the cheerful business of caroling, converging in picturesque groups on the generous stage of the plush new Crocker Theater. Leslie Bricusse’s score hews closely to the traditional melodies, at least here, and director Andrew Ceglio, a master of the witty grace note, trains his comic impulses toward wholesomeness in the opening pantomimes. This adaptation of A Christmas Carol, we are given to understand, will not be sly or ironic but warm-hearted and nostalgic.

• Holiday Slide Show

  Dec 22, 2009, by Brian Harker Community
  

  A slide show of holiday scenes in Santa Cruz.

• Goy To The World

  Dec 22, 2009, by Robert Sward Community
  

  A buxom aspiring female Santa Claus in a quilted down jacket swaggers out of room C1 in the Civic Center where I’m next in line for my “Rent-A-Santa” interview.
  “Ho ho ho,” she says over her shoulder, giving me an unnerving sidelong glance, a sort of knowing sneer tinged with Christmas spirit. She’s warring with me for the job of Santa Claus.

• Santa Cruz, Watsonville Shutting Down Services for the Holiday

  Dec 22, 2009, by Staff Community

  Still suffering from a growing deficit, the city of Santa Cruz will be cutting back on services and modifying its schedules in an effort to save money.

• A Santa Cruz Holiday on The Hoof

  Dec 21, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  Greta gives Josh a disapproving glance and sticks her nose in the air. Josh ignores her and stomps down the street. “They’ve been together a long time,” says Randy Clayton. The couple can’t get very far from one another, of course, as they are hitched together to a large white carriage rolling down the cracked pavement on Cedar Street in downtown Santa Cruz.

• Ten Questions For Luis Alejo

  Dec 19, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  When he is not fighting for the people of Watsonville, Luis Alejo works on his ‘54 Chevy Bel Air and enjoys home cooking.

• Love Bird

  Dec 18, 2009, by Adam Joseph Community
  

  “Do I sound all right?” Rachel Williams asked the audience at a recent show at Fernwood in Big Sur. The crowd’s loud, affirming cheers made the self-conscious singer-songwriter blush like a schoolgirl caught passing a note.

• The Lady Riders of Santa Cruz

  Dec 17, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community

  A recent booksigning at the Scotts Valley Motorcycle Center gives a glimpse into the lives of some dedicated female motorcycle riders.

• Snow in Downtown Santa Cruz?

  Dec 16, 2009, by Staff Community

  Sure, it’s been cold recently, but was that snow in downtown Santa Cruz? Actually, it was 25 tons of shredded ice, which blanketed the intersection of Pacific Avenue and Cooper Street. Still, it was snow-like enough to bring kids out in droves—and bring plenty of adults to release the kid inside them too. The Downtown Association’s annual Snow Night, originally scheduled for last Tuesday but cancelled due to inclement weather, was a success.

• Did You Think She Could Dance?

  Dec 15, 2009, by Staff Community

  Last night, millions of people across the United States went to the phones to decide whether Ellenore Scott, 19, could really dance.

• Cat Powers

  Dec 14, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  ON THE EVE of the first-ever National Cougar Convention, Richard Gosse, CEO of the San Rafael-based Single Professionals Society, was feeling a little tense. The event had sold out days prior, meaning an estimated 300 cougars—women 40 and older who prefer to date younger men—and cubs, the aforementioned younger men, were due to arrive in a mere 20 minutes. With slide show.

• Shades of Lady Day

  Dec 13, 2009, by Stephen Kessler Community
  

  MY HAND is stamped, the sold-out show has adjourned for intermission and I am admitted to replace someone who needs to get up for work tomorrow and has freed a seat.  Lady Day is in town, or her facsimile who channels or translates from the existing record of the original.

• Ten Questions for Jessica Jordan Champagne

  Dec 12, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Jessica Jordan Champagne, co-owner of Happy Girl Kitchens, explains how karma brought her to Santa Cruz and why we should keep our dreams alive. 

• The Minor Miracle of ‘An Altared Christmas’

  Dec 10, 2009, by Traci Hukill Community
  

  They won’t believe it in Peoria, but Rhan Wilson isn’t making fun of Christmas. True, his show An Altared Christmas, now in its fifth year, puts carols in a minor key to comic effect—a dolorous “O Christmas Tree,” an ominous “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” a distraught-bordering-on-unhinged “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”—but the producer of the highly entertaining musical variety show says he is not, in fact, mocking the holiday. He’s making fun of what people have done to it.

• Chihuahuas Overtaking California

  Dec 10, 2009, by Danny Wool Community
  

  With the first annual Woofy Awards right around the corner, it’s time to take a look at the most common canine in dog-happy Santa Cruz, the fearless chihuahua. They’re “Tiny, but mighty,” as Chloe the Chihuahua described herself in the 2008 hit “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” and they’re just about everywhere. California has more chihuahuas than it knows what to do with, and has even begun exporting some of them out of state. In Santa Cruz County alone, animal shelters in Watsonville and Live Oaks took in more than 400 abandoned chihuahuas in 2008.

• Bike Boulevard Would Raise Emissions

  Dec 09, 2009, by Mike Speviak Community

  Frequent Santa Cruz Weekly letters contributor Mike Speviak explains why he thinks a bike boulevard would be a mistake.

• Santa Cruz’s Sound and Fury

  Dec 08, 2009, by Paul M. Davis Community
  

  PUTTING a retrospective of the Santa Cruz music scene into print is probably asking for trouble. After accepting this assignment, I posted a one-line status update to Facebook: “writing a roundup of Santa Cruz’s most significant bands of the decade. Suggestions?” It didn’t take long for the responses to start coming in. “There have been significant Santa Cruz bands since Camper Van Beethoven?” wrote one local, illustrating the foolhardiness of trying to present a single overview of a decade of Santa Cruz music. For every resident who thinks the local music scene ended in the early ’80s when CVB signed to a major and left town, there’s a grubby teenager in a Soquel garage blasting through two-minute punk songs who has never heard of David Lowery. With slide show.

• Santa Cruz Derby Girl’s Injury Sparks New Site

  Dec 08, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  Things were going pretty well for Santa Cruz Derby Girl Evie Smith (a.k.a. Raven Von Kaos) when she skated onto the Roller Palladium floor for practice on Aug. 13. She was recently engaged, serving on the team’s board and playing better than ever, primarily as a pivot. Then, during a scrimmage, that tidy world order changed very suddenly. “It was a freak accident,” she says.

• Skateboard Romance

  Dec 06, 2009, by Stephen Kessler Community

  A common Santa Cruz sight jogs poet Stephen Kessler’s memory in this month’s installment of ‘Local Poets, Local Inspiration.’

• Ten Questions for Suna Lock

  Dec 05, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Suna Lock, interior designer and owner of Stripe, shares what she would be doing if she wasn’t a store owner and why she can’t stand the wrapping on a new CD.

• Downtown Menorah Stirs Controversy

  Dec 04, 2009, by Staff Community

  Amid protests by atheists and about security guards, menorah supporters ask why the same conflict does not apply to downtown Christmas tree.

• The Piano Mover

  Nov 27, 2009, by Traci Hukill Community

  Ricky Maurice Howard, owner of Howard’s Piano Moving, moves pianos with a surprising amount of elegance.

• Santa Cruz’s Royal Connection to Surfing

  Nov 26, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  The royal family of Hawaii paid tribute to Santa Cruz by donating a bronze plaque honoring the three princes who first surfed here in 1885. According to the story, three Hawaiian princes visited the coast that year while on vacation from St. Matthew’s Hall military school in San Mateo. When they saw the waves, they ordered three 15-foot, 100-pound surfboards to be made for them from the local redwoods. They paddled them out of the San Lorenzo River, and surfing history was made.

• Ten Questions for Kristen Cederquist

  Nov 26, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Kristen Cederquist, co-owner of Serendipity Saucy Spreads, shares what brought her to Santa Cruz and what she’s been up to since then.

• A Snapshot of a Penny University Meeting

  Nov 19, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community

  Some snippets of conversation from the recent Penny University meeting at the Calvary Episcopal Church.

• Ten Questions for Noa Levin

  Nov 19, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Clothing designer Noa Levin shares her thoughts on what’s important, what’s really not, and how she realized a lifelong dream by coming to Santa Cruz.

• Close Encounters With A Santa Cruz Comic

  Nov 18, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  Two years ago Planet Cruz launched into orbit. Today it’s a standing-room-only party with fans at the ends of the earth. Comedian Richard Stockton explains how his spaceship landed here and why it’s parked—for now.  With slide show.

• VIDEO: Watch the conclusion of “Rise of the Aztecas”

  Nov 18, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community

  The exciting finale of our mini-documentary on the Aztecas. (Video after the jump.)

• Trivial Matters

  Nov 13, 2009, by Austin Sardella Community

  “Which comic strip figured a character called Pig Pen?”

  It’s quite a thing to watch a brilliant mind, a useful cache of important thoughts such as professional matters, personal hygiene and important to-dos, drunkenly stumble over trivial matters.

• Santa Cruz Rates A Bit on ‘The Daily Show’

  Nov 13, 2009, by Danny Wool Community
  

  Jon Stewart opened Wednesday night’s show with a reference to UCSC’s latest job posting for an archivist for its Grateful Dead collection.

• VIDEO: Watch Part 2 of “Rise of the Aztecas”

  Nov 13, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  The continuation of our mini-documentary on the Aztecas. (Video after the jump.)

• Ten Questions for Chad Brill

  Nov 13, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Ten Questions with Chad Brill, brewmaster of Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing.

• In Santa Cruz, Epic Waves for Legendary Contest

  Nov 12, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  After several years of flat conditions, the O’Neill Cold Water Classic blew up big this year. Photographer Dina Scoppetone caught the highlights; view the slideshow here.

• The Aztecas of South Santa Cruz County

  Nov 10, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community
  

  Gina Castaneda stands along the sidelines inside the cavernous Soccer Central Indoor Sports arena in Watsonville, shouting to the teenage boys in the purple uniforms tumbling back and forth on the field. “Buena, buena, Jesus!” she yells. “Baja las manos!” With slide show and video.

• Local Poets, Local Inspiration

  Nov 06, 2009, by David Swanger Community

  Local poet David Swanger shares his work in a series appearing the first week of each month.

• Ten Questions for Jordy Topf

  Nov 06, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Ten questions for Jordy Topf, starving artist and lead singer for the Vox Jaguars.

• Son of A Lost Tribe

  Nov 05, 2009, by Austin Sardella Community
  

  In the late 1940s and early 1950s, following the establishment of the state of Israel and heightened hostility toward Jews inside Iraq, some 120,000 Kurdish Jews were airlifted out of the mountainous area known as Kurdistan and relocated to Israel.

• Santa Cruz Bartenders Spill the Beans

  Nov 04, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  To thirsty patrons, a bartender is a hero with a thousand faces: analyst, confessor, entertainer, clown, crush, captive audience, authority figure, giver of all good things, withholder of same, fount of wisdom or trivia—even friend, for all we know (and hope). When we walk in the door and perch on that barstool, we see someone with godlike powers to make us happy. Someone wise. Someone who’s got it all together. With slide show of photos by Dina Scoppettone.

• Ten Questions for David True

  Oct 31, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Ten Questions for Community Restoration Program Director and proud Deadhead David True.

• The Vampires Motorcycle Club

  Oct 30, 2009, by Curtis Cartier Community
  

  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 Female Gaze

  Oct 23, 2009, by Christina Waters Community
  

  Perhaps best known for her high-key colors, historic murals and consummate plein air pastels, Ann Thiermann is a tireless connoisseur of other people’s artwork—especially of the vibrant variety of women’s artwork.

• Ten Questions for Rudy Guzman

  Oct 23, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Ten questions for owner of T-Shirt Mafia Rudy Guzman.

• Hundreds Attend Meeting on Gang Violence

  Oct 23, 2009, by Staff Community

  Clothing was a big issue at the meeting on gang violence held at Santa Cruz High School Wednesday evening. The color shirts that students wear could potentially identify them as gang members, no less than something as basic as school colors.

• Night of The Living Thrill

  Oct 23, 2009, by Rula al-Nasrawi Community

  Zombies converge on Cooper St. Saturday to celebrate Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”.

• 350 Day Activities

  Oct 22, 2009, by Jessica Lussenhop Community

  Come celebrate Climate Action Day and help spread environmental awareness with these activities.

• Ten Questions for Heather Tyler

  Oct 16, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  Ten questions for the Santa Cruz Derby Girl known as Brawley Parton.

• Quake Led to Setting of Santa Cruz ‘Sun’

  Oct 15, 2009, by Stephen Kessler Community
  

  It was hard not to take the earthquake personally. That October Tuesday, my newspaper, The Sun, which I had started three years earlier in a surge of journalistic urgency and entrepreneurial folly, was on deadline, preparing to go to press the following morning.

• Santa Cruz Parties Like It’s 1989

  Oct 13, 2009, by Traci Hukill Community
  

  Post-quake Santa Cruz wasted no time coming up with irreverent slogans about the disaster it had endured—bumper stickers like “Shift Happens” and “It’s All Our Fault” popped up all over town in the months after Loma Prieta. In the same spirit, the town commemorates the 20th anniversary of the 7.1 monster this weekend by both thumbing our noses at the San Andreas Fault and engaging in some healthy introspection about what exactly happened at 5:04pm on Oct. 17, 1989 and how far we’ve come since.

• Ten Questions For Joe Paquin

  Oct 10, 2009, by Staff Community
  

  The office manager for WAMM shares his enthusiasm for hunting mushrooms and wild boars and reading Robert Anton Wilson.

• Cabrillo’s Creative Complex

  Oct 09, 2009, by Traci Hukill Community
  

  To the approximately 1600 people who snapped up free tickets to this weekend’s gala opening of Cabrillo’s new Visual and Performing Arts Complex in a freakish 56-minute display of enthusiasm for the arts on the first day tickets became available: Congratulations. Your efforts were not in vain. The three “sold”-out performances, a mélange of music, theater and dance, will be staged in a shiny new showpiece of a venue, the Crocker Theater, the crown jewel in a glitteringly modern complex 11 years in the making.

• Farewell to Selman’s Glass

  Oct 09, 2009, by Staff Community

  L.H. Selman’s Glass Gallery, once one of Santa Cruz’s most beloved art institutions, is leaving California for Chicago.

• The Randall Grahmophone

  Oct 08, 2009, by Christina Waters Community
  

  While it may come as no surprise to aficionados of the wit and wisdom long promulgated by vinographer Randall Grahm, this handsome new book from University of California Press will doubtless incite, even irritate, the far-flung empire of wine snobs, honchos and poobahs.

• Local Libraries Looking for Ideas

  Oct 05, 2009, by Staff Community

  Do you have any ideas about how local libraries can improve their services? Teresa Landers wants to hear about them.