Toadal Fitness has been around for years. It’s run by locals. It’s great. This year, it grabbed the top spot as Best Health Club, edging out Spa Fitness for the first time in years. See how the votes fell elsewhere.

Long before GT ran its cover story on UC Santa Cruz professor David Jay Brown, the votes were stacking up high for the local writer. This year, he claims the top spot as Best Writer. See how the others faired.

That dreaded River Street sign still gets on your nerves (Worst Eyesore), and Ryan Coonerty still keeps you interested (Best Mover & Shaker) but which group nabbed Best Activist Group? Take a look.

Best Singer/Performer
James Durbin

see feature article >

Worst Attack on Reading: Proposed Closure of Santa Cruz Public Libraries

“I like big books and I cannot lie
You other readers can’t denyThat when a book walks by with an itty-bitty spine
And a wide page in your face
You get sprung … ”

National Dance Week arrives. Is Santa Cruz Ready?
“Dance first.  Think later.  It’s the natural order.” —Samuel Beckett
Leave it to a playwright to set things straight.  Dancing, Beckett seems to suggest, allows us access to a deeper well that can better inform our thinking. If that’s the case, then the decision by Abra Allan to move Motion Pacific Dance Studio to a larger space was a good one: more room makes for more people dancing.

And get this: results from a 21-year study conducted by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine give Beckett’s quote new meaning. As reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, frequent dancing has the best track record of keeping dementia at bay, better than crossword puzzles and reading.

So Dance First. Think Later.

And there could be no better time to caper than National Dance Week, starting at 5 p.m. April 21. (full schedule below)

Local psychedelic visionary David Jay Brown has peered deeply into the nature of human awareness, bonded with the greatest thinkers of our time and explored the outer limits of philosophy, science, spirituality and parapsychology. In this mind-expanding interview with GT, he shares tales from his journeys to the fringes of consciousness.

Consciousness: What is it? Are your thoughts and emotions nothing more than neural static? Will your physical death extinguish your awareness? Is your individual consciousness just one of innumerable facets of a universal consciousness?

The crisis hits home. And it hasn’t even hit its peak yet. What it all means for Santa Cruz County.
Dorothy Laird is not your typical sub-prime borrower fighting foreclosure. Part owner of a legal-medical professional support business in San Jose that was doing well until a few years ago, and owner of two properties other than her primary home in Boulder Creek, Laird considers herself business savvy, detail oriented and responsible.

This is why Laird, 62, married with a grown son and a history of “fairly affluent income,” was outraged by how she was treated by Chase Bank, and is outspoken about what she describes as “intentional delay and just plain malfeasance” in the processing of her loan modification application to forestall the foreclosure she knew might be coming.

Our curious reporter heads behind the scenes of the California Grey Bears and uncovers a surprisingly inventive recycling program

There are win-win scenarios, and win-win-win scenarios, and then there are scenarios that have so many advantageous angles you lose count of the wins. “Seniors Helping Seniors” is the motto of the California Grey Bears, and they live up to it with the kind of efficiency and positive reputation that many other volunteer organizations would kill to achieve.

In a nutshell, the Grey Bears is a multi-faceted organization that coordinates various recycling operations that fund a program that distributes weekly bags of fresh food to thousands of county seniors. Most of the work is done by an army of 500 or so volunteers that can choose from a wide variety of activities to suit their needs, interests and experience. There is also a small paid staff, because you don’t live to be a senior without learning it’s worth paying somebody else to go to meetings.