If there’s one thing we have learned this year—more than any other year that GT has published The Best Of Santa Cruz Readers’ Poll—is that you really want to have your voice heard. More of you showed up to log in your votes (see below). As a result, we find ourselves having produced our biggest Best of Santa Cruz edition ever. We’ve even added a new category for next year in our A&E section, thanks, in part, to the inspiration of the local guy who graces our cover this week (see page 100). So, dive in. And thanks for voting—and reading. —Greg Archer, Editor

For years, Camouflage took home the Best Adult Store prize, but this year, the race was heated. Did Camouflage win? Check it out.

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.