Stripe Design Group rolls out Stripe Men. New men’s boutique embraces the masculine mystique

Consider this familiar scene: You’re shopping in a clothing boutique and you see a couple. Oftentimes, the woman is smiling, looking intently at the clothing, pulling hangers off the rack for closer inspection. “This is cute honey! What do you think?” she says to her companion. “Nice, babe,” the significant other might say, looking as though he would rather be getting a back wax than shop for even another minute. This all-too-familiar scene, though supremely common, may become a thing of the past in Santa Cruz.

Photography exhibition at local tattoo studio illustrates traditional world body art

A grayish tattoo streaks down the forehead of a middle-aged woman’s otherwise smooth almond-colored face. Her nostrils stretch wide over circular nose plugs inserted into her skin, and below her lips four more tattooed lines stretch down her chin. The woman peers out from a photograph within Chimera Tattoo Studio & Gallery in Westside Santa Cruz, but her body art is not the handiwork of a Chimera employee. The woman in the photo is a resident of the Apatani region in India, and her facial art is part of a tribal tradition.

12th annual Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival presents mixed bag of thought-provoking cinema

There are few locations in the world where you can find Muslim freedom fighters, a high jumper, a Holocaust survivor, a Catholic priest, a human rights lawyer, and a music producer, all in one place—aside from a “walks into a bar” joke, that is. But all of the aforementioned characters have a chance to shine at the 12th annual Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival, which kicks off on March 24 and runs through April 5.

Comic Erin Judge returns to Santa Cruz to record first live album

There’s a comedy boom happening around the country that hasn’t been seen since the 1980s when stand-up comedy was in its heyday. New venues are popping up like wild mushrooms, comedy clubs like Rooster T. Feathers in Sunnyvale are surviving the economic downturn, three-minute comedy sketches go viral every day, and political pundits are peppering their analyses with jokes and buffoonery.

Burning Man pioneer joins other local artists to present ‘A Festival of Fire and Light’ at the MAH
Spend an hour talking with local fire sculpture artist Lucy Hosking, and you’ll be inundated with stories about a childhood obsession with electronics and mechanics, making gunpowder as a teenager, working as a sound engineer for the Black Mafia in Philadelphia during young adulthood, and more recently, pioneering Burning Man.

A small sample of Burning Man culture—including Hosking’s well-known creative fire sculptures—will be exhibited at “GLOW: A Festival of Fire and Light,” on March 16 at the Museum of Art & History. The event will celebrate light, art, and performance, with glow-in-the-dark dances, flaming sculptures, LED light shows, and more.

United Way fundraiser at Chaminade offers a candid view of Marilyn Monroe’s private life
Most Marilyn Monroe historians play up the more sensational aspects of the film star’s life: the glamour, the mystique, the mysterious circumstances surrounding her death, the rumors of her affairs with this or that Kennedy. But beneath all the glitter and intrigue, Monroe was a shy, sensitive soul with a soft spot for humans in need, not to mention a strong belief in equal rights for minorities and the poor. Her compassionate side is evidenced by the fact that she supported several charities, all the way up to her last public appearance on June 1, 1962 (her birthday): a fundraiser to fight muscular dystrophy at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, Calif. 

Local muralist, Elijah Pfotenhauer, literally paints the town red

While most people would classify Elijah Pfotenhauer as a “working artist”—he makes a living by teaching art to children, painting murals, and painting live at local cafes—spend a little time with him, and it becomes clear that “living artist” is a more appropriate term. That’s because Pfotenhauer utilizes art whenever he can to interact with his environment.

“When I was young, I used [art] a lot more for awkward times, for looking at myself internally,” he says. “As I’ve progressed, it’s a way to escape, but it’s also a way to address your surroundings as well, and engage them.”

Editor’s note: This week’s Poetry Corner features Kevin Simmonds, a San Francisco-based writer, musician, and filmmaker, originally from New Orleans. His books include “Mad for Meat,” “Collective Brightness: LGBTIQ Poets on Faith, Religion & Spirituality,” and “Ota Benga Under My Mother’s Roof.” He wrote the music for “HOPE: Living and Loving with HIV in Jamaica,” which won a 2009 Emmy Award.

July in St. Helena
vine workers pass like la brisa calma
though my windows
as i ease up on the gas to San Francisco
an hour away
one dirty white man against a newspaper rack
by Walgreens waiting
for anyone to look
i will but won’t say sorry
i don’t have a job either
& poetry doesn’t change that
the slant of sorry
doesn’t ease his tightened throat
when the vine worker hears
there are five too many & he
may be one of them
saying in his mind
mi hija mi hija
like Hail Mary without the beads
now dangling from his rear view
what is want   what is need
what’s sweat without the breeze
my stepfather would say
in his wide brimmed hat staring
at how delicate i would always be
how scared he was of that

Aunt Jemima  
My momma put a scarf ‘round my head when I was a child. I can’t hardly remember my head without it. It don’t even come off no more. I dream of combs, of a man undoing the knot, taking me away somewhere.

I comfort. Sticky sweet maple flow of bosom they been sucking since 1889. Uncle Ben know what I’m talking ‘bout. We comfort.  

Flat worlds stacked one on top the other. I holds them together.  

Never mind that update they say they did 20 years ago, when they replaced my scarf and gave me pearls and a lace collar. That ain’t me.

Tell me something sweet, something that’ll stick and undo the knots I known.

An Old Man Carrying His Catheter Bag
white-haired vapor
in khakis
shuffling down a street

held it waist high
a flag
signaling the body

solid   liquid   gas
the body comes
to all three

I am bile
as I am wit
I drink to live in this body

See to it that you revere
this gold
this gold

Toxic family ties explored in JTC's engrossing 'Hello & Goodbye'

Two of Santa Cruz's best known and most dependable actors receive a gift of a play in the Jewel Theatre Company's new production of Athol Fugard's “Hello & Goodbye”—a gift that keeps on giving to local audiences in this intense evening of dramatic theater. Played with both terrific brio and aching subtlety by Mike Ryan and Julie James, and directed by Bay Area theater veteran Jessica Heidt, Fugard's two-character drama emerges as an incisive, microcosmic look at family, class, and cultural dysfunction in South Africa of the recent past.

Portland indie rockers, AU, take a page from Willy Wonka on latest effort

Luke Wyland says there is an "eerie similarity" between how he looked as a child and Peter Ostrum's depiction of Charlie Bucket in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

"Yeah," Wyland says, reflecting on the parallels between his formative years and the 1971 Gene Wilder classic. "I definitely grew up immersed in imagination."

In fact, it is still very common for the lead singer and songwriter of Portland bliss-rockers AU (pronounced "ay-you") to get lost in his thoughts and daydreams. "It certainly has carried over into my adult life," he says of his bond with that fortunate young lad who found the last golden ticket.