Sacred Craft Expo may tap Santa Cruz as the next surfboard hub

Nothing is quite as thrilling in a surfer’s life as that first blush of romance with a new board. Within those mysterious curves lie the potential to escape the self-consciousness of the daily grind, to fly free, to walk on water. Coaxing performance out of the template, rocker, foils, rails and tails is the job of the shaper, and translating those raw elements into a final three-dimensional shape is part science, part art and more than a little alchemy. Shapers are the high priests of this addictive union of man and nature; masters of a craft—a sacred craft.

For the past few years, director Scott Bass has paid tribute to boards and their foam messiahs by organizing the Sacred Craft Expo, housing a transcendent display of board-building genius under one roof for thousands to enjoy twice a year—Ventura in the spring and Del Mar in the fall. The most recent festival of foam in Del Mar honored Dick Brewer, the principle driver behind the shortboard revolution and mentor to multiple world-class shapers in their own right. Given a voice, who might Santa Cruz nominate as their local shaping master?

A large humpback whale bone surfaces on Santa Cruz County beach

You never know what you will find in the sand at the beach--just ask Santa Cruz resident Jay Chartrand. On Nov. 30, Chartrand took a visiting Canadian friend on a stroll along the shoreline of Greyhound Beach, seven miles north of Davenport. The pair were scouring the sand for sea shells when they came across the top of something large and mysterious. “I said ‘Is that a pipe? No, it’s a whale bone!” she says. “We were looking for shells and stuff, and we found this huge bone.” She and her Canadian friend (quite the welcome to California, eh?) began digging around the whale bone, soon realizing just how large it was. They estimated it to be over 10 feet long. After snapping some pictures, they backed away from the bone and its far-reaching stench and called the authorities, who said the bone was the remnants of a humpback whale that washed ashore in 1993. Thanks to Jay for sending in these photos and sharing her story.

In desperate attempts to avoid coming down with the formidable H1N1 flu this winter, folks are slopping on hand sanitizer and avoiding anyone with the sniffles. To keep it from spreading like wildfire throughout their campus, Dominican Hospital has announced they will be screening “all who enter its facilities” for H1N1 starting this week, according to Communications and Marketing Director Mike Lee. In addition, they will be restricting visitors to 16 years of age and up (no germy kiddos allowed) and restricting access to two entry points.

Low-income children in Santa Cruz County received a gift from the feds this holiday season: a $2 million grant awarded to the Child and Family Development Programs (CFDP) through the American Recovery and Investment Act. The grant will be used to expand the CFDP’s Head Start and Early Head Start programs, which currently serve 451 low-income children in Santa Cruz and Watsonville. The grant will allow for 130 new service slots, starting February 2010. The CFDP is a component of Santa Cruz Community Counseling Center, and is a national, government-funded effort to provide early childhood education and family support services.

UCSC -After approving an ominous 32 percent student fee increase at their Nov. 18 meeting (see goodtimesantacruz.com’s Slug Report for more info), the UC Regents have announced that they are kicking off a massive system-wide private fundraising drive to give back to the students. Project You Can, as it is called, aims to raise $1 billion in donations—more than the 10 UC schools have raised over the last five years for undergraduate, graduate and professional student support. The regents hope the drive will help them make amends with the thousands of UC students and faculty that have been protesting their financial practices as of late.

Frustrated students leave classrooms and take to the streets

“I think it's great that enough people want to make a change, that they're all out here, skipping classes, not eating, not doing anything,” said UC Santa Cruz freshman Tess Geyer. “They're just out here protesting [and] standing up for the rights of our class itself and then future classes.”

The Nov. 18 protest was organized weeks earlier in conjunction with the regents' expected approval of a 32 percent fee increase that same afternoon.

The word is out and generating hoopla at the national level: UC Santa Cruz is looking for a full-time archivist for their Grateful Dead archive. So far the position, offering $52,000 to $68,000 a year for a Deadhead with a master's degree in archive management, has produced media interest (and some jeers) from the Daily Show to the Wall Street Journal. The archive itself, while full of tripped out tidbits and stoney memorabilia, is in actuality no laughing matter, and was awarded $615,175 by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to continue their work. The archive covers the now legendary band's history from 1965 to 1995 and is comprised of thousands of pictures, documents, and other memorabilia, two-thirds of which were donated by the surviving members of the band in 2008. No one has yet been selected for the position (which will entail continuing the archive's move onto the web, among other things), but whoever does get the job, with mockery at the national level and outright objection from taxpayers (although the job is not supported by taxpayer money) and students with ever-rising tuitions at the local level, is going to have their work cut out for them.

UC SANTA CRUZ - On Friday, Nov. 13 hundreds of UC Santa Cruz students marched into the Science and Engineering Library and refused to leave, creating a sit-in protest of the UC-wide budget failures and the resulting affects (like the library being closed on weekends). Hundreds more students participated in a statewide protest of the UC Regents meeting on Nov. 18. Read more about the controversial 32 percent student fee increase and student protests in this week’s Slug Report blog at goodtimessantacruz.com.

Santa Cruz County’s transportation agency has until next June to spend millions of dollars in grant monies awarded to the county for rail trail acquisition, and is hoping to close a deal with Union Pacific by the end of this year, thereby purchasing the 32-mile stretch of railroad from Davenport to Watsonville.  Among the questions being raised: Is it financially responsible? Even if we can afford it now, what are the long-term costs?