Dancetronauts and Dancetrohotties hit the Cocoanut Grove

Ever seen a spaceship in Santa Cruz? How about one with a fuzzy white interior, fully equipped with a booming sound system, LED lights, DJs dressed like spacemen, and futuristic GoGo dancers?

The collaboration of CEOs Philip Plastina (Captain Philthy Phil) and Travis Richards (Captain Trav Nasty), the Dancetronauts are now a group of 30 members whose mission is to “live, love, laugh, and dance.” Together, the group has created a mobile entertainment unit that is a combination of fire, light, and the ultimate sound experience.

The Strip Ship, as this Burning Man-ready vehicle is called, will roll back into their hometown of Surf City on Thursday, July 26 to co-host a large, bright, electro space showdown with Bounce Camp for BOOM!, a show at Cocoanut Grove. Proceeds go to the Dancetronauts Burning Man camp, which will aid the Dancetronauts’ mission to inspire and support self-expression through music, dance, art, and an all-around good time.

'Sizzle reel' to be filmed at the Capitola Book Cafe

Written by a local-gone-screenwriter and set in Santa Cruz, the film Jane is Santa Cruzan through and through.

Deborah Allen, who was born in Santa Cruz, wrote the screenplay for Jane after spending the first half of her career in theater. Inspired by traumatic events in her own life and formed with the help of film production companies in Monterey and Los Angeles, Allen’s vision of creating a movie about real, brave, “smart women” is now becoming realized.

This coming Tuesday, July 10, Allen and her crew will be filming a “sizzle reel” for Jane at the Capitola Book Cafe. A sizzle reel resembles a film trailer and is meant to entice potential investors to get involved with the project, or, as the film’s website says, “to show possible backers, financial people, and friends what our visual story can look like.” Allen hopes that the reel will bring to fruition her story of Jane, a 15-year-old who embarks on journey of self-discovery and healing after a traumatic sexual experience.

Not sure what to read this summer? The staff at Capitola Book Café and Bookshop Santa Cruz reveal their favorite book picks of the season

Capitola Book Café:

“This is How” by Augusten Burroughs: The kind of wry, observational self help book that might have been written by a 21st century Mark Twain. Snarky hope for cynical optimists.

“Turn Right at Machu Picchu” by Mark Adams: This is armchair travel at its best, with all the exotic locales, physical challenges, off-beat humor and grand history anyone could ask for. Read it and look south. The mountains of Peru are waiting.

USDA funds summer food awareness program

A five-month food awareness program kicked off on Wednesday, June 6 at the Downtown Farmers’ Market in Santa Cruz. In an effort to expand producer-to-consumer market opportunities in the county, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service has provided funding to help launch food-centric programs throughout the area.  

The program, called the Foodshed Project, will put on celebrations on the first Wednesday of each month between June and October at the Downtown Farmers’ Market. The events will consist of activities such as “mini-classes, storytelling, and tastings facilitated by the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Market (SCCFM) farmers and food artisans,” and are meant to engage the community firsthand.  

David Best brings it back with this year’s The Temple of Juno

Have you ever wondered what it’s like as an artist—especially one who creates enormous sculptures and architectural feats, as does David Best, the man behind many of Burning Man’s temples—to see your masterpieces burnt into oblivion? “It’s kind of like those jokes—I built this temple and all I got is this lousy T-shirt,” jokes Best. But although the half dozen temples he has built for Black Rock City have all, inevitably, turned to ash, he actually says he would have it no other way. “The memory of those will last longer than a piece of art,” he says.

Geoffrey Nelson on the art of Burning Man costuming

Geoffrey Nelson’s artist loft at the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz is brimming with eye-catching Burning Man costumes. Mannequins in elaborate getups stand around in the bright, open space, hinting at the troves of funky clothes hiding in the home’s many closets (including the kitchen pantry) that are stuffed with Black Rock City digs.

Nelson shares his clothing creativity with fellow Burners—veterans and “newbies,” alike—in annual costume workshops.

He wasn’t born a costume aficionado, however. “My first time, I thought wearing a hair clip was really radical,” he laughs. “I walked around with this hair clip on top of my head.” But after 12 years of going to Burning Man, Nelson has his playa style down: like his theme camp, Mo’s Mini Martinis and Erotica, it draws heavily on a Bedouin aesthetic, which harkens back to childhood years he spent living in Morocco and is fitting for the festival’s desert environment.

While his daytime outfits capture a mellow Arabic influence, his nighttime getups are big, bold and colorful. He has an impressive collection of marching band uniforms, as well as traditional Masonic garb. “The Masons are getting rid of all of their traditional, ritual clothes, so I buy them on eBay for around $20,” he explains. He enlivens these already striking outfits with “EL” wire (a long-lasting, durable wire that glows brightly) to make it pop in the desert darkness.

In this week's installment of Around Town, GT's photography intern Sal Ingram captured the action at the 38th annual Santa Cruz Pride parade and festival and the fourth annual Santa Cruz Beach Soccer Championships on Sunday, June 3.

Watch the winning films from the Take One Screenwriting Competition

If you recall, back in August 2011, Good Times teamed up with local production company *IMPACT and the Santa Cruz Film Festival to host Take One: A Screenwriting Competition. The rules were simple: Submit a short script of any genre (two pages maximum) for a one- to two-minute movie.

Closing Night: Signing off from the 11th annual

Kurt Kuenne’s Shuffle and Mary Liz Thomson’s Who Bombed Judi Bari? were the notable winners on closing night of this year’s Santa Cruz Film Festival, taking the prize for Best Narrative Feature and the Morton Marcus Best Documentary Feature respectively, as voted by audiences. The former is a film I quite enjoyed and makes for a worthy winner, even if I might have cast my vote in another direction. Meanwhile, the latter is one I unfortunately missed; as much as I would have liked to see (and write about) every single film in the festival, I am but one man.

Philips Patton’s ‘Santa Cruzin’’ and Daniel Schechter’s ‘Supporting Characters’

The penultimate day of this year’s edition of the Santa Cruz Film Festival would eventually yield the strongest narrative feature I’ve seen in the festival—Supporting Characters—but before that happened, I had to patiently wait out Philips Patton’s harmless but aimless Santa Cruzin’.