I think it's looking better than it was in 2012. I'm about to get into the job market in another month, after I graduate, and I'm not really that scared about it. Ryan Freund
Santa Cruz | Student
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What’s your take on the economic outlook for 2013?
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Where or how do you think Americans could express more gratitude?
It's very simple: You can express all your thoughts in every action. So whatever is troubling them, whatever they want to improve, whatever they're not happy about with the government, they just do it themselves. So that’s how you solve it: just do it. Do the solution.
Amre Amer
Santa Cruz | Programmer
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What slang do you and your friends use that no one else uses?
“Popping off.” Like, what are you doing this afternoon? Gettin' poppin. Oh, are you at work? Poppin' off? Are you hanging out with your friends tonight, you could be a little pop-tart. Popping off. Get it? Poppin'!
Amy Hill
Santa Cruz | Airbrush Technician
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Do we even need a President?
According to the Constitution, we do. But the way the Congress has been acting under this administration, you almost wonder if we do.
Caroline McIntyre
Watsonville | Retired
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Do sports unite or divide us?
I would say uniting us because even though you have the team rivalries you still have more people that sit together in stadiums and pubs and watch games together drinking, talking and having a good time. It gives a lot of people a common ground to get together and do something.
Van Williams
Santa Cruz | Bike Assembler
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How would you describe Santa Cruz culture?
Unique radical self expression. Everybody’s cool, it's not a cool-contest. It doesn’t matter if you're plain Jane or totally crazy studs in the head, you're all good.
Vnes Of
Santa Cruz Concierge
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What direction would you like to see the Food Movement go?
I'd like to see healthier fast food, and make it taste better. And make the healthy food less pricey, have it pretty cheap and then more people would eat healthy food.
Oscar Lunine
Santa Cruz | 6th Grade
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Santa Cruz
- Muscle-Bound
- Inconvenient Truthers
- Santa Cruz Movie Times
- CYNDI
- Dancing Creek Winery
- From The Editor
- Field to Vase
- Stranger than Fiction
- Mark Twang
- Good Morning Maui
- Breaking the Waves
- Poems from the 20th Annual High School Poetry Competition
- What’s your secret to avoiding the summer swarms?
- The Bold Woman and the Sea
- Town Hall with Supervisor Bruce McPherson
- Santa Cruz Calendar
CYNDI
On the eve of Cyndi Lauper’s Mountain Winery gig, we dissect the woman, the icon, the creative beast. Plus: Her thoughts on the music industry, equal rights and those sparkling ‘Kinky Boots’ Few performers possess the kind of fierce, she-bopping tenacity Cyndi Lauper has become famous for. Equal parts free spirit, civil rights activist and Grammy-winner, Lauper is one of the few creative artists able to successfully marry her cutting-edge verve with a heart-of-gold panache. It certainly has helped fuel the remarkable career resurgence she has been experiencing lately.
Field to Vase
Open house provides opportunity for residents to meet their local flower growers Valentine’s Day is a high point of the year for those in the cut flower business. So when, one year in the late ’90s, the bouquet-riddled holiday failed to deliver for Kitayama Brothers Farms, the family behind the decades-old rose-growing business knew something was wrong. “It was the writing on the wall,” recalls Stuart Kitayama, operations manager for the Watsonville-based company. “Those of us who had been hoping things would just get better finally said ‘it’s time to change.’”
To Arm or Disarm?
While gun sales soar nationally, a group of musicians fundraise for a local gun buy-back In the wake of high-profile incidents of gun violence—from the Sandy Hook school shooting last December to the fatal shooting of two Santa Cruz police officers three months ago—the debate over gun ownership in America centers on one question as it rages on: Do guns make us safer or do they make our lives more dangerous?
The Bold Woman and the Sea
A paraplegic veteran launches solo row across the Pacific Military veteran and paraplegic Angela Madsen finds life at sea liberating. What others call her disabilities melt away when she is rowing to far-off destinations, and all that remain are her capabilities—what she can or cannot do is determined by the tasks at hand and what the ocean will allow.
Mark Twang
Mark Twang plays a little bit of everything—rock, roots, jazz and bluegrass for starters—but so far they haven’t played much in public as evidenced by the fact that their upcoming show at Don Quixote’s will only be their second gig. But there’s a reason why the band isn’t performing a lot right now. “We have plans [to make an album],” says drummer Jeff Wilson. “We’re trying to do some things differently though and not just come out full-steam ahead and start playing all these shows.
Breaking the Waves
Free Radio Santa Cruz celebrates 18 years of subversive programming Though the term “free radio” comes to us from the Summer of Love—a time when some folks splashed the word “free” on their nouns like an all-purpose verbal condiment—you can rest assured that the name Free Radio Santa Cruz (FRSC) is no mere tip of the hat to the psychedelic era. For the past 18 years, the colorful characters at the helm of our community’s own pirate radio station have been enjoying the freedom to broadcast whatever they damn well please, be it up-to-the-minute, uncensored local and worldwide news, programs in the Spanish language, shows produced by children, teens and homeless people, or all manner of music, from death metal to free jazz.
Muscle-Bound
Valiant cast battles loud, ugly action for the soul of 'Man of Steel' Early in Man of Steel, fourth-grader Clark, the boy who will be Superman, is cowering in a broom closet at school, eyes screwed shut, hands clapped over his ears. He can't control his super powers: his X-ray vision shows him the skulls and skeletons under everyone's flesh; unfiltered noise—dogs, traffic, heartbeats—assault him from all sides. Rushing to school, his mom kneels outside the door and asks what's wrong.
The Plug Bug & Corbin Dunn
Mechanic, programmer, acrobat, builder, tinkerer. Corbin Dunn's 1969 Volkswagen Beetle is a fully electric vehicle. It has an electric motor powered by 48 stacked squares of Lithium-ion battery cells under the hood in place of the 50 horsepower gas engine that it was built with. He calls it, affectionately, “the Plug Bug.” Dunn, who was born in Hawaii, raised in Corralitos, and now lives in a large, old A-frame house near the summit in the Santa Cruz Mountains, is a 35-year-old programmer for Apple in Cupertino, where he helped develop the iPhone and works on the framework for the Macintosh operating system. But his aptitude for intricate technical work is not limited to computers. Dunn is a tinkerer.
Making the Grade
The quest to identify sources of high levels of bacteria at Cowell Beach continues With straight As on Heal the Bay’s annual “beach report card” for 10 out of 13 Santa Cruz County beaches—Main Beach, Seabright, and even Cowell Beach at the Stairs, to name a few—it would seem that Santa Cruz boasts a high coastal GPA. But in recent years, one Santa Cruz beach just can’t seem to pass: Cowell Beach west of the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf.
Flag Day, Father’s Day and Chiron
Another week of complex planetary energies falling to Earth. Mars interacts with Pluto (inconjunct), Uranus (sextile) and Chiron (square, challenge, ouch!). We won’t know how to comprise, we’ll want to be friends but our hurts will challenge that desire.
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Good Morning Maui
Goodness, righteousness, virtuousness and fairness are some of the four-score English words that attempt to describe the Hawaiian essence of pono, whose use in the state motto translates to “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.”
The Power of Conversation
Local author Cecile Andrews emphasizes importance of community engagement in newest book Cecile Andrews, author of the new book “Living Room Revolution: A Handbook for Conversation, Community and the Common Good,” probably wouldn’t get along too well with Larry David’s character from HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, known for hiding his face and avoiding communication with anyone he runs into on the street. Andrews is a longstanding part-time Santa Cruz (part-time Seattle) resident who says something that’s struck her about this town over the years is people's willingness to participate in a practice she’s dubbed the “Stop and Chat”—which is exactly what it sounds like.
What’s your secret to avoiding the summer swarms?
Best of Santa Cruz County
The 2013 Santa Cruz County Readers' Poll and Critics’ Picks It’s our biggest issue of the year, and in it, your votes—more than 6,500 of them—determined the winners of The Best of Santa Cruz County Readers’ Poll. New to the long list of local restaurants, shops and other notables that captured your interest: Best Beer Selection, Best Locally Owned Business, Best Customer Service and Best Marijuana Dispensary. In the meantime, many readers were ever so chatty online about potential new categories. Some of the suggestions that stood out: Best Teen Program and Best Web Design/Designer. But what about: Dog Park, Church, Hotel, Local Farm, Therapist (I second that!) or Sports Bar—not to be confused with Bra. Our favorite suggestion: Best Act of Kindness—one reader noted Café Gratitude and the free meals it offered to the Santa Cruz Police Department in the aftermath of recent crimes. Perhaps some of these can be woven into next year’s ballot, so stay tuned. In the meantime, enjoy the following pages and take note of our Critics’ Picks, too, beginning on page 91. A big thanks for voting—and for reading—and an even bigger congratulations to all of the winners. Enjoy. -Greg Archer, EditorBest of Santa Cruz County Readers’ Poll INDEX | Shops | Food & Drink | Arts & Entertainment | Health & Fitness | Professionals | The Rest |
Dancing Creek Winery
At the Pinot Paradise event back in March, I tasted some very good Pinots from the Santa Cruz Mountains, and Dancing Creek Winery’s 2009 Pinot ($27) was one of them. This plummy dark brew, made from grapes grown in Corralitos, has delicious flavors of pomegranate, prosciutto, dried cherries, and mint julep.
Stranger than Fiction
Memphis singer-songwriter, Amy LaVere, finds joy and humor in painful situations Producer Craig Silvey likely saved singer-songwriter Amy LaVere’s life a few years back. Before recording 2011’s Stranger Me, LaVere had endured a breakup with her longtime boyfriend and was in the midst of one of those I-need-to-find-out-who-I-am phases. She knew the content for the album was going to be incredibly dark and moody, but Silvey did something which changed the course of the recording sessions entirely.
A Very Fine House
Adjacent to the front door, the long, clean wooden bar is surrounded by pumpkin-colored stools. At the entrance to the dining rooms, there is a new low-slung cafe door hung in the wood-covered arch. Where there once was a stage, stocky wooden tables are neatly arranged perpendicularly on a new tile floor, each set with square white plates and burnt orange cloth napkins.
Exposed
David Cay Johnston’s new book explains how big companies rob us blind In his late teens David Cay Johnston started to ask questions. “Why do we have these guys in uniforms with guns driving around in cars all day?” “Why is the Santa Cruz County Courthouse being built in such an unusual shape?” He wrote an article, while still living in his hometown of Santa Cruz, proving that the off-kilter courthouse building, which officials had promised would save money, actually cost more than a conventional building.