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.

Our curious reporter heads behind the scenes of the California Grey Bears and uncovers a surprisingly inventive recycling program

There are win-win scenarios, and win-win-win scenarios, and then there are scenarios that have so many advantageous angles you lose count of the wins. “Seniors Helping Seniors” is the motto of the California Grey Bears, and they live up to it with the kind of efficiency and positive reputation that many other volunteer organizations would kill to achieve.

In a nutshell, the Grey Bears is a multi-faceted organization that coordinates various recycling operations that fund a program that distributes weekly bags of fresh food to thousands of county seniors. Most of the work is done by an army of 500 or so volunteers that can choose from a wide variety of activities to suit their needs, interests and experience. There is also a small paid staff, because you don’t live to be a senior without learning it’s worth paying somebody else to go to meetings.

The surfing industry honors Doug Haut’s sacred shaping career

Professional surfers make big celebrities these days. But without the shaper there wouldn’t be a board to ride.

Before there were international photo shoots, big-money sponsorships, fluid-seam wetsuits, fluorescent surf trunks or Reef Girls, there was the surfboard. In all its simplistic glory, there was a hunk of wood trimmed to carry an upright human being across a wave. From balsa wood boards to today’s foam phenoms, surfboards have come a long way in the hands of their unsung Gepettos—the shapers.

A wizard behind the resin-stained curtain, Doug Haut has epitomized the art of surfboard shaping for 50 years, and, at 71, he’s an under-the-radar Santa Cruz fixture.

Jake Gandolfo,
Laili, Gilda’s,
Pelican Ranch Winery,
Martin Ranch Winery, Vinocruz, Copious Winery
11 Dishes or Meals That Will Blow You Away

Why La Bahia Hotel is a good idea and how Santa Cruz could greatly benefit from it.
Editor’s Note: Let’s face it: sometimes change can be uncomfortable. (Although, it doesn’t really have to be.) That said, the matters surrounding the proposed La Bahia Hotel in Santa Cruz’s Beach Flats have become a unique opportunity for the entire community. The idea: to replace the La Bahia apartments, which have been somewhat the face of the iconic Santa Cruz beachfront for 85 years, with a four-star, 125-room La Bahia Hotel. Why? A number of reasons, but a few that certainly stand out revolve around boosting the local economy and brightening up the face of the neighborhood, which has been showing severe signs of aging for far too long. Take a look: in its current state, La Bahia is in serious need of existential CPR. Its broad, white stucco walls and red-tiled roof are severely worn down. The neighborhood surrounding it, once thriving, appears to have slipped into an abyss of disrepair.

Our trusty scribe reveals the mysteries ahead for dear, sweet Santa Cruz
The study of astrology is, bear with me here, as old as the stars. Well, maybe as old as the youngest possible star. The need to find answers when none seem possible or readily available would seem to be human nature, as would the corresponding desire to reject astrology altogether as, per my grandfather, “a load of hooey.” From Alchemy to Geomancy to the I Ching, there is an undeniable urge to know what’s coming—a little preview of what’s on your personal road ahead.

Searching for guidance, or at least guide posts, in life is not exclusive to the superstitious, and certainly not relegated to the common rabble (no offense intended—I self-identify as rabble). Political and cultural leaders throughout history have turned an ear toward perceived spiritual or psychic henchmen for inspiration. Russian Czar Nicolas II  had Rasputin, Napoleon had Madame Lenormand, our own White House had Billy Graham, Billy Graham and more Billy Graham. Even young Manek had Madame Sousatzka (you didn’t think we could escape a Shirley MacLaine reference, did you?) There’s comfort in believing our destiny is pre-written, and finding an all-knowing person, idea or method to peek into future chapters. This is why astrology is the number two money-maker on the Internet. Insert wink here.

Editor’s Note: Good health. Where are you without it? In our annual health issue, we explore a variety of ideas to help boost your outlook on life—from the new Bike Dojo in Santa Cruz to skin care to eating disorders and more. Dive in. Be healthy ...

Inside:
Ready To Ride
Get Up, Stand Up
Skin Deep
Embrace ‘The Santa Cruz Challenge’
Food Fight
Shut Up, Skinny Bitches!
Tea Time
Divinitree

GT tags along on the 2011 Homeless Census and learns how Santa Cruz takes an imperfect science and does one of the nation’s most perfected counts.

I’m not much of a morning person. So when I set my alarm for 4:45 a.m. the night before taking part in the Jan. 25 Santa Cruz County Homeless Census, I feared the worst—for all I knew, I wasn’t even an operable human being that early. I’d surely be a bleary-eyed zombie, at best.

I moaned and grumbled as I forced myself out of bed the next morning. But as I filled the largest travel mug I own with some much-needed coffee, I gazed out of the kitchen window into the dark, frosty winter morning and a wave of humbling realization washed over me. Here I was, irritated to be yanked from my warm, comfy bed in my safe little house, grumpily making coffee in my very own kitchen, and yet in less than an hour I’d be setting out to count people who had spent last night, like most nights, outside, prey to the elements. These would be people who rise at this godforsaken hour every morning because they have to keep moving, because they don’t feel safe, or because they can’t be wherever it is they are.

The Cruz Connection.  How a longtime Santa Cruz resident, Helen Kinau Wilder, figures prominently
Charlie Chan, the great fictional detective, was a man of mystery and intrigue—as well as a racist cultural stereotype wrapped in an enigma. For an entire generation of mainstream America he represented a skewed and constructed image of Chinese Americans, a deferential and asexual caricature, spewing out fortune-cookie clichés for mass consumption.

Beginning in the early 1920s through the end of the 1940s, Chan was a remarkably ubiquitous icon in American film and literature, comic books and television shows. Chan was the title character in no fewer than six novels by the popular mystery writer Earl Derr Biggers, a rather proper Mid-Westerner and Harvard graduate who first “created” the Chan character in 1917 and brought him into the world full-bloom in 1925, in his novel “The House Without a Key,” first published serially in the Saturday Evening Post.