What do you do for a living?
I own Atlantis Fantasyworld, where I have sold comics and related items for the last 33 years. I also play guitar and sing at the Shadowbrook on Friday nights. 

It’s another Monday night south of Market in San Francisco. As the jukebox blares Joy Division, the Bloodhound Bar is shoulder to shoulder with thirty-somethings sipping from Mason jars of bacon-infused whiskey cocktails. Beards, tattoos, bandanas and black T-shirts mingle. Suddenly, the back door flies open. Ryan Farr and Taylor Boetticher emerge, carrying giant goat and lamb carcasses high above their heads. With slideshow

Signs Naming Creeks to Go Up Downtown
Most people in Santa Cruz know when they’re crossing the San Lorenzo River, but water about smaller rivulets like Branciforte Creek? There are 200 00 named creeks and rivers throughout the county, but few people know the names of all of them, and only 36 are marked.

On Tuesday, SantaCruz.com cited news source saying that “Officially, 150 jobs were added to Santa Cruz over 2009, with 86 of them in the final quarter.” Of course, “County officials [were] more optimistic, saying that as many as 362 jobs were either created or saved last year through the county’s departments alone.” For some reason, this doesn’t match up with a state report claiming that the county added 600 new jobs in local government in December, compared to November. The new jobs were supposedly added to county government, city government, school districts and community colleges.

At its meeting yesterday the board of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District debated a series of drastic cuts to overcome its $5.5 million deficit.

It is, unfortunately, easier to spend less than it is to make more. As a finance geek, I tend to approach every problem armed with an Excel spreadsheet, so let me illustrate. After taxes, an annual 5 percent raise (optimistic by most companies’ standards) results in an approximately 3.3 percent increase in take-home pay. If your income is $100,000, that’s only $3,300 for the year, or $275 a month. With luck, it will mitigate overall inflation and leave you exactly where you were before. It’s certainly not enough to afford the new Porsche I’ve always dreamed of.

There’s some good news for Comcast customers living outside of the city of Santa Cruz.

In the four years since it opened, the Majestic All-Stars Cheer Gym in Watsonville has become a local institution.

The SCPD is looking for people who know Richard Werner Schweich.