NewsBusiness
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Santa Cruz’s Can’t Fail, Last-Minute Gift Guide
Business Dec 14, 2011, by Guest Writers 8 Comments
Did the holidays sneak up on you? From notecards and calendars to mermaid clothing and feather accessories, this assortment of carefully curated gift ideas from local Santa Cruz shops can help. Because a full-blown holiday shopping panic is even less fun than it looks.
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Throw Mama From A Plane: Last-Minute Gift Guide
Business Dec 14, 2011, by Samantha Larson 2 Comments
There’s a good reason so many chipper holidays fall in the height of winter: Spreading goodwill and cheer is the social antidote to the winter blues brought on by shorter days and colder temperatures. Luckily here in the Golden State, life’s just a little easier. There are plenty of places nearby that provide activities for the intrepid, from skydiving to ballroom dancing, so a gift certificate may be just the thing.
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Santa Cruz Makes The Coworking Connection
Business Dec 13, 2011, by Tessa Stuart 2 Comments
Cruzioworks housed in a large light-filled atrium. There are desks, carrels, a reading nook, a couple of long tables and a white board bearing the scrawled, somewhat cryptic note “Bounce hour, Thursday, 10:30 on the blue couch.”
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Reasons to Love Small Business Saturday
Business Nov 23, 2011, by Samantha Larson 3 Comments
Smack in between “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday,” “Small Business Saturday,” on Nov. 26, promotes the locavore’s alternative to America’s holiday shopping spree. American Express created the national event in hopes of shifting consumer spending toward small businesses—you know, the ones President Obama called “the backbone of our nation’s economy” in 2008.
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Gift Guide: The 12 Crazes of Christmas
Business Nov 23, 2011, by Jacob Pierce 9 Comments
The fad gift phenomenon may seem like little more than a horrifying distillation of American consumer culture. There are the high prices, the long lines and those family members who went to bed early on Thanksgiving night only to wake up early and strangle the other toy-grabbing moms the next morning in a show of how much they love their kids. But the fad trend is bigger than that.
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Gift Guide: The Next Small Thing
Business Nov 23, 2011, by Leilani Clark, Jessica Dur, Anna Freeman, Traci Hukill, Cat Johnson, Samantha Larson, Jacob Pierce and Tessa Stuart 16 Comments
Are we over big yet? Have we had enough of supersizing? This could be the year to buck the trend with gifts that are small in size but big on style.
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Gift Guide: Service Robots
Business Nov 22, 2011, by Rachel Dovey
Siri, the iPhone 4S “personal assistant,” makes a great Christmas gift, and not just because she’s helpful. If you’re a tech-savvy asshole (or just curious), you probably already know how the sassy robot voice responds to questions like “What are you wearing?” or “When do you menstruate?” Of course, poor Siri isn’t the first bionic being to suffer indignity in the name of progress. Here’s a list of some other ’bots that have served us doggedly over the years—no matter what we subject them to—for that person in your life who just needs something to abuse.
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Gift Guide: Soleful Gifts
Business Nov 22, 2011, by Samantha Larson 3 Comments
I smelled it first, the stench of rotting meat mixed with stale ocean air. Turning the corner into the courtyard I found my housemate Liam standing in his underwear happily draping pieces of white rubber-like strands over the fence. I posed the obvious question.
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Gift Guide: Locally Made
Business Nov 22, 2011, by Maria Grusauskas 2 Comments
Most people will love and appreciate the unnecessary material good you’ve carefully selected—it’s the thought that counts, anyway, right? But when it comes to the impassioned activist on your list, holiday shopping becomes a little more challenging. For the Occupier in the family, there is only one type of gift that will flatter and please without offending their anti-corporate, nonconsumerist and eco-conscious values: the made-in-Santa Cruz gift. This guide locates some nifty locally made gifts anyone can feel warm and fuzzy about giving or receiving.
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Which Way on Pacific Avenue?
NewsBusiness Nov 22, 2011, by Jacob Pierce 3 Comments
Even before Santa Cruz’s Public Works Department temporarily stymied the debate about turning Pacific Avenue into a two-way street—decreeing that public safely won’t allow it—some locals had strong ideas on how to re-engineer the business district’s main artery.
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