Tsunami Panic And The Missing Media

At 3:30am on the morning of March 11, Reyna Ruiz was awakened by a knock on her door. It was her neighbor, warning her that a tsunami was headed toward Santa Cruz. Ruiz is the director of the Beach Flats Community Center, which serves a neighborhood of 1,068 residents, 82 percent of them Spanish-speakers and 40 percent monolingual, according to 2000 census figures. All over Beach Flats, people had begun getting phone calls from family members beginning at 1am. “By 5:30,” Ruiz said, “everyone had left.”

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Deposit Security

In the minds of most renters, interior design is the Eden-like province of homeowners. Time and again, the looming threat of losing one’s security deposit keeps tenants in the live-in equivalent of a hospital room—white walls, sterile décor, few or no design elements whatsoever and a TV in the corner.  But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are some cheap and easy methods of basic design that can ameliorate Ugly Rental Syndrome.

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Santa Cruz Catches A Buzz

Palika Benton shows off honeycomb from her hive during a workshop. Photo by Chip Scheuer.

I’m wearing a white full-body canvas suit with a net veil zipped to it, arm-length leather gloves and a mesh pith helmet the same shape as the ones British colonists wore in tropical climates. That last item feels particularly appropriate, since I’m with a group similarly outfitted and getting ready to descend on some potentially hostile colonies.

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Devil Makes Three Returns to Santa Cruz

Wicked Good: DM3 plays the Catalyst this Friday.

The Devil Makes Three has been spoiled by good audiences. As in crazy good. That’s the same adjective guitarist and lead singer Pete Bernhard uses to describe the vibe at some of the band’s current West Coast tour dates. In Portland, where he’s calling from, they sold out the 800-seat Wonder Ballroom, and two nights before that, fans were bum rushing the stage when they played to 1,000 people in Humboldt County.

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Santa Cruz Supes Ponder Pot Testing Rule

Might be medicinal. But is it pure? Photo by Curtis Cartier.

As Santa Cruz County prepares for new pot club regulations, experts are scratching their heads over whether or not dispensaries should test for pesticides and other harmful substances in the future. The new ordinance, which the Board of Supervisors is expected to approve on May 3, would keep medical marijuana dispensaries from operating within 600 feet of a school and 800 feet of another dispensary, forcing some clubs to move. The law would also require financial transparency, prevent clubs from turning away low-income patients due to lack of funds and create a committee to decide what regulations will be needed next.

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