Santa Cruz native Thomas Hickenbottom, author of the new novel Local Tribes, tells us about the old Driv ‘N’ Eat, the importance of positive thinking and his life’s passion.
News
Big Bowls of Bad
There was a point during Tuesday’s “Pension Reform Study Session” at City Hall when even Santa Cruz Mayor Mike Rotkin—a self-described socialist and champion of entitlements—had to admit that “scaling back pensions may be inevitable.”
Phone Books May Soon Be Cleaned Up
Let’s face it. The phone book is a relic of bygone times, when people actually used landlines for more than just modems. Once every home and every phone booth had its White Pages and Yellow Pages. These days just finding a phone booth is hard enough.
But the phone books keep coming. Every so often homeowners wake up to hundreds and hundreds of pages of information that they could easily pull up on their laptops and cell phones. The phone books end up rotting on the curb, until some good phone book Samaritan hauls them off for recycling.
The Rodeo Is Coming!
Finally had enough of that foreign sport, soccer, which is about as American as tapas or boerenkoolstamppot with rookworst? Want a sport as American as tater tots and processed cheese in a can? Good news, Santa Cruz! The rodeo is coming to town!
Big Ag Wins Kudos for Being Green
Researchers at Stanford University are trumpeting new findings that they say show agriculture’s so-called green revolution has greatly reduced forest clear-cutting and resulting climate-warming emissions—an unforeseen benefit to industrial agriculture. Because agricultural “advancements” like fertilizers, genetically engineered crops and pesticides have boosted yields, there has been less need to slash and burn for additional fields, and this has meant fewer carbon emissions, the report says.
Car Chases and Shootouts All Part of New Film
A new action film, “In Grit Fashion,” being shot in Santa Cruz. It’s a gritty tale of a conman just released from prison, a hitman, and a cop gone bad, racing for $5 million in diamonds. It’s a low budget production too, coming in at $15,000, less than it cost to film about a quarter of a second on James Cameron’s Pandora.
Santa Cruz Passes a Budget … Sort of …
Santa Cruz City Council approved the city’s budget at their Tuesday meeting. The total cost of the budget is $78 million. The problem, though, is that the budget still has a $2.2 million deficit, meaning that the city may yet have to dip into its emergency reserves.
Nitrate Runoff Rule Debated
If a group of farmers test the runoff in their fields for nitrates but the results are confidential, has the public good been served? This was one of the questions underlying debate at the July 8 meeting of the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board in Watsonville.
Ocean Conservancy to Feds: Get NRDA Right
In a June 3 letter to administration officials, Ocean Conservancy VP Dennis Takahashi Kelso argues for a Natural Resources Damage Assessment that is transparent, peer-reviewed, focused on the long-term and holistic.
Congressional Testimony of Dennis Takahashi-Kelso
On June 24, 2010, Ocean Conservancy VP Denny Kelso testified before the Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife of the House of Representatives’ Committee on Natural Resources. These are his written comments.
