On Sunday, June 10, Bay Area singer songwriter Melody Walker held a free show at the Backstage Lounge in Santa Cruz. The catch? She hadn’t intended the show to be free. After what she calls a strange “shakedown” voicemail from the city asking for a pre-show deposit on the estimated total admission sales, Walker investigated. She didn’t like what she found out and opted to play for free rather than give a cut to the gov.
Letters to the Editor: June 13-19
One reader questions Thrive’s scientific claims and another wonders where a two-way Pacific Avenue fits into the city’s plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Foodshed Project Spotlights Local Foods
Meat maestro Chris LeVeque of El Salchichero knows his way around a fiery barbecue sauce. Gearing up for the biggest barbecue day of the year, LeVeque will be joined by charcuterie artist and chef Brad Briske in a barbecue demo and tasting on July 4, 3-5pm. And it’s all part of an exciting new food awareness program that will include farmers, food artisans, community organizations and local chefs. Thanks to a USDA grant, our Santa Cruz Community Farmers Markets have joined forces with the Ecological Farming Association to offer a summer-long series of lively educational celebrations.
Blue Lounge Opens in Seabright
The weekly queer-friendly sweat-and-danceathon known as the Rainbow Room has given LGBT and straight booty-shakers alike a reason to get out of bed on Thursday afternoons for a couple of years now. So it was cause for some concern in partyish circles when the Seabright bar the Mad House, scene of all the fun, changed hands. You could almost hear the questions marks over the beats: “Will the Rainbow Room survive?”
Forum Explores Water Swap Scenario
Engineers for Water Alternatives is hosting a June 14 forum about conjunctive use, also known as water swapping, which is currently being studied by the county. The possible swap would involve pumping the San Lorenzo River’s surplus flows to other places in the county. The idea has made county water resource director John Ricker, who leads the study, quite popular with desal opponents—even though Ricker has doubts that this is the game-changer environmentalists have been awaiting.
At R. Blitzer, Two Approaches to Viewing Earth
Last fall, local artist Lisa Hochstein discovered that the U.S. Geological Survey’s Pacific Coast and Marine Science Center shared more with the R. Blitzer Gallery than an address at the former Wrigley Building—they shared a wall. Struck by the metaphor of this relationship between art and science, Hochstein began musing about their presumed separation. “The two have much in common: a curiosity about the world, an impulse to explore and probe deeply,” she explains. “Both search for aspects of truth. And both recognize that knowledge is elusive and always subject to challenge and refinement.”
In Heaven They’ll Never Close
The most recent casualty to Santa Cruz’s dive scene, the Avenue Bar and Cigars was the best place to watch overaged, underpaid prostitutes flash returning customers and new victims. Those who didn’t want to see anything illegal happen simply had to close their eyes and listen to the sweet, sweet sounds of “I’ll get you the money tomorrow!”
Dive Bar Scoring Criteria
Given the sheer importance of this article, we had to design a scoring system that would be as entertaining, at least to us, as it would be fair. With that sentiment in mind, we came up with the following rubric. Each dive bar would be judged in the same manner a good beer would, through smell, mouthfeel and taste—metaphorical, of course—and overall score.
Dive Bar Hall of Fame
The cute, the cheap and the icky get a special shout-out from our dive bar guides.
Advocates for the Mentally Ill Struggle to Change System
Descending on Thimann Lecture Hall at 8am on a Thursday morning is like joining a flock of zombies: coffee cups and notebooks loosely clutched, we shuffle through the remnants of last night’s dreams towards habitual seats in the 300-seat hall. By 8:12am, though, it’s apparent that this isn’t just another morning in the risers of PSYC170, Professor David A. Hoffman’s abnormal psychology class at UC–Santa Cruz.
