Inside the classroom in the Louden Nelson Center, the Wednesday afternoon traffic is a distant hum. It’s not that Center Street has gone quiet, by any means—it’s just been absorbed into a great stream of concentration and a calmness that fills the room. Time itself appears to have slowed.
Rachel Fannan & Only You
A guitar-slinging heroine conjuring multitudes with only her voice and ax: the image of the singer-songwriter is an enduring one. But this iconic persona has shown its age in our time of sequencers and one-man laptop bands. So it was refreshing to watch Rachel Fannan at the Crepe Place circa 2008, assembling ornate live multi-part arrangements with electric guitar, drum machine and loop box that pushed the limits of what a single performer could produce live.
‘Contraband’ Pilfers From Predecessors
You’ve seen this movie before. You’ve even seen it with Mark Wahlberg in the lead. But to be fair, our middle-aged incarnation of Marky Mark can still work a room.
A Conversation With James Durbin
James Durbin, who started singing in bars at 15, has an edge that even his most ardent fans may have missed as they watched his ride on national television last year. “Being on [American] Idol, you get this stigma of being this wholesome person or else you don’t make it very far,” Durbin said before a secret concert earlier this week.
The Top 5 Pubs in Santa Cruz
On a cold Santa Cruz night, where’s the best place to be? Bellied up to the bar in a cozy, friendly pub, lifting a pint and forgetting your woes.
Santa Cruz Submerged
A team of snorkelers, boogie boarders and life jacket-clad activists will wander Pacific Avenue for an ocean-themed, only-in-Santa Cruz parade this Tuesday, Jan. 24. And it’s all in the name of climate change education. If temperatures continue rising, experts say much of downtown Santa Cruz could one day be underwater. “All of this is very, very hard to imagine because it’s so scary,” says Transition Santa Cruz’s Michael Levy. “One way to think about it is by laughing.”
Tuskegee Airmen: The Men Behind The Movie
Behind the George Lucas film Red Tails is a group of black pilots who battled on two fronts—against the enemy overtaking Europe and the enemy undermining them at home.
Streetsigns: Ten Ways to Tell It Is Too Warm For A Saturday in January
Musings on a sunny Santa Cruz weekend.
Wine Passports Open Doors in Santa Cruz
The Santa Cruz Mountains is one of California’s oldest wine making regions, and it’s making some of the country’s most exciting wines—if you know where to find them. That’s why there’s Passport Day, which literally provides a map to some of the appellation’s greatest treasures. This Saturday, from 11am to 5pm, anyone with wine passport can gain access to some 50 local wineries—including many that are normally closed to the public.
Letters to the Editor, Jan. 18-24, 2012
Our readers sound off on the dog poop blues, modern astrology, and our future according to the Long Count Mayan calendar.
