Last Paradise isn’t your average surf film. “We’d dream up these crazy ideas of things you can do, which is exciting because you don’t know if you’re going to live or die when you’re doing them,” says all-around extreme sports enthusiast John Neeson.
PRFF: Deadly Heights
Luis Benitez paused when he saw me coming down and leaned into the axe planted in the snow above him. “Hey Sam, how’re you feeling?”
“Good . . . tired,” I replied, my voice weak.
“I’ll bet you are,” he said, and laughed. “Why don’t you go back to base camp, get yourself a coke, go to college, find a hot boyfriend—how ‘bout a junior—and forget this scene for a while,” he said.
Skyline to the Sea with the Pac Rim Film Fest
Twenty-three years ago, Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry Be Happy” was at the top of the charts and George Herbert Walker Bush was about to sweep the presidential election on the strength of Willie Horton ads, a thousand points of light and America’s willingness to read his lips and find no new taxes there.
PLATED: Grape Expectations
Having a Cigare (or 16) with Randall Grahm; Seabright Brewery breeds Best Young Chef in the World.
Blue Lights Come to Santa Cruz
For a city whose violent crime history includes four serial killers during the ’70s and early ’80s and enough stabbings in recent years that one guy started a website to track them, it’s difficult to imagine combating violence without the police. But a few community-minded citizens in Santa Cruz are trying.
Lompico Rate Hike Set To Take Effect
It’s official. The Lompico Water District, which already has the highest water rates in the county, is about to see its rates rise again—about 25 percent, depending on the household’s usage. In order to stop the rate increase, more than half of Lompico’s 500-odd households would have had to write in or speak up at a hearing on the issue. Only about 30 did so at the hour-long meeting at the Zayante Firehouse on Sept. 29.
Lanting, Glass and the Science of ‘Life’
“Life,” the ambitious multimedia collaboration between Frans Lanting and Philip Glass that premiered at the Cabrillo Festival in 2006, is finally returning to the Bay Area after stops in New York, London, Italy, Mexico and elsewhere. Glass’ score will be performed Saturday, Oct. 16 at the Flint Center in Cupertino by Symphony Silicon Valley under the direction of conductor Carolyn Kuan for UCSC’s “Evolutionary/Revolutionary.”
Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes
While the number of active protesters has dwindled in the week since the first general meeting in Laurel Park on Tuesday, Oct. 4, there are unmistakable signs that the Occupy Santa Cruz movement is beginning to coalesce after a week of gestation.
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish
Although Geoffrey Dunn tried to cling to his Underwood typewriter, the Santa Cruz author eventually surrendered to Apple’s user-friendly technology. That wasn’t the only way Apple co-founder Steve Jobs changed his life.
Don’t Call Him Beat
‘Don’t call me a Beat—I never was a Beat poet,” Lawrence Ferlinghetti declares flatly in Ferlinghetti, filmmaker Christopher Felver’s 2009 documentary screening this Tuesday night, Oct. 18 at the Del Mar as the main event of Lawrence Ferlinghetti Day in Santa Cruz. Both Felver and his subject will be present as the city honors Ferlinghetti’s monumental contributions to American literary, cultural and political life.
