Ken Foster hates two-stroke leaf blowers, loves Mandy Moore and Transition Santa Cruz.
PLATED: Local Color
Bonny Doon’s Sunset shout-out, Vine Hill’s new tasting room and Storr’s awarding-winning Pinot in this week’s PLATED.
Botanica Exotica
Create interesting and unexpected design by putting plants in strange places.
Santa Cruz Preservation Society
Exploding jars, secret vendors and simple tricks: three Santa Cruz County Fair blue-ribbon canners talk turkey.
Cabrillo Music Fest: Closing Weekend
Imagine a symphony orchestra playing a complex score that does not require melody, harmony or rhythm. So it was with Zosha di Castri’s Alba, which opened the Cabrillo Festival’s program last Saturday, Aug. 13, in Santa Cruz. This eight-minute world premiere was all about the “stark quilted silence and stunning flatness” of a wintry dawn in Northern Alberta, birthplace of its composer. Composer John Adams commissioned the talented Canadian to celebrate Marin Alsop’s 20th anniversary at Cabrillo. Of course harmony and rhythm are found abundantly in the work’s musical notation, but those elements disappeared for the audience in an atmospheric tour de force.
Bomb The Music Industry’s ‘Vacation’
When Jeff Rosenstock’s band The Arrogant Sons of Bitches broke up in 2004, instead of starting a new band he decided to record a bunch of weird songs alone on his computer and just give them away for free on the Internet. He called this project “Bomb the Music Industry.”
Discovery of Ancient Remains Sparks Protest
Protesters are demanding that KB Homes stop development on a 9-acre site at Market Street and Isbel Drive after builders unearthed part of a skull and a necklace believed to have belonged to a young Ohlone girl. The protesters believe that the location, a knoll overlooking Branciforte Creek, was used as a burial site 6,000 years ago. The call to end construction was issued by Ann Marie Sayers, a descendant of the Ohlone Indians who lives in the village of Indian Canyon. According to the California Native American Heritage Commission, Sayers is the “most likely descendant” of the girl, whose bones were found there.
County RDA To Remain As A Shell
The county agency responsible for building the Live Oak Library, Simpkins Family Swim Center and 20 miles of sidewalk has decided to keep its name but not much else. The Santa Cruz Redevelopment Agency is essentially closing down but will operate at diminished capacity after paying $9.7 million this year. That’s the county’s portion of the cumulative $1.7 billion that the Brown administration says redevelopment agencies owe California.
Coastal Commission Nixes La Bahia
Depending on whom one asks, the California Coastal Commission either squandered Santa Cruz’s biggest tourism-boosting project in years or held the line on height limits in the city’s coastal zone. The commission—tasked with preserving 1,100 miles of coastline—voted 6-4 on Thursday, Aug. 11 not to change the city’s coastal plan to accommodate Barry Swenson Builder’s proposal to tear down the crumbling La Bahia Apartments and put in a 125-room condo-hotel. The much-anticipated hotel would have literally raised the roof—a full one-and-a-half stories above the city’s own four-story coastal limit. It’s an exception the agency wasn’t willing to overlook.
Suspects Plead Not Guilty in Stow Beating
Louie Sanchez, 28, and Marvin Norwood, 30, pleaded not guilty at their arraignment for the beating of Bryan Stow at Dodger Stadium this spring. Prosecutor Frank Santoro argued that the two men had already admitted to beating Stow as well as committing other acts of vandalism at the stadium on March 31.
