At its meeting on Tuesday, Santa Cruz City Council officially approved an ordinance requiring owners of rental properties to register their properties and submit them for inspection. The measure, approved at its first reading a few weeks ago, passed 5-1, with only Tony Madrigal voting against. He argued that the plan could lead to increased rents for low-income residents. The council rejected the arguments of rental property owners that the program violates their property rights.
2010 Season Good To Shakespeare Santa Cruz
If only the housing market were doing as well as Shakespeare Santa Cruz. The company released some end-of-season statistics today that show small but significant improvements over the 2009 season.
San Jose’s Mayor’s Open Government Campaign Promise to Be Tested
When he ran for mayor of San Jose, Chuck Reed promised greater transparency. On Wednesday that promise will be put to the test. A committee, headed by the Mayor, will decide whether to succumb to pressure by journalists and citizens’ groups to release information that the SJPD says will invade privacy and hinder their ability to fight crime.
Beer Truck Crashes on Highway 17
Okay, admit it. You’ve always dreamed of the day a beer truck crashes, releasing its contents on a parched public. It makes the whole “100 Bottle of Beer on the Wall” song seem like kid’s stuff. “If one fell, I’ll do well, 99 bottles of beer on the wall.” Even better if it has more than just the ubiquitous Bud Light.
Santa Cruz Hires Rent-A-Cops to Patrol Downtown
Starting this weekend, three private security guards with the First Alarm service will be patrolling downtown Santa Cruz in the morning and early afternoon. The decision to employ the private security guards was made by the Downtown Business Association, the SCPD, local residents, and others who have a stake in the wellbeing of the downtown area.
Residents Debate Proposed Pogonip Trail
Just about no one is happy with Pogonip Park these days. The 640-acre park, the largest in the city, is a magnet for criminal activity, and one area, “Heroin Hill,” recently had to be closed off to limit crime there. Inevitably, fewer people are visiting the site, but that just makes it more amenable to criminal elements, so the city has decided to promote visits by building a new multipurpose trail there, for pedestrians, dog walkers, and cyclists.
Hail to the (Interim) Chief
After seven years, Santa Cruz bid farewell to Police Chief Howard Skerry and welcomed his replacement, Interim Chief Kevin Vogel. Vogel, a 23-year veteran of the SCPD is assuming the position in difficult times, a fact not lost on him during the ceremony.
Santa Cruz’s Rental Inspection Law Raises Ire
The doors are still boarded shut at the powder blue house on Lee Street. Below a red “Do Not Enter – Do Not Occupy” sign, a laminated letter from the Santa Cruz Planning Department dated July 28 tells the landlords when they can clean out whatever is left. Besides the menacing signs and boarded entryways, the building itself is bizarre. The driveway bridge lists to the right, the garage door is not a door but a tarp, and in the back, doors on the second story open into an abyss while several nail-studded wood beams poke north by northwest into the summer air, evidence of someone’s intention to build a deck.
George Hitchcock, Jorge-of-all-trades
When I was an undergraduate and aspiring poet at school in upstate New York in the mid-1960s I started reading the small-circulation independent literary journals known as little magazines. It was a volatile historical moment when cultural life was starting to erupt in all sorts of unpredictable forms, and one of those forms was this suddenly dynamic proliferation of creative periodicals run by eccentric individuals with a taste for poetry and some esthetic agenda or political viewpoint to promulgate, and read by a self-selected bohemian elite. One such journal was the San Francisco quarterly kayak, a remarkably lively magazine launched in 1964 and publishing some of the best poets, both famed and unknown, then writing in the United States. The editor and publisher of kayak was someone named George Hitchcock.
Michael Been: 1950-2010
There are cult bands, and then there are cult bands. Fans of the Ramones or the Misfits, for example, may treat them like cult bands, quick to point out that they were so far ahead of their time that the mainstream simply didn’t know what to do with them until long after they were gone, when they were vindicated by a rise to legendary status.
