Zipping Through the Redwoods

Leadership Santa Cruz County executive director Dave Vincent comes in for a zipline landing. (Photo by Curtis Cartier)

Falling out of a tree is not as easy as it sounds. Not if all that’s keeping you from a faceful of fiddleheads some 40 feet below is a thin cable. “This one is like the bunny slope,” our canopy tour guide, Steve Richards, assures us. “Enjoy the zip.” And then he tips off the edge of the wooden platform built treehouse-style around the trunk of a living redwood tree and whizzes across a 158-foot zipline, his shadow dancing along just behind him in the sunlit brush below.

Continue Reading →

State Parks Key to The Staycation

Last week’s election results accentuate the bizarre circular dynamic of an economic downturn that is driving people to vacation locally at our phenomenal parks and beaches that operate using funds from a state budget that is dramatically shrinking due to in large part to…an economic downturn.

Continue Reading →

Local Teens Talk About Porn

Illustration by Jeff Drew

It is easier than ever to watch, create and share pornographic images and text, and as the first generation of web-savvy teenagers who have always had the instant gratification of DSL, who get cell phones as soon as they’re old enough to talk and who’ve never used air quotes with the word “blog,” their knowledge can easily be applied to creating their own porno paradise. Which leads to the question, can this be bad for them?

Continue Reading →