Ken Collins has been talking nonstop for fifteen minutes. His voice is getting hoarse, and the cold he fought off a day earlier sounds like it’s coming back. “This is a small surf city with big city problems. It should never have gotten this bad,” he says.
5 Things to Do in Santa Cruz This Weekend, Feb. 23-24
From dance at UCSC to the Boardwalk’s famed chowder cook-off, the best bets for Santa Cruz events this weekend.
Banff Mountain Film Festival Rides Again
Banff is a tiny mountain town in the Canadian Rockies. Like our own community, it’s a popular tourist destination, known to draw people who love outdoor activities of all stripes. But other than that, it’s way more South Park than Santa Cruz, surrounded by ski resorts and known for a gondola ride that actually goes somewhere other than across a theme park.
David Kinch’s Manresa Gets High Marks
According to Bon Appetit magazine, we have even more reason than ever to be culinarily smug. Santa Cruz resident David Kinch’s Manresa in Los Gatos, which has collected two Michelin stars, has now also been named among the twenty “Most Important” restaurants in the country. In fact, it was ranked # 5 (even above the hallowed Le Bernardin in New York). The editorial staff of the magazine chose these restaurants as defining how we eat out. “They’re the fearless spots that drive chefs to innovate, restaurateurs to imitate, and the rest of us to line up.”
Food Activists, Scientists Talk GMOs
Imagine sitting UC Berkeley Professor Miguel Altieri—one of the nation’s most outspoken advocates of sustainable farming—down at the table with a representative from Monsanto, the world’s biggest producer of genetically modified seeds, for a debate about GMOs. What would happen? Cat fight? Chair throwing?
Q&A: Paula Poundstone
Poundstone rose out of the stand-up scene in Boston, and came to national attention with her TV appearances and award-winning HBO special in the late ’80s. These days, she is a frequent panelist on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!, an avowed asexual and an unapologetic crazy cat lady. We caught up her via a phone interview as she prepares to perform at the Rio on Friday, March 1, 2013.
Letters to the Editor, Feb. 20-26
Reader responses to Needle Exchange, the city’s LED street lights and how a former San Lorenzo Valley resident and frequent attendant at county supervisorial meetings would have reacted to a recent change to the LAFCO panel.
Regional Transportation Commission Awards Funds to School Kids
If 75 bus-riding cyclists fought with a few hundred kids over a pot of money, who would win? That’s pretty much what unfolded at Santa Cruz City Hall last week. During a Regional Transportation Commission meeting, commissioners had to choose certain transportation programs for grant applications through the county’s Regional Surface Transportation Program.
Letters to the Editor, Feb. 13-19
One reader dismisses concerns about public water, while another gets deep into the real reason for corked wine.
Downtown Businesses React to Shooting
“Oh my gosh, what’s happening to Santa Cruz?” Carlos Ortiz of Planet Fresh Gourmet Burritos said two days after a tragic shooting near the restaurant. “It wasn’t like this five years ago.”
