The taste of this Soquel red whose name is Noir speaks a language of lost time on my tongue listening to old songs and finding echoes of Old San Jose Road years ago where I met bobcats or coyotes prowling from time to time, heard owls some nights or loud bees swarming as they moved their hive, and wild girls rode their bikes five miles uphill to find me in my remembered home with just such sips of blood-deep crimson to sweeten and darken some warm afternoons.
News
Peace, More Ukes
The heresy that Santa Cruz is actually a strayed Hawaiian island isn’t denied by Under The Boardwalk, Nina Koocher’s sweet and sometimes sad documentary about the Ukulele Club of Santa Cruz. They’re reputedly the largest group of uke-fanciers in the world—“a Mormon Tabernacle uke chorus”—riding the new wave of popularity for the four-stringed instrument.
PLATED: Grapes & Nuts
Mina and Brody Feuerhaken have gone happily nuts and just opened Nut Kreations, a designer house of almonds, pistachios, cashews and more, at 104 Lincoln Street in downtown Santa Cruz. Mina, whose family has been in pistachios for so many generations they can trace their orchard roots all the way back to Persia, brings years of fieldwork to this new venture.
The Jimi Hendrix Blues Experience
Billy Cox has been playing Jimi Hendrix’s music on and off for five decades, since the two of them served in the army together as teenagers and formed their first band. Cox was there with Hendrix onstage at Woodstock and played bass in the Band of Gypsys and the reunited Jimi Hendrix Experience right up to the guitar legend’s last concert 12 days before his death in 1970.
Students of The Country Classics
If Hotbox Harry were a disc jockey, his classic country show would feature the likes of Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams and be piped into your living room via a staticky AM signal. Hotbox Harry is not a DJ, though—he’s a roly-poly train-hopping hobo Mike Scutari met perched on a barstool in Arcadia years ago.
Sanctuary Center Gets Its Crowning Glory
It’s been a busy few weeks at the corner of Front and Beach streets, where a steel structure has sprouted out of the wedge-shaped lot across from the Santa Cruz Wharf, kitty-corner to the Dream Inn and a hop, skip and a jump from the Beach Boardwalk. It’s the perfect location, really, for an ocean-themed visitors’ center with fun for the kids—precisely what the NOAA Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Exploration Center promises to be.
Durbin Day Slideshow
Need more Vitamin Durbin? Here are a few shots from Saturday’s hoopla, courtesy Santa Cruz Weekly staff writer Tessa Stuart.
Medical Staff Take on Bosses at Salinas
John Steinbeck would be proud. Rather than sitting down with their bosses to negotiate deeper cuts, nurses, technicians and other hospital workers in the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare system have taken on their employers, telling them, “No, you’re not broke, and we can prove it.”
Is Santa Cruz Getting Older?
The recent census reveals that Santa Cruz County’s population grew by 2.7 percent over the past decade. It also found that the new population is considerably older. The number of youth in the county dropped by almost 9 percent, or 5,323 people. The county is getting older.
Strawberry Blast An Eye-Opener for Students
The field day outing that sounds like a Jamba Juice flavor fell, happily, on a sunny day at UCSC Farm. Hosted by Life Lab’s youth empowerment group, Food, What?!, the fourth annual Strawberry Blast took 300 middle and high school students from Santa Cruz County on a food education free-for-all on May 12, exposing surprising realities behind the food we eat and the equally surprising need for such outings.
