When Jayne Dudfield noticed the hillside directly behind her home beginning to erode, she informed the city of Santa Cruz to no avail. That was almost 40 years ago, according to records supplied by residents currently living above the hillside, and still the bluff over Chestnut Street—created in 1961 as part of a city engineering project that cut away a steep hill to create a sheer cliff in its place—continues to crumble away. And still the Santa Cruz Public Works Department has failed to stanch the erosion.
News
A New Coachella Rocks in Indio
Mathematically, it’s impossible for one person to see every band at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. With around 140 acts playing on five stages over three days, it’s unlikely, in fact, that said person would even see every band they like. Accepting this fact is the first step in attending the West Coast’s premier music event and it’s especially important if you’re a journalist naively hoping to sum up a weekend’s worth of sensory overload on paper. With slideshow.
Santa Cruz Drug Research Group Sees Progress
The first ceremony begins at dark. The participants come into the octagon spiritual room in the middle of the Amazon rainforest. They sit in a circle and state their intentions about what they want out of the ceremony. The more specific the question they want answered, the better. The doses of ayahuasca are handed out in small cups. Everyone drinks it together, most wincing at the acrid taste that has been likened to “the entire jungle ground up and mixed with bile.” As soft tribal music plays in the background, everyone lies down. They focus their attention and wait.
Santa Cruz Man to Stand Trial for Throwing Baby Out of Car
Erik Rebert Johnston was driving along Highway 9 on April 1 with his girlfriend and her two daughters, aged 9 and 22 months. At one point something ticked him off, so authorities say he pulled over to the side of the road and flung the younger baby out of the car.
UCSC Campus to Go Up in Smoke for 4/20
It’s here! It’s here! It’s finally here! April 20 is for potheads what Christmas is for little kids or, dare I say it, what April 19 is for the armed and dangerous anti-Obama crowd. It all goes back to 1971, when a group of San Rafael teens used to gather after school at 4:20 pm at the statue of Louis Pasteur. They were not going over their biology notes. The only papers they brought with them were for rolling their weed, and 420 soon became synonymous with weed and the cannabis counter-culture.
A Salmon Season Without Salmon?
On April 15, the Pacific Fishery Management Council decided at its Portland meeting to extend the recreational salmon season, which opened April 3, until Sept. 6. The decision comes as an unpleasant surprise to many California fishermen, some of whom would prefer to see salmon fishing prohibited for at least the rest of the year following the poor return of spawning adults to the Sacramento River last fall.
Saving Horses, One Mare At A Time
It’s a known fact that in times of recession, some people are forced to abandon their pets. The ASPCA and other organizations are overwhelmed by the numbers of cats and dogs that end up in their hands. What few people realize is that sometimes the abandoned animals include horses too. Pregnant Mare Rescue of Aptos does. Since the non-profit group was founded four years ago, they have rescued some 60 horses from abandonment or worse, the dinner table.
Homeless Activist Gets 35 Hours of Community Service
On Jan. 6, activists from Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom stood outside of Bookshop Santa Cruz to protest the law preventing homeless people from sleeping downtown. They handed out fliers to passersby and soup to the homeless. And they sang. In fact, they had a whole repertoire of songs, from Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” to John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” to Petula Clark’s “Downtown” (lyrics altered to reflect the occasion). It was around noon, but some of the neighbors considered them a nuisance. One of them, Sean Reilly, even called the police.
Psychedelic Conference a Big Hit
Timothy Leary once said that “We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history, but they’ve got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.” Well, they could have gone to the San Jose Holiday Inn to attend the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) Conference. The Santa Cruz-based group brought together 1,000 people to discuss the benefits of psychedelic drugs, especially as a means of helping people tackling such problems as depression, OCD and PTSD.
A Bike Ride on the Westside
The bike cost 20 bucks at the Goodwill, what timing to find it, what a deal, it’s white with rusty spokes, it works, it fits, and so you take your aging heart for spin, sunlight revealing a long view across the bay, that purple slope of a distant peninsula akin to a tall nude lying on her side, reminder of distant springs, but now you are turning a corner downhill on Arroyo Seco letting gravity have its way with you and your wheels one late afternoon in April, breeze in your helmet, subtle joy in the soul to be gliding so easily along through such hard times …
