Why Peter Harper spent most of his life trying not to follow brother Ben’s musical path You’d think Peter Harper would have taken up music early. He comes from a musical family, he spent much of his childhood in an instrument shop, and his brother is Grammy-award-winning rock star Ben Harper. But Harper’s a bit of...

YOLO gets reincarnated Jonathan Degeneres purchased YOLO from previous owner Richard Perez last year. He gave the comfort food restaurant a soft reopening in the fall and rebranded it Water Street Grill, adding items like a Bourbon Street Chicken dish. It had its grand opening last month, just in time for Valentine’s Day. What’s a soft...

The Secret Film Festival celebrates its 10th anniversary y The movie gods giveth, and the movie gods taketh away. That’s what organizer Scott Griffin of the Nickelodeon Theatres has learned in 10 years of doing the Secret Film Festival. The 12-hour festival starts at midnight at the Del Mar and ends at noon the next day—this...

JTC cast excels in new play ‘Harper Regan’ Now celebrating its 10th productive season in the heart of Santa Cruz, Jewel Theatre Company has established its reputation for innovative programming and creative professionalism. (Especially given the tiny size of its venue, Center Stage.) At JTC, vintage work by Shaw and Coward is presented alongside often complex...

Housing costs spur spread of tiny homes In the Santa Cruz Mountains, tiny cottages—not all of them permitted—dot the forested landscape. One property houses a yurt, a circular dwelling held together by stilts, on a hillside. Another property owner, who’d rather just go by Bob, constructed a 244-square-foot cottage on a dusty plateau overlooking redwood forests...

Louie’s Cajun Kitchen & Bourbon Bar closes, plus Back Porch pop-up, and 2015 Outstanding in the Field tour Lou Caviglia of Seacloud, Clouds Downtown and most recently Louie’s Cajun Kitchen & Bourbon Bar confirmed last week that he would not be renewing his lease on the 20-year-old downtown watering hole. “The rents here have gotten insane,”...

The Watsonville Film Festival expands into four days In 2011, Jose Antonio Vargas, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist for the Washington Post, outed himself as an undocumented immigrant in New York Times magazine. Brought to the United States as a 12-year-old boy by his grandparents, who had legally migrated to the country from the Philippines, Vargas’ story,...

Former-GT-editor-turned-author Greg Archer has long looked for signs from the universe to point him in the right direction. When it came to his Polish family’s mysterious past, they arrived in abundance. One came in the form of a handshake—a Masai handshake to be precise—that his Uncle Stanley taught him. When Archer asked him where he learned...

Santa Cruz hosts drone conference in May—will we be the center of robo-tech? In 20 years, you won’t be driving Highway 17 to work in Silicon Valley—you’ll be flying your personal drone over the mountains. At least that’s the vision of Philip McNamara, who is bringing an international drone conference to Santa Cruz in May with...

How the confusion over GMOs is undermining the organic movement The push to eliminate genetically modified organisms from our food has finally broken the surface of mass consumer complacency. Occupying a slot of infamy once reserved for trans fats and nitrates, GMOs are today’s reigning symbol of the Evil Empire of Big Ag, and the latest...