Born into an aristocratic Irish family, flamboyant poet/playwright Oscar Wilde was a model of elegance and style. But that didn’t stop him from busting the vacuous veneer of Victorian society, where one had to have beauty or a guaranteed income. Plus a townhouse in the city and a manor in the country.
In The Importance of Being Earnest he gave us one of the most celebrated comedies of manners ever devised. And as we found out last week at Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s production, this wicked satire plays as delightfully today as it did 140 years ago.
Under the consummate comedic instincts of director Paul Mullins, this disarming cascade of wit romps along smartly. Michael Schweikardt’s pleasing set design—one appointed with opulent armchairs and tea service, even a grand piano!; the other a garden setting in the countryside—lays the visual groundwork for Wilde’s brilliant scenario.
Two young gentlemen, Algernon and Jack, lead double lives through an invented surrogate called Earnest, which they use when they need an excuse to leave a tiresome situation and escape to either the city or the country as needed.
However, as “Earnest,” each becomes entangled with pampered young ladies—in Jack’s case Gwendolen, and in Algy’s, Cecily. Turns out that each young woman adores that their beloved’s name is Earnest. Only it isn’t!
The play revolves around the calamities created by this deceit, little eddies of absurd mischief, delicious wordplay and hilarious situations. “I hope you have not been leading a double life pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.”
As the play opens, Algy’s aunt Lady Bracknell (Saundra McClain) is coming to tea, bringing along her daughter Gwendolen (Brianna Miller). Jack shows up, proposes to Gwendolen (who thinks his name is Earnest), but is rejected by her upwardly mobile mother.
McClain’s pitch-perfect Lady Bracknell lays it on as thick as clotted cream, forcing the young ones to devise some desperate plots.
Moving to the countryside, we meet Jack’s ward, lovely Cecily (a pert, decibel-intensive Allie Pratt), who upon meeting Jack’s friend Algy/Earnest, confesses a hysterically romantic attachment for him. Cecily’s housekeeper, Miss Prism (an excellent Marion Adler), has caught the eye of the local parson (an over-the-top Mike Ryan), but that’s not all. Miss Prism holds the key to the accelerating plot, which will once again require the presence of Lady Bracknell and her daughter.
“Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever,” Lady Bracknell observes. “If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes.”
It’s as good as farce gets, loaded with observations about marriage as a destroyer of romance, and women’s tendencies to form incomprehensible attachments to each other.
Expert direction and crisp performances make this a production a complete delight. DeJesus and Block as the two young gentlemen are utterly convincing. So comfortable are they with the set, the words and the motivations that we believe completely in their friendship.
As the reliable butler, and there must be a butler to perform the daily tasks of the idle rich, Kurt Meeker is the soul of discretion. So, a few of the British accents slip now and then. But the chance to watch Mike Ryan as an Anglican minister is priceless.
Everybody’s a dream and the entire production had last weekend’s audience laughing through the entire second half—on a weekend when we all needed uplifting! But highest praise for Will Block as the naughty, mercurial, muffin-loving Algernon. His nimble performance was everything Oscar Wilde had in mind when he penned this clever send-up of social pretense. Kudos to all, and an extra muffin for Block!
Shakespeare’s rom-com classic As You Like It filled the Grove with the sounds of merriment, silliness and slapstick at the Santa Cruz Shakespeare opening night. Playing for laughs, this production is spun as a crowd pleaser showcasing sit-com, vaudeville, and an interior gloss on Cyrano performed by a dazzlingly diverse company.
Somewhere in all of this there is the tale of a bold young noblewoman, Rosalind (an adroit Charlotte Munson), exiled from her royal home and dressed as a man, discovering confidence and freedom denied to women of her time. In the guise of a youth accompanied by the court fool Touchstone (Patty Gallagher), and her adoring friend Celia (a vivacious Anna Takayo), Rosalind finds herself free to make her own decisions. Elizabethan audiences must have swooned.
As You Like It is one of those Shakespearean entertainments involving noble brothers, a good Duke and an evil one (both played effectively by Raphael Nash Thompson), warring offspring and cross-dressing lovers. In the end there are lots of weddings and jolly singing and dancing. And to be sure we are entertained. Usually at the expense of poetry and insight.
It is both painful and hilarious to watch the intelligent woman Shakespeare created transform herself into a lovesick suitor of a similarly lovesick object. That object is the good Duke’s son Orlando (an effective Elliot Sagay).
Rosalind and Orlando fell in love back in court, but Orlando too escapes to the forest fleeing his evil brother (a smart turn by Charles Pasternak) and now meets Rosalind in her disguise as a man. Even if he doesn’t yet realize her true identity, Rosalind has a plan. She will teach him courtship that doesn’t rely on Hallmark clichés and stodgy social protocols. It will be hands-on, so to speak.
Both of them, in different ways are playing at (rehearsing?) lovemaking. But without more subtle staging there was no way to tell whether Rosalind remains a giddy girl or something more liberated and hence the sophisticated duplicity of her character gets lost. Some speeches however—clever, swift, and engagingly delivered—reveal cross-gendered Rosalind’s genius, and here is where Munson catches fire.
Santa Cruz Shakespeare performers Jomar Tagatac, Chelsea Rose, Patty Gallagher and Elliot Sagay bring “As You Like It” to life at the Audrey Stanley Grove. PHOTO: Shmuel Thaler
Opening night’s cast knew their lines but often delivered them as if they forgot they had headset amplification and felt the need to use 19th-century vocal techniques. Shakespeare’s ingenious words and colorful insights were underscored by panto gestures and elaborate burlesque, just in case we in the audience didn’t understand. For example, melancholy Jaques wrapping up his coat into a bundle, a visual cartoon of an infant in swaddling blanket, the first age of man as in the “all the world’s a stage” soliloquy.
Paige Lindsey White as Jaques, an exiled noble living in the Forest of Arden, adopts a persona somewhere between David Bowie and Basil Fawlty. Even though her delivery of this famous speech is odd, she is hard to resist. The impeccably confident White struts through her role making non sequitur pronouncements in the cynical tone diametrically opposite of Touchstone’s “motley mocker.”
Jaques provides bits of gravitas, often apropos of nothing, in the way that Touchstone provides comic relief. Exactly as Shakespeare intended, and yet at this point both the play itself, and some of the players, seemed to belong in a different sectors of the galaxy. (At this point I began to suspect that some players were unclear as to their characters.)
High praise for the brilliant music designer/performer David Coulter, whose bag of tricks—ranging from a shimmering musical saw to various pipes, whistles, drums, mouth harps, guitars, et al.—brought a magical sense of continuity and narrative to every scene.
Also contemporizing this production was the onstage presence of large racks of costumes and other stage props, as if to suggest that we were watching the play rehearse itself. But the sketchily equipped set was never explained. Two dress forms graffitied with Rosalind’s name and lines of love poetry were intended to portray the trees of Arden upon which Orlando carves his declarations of love for Rosalind. In key scenes intelligibility seemed sacrificed for novelty. But the endless clowning of genius clown Patty Gallagher kept the crowd in stitches. Lots of stitches.
The director opted to make Shakespeare’s broad silliness even broader, to the extent that Patty Gallagher ends up (I won’t tell you where) barking orders to her ditsy paramour Audrey (Jomar Tagatac in baby doll drag). Major crowd pleaser.
Praise to the warring odd couple, starry-eyed Phoebe (Chelsea Rose) who loves Orlando, and her eager suitor Silvius (Justin Joung). These two worked their way through a brisk comedy of errors, wooing and arguing and knowing exactly who their characters were and what they wanted. Costuming here offered mega-optics reminiscent of a Billie Eilish concert. Kudos to costumer Pamela Rodriguez-Montero.
A trip to the Grove, watching vivacious players working through some prime wordplay, is always a pleasure: “Sell when you can, you are not for all markets,” Rosalind advises one feckless character. She also proclaims the play’s subtext: “Love is merely a madness.” Phrases in use today were invented here 400 years ago—“too much of a good thing,” “forever and a day” and “newfangled.”
The uncanny and inventive sound design of Coulter, a musician who has performed and produced with Tom Waits, Kronos Quartet, Yoko Ono and Wes Anderson, is one of the big reasons why you need to see this production. A full moon and a stageful of action heroes—comic and romantic—are a few more.
There’s plenty of time for the needed fine-tuning since As You Like It runs through Sept. 1 in the Audrey Stanley Grove, Santa Cruz. santacruzshakespeare.org
If we had not gotten lost, we would have never found ourselves looking down on Aptos High School from the mountain above. Seeing the sprawling school from the mountain side made me understand what a huge pillar of this community the high school is, huge in size and community support. Sometimes you just don’t know what you will find until you get lost.
Into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul. —John Muir
Freedom Boulevard is my road home. I have driven by Aptos High School five hundred times, and I never gave the school a thought. “Not my place, not for me.”
Except for an occasional morning or afternoon traffic jam at the entrance to the school on Freedom, the arches emblazoned with Aptos High School in blue and white letters, towering over the entrance to the region’s high school, never entered my mind. And if we had not of gotten lost on the mountain above the school, we never would have gotten to see this amazing school.
Rebels Without a Compass
Indigenous tribes for centuries cultivated and maintained intricate trail networks before federal agencies claimed them. I don’t know who created or owns the trails behind Aptos High School, but you can get sensational panoramic views of the school from trails up on the mountain.
We find a path up the mountain out of the church parking lot, next to the Highway Patrol Office on Soquel Avenue. My compadres have their dogs on leashes to keep them from frolicking in the poison oak, which is everywhere. We notice there is no trail signage, none. The path is obviously used by lots of people, horses and even dirt bikes, but this surely is not a government-maintained path.
We are undeterred, we are rebels without a compass. We claim hiking days for our rebellion against structure and rules. We do give a wide berth around homes, we respect people’s privacy, but out on a trail there is no barrier we will not climb, no fence we will not hop, and no double negative we won’t use. Our favorite verse from Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”:
Was a high wall there that tried to stop me A sign was painted said: Private Property But on the back side it didn’t say nothing This land was made for you and me
Our point man takes a steep animal path up the hill, and I scramble up the incline after my compadres on all fours. Once we make it to the ridge there is a well-worn, level, human path through a beautiful multi-treed forest that reminds me of the flora in Bonny Doon. We walk silently, not at odds, but the climb up the steep hill to the ridge has winded us and we focus on the next step, the next breath.
We come upon a rope swing, impossibly tied to an oak tree limb high over a steep ravine. This swing over the canyon is the first inkling I get that we might be near where young people congregate. Who would climb out this oak limb to attach the rope so far above the ravine floor? Images of myself as a teenage boy seep out of my reptilian memory, and I picture a young person inching his way out the limb. We don’t understand yet that we are lost but I’m wondering if Aptos High School is closer than we think.
What kind of person would scale this oak tree to tie the rope swing so high up and so far out over the ravine? Maybe we’re closer to the high school than we had imagined.
We originally had a destination—the Aptos water tower—but as we continue up the ridge trail, our point man says that we missed the turnoff to the water tower and we are now lost. We no longer have any idea where we’re going. We continue on the ridge trail, now wonderfully lost. For a few moments we are set free, untethered, on a path to nowhere.
Getting lost may be the last frontier. Maybe the only one. If you know where you are, if you clutch your map that says “You Are Here,” everything is prescribed, you’re just passing through a predetermined experience. There is no adventure; it all is just theater, where everything gets reviewed, everything gets Yelped. It’s the triumph of metaphor over reality. Getting lost may be our last hope.
“I wish I didn’t have to perform Iron Man every night.” —Ozzy Osbourne
The next clue that we were on a trail above the high school is when we found the gnome in the tree. I’m thinking, “Here’s a gnome in a tree, and gnomes and knights are all the rage on TikTok. Feels like high school students must be close.”
Another clue that we were approaching the high school.
Indeed, a few steps further and we find Tee 3 of the Aptos High Disc Golf Course. The course rocked for years but closed down during the pandemic.
I’m sorry to have missed the water tower up the mountain behind the Highway Patrol Office on Freedom and Soquel, but we wandered lost, were set free, to feel our relationship with the entire mountain, not just the 18 inches wide path in front of us. And we wandered lost until we stumbled upon the disc golf course markers and then Aptos High School below us.
Aptos High has approximately 1,500 students, but it looks like a small college. It has a performing arts center, two gyms, a football stadium and a baseball park. The place shines with affluence.
How to get there, or not: There was no signage, so I suggest you do this only as your personal sense of adventure allows, but there are paths off Mockingbird Ridge Road, as well as from the Soquel Avenue church parking lot, that go up the ridge of the Aptos mountain and drop you on a trail that runs along behind Aptos High School. You can also walk from the high school entrance road up onto the mountain to find trails with stunning views of the school. Again, we were headed elsewhere, got lost, that’s my alibi and I’m sticking to it, but the trail up on the mountain behind the school shows a panorama of the beautiful campus. My buddies and I end up sitting on a bench at the entrance to Aptos High School. One says, “This is how I want to go to high school. When it’s closed.”
My dad, Bobby Magnante, he’s a tattoo artist. I love traditional tattoo art, like Japanese style. That’s what I grew up with.
Freya Magnante, 19, Student
MAXIMILLIAN
Robert Morris the minimalist sculptor. And Richard Serra too. New York paid him a lot of money to create Tilted Arc, a sculpture in a public plaza. It was a big, brown, rusty, curved steel wall. It disrupted the flow of people walking and they all hated it. They said, it’s ugly, it’s in my way! And they made him take it down.
Maximillian Murray, 20, Art History/Physics Student
MAYA
I like Frida Kahlo. I like her art about feminism, and care on the body. My favorite artist is my mom, Luz Howse.
Maya Howse, 15, Student
ORIEN
I like Jackson Pollock. People try his splatter thing, and nobody pulls it off. There’s a substance to it that nobody can figure out—and they’re huge. When I saw them, it really inspired me. I’ve had dreams of being in a Pollock studio in the brick pillar of a bridge with giant canvases. I keep having the same weird dream about him—it’s like I’m him.
Orien Boisvert, 41, Artist
LYNNE
I love Théophile Steinlen. I love his cats and critters, like his Le Chat Noir. They’re very stylized poster art, I would say Art Nouveau, from that era. I love the simpleness of it. My eyes naturally track curves; I’m not a straight-line person.
Lynne Achterberg, 75, Professional Volunteer for Animal Rescue
DANIEL
Andy Warhol. I like his rich imagination and the colorful preservation of that time and history. I really think he changed the world of art.
Residents of a Watsonville neighborhood are pushing back against a proposed housing project meant to help homeless individuals staying along the Pajaro River levee. They say that local officials have ignored their concerns over crime and safety and are moving ahead without addressing complaints connected to the encampment.
City and county officials say that the community should stand behind efforts to address homelessness in the area, which leaves neighbors feeling their voice is being drowned out.
The “Recurso de Fuerza” (Resource of Strength) tiny home micro village was first proposed in 2023 as a joint effort between the counties of Santa Cruz and Monterey to address homelessness along the Pajaro riverbed. For years, unhoused people have camped in the levee area at the border of Watsonville and Pajaro and are particularly vulnerable during events like the Pajaro flood in 2023.
Additionally, the Pajaro River Flood Risk Management Project, which will construct levees and improvements along the lower Pajaro River and its tributaries, is slated to begin in 2024. This means that the encampment would have to be moved at some point in the near future.
In late 2022, Monterey County officials surveyed the enclave of around 50 people to determine the problems they faced. Occupants of the camp cited immigration and citizenship assistance, job development, mental health services and substance abuse intervention as prerequisites for housing stability.
Monterey County received in 2023 an $8 million Encampment Resolution Funding grant from the State of California, which will be used to create Recurso de Fuerza. The management of the 34-unit facility would be a collaboration between Monterey County’s Homelessness Services Program, Santa Cruz County’s Health and Human Services department and the City of Watsonville.
In April 2024, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors approved a $5 million agreement with San Francisco-based nonprofit DignityMoves for the development of the facility, and $2.5 million to manage the village and provide services for the first two years. DignityMoves has experience running similar projects throughout California.
Originally set for a June 2024 groundbreaking, the project has stalled and is expected to begin later this year.
A rear lot on the premises of the Westview Presbyterian Church in downtown Watsonville was selected as the site for Recurso de Fuerza, which is located off the Highway 129 thoroughfare. It is roughly a half mile from the Pajaro levee campsite and was chosen in order to ease the transition for future residents and maintain an access corridor.
But residents of a mobile home complex on the 100 block of West Front Street have begun to voice their opposition to the project. The complex runs up against the levee area where the encampment is situated, and neighbors say they have been subjected to increasing crime and harassment by people connected to the encampment. Numerous residents are now saying that city and county officials failed to adequately inform them of their plans for the micro village, and that the move will create a corridor of crime and unsafe conditions for both residents and the encampment dwellers.
What About Us?
Enedina Rodriguez has lived in this mobile home complex for 25 years. Lopez, like many other residents, is a working-class Mexican immigrant who made Watsonville her home. But she currently feels endangered by the encampment just yards from her dwelling. Rodriguez sits in her living room accompanied by five other neighbors. They have gathered here to share some of their alarming experiences.
Rodriguez recalls an incident in which a person from the encampment began ransacking the garbage bins on the curb in front of the complex. When Rodriguez asked her to stop, the woman reacted aggressively, threatening her with bodily harm.
“She began chasing me, wielding a shovel,” Rodriguez says in Spanish. “Then she threatened to slit my niece’s throat with a machete. We called the police and they took her away.”
Other neighbors complain of car break-ins and vandalism in their front yards and say that they feel like they are under siege in their own homes.
“Some of them don’t do harm, but others do. They are not well from their senses; one day they could be good and another they are doing bad. And in one of those [bad days] they could take our life,” Rodriguez says.
The police get called constantly, according to residents, but the issues persist in an area that they say is neglected by their representatives due to its socio-economic demography. While the neighborhood is just minutes from city hall, it is in an isolated industrial area with little through traffic.
Lorena Vasquez lives at the end of Walker Street, across from the mobile home complex. She runs a daycare out of her home during the day and works nights as a caregiver. Over the last several months, Vasquez says she has been “terrorized” by a man she believes has connections to the encampment.
In April 2024, a man began camping out in his car in front of Vasquez’s home for days on end, even trying to peep inside her house. Initially, Vasquez assumed it was an unhoused person needing a place to park and did not call the police. But things took a turn when the man tried to break into her home. Vasquez then called police and he was picked up for trespassing, according to arrest records.
That’s when Vasquez learned that the man—Daniel Zavala Zavala—had previously been arrested for shooting a gun into an occupied dwelling in February 2022. After learning this, Vasquez quickly filed for a temporary restraining order in April of this year.
But one night when she was out to dinner, she saw through her doorbell camera that Zavala had returned and was intent on breaking in.
“He was going all around the outside of the house trying to get in. He was holding a machete. That’s when I called the police and I told them that Daniel Zavala was back,” Vasquez says in Spanish.
He was arrested again and was still in custody as of July 22.
Watsonville Police spokesperson Michelle Pulido says that there have not been an] unusually high number of calls for service coming from the neighborhood in the last months. She did say, however, that the department has heard concerns from residents about crime in the area and has engaged with the public on the matter.
In late June, a community meeting was held for residents in the greater downtown area and Pulido says that crime concerns were brought up. Also in attendance was Watsonville District 1 Councilmember Eduardo Montesino, who represents residents of West Front and Walker.
Montesino says that the city has been turning a blind eye to the issue of homelessness and is fully behind the Recurso de Fuerza project. As for concerns over safety, he disagrees that the project will increase crime.
“What [residents] are experiencing is the few people that are on the streets that are causing havoc, but they’re not seeing the vision that we also got to do something about the homeless population. They’re our neighbors, and people just are not seeing where there’s the potential to see something different and help people out of that situation,” Montesino says in a phone interview.
But there is also pushback to the project within the council itself, with one member concerned that the city and county are getting in over their heads.
‘Service Desert’
Watsonville District 5 council member Casey Clark says that the first time he heard about the Recurso de Fuerza project in June 2023, he felt it had already been decided without input from Watsonville city officials. One of his main issues is the site selection, which he says he has brought up to county officials.
“I see it going somewhere more appropriate and I have suggested two sites to the County of Santa Cruz, which I just get told ‘No,’” Clark says in a phone interview.
Clark argues that the Westside Presbyterian Church site is a “service desert” and says that other sites are more suitable for the project. The facility will include an indoor and outdoor dining area, showers, lockers and a housing navigation center.
A key detail is that the micro village is meant as temporary, transitional housing for a period of six months. Enrollment in the program is voluntary and there is already a waitlist for the units, according to Monterey County officials.
Clark says that the organization tapped to manage the facility is not equipped for the task. Earlier this year, Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County (CAB) was chosen to contract with Monterey County as operators for Recurso de Fuerza.
Emily Watson, interim director for Homelessness Prevention and Intervention Services, says that CAB is uniquely positioned to take on the management of the project and has extensive experience working with unhoused populations. CAB is planning to staff 10 to 15 workers at the site, including case managers for the residents.
The neighbors on West Front Street say that the encampment occupants’ rights are being held in higher regard than their own.
“Why is our voice not being heard?” asks Catalina Torres, who is a spokesperson for the group and has attended multiple city council meetings to bring the issue forth.
“They need to stop this [project] and take the time to find the right place for it outside the city. They have rights, but what about our rights?” Torres says in Spanish.
Councilmember Montesino says it’s not up to the council to say yes or no on the micro village, as it controlled by the county and state. He wants the West Front Street residents to keep an open mind.
“I just want people to realize and to listen to what the actual project is. I want people to be open,” Montesino says.
Santa Cruz County District 4 Supervisor Felipe Hernandez, who represents Watsonville, says he is in favor of the project. According to Torres, she and other residents have reached out to his office to raise their concerns. Hernandez categorically denies that they have made any attempts to reach him. But even if they had, Hernandez won’t budge on his support for Recurso de Fuerza unless there is a consensus from Watsonville officials to halt it.
“So, I’m fully onboard for the project and indifferent to the opposition until there’s some alignment [amongst the council],” Hernandez says in a text message.
As I sip a Gypsy Queen at Carmel’s Cypress Inn, I think about getting tossed and turned, hours earlier, by the crisp and nearly onshore emerald waves down the hill from this hotel once owned by Doris Day. I look up at the five framed CDs presented to Terry Melcher, Day’s son, by the Recording Industry Association of America for 500,000 sales of “Good Vibrations, 30 Years Of The Beach Boys,” hanging above.
I wonder how exactly it is that I ended up here—a Canadian expat working for a Central California newspaper. And, as the Beach Boys’ return to San Jose this weekend at Music in the Park draws near—with Los Gatos-bred John Wedemeyer leading the guitar lineup—my mind wanders to the role this four-piece from Hawthorne, California, may have played in my arrival in the Golden State. And I can’t help considering the band’s role in shaping the development of surf culture—or at least the place it occupies in the popular imagination.
Somehow I’d forgotten about the weekend nights when my dad would put on a Beach Boys greatest hits cassette, and I would run ’round, ’round the living room to “I Get Around.” My mom called it getting “rambunctious.” I didn’t exactly understand what the lyrics were all about. And I didn’t really care. The music awoke something inside, a sense that musical frequencies could be something to which you could devote your being.
Artifacts of surf culture at Terry’s Lounge. Photo by Drew Penner
I understood the Beach Boys to be emissaries of a sunny Californian culture that seemed appealing to someone accustomed to windows iced shut all winter. In Canadian “lake country,” the idea of surfing seemed more distant than a Caribbean vacation. Even then, I had the sense that this was a reflection of a moment in American history that had already passed, and transformed into something else. The broken beats in the Beach Boys’ drum machine-laden collaboration with hip hop trio the Fat Boys on the 1987 “Wipe Out” single brought the myth to a new generation.
BIRTH OF SURF CULTURE
Nowadays, you’re more likely to hear hip-hop music blaring from vehicle stereos in the beach communities of Southern California. But as I drove home to Santa Cruz, KZSC 88.1FM was playing “Cherish” by the Association. The still-full moon beamed milky light past towering palms, as I arrived, and I saw one of my roommates in passing. He came to California from the Midwest in 1976 and remembers cruising around LA to the sounds of Wolfman Jack on the airwaves. I asked him about hearing the Beach Boys as a kid. “It was a whole culture,” he said. “It basically made California—and it was fun, too.”
The previous weekend I’d driven down to Los Angeles for the California Journalism Awards dinner and headed to Torrance Beach, near where I lived during the pandemic. I wanted to see if there were any rideable waves. There weren’t. In my favorite nearby coffee shop, I was approached by a 77-year-old man named Richard Kelsey, and we struck up a conversation. Kelsey has been living in Seattle, but he grew up in Torrance. His family moved there in the ’50s.
“Hermosa Beach was kind of Ground Zero for the beach culture,” he said. “Surf music came, and it was just a new type of music—and everybody liked it.”
His father surfed a wooden board. Kelsey followed in his dad’s oceanic footsteps.
However, the hardcore surfers didn’t exactly buy into the Beach Boys schtick at the time, he recalled. He didn’t think much of the act at first, either. Although, one day that changed. “They came to Torrance High School,” he said. “It was a big local thing.”
Kelsey was quite impressed with their performance.
“They certainly didn’t embarrass themselves at all,” he said. “They were great.”
Kelsey hadn’t been back to Torrance in half a century. And now, upon his return, what struck him most was how little things had changed. “It was surprising,” he said. “There’s way more money here, of course. It’s a trillion times more expensive.”
And he credits the Beach Boys—and their ilk—with helping shape the place.
“It put the beach communities—especially in LA—on the map, for sure,” he said. “Nevertheless, those things kind of come and go.”
THE MOTHER SPORT
Back in Santa Cruz, the place with arguably the most vibrant surf scene, you can’t throw a stone without hitting someone who played a role in growing the wave-based pastime. It’s as good a place as any to gauge the Beach Boys’ impact on beach culture.
Randy French, who founded sailboard manufacturer Seatrend in Santa Cruz in 1976, and then later Surftech, used to ship 80% of his boards to SoCal. He says the Beach Boys didn’t appeal to the older generation of surfers, who preferred instead the sounds of jazz and blues. Those guys, he explained, felt like the group was capitalizing on a culture they didn’t have much to do with. “My generation,” he added, “we liked the Beach Boys.”
BOARD GAINS Randy French’s surf culture memorabilia. Photo by Drew Penner
French was close with the stuntmen for the film Big Wednesday. And he ended up making surfboards with Robert August, star of the 1966 documentary The Endless Summer.
“Surfing is the mother sport of all the satellite sports—skateboarding, windsurfing, snowboarding, kiteboarding,” French said. “All of that emanated from surfing.”
French, who at one point was sponsored by O’Neill, would go on to sell boards in dozens of countries.
“Running surf companies is an art form,” he said. “The guys that made the money in the surf industry aren’t the guys that made boards.”
Another local with ties to the venerable O’Neill brand, which was founded in 1952, is 76-year-old Michael Yankaus, who was the art director there from 1985 to 1991.
Yankaus recalls owning a ’56 Mercury “Woodie Wagon” in the mid-’60s.
“It was considered to be the cool surf wagon,” he said.
He also remembers the artwork for Surfin’ Safari (1962), which featured the Beach Boys in a thatch-adorned ride on the sand at Paradise Cove in Malibu. “Their first album cover was really cool.”
Another influence was The Endless Summer movie poster, created by Surfer magazine art director John van Hamersveld. Yankaus even went to the film premiere in LA.
“It was packed,” he said.
Decades later, he would wander into a Santa Cruz paint shop and select a fluorescent orange hue to bring to O’Neill’s 1980s graphic design.
Randy French displays the program for a screening of “The Endless Summer.” Photo by Drew Penner
After the Beach Boys’ music was featured in the 1973 George Lucas film American Graffiti, Capitol Records released the hits collection The Beach Boys Endless Summer—which catapulted the group back to the top of the charts.
In a 1992 interview in Goldmine, co-founder Mike Love took credit for the name, stating the original concept was more generic.
“They were going to do a Best of The Beach Boys Volume Three,” he told the publication, adding while he loved the “vibe” of the record, he wasn’t a fan of the artwork. “It was awful.”
MUSIC AND MEDITATION
One day in 1984, in a Dutch airport on the way to a Transcendental Meditation assembly, Yankaus spotted Beach Boys lead singer Mike Love.
“He had just gotten his luggage; and I was just walking in to locate mine, and we crossed paths,” Yankaus said. “I said, ‘Hey, surf’s up!’”
They ended up rooming for the duration of the course.
“We did yoga together, meditated in a group with 5,000 other people,” he said. “And see, the Beach Boys were gigantic in Holland.”
Yankaus, a TM teacher, was impressed by Love’s friendliness and his respect for the practice, which they’d both learned (as did the Beatles) from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
NEON BRIGHTS Santa Cruzan Michael Yankaus served as the art director at O’Neill’s from 1985 to 1991.
“He was just awesome,” Yankaus said. “He’s always been very supportive of the TM program, as Paul McCartney and Ringo are.”
Yankaus, the former director of the Silicon Valley Transcendental Meditation Center, sees plenty of similarities between music, meditation and surfing.
“Surfing is one of the best things that ever happened to me, and that’s why I still do it,” he said, during our interview at the second-floor TM space in Capitola. “Whatever was bothering you is gone after you catch a wave.”
The Beach Boys brought the guru on tour with them in 1968. Even though that effort ended in disappointment due to low ticket sales in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Love said he didn’t regret trying to spread the message of TM.
“I thought I could do some good for people who were lost, confused, or troubled, particularly those who were young and idealistic but also vulnerable,” Love said in his autobiography. “I thought that was true for a whole bunch of us.”
Yankaus says the group has been broadcasting upbeat messages to audiences since their earliest days.
“The Beach Boys really created a positive vibe in the youth in the United States,” he said. “They had their fingers on the pulse of what was happening.”
NORTH VS. SOUTH
I met Mark Gray, 75, in the Billabong store in the Pleasure Point neighborhood of Santa Cruz, where he explains surfboard and wetsuit technology to shoppers. Over the years he’s written for outlets like Surfer’s Path and Surfer, and helmed Surfer’s Japanese publication. He’s the product of parents who met on a ship to India in the ’40s. He was in his early teens when surf music popped off in 1962.
“That’s when I started surfing,” he said, recalling how he would hitchhike from Redwood City to Half Moon Bay to catch waves.
He remembers how the surf culture of Northern California had a slightly different flavor to the southern half of the state, given the colder climate and the influence of the beat poets from San Francisco’s North Beach—which ultimately morphed into the Grateful Dead–soundtracked hippie generation.
So, while the groups of SoCal would tend to play surf music exclusively, the NorCal bands would perform a mix of hits and surf rock, he explained.
He saw the Beach Boys wanting to ride that wave to mainstream success.
“They were trying to attach themselves to a trend,” he said. “But the ‘Pet Sounds’ album was really quite remarkable.”
THE NEXT WAVE
Unfortunately, as he sees it, it was the fact that surf music was intrinsically linked to the Pacific Ocean communities that spelled its downfall. While it surged for a while, pop audiences of America couldn’t always relate—though some groups, like the Beach Boys were later able to capitalize on nostalgia.
“It was really a music of the coast,” Gray said. “A lot of the surf music was primitive.”
He remembers going to a “surfers stomp” party in Santa Cruz on Seabright Beach, back when it was called Castle Beach (because of the castle-shaped bathhouse that was turned into the Casa del Mar restaurant).
Recently, there’s been a renewed interest in surf culture, particularly from the new wave of transplants to Silicon Valley who can now spend more time near the beach, due to pandemic-prompted work-from-home policies.
“They could live anywhere, because they had enough money, so they’d get an apartment where they could see the waves,” Gray said, noting some of them started to get good at surfing quite quickly. “A lot of them were trying to go from a longboard, to a mid-length, to a shortboard.”
With the early 2000s came the rise of “indie surf” and “Lo-Fi” music. Groups like the Growlers, Wavves, Best Coast, Beach Fossils and the Drums—who are musically indebted to the reverb-heavy sounds popularized by the Beach Boys, and others, back in the 1960s—began to provide the soundtrack to parties in beach towns and beyond. Meanwhile, Australian bands King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Tame Impala have extended beachy rock’s contours in new directions.
“I think that surf music is still alive and well,” Gray said.
Drew Penner is the editor of the Los Gatan newspaper. He also hosts the Frequency Horizon electronic music and surf culture podcast, Fridays from 10-midnight on 92.9FM Pirate Cat Radio (kpcr.org).
The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music needs a new name.
I’m not talking about the “Cabrillo” part, which could be dropped in light of the recent strong political sentiment against the conquistador. I’m talking about the “Contemporary Music” part.
It just sounds…boring. And this festival is anything but.
This ain’t your father’s classical music. The Cabrillo fest is to classical music what prog rock is to rock or avant garde jazz is to smooth jazz.
It’s music to take you to a new and unexplored place, to maybe make you a bit uncomfortable, with the intention of blowing your mind and expanding your musical horizons.
Started 61 years ago, it’s the longest-running contemporary music festival dedicated to new music for orchestras.
I almost missed my first one because the name was so bland. But then I heard music by John Cage, John Adams, Philip Glass and Aaron Copland and there it was…head exploded. It reminded me of the first time I saw Pink Floyd, before I knew such things existed.
The unusual thing is that this festival is known worldwide and attracts far-away music lovers. I wonder sometimes if they appreciate it more than the locals do. The New York Times called it a “mecca for new music lovers” and I’m proud to have it on the cover of Good Times and hope if you haven’t checked it out, this might encourage you to give it a shot.
Historical note: the festival had its birth in 1961 in an Aptos coffee shop called Sticky Wicket, where an Italian composer named Robert Hughes came to study with composer Lou Harrison and they produced a small festival outside the shop. When Cabrillo College opened, the festival moved there and put on its first show on Aug. 21, 1963. It lasted for 15 years before Prop 13 devastated public arts at the school.
The performances moved to churches and a tent on the UCSC campus before arriving at the Santa Cruz Civic in 1991.
So what do we call it now to show how exciting it is and to show lovers of the rave, EDM or jam band cultures that this is something they can totally relate to? Send your ideas to ed****@*******es.sc.
Speaking of music: we have an article by Bill Kopp about a brilliant indie songwriter called The Philharmonik playing this week and one by Mat Weir about notable local country band Kentucky Mule.
And for food, you must check out Andrew Steingrube’s intro to Lago di Como, a glorious taste of Italy.
Thanks for reading.
Brad Kava, Editor
PHOTO CONTEST
CHILLIN’ Taken on Cowell’s Beach, dude on lounge chair surfboard, with a front-row seat watching the surfers at Lighthouse Point. Photograph by Craig Ferguson
GOOD IDEA
Registration for Kids2Parks will open July 29. Kids2Parks is an equity program to bring students from Title 1 schools to state parks. The registration period for field trips planned for the 2023-24 academic year will run until Aug. 18.
Kids2Parks offers funding for field trips to most local state parks to elementary schools in Santa Cruz, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties for schools with a high percentage of low-income families.
It includes Castle Rock State Park, Castro Adobe State Historic Park,Seacliff State Beach, and Wilder Ranch State Park, to name a few.
Apply at thatsmypark.org/k2p.
GOOD WORK
The Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust will hold its 10th Anniversary Seafood Celebration on Sunday, Sept. 29 at the Monterey State Historic Park Memory Garden to celebrate 10 years in support of sustainable Monterey Bay seafood and honor local fisheries champions.
This milestone event serves as an important fundraiser and community-building opportunity that celebrates hardworking fishermen, dedicated local seafood businesses, sustainability-driven chefs, partner food relief organizations, and supporters of the Monterey Bay fishing community.
There will be seafood tasting stations with locally inspired culinary delights featuring seasonal Monterey Bay seafood. The fundraiser includes a silent auction, as well as live music and guest speakers. INFO:montereybayfisheriestrust.org/
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“When stupidity is considered patriotism, it is unsafe to be intelligent.” —Isaac Asimov
In the July 10 edition, the article “Wages of Aging” concerning the 2024 State of the Workforce report said that “Mid-wage jobs, with an average salary between $50,000 and $74,000, were mostly concentrated in the healthcare industry.” To clarify, those jobs are primarily concentrated in that industry, but are also found in the education, building and design and logistics industries.
AFFORDABLE HOUSING?
There is not now, nor will there ever be “Affordable Housing” in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is the most expensive rental market in the country. A family of four with both parents working requires an income of around $180,000 to live here. The vast majority of employment in Santa Cruz is in ”service” work. None of these jobs pays enough to rent, much less buy a home.
According to the county Civil Grand Jury, Santa Cruz City government has no idea who is living in so-called “affordable” housing. However, proponents of the massive build-in of these expensive high-rises claim that the condo debacle as well as the proposed garage/ library are designed to help provide “low income and affordable” housing. Anyone who claims that these projects will alleviate the crushing costs of living in Santa Cruz is lying.
–John Morris, Santa Cruz
IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE, AGAIN?
In response to Steve Kettmann’s Opinion (fear mongering article) on “A Democratic Moment” he spoon feeds the reader with inflamed opinionated accusations DJT will be a dictator and an authoritarian based on what? His dislike of Trump’s personality? His tweets? His policies, that he actually never addresses and that Trump is rising in popularity with THE AMERICAN PEOPLE?
Yes, there are Americans across the country who like, agree and want Trump’s policies implemented. Are those people wrong or bad? Simply stated, they want different policies than Biden’s. They don’t like what they got with Biden and are begging for a better life with the leadership they felt safer with and prospered under when Trump was in office.
Let’s face it, life under Biden has been one disaster for the American People after another. People are living in uncertainty for what tomorrow will bring, being on the edge of WWIII.
Has Steve considered all Americans’ right to vote for who he doesn’t agree with? Do they have a right to choose and vote for who they want? Or do we all have to agree with Steve Kettmann?
Steve, the real threat Trump presents is to the Democrat Party’s power and control over the nation.
The Philharmonik, a musician currently based in Sacramento, believes that in today’s music world, there are only two paths to success. “You either have to have a plethora of talents that you .can use, a very wide skill set,” he suggests, or you have to have a lot of money so you can bring in people who have that skill set. “And let me tell you,” he says with a smile, “I do not have the money.”
Having a wide skill set no doubt helped The Philharmonik become the 2024 winner of NPR’s Tiny Desk Contest. And he’ll be in Santa Cruz showing off those skills at a concert at Woodhouse Blending & Brews. The event is cosponsored by Soul Good Entertainment and Creative Minds.
Even before he first picked up an instrument, The Philharmonik (born Christian Gates) was a serious music lover. “I was listening to a lot of ’70s music, he says. “But I wasn’t allowed to listen to hip hop; it was the thing I listened to in secret, to rebel.”
And he went deeper than merely listening. “I’d read all the credits, see who was producing,” he recalls. That was especially true when he immersed himself into hip hop. “I’d find out where the samples were coming from,” he says. “And then I’d listen to those songs. So hip hop played a huge role in my returning back to the classics.”
Those classics include an eclectic assortment of the very best: Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix and even Elton John. Listening to The Philharmonik’s music, keen listeners may hear the influence of Donny Hathaway. “When I was a child, one of the first CDs I got was a compilation,” he recalls. “So I grew up on a lot of Bobby Caldwell, Christopher Cross, Prince … all of those are right down my alley.”
Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, The Philharmonik was also immersed in other musical forms; he learned piano and studied classical music, and he sang in a choir. “Those things gave me a foundation,” he says. “They gave me a head start when I wanted to create. When I started making my own music, I already knew how to play piano and sing, so all I had to do was write.” He believes that his musical self-sufficiency developed in large part thanks to those formative years of study.
In high school, The Philharmonik enrolled in a MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) class. MIDI is a technical standard that allows multiple digital instruments to communicate, synchronize and work together. For a self-sufficient, multi-instrumentalist in the tradition of Stevie Wonder, Todd Rundgren, Prince and Paul McCartney, MIDI opens up a world that allows a solo musician to create and render fully arranged music.
Combining his keyboard and MIDI skills, The Philharmonik began working as a producer while still in high school. He was still involved in the sorts of musical activities his fellow students enjoyed—“having rap battles, beating on desks,” he says—but he took everything several steps beyond. By graduation in 2011, he was “messing around” with a demo copy of Fruity Loops, a computer-based digital audio workstation.
The Philharmonik released his self-titled debut album in 2018 on Sacramento-based Sol Collective. The following year, he toured as the opening act on Hobo Johnson’s first national tour. Sidelined (like everyone else) during the worst of the Covid era, The Philharmonik dove into the creation and development of his second long player.
MASTERFUL FUNK Now is the time to catch soul man, the Philharmonik, because he seems perched to blow up.
Released in 2022, Kironic expands his artistry in many directions. Across its ten tracks, the album moves seamlessly between styles— funk, R&B, pop, rock, psychedelia and hip hop—in a way that effectively erases the divisions between those styles.
The album’s opening track “Am I Dreaming?” asks the musical question: What is the meaning of life? In addition to a rich and soulful musical foundation, The Philharmonik’s music features thoughtful lyrics that probe such big questions. “I like to observe a lot,” he explains. “And I like to reflect that in my music.” He says that he endeavors to put a philosophy class into his music. But there’s still room for ruminations on love. “I study a lot of musicians,” he says. “But I also study a lot of poets.” And that emphasis makes itself known in a real, organic form on Kironic.
Considering such a directed, together artist as The Philharmonik, it might come as a surprise to learn that as recently as a few years ago, he considered giving up his musical pursuits. “When the second album got released, we were still coming off the pandemic,” he explains. “When it was released, I feel like it flopped.” Dealing with the aftermath of an auto accident, The Philharmonik hit what he describes as a dip, a dark moment. He recalls thinking, “I’m creating my best work, but I don’t know why I’m doing this any more. And I don’t know how much more I have in me.”
Back in 2019—“just as a feeler,” he says—The Philharmonik submitted an audition to NPR’s Tiny Desk program. He wasn’t chosen, but he tried again a few years later. “The second time, I knew exactly what to do,” he says. “I trusted myself.” He told himself, “This is the last thing I’m throwing at the wall. If this doesn’t make it, I’m done.” He won the 2024 competition, and performed on the popular program in May.
But it wasn’t the accolades that came with the Tiny Desk win that got The Philharmonik back on track. “It was the win itself,” he says. “I needed proof [to] myself: ‘This is worth it to me.’” He says that if he encounters another difficult point in his career, he can look back to Tiny Desk and remind himself: “Remember what you did when you saw nothing ahead? You kept going.”
The Philharmonik plays at 7pm July 28 at Woodhouse Blending & Brews, 119 Madrone St, Santa Cruz; 831-313-9461. $15 adv/$20 door. Tickets through Eventbrite. And check out his Tiny Desk video.
‘That’s the thing about country music over other genres,” Coleton Joe Tidwell says, before pausing and taking a final drag from his cigarette. As he exhales he adds the butt to a small pile he’s been building in the form of a log cabin.
“People love country music because it tells stories. When we began I wrote more abstract lyrics that were out there and creative. As we progressed I wanted to tap into the concept of songwriting instead of concept albums.”
It’s exactly the sort of thing one would expect from the singer and primary songwriter of five-piece country outfit Kentucky Mule. That’s because while other bands might say that statement to sound deep and introspective while being basic and clichéd, Kentucky Mule breathes a sun-soaked, scent of fresh grass life into their songs.
This Saturday they’re bringing their blend of working-class, American folk tunes, mountain string music and honky tonk to Moe’s Alley when they open for San Francisco’s The Sam Chase & The Untraditional.
Though barely two years together, Kentucky Mule has already made a name for themselves in the Santa Cruz music scene, country and beyond.
“When we first started playing we found ourselves in front of audiences who were not there to have a country music experience,” laughs drummer Troy Nadeau. “But it was cool because a lot of people would come up to us afterwards and say, ‘I never thought I’d like country!’”
“That was always my favorite sentence,” Tidwell agrees.
“And we heard it a lot,” guitarist Scott Willis says.
The base for Kentucky Mule was poured when Tidwell and Willis met as the pandemic lockdowns began to lift. Willis already had bass player Will Lermini in his back pocket.
“He’s my first pick for bassist, always,” Willis says.
They knew Nadeau from the local scene and had played with him in other projects so he was quickly added to make Kentucky Mule a quartet.
Nadeau just so happens to also be a sound engineer by trade and has a self-built home studio where he records all of the band’s music. It’s a tradition that dates back to Kentucky Mule’s very first practice.
“The first time we ever played together we recorded our first song,” Lermini says.
That track is the harmonica-driven, soul-searching “Hounds,” still available online.
Because of Tidwell’s prolific writing from playing solo gigs over the years prior to the band forming, Kentucky Mule already had a couple dozen original tunes right out of the gate.
“Because of all that work we had the opportunity to hit the ground running with a full set of originals,” Nadeau recalls.
“Our first set was like 80% originals, which was pretty amazing,” Tidwell says.
Soon after, the boys were joined by fiddle player Lizzy Smith, the lime juice and garnish that completes the Kentucky Mule recipe. Tidwell tells GT that Smith “really makes the sound” of the band and that everyone knew she had to join after meeting her and seeing her play.
The feeling was quite mutual.
“I’m so excited to be a part of this band,” Smith writes in a text message.
Last year they released their debut EP, Beginner’s Luck, a four-track collection of songs about questioning traditional values, working hard for minimum pay while capitalists get rich and driving fast down Highway 17. Tidwell’s voice flows from silky smooth to whiskey grizzled depending on what the song—and sometimes chorus—calls for. In only 12 minutes and 48 seconds, Beginner’s Luck throws down the gauntlet and harvests a gamut of Americana styles from outlaw and country rock to folk and western ballads complete with a slide guitar.
Then there’s the freshly released Deep Roots Ranch Live Sessions EP that just dropped on July 15. As the name implies, it was recorded live at Deep Roots Ranch outside of Corralitos, surrounded by the local mountains, fields of wild plants and that California sun sinking down just right at the golden hour.
A monster of an EP, Deep RootsRanch captures the band’s best side. It’s built with boot-scootin’ honky tonk and beer-swiggin’ stories about finding one’s place in this life. There’s even a 1960s-style string ballad that sounds like something Robert Hunter would’ve written. Which is on brand because, ultimately, Kentucky Mule is a live experience, as anyone who’s seen them play can attest.
With skill and ease they follow one another through the songs, sometimes running one tune into another, à la jam band style. Part of that stems from all members having backgrounds in punk and heavier music, with local psychedelic metal bands like Supernaut and Knuckledragger represented.
Then there’s also their grateful side.
“Being a Deadhead [helps],” Lermini says. “I try not to turn my nose up at anything and be as open as possible to all of it.”
It’s a very democratic take on music, which makes sense considering the band’s punk rock background. Someone not familiar with the genres might not think country and punk (or metal) have much in common, but they’d be wrong. All began as music “of the people, by the people and for the people,” with songs about everyday life and struggles.
It’s a connection not lost on Kentucky Mule and they’ll continue to sing their true stories whether they make it in Nashville or not.
“Country music is supposed to be the voice of the average person,” Tidwell says. “But the popular option for country today isn’t giving people that voice. The more you move away from that and corporatize what was supposed to be the music of the masses, something’s definitely off.”
Kentucky Mule opens for The Sam Chase & The Untraditional July 27 at Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $20/adv, $25/door. 479-1854.
There is not now, nor will there ever be “Affordable Housing” in Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz is the most expensive rental market in the country. A family of four...
The Philharmonik, a musician currently based in Sacramento, believes that in today’s music world, there are only two paths to success. “You either have to have a plethora of talents that you .can use, a very wide skill set,” he suggests, or you have to have a lot of money so you can bring in people who have that...
