As the 40th annual Santa Cruz Pride approaches, a co-founder looks back on how one weekend turned into a local movement In 1975, a weekend that included a potluck, workshops, music, a picnic and a giant tug of war served as the first local Pride celebration, and marked a turning point for the LGBTQ community in...

Santa Cruz’s Camper Van Beethoven take California fetish to BottleRock Could there be a better act to play the uniquely Northern California festival BottleRock than Santa Cruz’s own Camper Van Beethoven, with their conjoined twin band Cracker in tow? After all, Camper is the group that on their 2013 album La Costa Perdida delivered “Northern California...

First Friday Santa Cruz celebrates its 10th anniversary  A huge monthly party celebrating the local creative community, First Friday is now a cornerstone of Santa Cruz’s cultural scene. But 10 years ago, before it was a wildly popular event, it consisted of little more than galleries in empty storefronts, a tiny walking tour, and a bus...

An A-to-Z guide to what our legislators have been up to in Sacramento  Abalone and other shellfish harvesting is a key California industry, and Assemblymember Wesley Chesbro, D-Santa Rosa, has introduced a joint resolution that aims to enhance state efforts at building a commercial aquaculture infrastructure. Chesbro offers support for a clean, healthy marine environment...

Films This WeekCheck out the movies playing around town.With: Reviews, Movie Times click here.Santa Cruz area movie theaters > ....... New This Week BLENDED Adam Sandler teams up with Drew Barrymore for the third time in this romantic comedy about two single parents and their respective kids thrown together at an African safari resort for families....

With the Felton and Scotts Valley farmers markets both happening every week into the fall, the summer fruit season is officially in swing. We thought it’d be a good time to check-in with Santa Cruz Community Farmers Markets director Nesh Dhillon, who oversees those two markets, and three others in the county—downtown, Live Oak and on the Westside. ...

T-Pain Rapper turned singer T-Pain has a handful of albums to his name, and has lent his talents to dozens of recordings, including Grammy-winning singles with Kanye West and Jamie Foxx. But perhaps his biggest contribution to pop culture was popularizing auto-tune by using it on a ton of chart-topping tracks. A multi-faceted artist who also...

Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes “pop music.” Elisha Kim, lead singer/songwriter of indie-rockers Totoake, sees one unifying attribute. “To me, pop is just kind of structuring: Verse, chorus, verse chorus, then you have a bridge. You can be as weird as you want to be, if you structure it correctly, and it will...

State lawmakers haven’t taken a close look at the death penalty since its last execution seven years ago Clarence Ray Allen was put to death in San Quentin State Prison’s death chamber, making him the last person executed in California. That was Jan. 17, 2006. The “cocktail” administered to Allen was similar to the one used...

Specialty food conference in Watsonville, plastic bag ban roundup To Market, to Market County residents are spoiled for choices when it comes to shopping for specialty food products. Numbers show the love we have for artisan breads and handcrafted cheeses is increasingly shared by consumers across the country. Americans spent $86 billion on specialty food items...