Impact Media Group takes business to the city but stays grounded in Santa Cruz
It’s hard to make a name for your business on a global scale when you’re based in a small town like Santa Cruz. It’s even harder if you’re a production company.
Impact Media Group on Soquel Avenue may be 340 miles from Hollywood, but the company has a history of accolades including a 1984 Academy Award nomination for founder Eric Thiermann’s film In the Nuclear Shadow: What Can the Children Tell Us? and an Oscar for his 1986 documentary short Women for America.

Thiermann, who was in the first graduating class at UC Santa Cruz, founded the company in 1976. Impact started out producing a documentary about artists in maximum security prisons, then moved on to filming music videos starring artists like James Brown, then on to high profile weddings. Today, Impact creates everything from documentaries, to technical product videos for Silicon Valley companies, to TV commercials for brands, to educational videos and everything in between.

Ocean champion lands in Santa Cruz during her canoe trip from Seattle to San Diego
Margo Pellegrino is no ordinary ocean advocate. She recycles, she makes conscious consumer decisions, she teaches her kids about the environment. But, two months a year, she also hops in her outrigger canoe and sets off to sea—solo—to take long voyages along the American coastline.

The 43-year-old mother of two began her current journey, The Pacific Coast Paddle, in Seattle on July 3. She reached the California border in early August, and landed at the Santa Cruz Harbor this afternoon (Tuesday, Aug. 24). Aside from being an incredible feat of strength and will power, Pellegrino’s marathon paddles are meant to draw attention to threats facing the oceans. The main issues she hopes to raise awareness about are over-fishing, pollution, plastic debris, and acidification.

Tomorrow, Aug. 25, she’ll set off to paddle her way to Monterey. You can track her progress, and read about her experience (which has been as trying as it has been rewarding) on her blog, seattle2sandiego.com. The paddle is part of the Blue Frontier Campaign, and is sponsored by Ocean Champions.. Local support came from Santa Cruz Surfrider, The Clean Oceans Project, Save Our Shores, and more.

Cabernet “Gironde” 2006
Practically the whole of Santa Cruz knows by now that talented local chef Jake Gandolfo is appearing on the MasterChef cooking show series on Fox TV—on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. until mid-September. By the time this article comes out, he may have proceeded to the next food preparation challenge, or he may have been eliminated. But whatever happens, he’s certainly had his share of 15 minutes of fame—and demand for his cuisine is escalating.

Westside’s Phoenix Asian Restaurant serves huge portions from its long menu
I tend to avoid Mission Street this time of year, but there I was, and realized one of the Chinese restaurants had changed hands, albeit more than a year ago. Now named Phoenix Asian Restaurant, it’s known for its huge selection of lunch specials for about $6.

In a world of disposable music in which many bands study fashion more than the songs they play, Denney Joints from the Midnite Snack has one thing to say to you: “Blow my head off with your guitar. Give me something moving, that’s how beauty should sound.” And the 26-year-old knows a little something about music. Besides being the lead singer-songwriter and guitar player for the Snack, he eats, breathes and studies music at Cabrillo College. It was there, in 2008, where he met drummer Trevor Hope (of the Vox Jaguars) and the two formed Midnite Snack, adding bassist Sam Copperman a year later and recording their first EP, Soup Samwich. “I wrote most of the stuff we play like four years ago, but I’ve been sitting on it because I didn’t have a band and I hated the way my voice sounded,” Joints explains with a smirk.

It seems that everyone in Santa Cruz has ties to Fresno, me included. Driving home from that Central Valley town, rows of tall corn, orchards of pistachios, and trailers laden with ripe tomatoes make it hard to ignore hunger pangs. But if you can make it past Casa de Fruta to San Felipe Road, you’re just minutes away from what’s billed as the best tri-tip in San Benito County.

Low-income residents battle bed bug infestation at local motel
For most of us, the saying “good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite” is simply that—an age-old phrase meant to cue the REM cycle. But for others, including a group of nine Santa Cruz motel residents, it’s a nightly reality.

These nine renters reside on the right-hand side of Aqua Breeze Inn, formerly known as Sea Breeze Inn. Located directly across from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, the motel is a popular tourist destination with a prime location and reasonable prices. But the inn also has an unresolved bed bug infestation problem.

The Green Station keeps hopes for biodiesel alive in Santa Cruz
Whatever happened to biodiesel? Once—not so long ago—it was hailed as an immediate and sustainable way to alleviate dependence on oil and reduce CO2 emissions. But lately biodiesel seems to be living in the shadow of other green technologies, like spotlight-stealing electric cars. However, the absence of fanfare hasn’t deterred Santa Cruz’s Kings of Biodiesel, Green Station owners Bill Le Bon and Ray Newkirk, from continuing the fight. While forced to lease U-Hauls out of the Green Station lot to make ends meet (and sell some of those sly electric cars, which they also agree are great eco-choices), they remain committed to keeping the biodiesel pumps alive and accessible for Santa Cruz.

UC Santa Cruz dining goes meatless on Mondays
San Francisco and New York City do it; every school in the Baltimore City School District does it; Sir Paul McCartney does it; and now, like four other UC schools, UC Santa Cruz does it, too.

We’re talking about Meatless Monday—a growing movement to cut meat consumption by 15 percent (one day a week), thereby helping to reduce serious environmental stresses, health problems, and resource shortages. Organizations like Meatless Monday and Meat Free Monday (the latter was founded by McCartney and his daughters) are spearheading the campaign, and reminding the world’s omnivores that, according to the United Nations, livestock are the single largest contributor to global warming—spewing even more greenhouse gases than all of the world’s transportation combined.

In the latest Highway 1 news, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) recently announced that they have taken over the role of Construction Manager for the Highway 1 Auxiliary Lanes Project, the project that will add an auxiliary lane (a ramp connecting the off ramp to the next on ramp) between Morrissey Boulevard and the Soquel interchange, “thereby extending the Highway 1/17 Interchange Merge Lanes project to the north side of Soquel Avenue,” said the RTC in an Aug. 19 release. They will work in conjunction with Caltrans, which owns the state highway system. Construction is set to begin next summer.