Local band challenges Unreasonably Disturbing Noises Ordinance
If you haven’t seen Love Gutter, you’ve probably heard them pounding away on their homemade barrel drum in front of New Leaf at the corner of Soquel and Pacific Avenues. For six years, street performers Brent Adams and Wireless have attempted to provide a heart-thumping soundtrack to downtown life amidst the slew of heavily enforced noise ordinances. Wednesday, the duo prepared to brave the waves of law enforcement officials and play their music anyway, as a means of objecting to what they perceive as the unfair use of the Unreasonably Disturbing Noises Ordinance. “Any kind of art that is frustrated by law or injustice, isn’t pure art,” says Wireless, who drums on kitchen pots using gardening gloves with safety pins at the fingertips. While the two are well versed in the ordinances and know they can only play for an hour in certain places and only at certain times, a single complaint about Love Gutter can cost them a $450 ticket.

Cabernet Sauvignon 2006
A delectable wine and the mystical music of Indian sitar turn out to be a perfect partnership at Don Quixote’s in Felton – a well-known international music venue. My husband and I had gone there to listen to Ashwin Batish – a master sitar player who happens to be a local resident as well. I want a wine that matches the complexity of a raga – something sensuous with lots of body and dark fruit – so I take along a bottle of 2006 DaVine Cab.

I had sampled this interesting wine at MJA Vineyards (DaVine Cellars is an offshoot of MJA Vineyards) tasting room just a couple of weeks before – and bought a bottle ($30) to drink another time. Blackcurrant, tobacco and coffee aromas leap out immediately – plus hints of ripe plums and vanilla. Swirl this wine around the glass for a while and you’ll get a fabulous olfactory fix before you even take a sip. And when you do take a sip, all those fruit-forward flavors come together in one splendid inky mouthful. Here’s a Cab with a nutty, earthy quality that is pure pleasure.

Little Caricias Café offers healthy alternatives to fast food on Beach Hill
Caricias Café sits on the small patio in front of Boca Del Cielas, a mauve Victorian bed and breakfast just up the First Street hill from the Boardwalk Bowl. Tico, the resident scarlet macaw, shimmied up the pole to her perch and surprised us with a loud squawk. The immense parrot then climbed down the backside of the wrought iron fence behind my daughter’s chair, nibbled playfully on her sweatshirt, and gently grasped her elbow with zygodactyl feet.

On the whiteboard which describes the menu, I was surprised to see a fruit Pico de Gallo ($3). Spears of pineapple, honeydew melon, mango and cucumber were served with Tajin Clasico, a brand of slightly tart seasoning that includes powdered chilies and salt. I learned that dried chilies are enjoyed on everything in Mexico, especially fruit. Even better than Tajin was the spicier house-made version based on toasted, dried Japanese red chilies.

Scones bring to mind tea time, crumpets and treacle. Since 1999, John and Yvette Bilanko have been selling mixes for these sweet breads to retail customers and restaurants alike. Now they return to their roots with a cafe, showcasing not only their baked goods, but savory fare as well.

Family photos line a wall of the cafe and store. Yvette, a first generation American, is shown on a Vespa outside of her Grandfather’s Tuscan home. Raised in Chicago, the Bilankos married, had children and careers, and in 1991 opened an espresso bar and cafe. They used a scone mix, developed and sold by a group of graduate food science students, which was easily made with just heavy cream instead of butter and eggs. The resulting moist breads were hugely successful. Eventually the Bilankos bought the mix company and moved to Santa Cruz. Three weeks ago they were finally able to open the cafe.

Santa Cruz homeboy Wallace Baine leads the pack of inventive pageturners this summer
Full reviews of:
The New Good Life by John Robbins
Standing Up to the Madness by Amy Goodman and David Goodman
Imperfect Birds by Anne Lamott
Ravishing of Lol Stein by Margarette Duras
THE HOT LIST FROM LOCAL BOOKSELLERS

Plus Letters to Good Times…
Doing Desal?
2012 Misconceptions
2012, Here We Come …
Holiday Deadlines
Holidays are a good thing, so enjoy them when they arrive. The nation’s biggest holiday, in fact, arrives this week via the Fourth of July. No doubt, we’ll all partake in some kind of revelry as the country reaches its 234th birthday this year. Well, if you start counting from the time we adopted the Constitution in 1787, that would make us 223 years old. Then again, beyond “us,” the place we call America is actually much older. Native Indian tribes, as we all know, had lived here for nearly 25,000 years before Spaniards began exploring the area in the early 16th century. In any case, the land may be “old,” but it seems that many of the modern humans overseeing it are “young.”

A new graphic novel mirrors life in the deep south—with a twist
In the tradition of groundbreaking graphic novels such as Art Spiegelman’s “Maus” and Alan Moore’s “Watchmen,” writer Johnnie (JD) Arnold and artist Rich Koslowski’s new book “BB Wolf and the Three LPs” ingeniously melds the medium of classic comic books with a serious, history-steeped story, all making for an excellent, moving piece of work, which will be celebrated at a release party on July 10 at Comicopolis.

Set in a world mirroring the deep American south of the Jim Crow era, where wolves are the victims of racism and oppression at the hands of hateful pigs, the story follows the life of the title character, a blues musician whose farm and family are unfairly and horrifically taken away from him.

Local designers team up for a fashion show at Stripe
Roughed up hair, gorgeous painted faces, ruffled frocks, modern, cutting-edge leather accessories—it all makes for the type of fashion shoot you’d see in Vogue magazine. Or, you can just walk down the street and see such innovative fashionable concepts come to life at Stripe, as the one-year-old popular clothing and housewares boutique in Downtown Santa Cruz, debuts its first runway show at 8 p.m. Friday, July 9 at 107 Walnut Ave. (Doors open at 6 p.m., and tickets are $10.)

What makes this fashion show different than some of its predecessors in town is that the team behind it have been planning this project for months, and they’re going for genuine fashion—no thesis student art projects here—rather, you’re going to get a taste of something you might find at Bryant Park during fashion week in New York, meaning that this is indeed something you’ve never seen before in Santa Cruz.

Cabrillo Stage gets in the groove with exuberant ‘Swing’
Movie musicals of the 1930s liked to advertise themselves as “All Singing! All Dancing!” to let Depression-weary audiences know they were in for a good time. In much the same spirit we get “Swing,” the second offering in this year’s expanded Cabrillo Stage summer musical theater season. All singing, all dancing, “Swing” is a lively, uptempo production without dialogue, plot or story, whose energetic ensemble sings and dances its way through more than two dozen classic big-band numbers from the ’30s and ’40s.

When the hot dogs have long since been grilled and the fireworks have died down, our local beaches are left with a big, ugly reminder of the Fourth of July: insurmountable amounts of trash. That’s why Save Our Shores and other sponsors like The Clean Ocean Project are hosting the Star Spangled Beach Cleanup on July 5—a mammoth cleanup effort where Cruzans can really show their stars and stripes by keeping the county’s sand and sea trash-free. Volunteers are needed from 7 to 10 a.m. at Twin Lakes, Seacliff/Rio Del Mar, Seabright, Davenport, and Panther beaches. Last year, 150 volunteers armed with 1,200 trash and recycle bags participated in cleaning the five beaches. With their help, and that of state park maintenance and Green Waste crews throughout the following week, a total of 12,500 pounds of trash was collected from the beaches (they amassed 14,000 pounds in 2007).