[Editor’s note: In no way, does this letter reflect the opinion of Good Times]
In honor of Mother’s Day, I am using my voice as a mother of five to strongly encourage individuals to think critically about introducing gender ideology to children. Business owners who have the audacity to hold events such as Drag Story Time should really read the room and think about the moral and societal implications of exposing vulnerable children to the use of pronouns, the idea that you can choose your gender, and cross-dressing giant overgrown makeup-covered men. The Watsonville family center called Raíces y Cariño is holding a Drag Story Time on May 21 for all ages, and to encourage families to participate, it’s free, of course! Despite the moniker “children are resilient” that was thrown around the last three years regarding how much their lives were turned upside down, as a mother and as an adult working in healthcare, I can see very clearly how children are vulnerable, and we need to protect them. The most disturbing trend in the last few years is the destruction of the innocence of childhood in an attempt to validate insecure and mentally ill adults. —Anonymous
These letters do not necessarily reflect the views of Good Times.To submit a letter to the editor of Good Times: Letters should be originals—not copies of letters sent to other publications. Please include your name and email address to help us verify your submission (email address will not be published). Please be brief. Letters may be edited for length, clarity and to correct factual inaccuracies known to us. Send letters to le*****@*******es.sc
LUNAFEST The 22nd annual short film event to benefit WomenCARE will be in-person and virtual. A pre-show reception at the Del Mar will also feature wines from Hallcrest Vineyards and Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard. “We’re proud to amplify the inspiring short films by this year’s selection of women and gender nonconforming directors. Our featured filmmakers are from all walks of life, from poets to conservationists, activists and educators. These stories remind us that when we come together, we all move forward.” $20-35; $15/students. Wednesday, May 17 (virtual screenings run through May 20), 7pm (5:30pm pre-show). Del Mar Theater, 1124 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. lunafest.org
EARTHLESS WITH TERRY GROSS There’s an ancient Japanese legend in which a horde of demons, ghosts and other terrifying ghouls descend upon the sleeping villages once a year. Known as Hyakki Yagyō, or the “Night Parade of One Hundred Demons,” one version of the tale states that anyone who witnesses this otherworldly procession will die instantly—or be carried off by the creatures of the night. As a result, the villagers hide in their homes lest they become victims of these supernatural invaders. Such is the inspiration for the latest album from Earthless. “My son is really into mythical creatures and old folk stories about monsters and ghosts,” bassist Mike Eginton explains. “We came across the ‘Night Parade of One Hundred Demons’ in a book of traditional Japanese ghost stories. I like the idea of people hiding and being able to hear the madness but not see it. It’s the fear of the unknown.”$25/$30 plus fees. Thursday, May 18, 8pm. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. folkyeah.com
EVERYONE ORCHESTRA 20 Years in, with over 1,000 different musicians joining, Everyone Orchestra continues to create uniquely. EO is a masterfully conducted, entirely spontaneous explosion of live music created by a rotating cast of world-renowned musicians and led by conductor Matt Butler. Each show is 100% unique, as a carefully curated lineup of performers is guided through high energy, creative, danceable grooves and beautiful songs that you won’t believe are created on the fly under the visionary leadership of Matt’s cues and improvised whiteboard directives. This show features Dan Lebowitz (ALO), Natalie Cressman (Trey Anastasio Band), Grahame Lesh (Terrapin Family Band), Jason Crosby (Jackson Browne / Phil Lesh), Johnny Bones (California Honeydrops), Brett McConnell, Aniana, Doug Stringer. $28/$32 plus fees. Friday, May 19, 8pm. Felton Music Hall, 6275 Hwy 9, Felton. feltonmusichall.com
GOOD LUCK THRIFT STORE WITH WOLF JETT A reunion for the ages! The Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit has recorded and performed original music since 2004. Fine songcraft and contagious enthusiasm on stage keep fans coming back to see them repeatedly. The band consists of singer-songwriters Willy Taylor and Chris Doud; drummer Aaron Burtch; Taylor Webster on bass and vocals and multi-instrumentalists Matt Cordano and Chandler Pratt. The band has been staying local to their home base in Oakdale, but they’re coming in hot! $25/$30 plus fees. Saturday, May 20, 8pm. Veterans Memorial Building, 846 Front St., Santa Cruz. bit.ly/3mhPY14
MIGHTY POPLAR New roots-Americana Supergroup Might Poplar features Noam Pikelny and Chris Eldridge (Punch Brothers), Andrew Marlin (Watchhouse) and Greg Garrison (Leftover Salmon). With their self-titled debut, they capture the fierce and playful energy of an all-night jam between old friends who just happen to be musical savants. Marlin selected and sang lead on most songs, bringing classics and deep cuts from greats like Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, John Hartford, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Norman Blake. The songs and tunes are as immediate and emotionally impactful as the tasteful playing. $25/$29 plus fees. Saturday, May 20, 8pm. Felton Music Hall, 6275 Hwy 9, Felton. feltonmusichall.com
DAVE EGGERS: ‘THE EYES & THE IMPOSSIBLE’ Join bestselling and award-winning author Dave Eggers (The Every) for a reading and signing of his new all-ages novel about a dog who unwittingly becomes a hero to a park full of animals. The Eyes & The Impossible is illustrated by Shawn Harris (Her Right Foot). Taylor Norman, the executive editor of Neal Porter Books, will join Eggers. Johannes, a free dog, lives in an urban park by the sea. His job is to be the Eyes—to see everything in the park and report back to the park’s elders, three ancient Bison. His friends—a seagull, a raccoon, a squirrel and a pelican—work with him as the Assistant Eyes, observing the humans and other animals who share the park and ensuring the Equilibrium is in balance. But changes are afoot. More humans, including Trouble Travelers, arrive in the park. A new building containing mysterious and hypnotic rectangles goes up. And then there are the goats—an actual boatload of goats—which appear, along with a shocking revelation that changes Johannes’s view of the world. A story about friendship, beauty, liberation and running very fast, The Eyes & the Impossible will make readers of all ages see the world around them in a wholly new way. Free (registration required). Saturday, May 20, 2pm. Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. bookshopsantacruz.com
SANTA CRUZ COUNTY YOUTH SYMPHONY SPRING CONCERT Featuring soloist Anaïs Huet on violin, the all-pops concert will feature the music of the Studio Ghibli Suite, Pirates of Penzance, How to Train Your Dragon, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. $5-33. Sunday, May 21, 3pm. Samper Recital Hall at Cabrillo College, 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos. cabrillovapa.universitytickets.com
RYLEY WALKER BAND Ryley Walker currently resides in New York City. But his latest LP is a Chicago record in spirit. The masterful Course In Fable, the songwriter’s fifth solo effort, draws from the deep well of that city’s fertile 1990s scene, when bands like Tortoise, The Sea and Cake and Gastr del Sol were reshaping the underground, mixing and matching indie rock, jazz, prog and beyond. Walker spent his formative years in Chicago, absorbing those heady sounds and finding ways to make them his own. Even though he emerged at first in folk-rock troubadour mode, it makes sense that he’s arrived at this point; each LP has grown more intricate and assured, his influences distilling into something original and unusual. Course In Fable is Walker’s best record yet, full of active imagination and endless possibilities. $35 plus fees. Sunday, May 21, 7:30pm. Kuumbwa Jazz, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. folkyeah.com
Stephen Kessler, longtime—make that legendary—Santa Cruzan, poet, translator and editorial troublemaker, is the 2023 recipient of the Santa Cruz County Arts Commission Artist of the Year award. In a career spanning more than 50 years, Kessler has spun out a dozen volumes of original poetry, sixteen books of literary translation, three volumes of collected essays and countless impeccably crafted opinion columns for newspapers from the golden age of alternative journalism to today’s daily paper.
As a publisher and editor of numerous literary and community journals, Kessler has won awards, dazzled admirers and outraged his critics. Despite his versatility, it is as a poet that most of us have known him. “It wasn’t a choice,” he admits. “It just came and got me.”
He also admits that the word “poet” seems a ridiculous label, “especially since there’s no cultural support for being a poet. Poetry plays such a marginal role in our culture. But it is a high calling. I wanted to be part of that company who excited me when I was young.”
Ferlinghetti, Frank O’Hara, Charles Bukowski, Kenneth Rexroth, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walt Whitman. These are among his pantheon of giants.
“I prefer to call myself a writer, but poetry is the core of my practice,” Kessler says.
Baudelaire had Kessler in mind when he advised him to always be a poet, even in prose. Poetry infiltrates his journalism.
“I don’t write conventional journalism,” he notes. “Personal experiences, nature, events of the day, my world—I think people appreciate the poetry in my pieces.”
Kessler embodies the Nietzschean observation that poets exploit their own experiences. For decades he won awards and is a renowned translator of Spanish poetry.
“I learned more from translation than reading—it increases your range and stimulates poetic practice,” he notes. “When you translate, you’re essentially apprenticed to the writer you’re translating. It’s a workshop. When you spend hours, days or even years hanging out with these people, it’s an intensive tutorial—a lot like acting. You’re playing this other person, adopting their tone, nuance, style, persona—a Method school of poetic experience. I’ve learned so much from those different voices.”
Kessler abandoned the piano for softball at eight, but music continues to influence his work profoundly. “My poems aspire to music,” he says. “When I go to a concert, a performance or a poetry reading, I want to be enchanted. I have a good musical ear, and I think writing is a way of processing experience.”
He also knows that the very words “poetry reading” can put people to sleep.
“A great reader is key to keeping the audience engaged,” he says. And Kessler is an excellent reader; he keeps the swing, the jazz that energizes his poems alive, most of which exploit the poet’s adventures in true Nietzschean fashion. Kessler describes his work as “totally intuitive.” His most recent collection, Last Call, illustrates that intuition and controlled improvisation.
Asked what he thinks has made him good at what he does, he unhesitatingly responds, “Practice! Younger writers often think they can sit down, and it just happens. But you need to practice, practice, practice. Practice creates technical skills so that you’re ready to catch inspiration when it shows up. Just as in any of the arts. If you’re a pianist, you can give a great concert because of all the hours each day, for years, that go into practicing a performance.”
Kessler also admits that his writing “is a kind of compulsion. I couldn’t not write. I have a pen and notebook with me all the time.”
He’s disillusioned by what he sees getting published these days and can’t stand “the noise of digital culture.”
However, Kessler isn’t done yet, and he appreciates the arts community of Santa Cruz.
“I’m still writing and still having fun,” he says. “Poetry as a hobby is no worse than golf. I think I’m more tolerant of beginners’ efforts now than I was when I was younger. I know how many not-good poems I’ve written.”
Stephen Kessler’s Santa Cruz County 2023 Artist of the Year presentation happens Saturday, May 20, 7-9pm at Kuumbwa Jazz, 320 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. Free. kuumbwajazz.org
STEPHEN KESSLER QUICKIES
Biggest professional mistake:
Wanting to be famous before I understood how embarrassing it was.
Daily read:
The New York Times
Finest hour:
Giving the eulogy at my father’s funeral.
Biggest regret:
Being unkind (more than once) when I should have been tender and understanding.
Favorite food:
A really good Caesar salad.
Favorite poets:
Different ones at different times for different reasons.
Best advice you received:
George Hitchcock’s counsel not to return to graduate school after my second leave of absence.
What you’d be doing if you weren’t a writer:
A musician? A psychotherapist? A rabbi?
Favorite composers:
John Coltrane, Joaquin Rodrigo, Hoagy Carmichael, Antonin Dvorak and Duke Ellington, among many others.
What you love most about Santa Cruz: Good weather, lots of interesting and accomplished people and Kuumbwa Jazz Center.
Since its 2020 debut, the Deep Read has featured Margaret Atwood, Tommy Orange and Yaa Gyasi. How do you top a trifecta like that? The annual program, put on by the Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, approached the selection of its 2023 book by going in a different direction.
There had already been three novels, so it was time for something different. Program Coordinator Laura Martin told me the committee’s choice, Elizabeth Kolbert’s Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future, was unanimous.
Not only does Under a White Sky mark the Deep Read’s first foray into non-fiction, but it’s also a work of science journalism.
Not including the afterword, the book is 201 pages. Kolbert’s vibrant and descriptive reporting and her dark-humored reflection pull you into the field alongside her. While Under a White Sky is a quick read, it resonates with you for a long time.
And while it resonates, the complexity of the themes Kolbert presents surrounding climate change and human intervention inspires a deeper dig. Kolbert jumps from place to place like a squirrel hopping from branch to branch. She first takes us on a leisurely cruise on the Chicago River, where she refers to Joseph Campbell’s Heart of Darkness.
It might seem like an unusually bleak metaphor during what’s supposed to be a pleasant, touristy boat ride, but Under a White Sky is an endless journey into the unknown, and there’s no turning back. Once humankind starts messing with something, we can’t simply walk away and expect everything to go back to how it was before we mucked it up.
For decades, the Windy City has been trying to solve problem after problem that arises in its river, employing possible solutions that only end up causing new problems, which in many instances are worse than the initial complications—Kolbert refers to the river’s Sanitary and Ship Canal as an “Oversized Sphincter.” One tactic involved bringing in vats of Asian carp, which planners thought would help ingest the massive amounts of bacteria from the river, which supplies Chicago with drinking water.
But the non-native carp had no predators, so the Chicago River has become infested with the fish—the solution: electrifying areas of the river that would kill off some of the carp. As you can imagine, it wasn’t the best idea.
The falling domino effect of these infrastructure-meets-nature dilemmas exists worldwide, and Kolbert takes us along as she details several. All follow a similar pattern that involves humans.
“You can’t prepare for a future you can’t imagine,” Kolbert says. “The trouble is, it’s hard to picture the future we are creating. As the climate swings of the past suggest, even subtle and gradual forces—tiny variations in the Earth’s orbit, for example—can have world-altering consequences. And what we’re doing now is neither subtle nor gradual. In little more than a century, humans have burned through coal and oil deposits that took tens of millions of years to create.”
Kolbert takes us to an Australian lab where students are working through the night, mixing corral sperm with eggs in bowls—making a lot of sperm jokes along the way—attempting to figure out how to rejuvenate the Great Barrier Reef, which has been dying off.
Meanwhile, in southern Iceland, Kolbert visits Climeworks, a startup that scrubs carbon emissions from the sky and essentially converts the pollution into rock using a system inspired by the effect volcanic lava has on CO2. Then these two-foot rock cylinders are buried in the ground. While carbon dioxide removal is essential, the amount of money it would cost to impact slowing climate change is so large it’d never be feasible.
UCSC’s Deep Read organizers selected Elizabeth Kolbert’s ‘Under a White Sky’ for various reasons: it’s a different genre than previous years’ selections, the subject matter is quite relevant and the theme of traveling around the world is poignant in post-Covid society.
“For the last 30 years—more if you go back to 1965—we have lived as if someone, or some technology, were going to rescue us from ourselves,” Kolbert says. “We are still living that way now. [Climate Change] isn’t going to have a happy ending, a win-win ending, or, on a human timescale, any ending at all. Whatever we might want to believe about our future, there are limits, and we are up against them.”
Kolbert’s time in Louisiana, where she explores the rising seas inundating the Mississippi Delta, which leads to the area south of New Orleans essentially breaking off into the Atlantic, hits home.
“If Delaware or Rhode Island had lost that much territory,” Kolbert writes, “America would have only 49 states. Every hour and a half, Louisiana sheds another football field’s worth of land.”
Kolbert notes that every coastal city is like New Orleans, committed to living in what’s pretty much a place that people should have never lived in. However, no matter the cost, financial or human, it’s impossible to convince residents to abandon their homes. I connected to the flooding in Pajaro and the levee breaches that have been going on since 1955, just six years after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers built the Pajaro River levee system—it also breached in 1958, 1995 and 1998. Most recently, on March 10, 2023, multiple breaches led to flooding that impacted ag land and Hwy 1, which had to be closed for several days.
I asked Kolbert how she’d approach the reporting of the Pajaro River levee; there are so many angles: the science, politics, socioeconomic ramifications, etc. How do you separate emotion and frustration from science?
ELIZABETH KOLBERT: That’s a really good question. As a journalist, you are always confronted with that, I suppose. I don’t see it as different in some ways from reporting on a lot of other problems in the world. But I think that’s what distinguishes some of the subjects that I already read from your typical journalistic disaster stories that people cover. The inexorable nature of climate change as you alluded to earlier. We’re not going to stop sea level rise at this point. That’s really not possible. So, we will be dealing with the consequences of climate change forever. And that’s a heavy number.
Any story has a lot of angles, and it is completely embedded in politics and economics. I should also add that those two are intimately related as well. In Under a White Sky, I try to look at these proposed or, in some cases, actual interventions that are designed to sort of counteract previous interventions.
I tried to look at them on their own terms and not get into the many, many, many political ramifications they all have; that would have been a book that is simply too humongous to write. And this is a very pointed book; it’s trying to make a point succinctly.
Anthropocene is the buzzword of the book. How would you define it?
It refers to the idea that humans have become the dominant force on the planet. So, we are now geological; our activities shape the earth and its future on a geological scale.
When humans began messing with everything, for better or worse, you say that’s when it became the point of no return. Nothing will ever return to how it was before, so we can’t simply walk away and hope for the best. We must continue to tinker, or things will just get worse.
I think the book lets you draw your own conclusions on that. I think what it’s identifying, what it’s really looking at is our tendency or our reluctance to go back and, in some cases, as you say, the inability to go back. There are simply too many people on the planet right now to just stop doing what we’re doing. And so, we are sort of compelled to continue.
In 201 pages, you report everywhere, from Chicago to Australia to Death Valley. It seems like it could be random, but it’s very intentional. Did you start with an outline? How did you connect the dots, like the story of the carp in the Chicago River to the Mojave pupfish?
The first story I reported on was in the middle of the book about the coral reef, and then the other stories, in some cases, found me. In other cases, I went looking for them.
Out of all the stories in Under a White Sky, what was the most complex for you to understand before writing about it?
Good question. I’m trying to think. You know, most of them are pretty straightforward, I guess. The most complicated science is actually in the carbon removal chapter, which is a chapter in which I go to Iceland. So that was probably the most difficult to master the subject matter, if that makes sense.
Hubris is a recurring theme in Under a White Sky. I think it’s a recurring theme in most science, especially when we get into gene editing and geoengineering. On many of the recent podcasts you’ve appeared on discussing your book, hubris is brought up with a negative connotation. Would you say that’s a fair assessment—hubris’ association with science is a negative attribute?
I certainly would. I think we see it playing out all the time now. Hubris is a good word, and heedlessness is another good word. We just plunge ahead without thinking through the consequences on a humongous scale. And then, even when we’re warned about the consequences, even when the consequences are overwhelmingly apparent, we are very reluctant to change the way we do things. And that’s rooted in psychology, it’s rooted in the economy, it’s rooted in politics, but it’s going to be the end of the world as we know it.
Is there anything you reported that meant a lot to you but didn’t make it into Under a White Sky?
No, not really. I did get to see one really interesting experiment—it was going on in the Australian Outback, and it didn’t make it into the book for complicated reasons. But most of the things I set out to report on for the book made it. You don’t have—maybe some people do—much luxury of going out and doing a tremendous amount of reporting and just leaving it on the cutting room floor. So, I didn’t do that for this book. I’m happy to say.
As you were reporting and writing the book, did you have any unexpected epiphanies as everything was coming together?
The point of the book is this pattern that I started to see everywhere; that’s sort of what motivated the book. I would not say there was exactly an epiphany, but I would say that I have continued to see that pattern everywhere. I constantly am coming up against new instances where people’s responses are, “Well, things are kind of messed up because of our actions, and we’re going just to have to take more actions to unmess them up.” I keep seeing that pattern.
I want to talk a little about your style of journalism. I’d almost say it’s your trademark, the way you describe the physical attributes of all of your sources when they are introduced. Has this always been something you’ve employed?
I think my style is definitely influenced by having worked for many years for The New Yorker, which doesn’t really have pictures. You have to give your reader a picture in words of what you’re looking at, who you’re talking about.
You’re often lumped into the “New Journalism” category alongside Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Hunter Thompson and others. New Journalism has always been difficult for me to grasp because I don’t see any other way of effectively relaying information of value to readers. What are your thoughts on the term New Journalism?
Honestly, I think it was a useful term back in the ’70s when it was [still relatively new]. We’re all sort of practicing the New Journalism now. We’ve lost the old journalism, which was a much more stayed and sort of stolid reporting where the idea was writing from a particular position of often anonymity. You’re just the filter for the information. Then people like Tom Wolfe and Hunter Thompson came along and became characters with this tremendous amount of voice in their work. That was the New Journalism; we’re all in their shadow now.
Are you currently working on anything?
I don’t have another book in the works. I’m sort of toying with some things, but there’s nothing I want to talk about right now. Sorry about that.
Elizabeth Kolbert will be in conversation with podcaster Ezra Klein on Sunday, May 21, at 4pm. Free. Seating is first come, first served. UC Santa Cruz Quarry Amphitheater, 1156 High St., Santa Cruz. thi.ucsc.edu/deepread
The air is warm and thick with salt Friday evening at Beach Flats Park, just steps from the Boardwalk. Three teenage girls from the Senderos nonprofit perform traditional Mexican dances, swirling their skirts to mariachi music in front of the Nueva Vista Community Resource Center at the neighborhood park. People gather around tables while kids run through the playground, all in celebration of the center hitting its 40th anniversary.
Like the community it serves, Nueva Vista Community Resources has endured challenges and persisted throughout the decades. Originally opened up as La Familia in 1983, the center provided crisis counseling and women’s medical services, among other things, to a low-income, high-crime community.
In 2008, when the center faced imminent closure, Community Bridges stepped in to keep it running. Now, it continues to ensure the Beach Flats and lower Ocean communities, Santa Cruz’s highest minority-concentrated neighborhoods, have access to things like clothes, food, counseling services and more.
While Nueva Vista tries to fill in the gaps to support low-income residents to make ends meet, the neighborhood faces challenges beyond the scope of a resource center.
According to locals, the neighborhood’s longtime residents are increasingly at risk of relocation as the city continues to be mainly unaffordable to low-income families—despite that neighborhood being a haven for lower-cost housing throughout the past decades.
How did the Beach Flats and Ocean Street neighborhoods become the lower-income, minority neighborhoods in Santa Cruz? In an increasingly expensive city, what does the future of these neighborhoods look like?
BEACH FLATS HISTORY
When Eduardo Montesino, the now-mayor of Watsonville, recalls growing up in Beach Flats in the ’80s, a few things stand out to him. He remembers people watching at the Boardwalk in the summer with his cousins, partly because of the limited access to green space. They walked around the bustling Boardwalk, occasionally stopping by the small park—what he described as a small square slab of concrete and dirt—to hang around.
Montesino remembers sharing a studio with his mother, father and siblings—and the cockroaches. He recalls the “cockroach bomb” they would set off in the house to kill the critters—a familiar neighborhood routine.
He remembers the walk from his neighborhood to where the downtown Trader Joes now stands, the closest grocery store to his home. And he recalls the prostitutes strolling the sidewalks in the evenings and drug deals happening on street corners.
“It was probably a very tough neighborhood,” Montesino says. “But as a kid, you never saw that because you didn’t have that broader context.”
It wasn’t always considered a tough neighborhood.
The Beach Flats neighborhood can be traced back to the beginning of the 20th century when the boardwalk was built in 1907. According to the book History & Future Of The Santa Cruz Waterfront: A Historic Perspective of the Wharf-Mouth, Beach Hill, Beach Street, Beach Flats, Depot District, And Riverside Park, written by local historian Eric Ross Gibson, by the 1920s, scores of families had built bungalows and cottages near the boardwalk as summer retreats. Grocery stores, restaurants and boat rentals soon followed.
The area remained popular until 1955 when, after a devastating flood, the Army Corps of Engineers built levees to protect the town. Gibson writes that this flood changed everything for the neighborhood, which was now less appealing to tourists as the ocean views were obstructed and access to the river changed. The neighborhood rental market dropped in value as landowners struggled to find people to fill their units.
Today, most of the rentals in the neighborhood are the same ones built before the flood, and the area is now made up of primarily lower-income, working-class minorities of Latin descent.
Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley attributes the change in the makeup of this neighborhood in part to the accessibility of the wharf and Boardwalk.
“Many of the workers in the flats may be in the service industry, in the gardening industry or maybe working at professional jobs at the boardwalk,” Keeley says. “The proximity to many of the employment centers has historically drawn Latinx workers, many of whom have immigrated to the United States.”
According to many who live there and data from 2019, the neighborhood is home to most of the city’s service industry employees. For a town with a tourism tax that is estimated to bring in $12 million in revenue in 2023, these workers are essential to the economic vitality of Santa Cruz.
Assistant professor in Anthropology and Social Change Michelle Glowa, who has researched the Beach Flats neighborhood, says this neighborhood deserves the same rights and privileges as other parts of the city.
“This isn’t the doormat to the tourists’ playground and the boardwalk,” Glowa says. “This is an important community. And these are our friends and neighbors who live here in Santa Cruz and should have every right to decide what their life and community look like.”
NEIGHBORHOOD CHALLENGES
Montesino, whose sister and mother still live in the neighborhood, says that when he visits, he notices that the area has changed in some ways from his childhood. It’s safer; there are fewer drugs and less prostitution; there has been clear investment in green spaces like the park and the community garden.
But some aspects have remained the same. From accounts Montesino has heard, conditions of many of the homes in the Ocean and Beach Flats neighborhoods are uninhabitable: mold, lead contamination and the simple wear and tear that comes from cottages and bungalows remaining from the early 1900s. Still, longtime residents are being pushed out of the neighborhood because of rising rent costs.
“I have a longtime family friend; he had to move out to Watsonville,” Montesino says. “He works at a restaurant in the wharf and originally lived in Santa Cruz for many years. But it just became unaffordable, and there’s not enough space.”
Glowa’s research reinforces this anecdote on a larger scale. In 2015 during her graduate program, she worked with UCSC students to survey residents about what they viewed as their primary concerns and challenges. The top concerns included neglectful landlords, poor living conditions and displacement due to high rent and lack of green space.
“It’s a different context from now, but today there are still many of the same concerns, if not even more exacerbated,” Glowa says.
It will be critical, Glowa adds, that as the city tries to address any affordability issues, it prioritizes the voices of the residents who live there now to avoid residents being priced out of their homes.
“It’s a concern that when housing gets improved, that can benefit neighbors and community, and it can also be a process that leads to some displacement,” she says. “Unless you have strong advocacy from those tenants, they can stay in their neighborhood and where they’ve been living. [The city needs to] make sure to have tenants’ voices at the table and empower tenants to be a part of the development process.”
LOOKING AHEAD
Keeley admits that the Beach Flats neighborhood has been neglected in previous years.
“It’s in an area that could be relatively easily flooded,” Keeley says. “It’s a neighborhood somewhat noisier than the rest of the community because it’s immediately adjacent to the boardwalk and all its activity. It is densely populated, and the neighborhood streets are relatively narrow. It’s a neighborhood that, over the decades, has, in my judgment, been treated differently. I think that’s changed over the past years.”
And it will continue to change, he says. Keeley points to the city’s shift to district elections, which ideally will hold representatives accountable for the interests of the neighborhoods they represent. He also says that the city’s upcoming housing mandates from the state will bring an influx of affordable housing units that will help offset rising rents.
A transformation plan for the neighborhood is also in the works. The city is just in the beginning stages of the project, collecting community input from the residents in the neighborhood.
But, he says, there will be an upcoming community meeting this Thursday to design and build an affordable housing bond measure that will be placed on the 2024 ballot. Keeley also attended the Nueva Vista anniversary party, where he told community members about the chance to give feedback on the bond measure, so he expects input from the Beach Flats neighborhood.
“I think we have an opportunity to focus on a range of housing affordability as we’re complying with state law,” Keeley says. “There will be, by law, more extremely low, very low, low, and moderate-income units by a lot. We will see a rather major transformation of downtown Santa Cruz. I think that increasing housing, which is affordable in this strategy, will be helpful to Beach Flats residents.”
In March 2020, as news of the Covid virus rapidly transmitted worldwide, the federal government declared the pandemic a Public Health Emergency (PHE). Through the declaration, the government could provide free vaccines and Covid testing and expand programs like Medicare to include these measures. The PHE declaration officially ended on Thursday, May 11.
Covid cases have subsided significantly just in the past year. In January 2022, the county had a 7-day average of 261 cases per 100,000 people. As of May 8, 2023, the 7-day average was 2.5 cases per 100,000 residents. Deaths from the virus are also less likely than during last January’s peak, with no deaths reported in May 2023. To get a better picture of the Covid caseload and understand what this change in emergency status will mean locally, Good Times spoke to Dave Ghilarducci, the Deputy Health Officer and Emergency Medical Services Director of Santa Cruz County.
Why is the emergency declaration ending now?
DAVE GHILARDUCCI: Covid exposed a lot of vulnerabilities in our system, like access issues and barriers to healthcare. The declaration brought support: free testing, free vaccinations, free medications and education. Now it’s the responsibility of the healthcare system to provide these services. A never-ending state of emergency was never sustainable. Now that the threat has changed, it makes sense to revert to our usual healthcare system to handle this disease, like it handles flu and other infections.
What changes will residents experience after the declaration ends?
Although the federal health emergency expired on May 11, California has extended benefits for an additional six months, giving free access to vaccination, testing and treatment as long as supplies are available. Health insurance plans must cover those without cost to the recipient until Nov. 11. Under the declaration, automatic re-enrollment in MediCal expires. We have made efforts to educate people to stay enrolled.
How will the county continue to monitor Covid?
We will no longer be using Covid case counts to measure the severity of Covid, as there is no accurate way to collect case counts. The majority of testing takes place at home now, instead of a laboratory or testing center, where that data collection traditionally has occurred. People with mild cases might not report them.
Fortunately, we monitor case counts by analyzing wastewater data. The amount of virus in sewage at treatment plants indicates whether cases are rising, falling or steady. That data informs educational efforts and mask recommendations. If the virus spikes in one part of the county, we consider focused approaches for that location. Our website, santacruzhealth.org, shows wastewater levels dropping and hospitalizations down to 16 in early May.
What does the future of living with Covid look like?
We’ve had flu in human society for as long as we know. We know it can be deadly, especially to vulnerable populations like the elderly and the immunocompromised. Most of us have had Covid once, have been vaccinated or both, which does minimize impact, hospitalizations and deaths. We will probably see Covid fall into a seasonal pattern where it will be most common during the winter, when people gather indoors, and annual vaccinations, especially for the vulnerable. It is helpful for healthy people to vaccinate, as they become less likely to spread the disease. Many people will wear masks to protect themselves and others in specific settings or during Covid and flu season. In the Bay Area, San Benito County and Santa Cruz, health officers, who communicate often, see things gradually returning to normal with some location-specific interventions as required. School closures will be highly unlikely.
Will there be masks or vaccine mandates going forward?
Public health policies related to masks or vaccination probably aren’t useful at this stage. We closely monitor the number of hospitalizations, and if we see them getting strained with Covid admissions to the point of being unable to function, then we may have to revisit masking and requiring vaccinations for healthcare workers.
If Covid is less of a threat to individuals and the healthcare system, what are the County Health Department’s most pressing issues?
Now we are dealing with opioid overdoses, an explosion in syphilis, issues stemming from homelessness. Some of these are aftershocks from the Covid earthquake that has reverberated with childhood mood disorders and behavioral healthcare—there’s so much work in public health, it’s incredible.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries dramatist Samuel Beckett, winner of the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature, wrote 22 plays. The shortest was Breath. It has no dialogue or actors and lasts less than a minute. It begins and ends with a recording of the cry of a newborn baby. In between there are the sounds of someone breathing and variations in the lighting. I recommend you draw inspiration from Breath in the coming weeks, Aries. Be succinct and pithy. Call on the powers of graceful efficiency and no-nonsense effectiveness. Relish the joys of shrewd simplicity.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In the coming weeks, you Bulls must brook no bullies or bullying. Likewise, you should tolerate no bullshit from people trying to manipulate or fool you. Be a bulwark of integrity as you refuse to lower your standards. Bulk up the self-protective part of your psyche so you will be invincibly immune to careless and insensitive spoilers. Your word of power is BUILD. You will align yourself with cosmic rhythms as you work to create situations that will keep you strong and stable during the next 12 months.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): How much do you believe in your power to become the person you want to be? Ninety percent? Fifty-five? Twenty? Whatever it is, you can increase it in the coming weeks. Life will conspire with you to raise your confidence as you seek new ways to fulfill your soul’s purpose. Surges of grace will come your way as you strive with intense focus to live your most meaningful destiny. To take maximum advantage of this opportunity, I suggest you enjoy extra amounts of quiet, meditative time. Request help from the deepest core of your intelligence.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Early in the 19th century, cultural researchers Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm gathered an array of old folk stories and published a collection of what we now call fairy tales. Because the two brothers wanted to earn money, they edited out some graphic elements of the original narratives. For example, in the Grimms’ revised version, we don’t get the juicy details of the princess fornicating with the frog prince once he has reverted to his handsome human form. In the earlier but not published stories of Rumpelstiltskin, the imp gets so frustrated when he’s tricked by the queen that he rips himself apart. I hope you will do the opposite of the Brothers Grimm in the coming weeks, Cancerian. It’s crucial that you reveal and expose and celebrate raw, unvarnished truths.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Is there a job you would love to have as your primary passion, but it’s different from the job you’re doing? Is there a calling you would delight in embracing, but you’re too consumed by the daily routine? Do you have a hobby you’d like to turn into a professional pursuit? If you said even a partial yes to my questions, Leo, here’s good news: In the coming months, you will have an enhanced ability to make these things happen. And now is an excellent time to get underway.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo-born Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) was a versatile virtuoso. He excelled as an essayist, biographer, playwright, editor, poet and lexicographer. How did he get so much done? Here’s one clue. He took his own advice, summed up in the following quote: “It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote. Present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.” Johnson’s counsel is perfect for you right now, Virgo. Forget about the future and be focused on the present. Dive into the interesting work and play that’s right in front of you.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I would love you to go searching for treasure, and I hope you launch your quest soon. As you gather clues, I will be cheering you on. Before you embark, though, I want to make sure you are clear about the nature of the treasure you will be looking for. Please envision it in glorious detail. Write down a description of it and keep it with you for the next seven weeks. I also suggest you carry out a fun ritual to formally mark your entry into the treasure-hunting chapter of your life.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In the coming weeks, you’ll be guided by your deep intelligence as you explore and converse with the darkness. You will derive key revelations and helpful signs as you wander around inside the mysteries. Be poised and lucid, dear Scorpio. Trust your ability to sense what’s important and what’s not. Be confident that you can thrive amidst uncertainty as you remain loyal to your core truths. No matter how murky this challenge may seem, it will ultimately be a blessing. You will emerge both smarter and wiser.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): If you take the Bible’s teachings seriously, you give generously to the poor and you welcome immigrants. You regard the suffering of others as being worthy of your compassionate attention and you express love not just for people who agree with you and share your cultural traditions, but for everyone. Numerous Biblical verses, including many attributed to Jesus Christ, make it clear that living according to these principles is essential to being a good human. Even if you are not Jewish or Christian, Sagittarius, I recommend this approach to you. Now is an excellent time to hone your generosity of spirit and expand your urge to care for others.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In 1982, Capricorn actor Ben Kingsley won an Oscar for his role in the film Gandhi. Then his career declined. In an animated movie in 1992, he voiced the role of an immortal frog named F.R.O.7. who worked as a James Bond-like secret agent. It was a critical and financial disaster. But Kingsley’s fortunes rebounded, and he was nominated for Academy Awards in 2002 and 2003. Then his trajectory dipped again. He was nominated for the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actor for four separate films between 2005 and 2008. Now, at age 79, he’s rich and famous and mostly remembered for the great things he has done. I suggest we make him your role model for the coming months. May he inspire you to emphasize your hits and downplay your misses.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I’m devoted to cultivating the art of relaxation. But I live in a world dominated by stress addicts and frenzied overachievers. Here’s another problem: I aspire to be curious, innocent and open-minded, but the civilization I’m embedded in highly values know-it-all experts who are very sure they are in command of life’s secrets. One further snag: I’m an ultra-sensitive creator who is nourished by original thinking and original feeling. And yet I constantly encounter formulaic literalists who thrive on clichés. Now here’s the good news: I am a successful person! I do what I love and enjoy an interesting life. Here’s even more good news, Aquarius: In the next 12 months, you will have a knack for creating rhythms that bring you closer than ever to doing what you love and enjoying an interesting life.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Most of us suffer from at least one absurd, irrational fear. I have a daft fear of heights, even when I’m perfectly safe, and a manic fear of mosquitoes dive-bombing me as I sleep, an event that has only happened four times in my life. My anxiety about running out of money is more rational, though, as is my dread of getting sick. Those worries help motivate me to work hard to earn a living and take superb care of my health. What about you, Pisces? Do you know which of your fears are preposterous and which make at least some sense? The coming weeks will be a favorable time to get a good handle on this question. Ask yourself: “Which of my fears are misdirected or exaggerated, and which are realistic and worthy of my attention?”
mposter syndrome is a thing. For me, it happens most intensely when I visit Shoppers Corner.
I know it sounds weird. But it’s real. All the team members there are genuinely friendly; why are they so happy to see me? I am not this likable.
The hot Corner is on my mind because The Best of Santa Cruz special issue now appears on newsstands, and S.C. cleans up among S.C. voters, deservedly so. The community pillar took home seven honors, including Best Cheese Selection, Best Wine Selection, Best Butcher, Best Grocery Store, Best Produce, Best Mural/Public Art and Best Green Business.
FWIW, I’d vote for Shoppers Corner for Best Vibe, too (new category!). It’s one of my happy places, and I know that’s true for many, including third-generation owner Andre Beauregard.
“We like to have fun while we are getting it done,” he says. “That’s kind of [our] philosophy here.”
Another special issue will feature Shoppers Corner when Good Times’ Visitors Guide lands next month.
The Best Of publication and the Visitors Guide remind me just how many remarkable spots this community has. Shoppers Corner ranks near the top, and that was before it set out to evolve its impact further.
The grocery store earned certification from the California Green Business Network a half decade back but didn’t stop there.
By installing solar panels, limiting energy consumption, managing waste streams (including food scraps) and practicing mindful landscaping, among other undertakings—including partnering with vendors on their habits, which creates a swell of cascading benefits—Shoppers is now up for CGBN’s Innovator Tier of green business certification.
It has a chance to be the first grocery store in the state to earn that status.
“People might be surprised by the behind-the-scenes things we are always working on,” Beauregard says. “We have been examining all the details of our environmental policy, taking it as far as we can.”
TRUCKIN’
Food Trucks A Go Go is back and revving up flavor 5-8pm Fridays starting May 19 in Scotts Valley. Scrumptious Fish & Chips, Epoch Eats, Kuki’s Bowls, SNB, Parker Presents Oysters, Tacos El Chuy, Cracked Cookies and Aunt LaLi’s all participate. The SVEF Beer & Wine Garden flows freely (and benefits local schools). Brenda (one-name artist respect due) paints faces. Santa Cruz Voice broadcasts a live remote. Parking is free. foodtrucksagogo.com
WINE TIME
Santa Cruz Mountains Passport Days hit May 20. A wealth of quality wineries customizes tasting experiences against the backdrop of the surrounding hills as tasting flights await ticket holders at each winery. Off to Bargetto and Beauregard, Fellom Ranch and Fernwood Cellars, Windy Oaks and Wrights Station, a few of the three dozen participating spots. winesofthesantacruzmountains.com/events/passport
HOOKED UP
Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust perpetuates its thoughtful support for local fisherfolk and undernourished communities with the latest installment of Get Hooked! at Home in Soquel on June 8. A chunk of the proceeds from Chef Brad Briske’s predictably incredible multi-course oceanic feast will directly support the Community Seafood Program, which provides healthy seafood meals to those in need. montereybayfisheriestrust.org
In 2020, the CZU fires ravaged the Santa Cruz Mountains, destroying 1,490 structures and an untold number of trees.
A little more than two years later, many of those downed trees washed down streams into the ocean. During the storms in January and February, the trees smashed into the wharf at Seascape State Beach, heavily damaging the Capitola Wharf and causing millions of dollars of damage.
That was a perfect example of how forest health—and wildfire risk—ties into multiple aspects of life on the Central Coast, says Santa Cruz County Supervisor Zach Friend, who was part of an all-day seminar hosted by the California Wildfire and Forest Resilience Task Force.
“There is an interrelation between climate disasters,” Friend says. “Dead and felled trees from the CZU fire became the same trees that caused damage in Seacliff and Capitola. We have to look at, and plan for, this connection of extreme drought and extreme flood and see that one disaster can lead to other challenges years after the event.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom created the Task Force. It calls for a comprehensive statewide strategy for wildfire and forest management, which includes aligning the alphabet soup of local, state, federal and tribal agencies that are involved in forest health and wildfire management. At the heart of the seminar was the knowledge that much of California is facing the possibility of a catastrophic fire season.
“We all know the climate is changing, and conditions are riper and riper for catastrophic wildfire,” says California Natural Resources Agency Secretary Wade Crowfoot. “We are just months away from what could be another devastating wildfire.”
More importantly, the differing landscapes and climates throughout the state require different regional approaches to management.
“One thing I’ve learned is that wildfire threats are very different, depending on where you are in California,” Crowfoot says.
In the Central Coast, there have been nine forest health projects and 71 wildfire prevention efforts thanks to the Task Force. In addition, fuel reduction efforts have been on 32,000 acres and prescribed burns on 23,000 acres. Crowfoot says the Task Force has 1,200 wildfire management projects in the works, but there needs to be more.
“I think we need to move much more quickly than we have today,” he says.
Most importantly, managing the state’s forests and reducing wildfire risks also requires the collaboration of multiple agencies and organizations.
“This is a collective effort,” says Jennifer Eberlien, a regional forester with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region. “Not one entity can do it by themselves.”
Chris Dicus, a natural resources management professor at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, showed the audience a photo of heavy undergrowth exacerbated by the heavy rains as an example of the state’s current wildfire risk.
“It looks like a battlefield, and that’s because it is a battlefield,” he says. “Wildfire is going to be a problem, so we have to get over the idea that it’s not going to happen to us.”
Dicus says that management and prevention efforts must include shaping this battlefield by, among other things, creating refuge areas in mountainous regions where evacuation is difficult or impossible during wildfires and creating ways for firefighters to access the sites.
La Crema’s 2021 Pinot Noir is available all over, and it’s a jolly good bottle of red wine—it’s only $18, too! The grapes are from Monterey, and the wine is bottled in Santa Rosa at the La Crema Estate. It’s a delicious Pinot; I’m enjoying a glass of it right now!
“Aromas of boysenberry, black plum and rhubarb are followed by flavors of red plum, blackberry and pomegranate,” the winemaker explains. “The 2021 vintage presents a plush texture and balanced acidity.”
Various options await you when you visit La Crema: Estate Tasting; Barrel Tasting; Picnic Table; Best of the Vine Estate Tour. Check out La Crema’s Picnic at the Grove series—a Saturday afternoon of La Crema wine, snacks, lawn games and live music. The events happen July 8, Aug. 12, Sept. 9 and Oct. 7, from 3-6pm. On Dec. 2, the Sparkling Holiday Soiree is 6-9pm. Reservations are required.
La Crema Estate at Saralee’s Vineyard, 3575 Slusser Road, Windsor, 707-525-6200; lacrema.com
CHAMINADE’S VINE TO VIEW
The Vine to View (named for the fantastic panorama of the Monterey Bay) farm-to-table dinners at Chaminade Resort & Spa’s magnificent resort kick off on June 16 with Equinox Wines. Then, Maker’s Mark follows on July 21, J. Lohr Vineyards on Aug. 18, Alfaro Family Vineyards on Sept. 15 and Calerrain Wines on Oct. 20. Executive Chef Avram Samuels and his team create thoughtful food and wine pairings for each of the five-course gourmet dinners served on the outdoor patio. There are spectacular accommodations should you decide to spend the night.
