Located just a couple blocks from Twin Lakes Beach, Deke Ramirez has owned his namesake Deke’s Market and Deli for 18 years. Originally born and raised in the Central Valley, he moved to the Bay Area after college and worked in the tech industry for 10 years.
When the chance to purchase a failing market and convenience store presented itself, Ramirez decided to take his shot. He revamped the business and added a deli side, nicknamed “In Mah’ Belly Deli,” that specializes in artisan hand-crafted sandwiches and salads.
Their signature sando is the Hippie Tri-Tip with tender, flavorful steak complemented by barbeque sauce, Sriracha mayo, provolone cheese and pepperoncini between a French roll. Popular poultry picks abound, like the Chicken Salad sandwich and Chicken Pesto sandwich, and salad options are headlined by the Chicken Garden Salad and the Asian Chicken salad. The Force Feed Breakfast Burrito is packed with French fries (yes, French fries), eggs, cheese, avocado and customizable proteins. Deli hours are 9am-3pm Mon-Fri and 10am-3pm Sat/Sun.
What propelled you to open Deke’s?
DEKE RAMIREZ: I really liked the Santa Cruz community and that is what inspired me to want to open a business here. A local neighborhood market was a perfect opportunity to take advantage of that dream. Owning a small business has come with many challenges, and even though I’ve had an opportunity to pull out several times, stepping away has never been an option for me. It’s an honor to still be serving the local community, and I’ve never regretted leaving my previous career in tech.
What sets your sandwiches apart? DR: For one, our portions are very generous and we always listen to customer feedback in order to continuously improve upon our quality. We pride ourselves on using mostly local vendors, especially for our produce and bread. We have a lot of passion for providing great value to our customers, and making
An apple is more than an apple for Larkin Valley growers Freddy Menge and Ellen Baker of Epicenter Orchard.
It’s a dance with history, an exclamation of flavor and a meeting place between farmer and eater.
“A really good apple is a discovery—’What am I tasting,’ ‘Where am I?’ ‘What time is it?’ ”Menge says with an easy chuckle.
Menge and Baker are enthusiastic members of the Monterey Bay chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers.They also tend avocados, and sell at the Santa Cruz Westside Farmers’ Market on Saturdays.
For November they’ll bring Allen’s Everlasting apples and Brushy Mountain Limbertwig apples, Calville Blancs and Crabby Ladies, and then Pink Parfaits and fleeting red Rubaiyats later in the month. Dana’s Hovey pears, too, and curated tasting boxes (while supplies last).
Many of those old-school apples, including varieties hundreds of years old, will also appear at underrated Jack O’Neill Restaurant all month.
That’s where an apple—or more accurately, hundreds of apples—transform into a lot more in the hands of Exec Chef Gus Trejo, Chef de Cuisine Greg Karjala, pastry chef Cece Bauer and their team.
The apples will leap to life in miso apple butter on fresh-catch lingcod, on top of grilled quail with brioche, celery root and chili sumac, and roasted in rugosa squash ravioli with pomegranate and a brown butter sauce.
Every month Trejo likes to spotlight an abundant and top-tasting produce crop (last month was Mariquita Farms pumpkin).
“The goal is to educate and practice,” he says. “I get excited about this! I’m hoping I can get to the point where I’m not having to leave my community to ‘gather’ foods.”
Trejo loves the spark the monthly custom brings to his kitchen with taste tests, recipe play and information (“It gets the team going,” he says, ““There are 2,500 varieties of apples!”), the verve of his suppliers (“They’re super passionate about what they’re doing!”) and the perspective it provides, in more ways than one.
“It gives people a different way to look at apples, and Freddy has some unique apples you wouldn’t think are apples,” he says. “I want people to come in and try an apple in a way they haven’t before.”
Davenport Roadhouse likes to remind locals it awaits “just two songs north of Santa Cruz.” That doesn’t stop the saloon-restaurant-inn from simmering other reasons to head up the coast (beyond burgers, fried pickles and giddyup garlic bread)—namely Taco Tuesday, Trivia Wednesday and Thirsty Thursday, which all stack $5 deals (for things like two tacos, margaritas, draft beers, street pizza and well drinks, depending on the day).
Then there’s live music on weekends too; this week the sequence is Slow Coast (Friday), Joe Jester (Saturday) and the Breaux Show (Sunday). davenportroadhouse.com
KEEP IT COMING
Turbo news nibbles: Speaking of apples, Live Earth Farm hosts Apple-palooza Nov. 11 with cider tutorials, applesauce canning, take-home treats and more, liveearthfarm.net; also Nov. 11, Capitola Sip & Stroll flows with wine and beer tastings and 28 participating wineries for $45, capitolavillage.com; Café Gratitude (aka Café GSC) in downtown Santa Cruz has closed for good; at last month’s Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Chili Cook-Off, two local faves shined: East Side Eatery won people’s choice and Far West Fungi earned the nod for best vegetarian.
This is a tale of two radio stations that were voices for the Santa Cruz community, burned to the ground by ambition and a changing media landscape, and how the charred bones of their community service were reborn to rise over Santa Cruz like two reborn Phoenixes.
While many people deserve credit for bringing back community radio to Santa Cruz, this is the story of two women who were its genesis.
From the ashes of KUSP, broadcaster Rachel Goodman marshaled the Santa Cruz community to rebuild a new station, KSQD. From the thinned ranks of KSCO, Rosemary Chalmers, the morning voice of Santa Cruz for three decades, led the exodus of her peers to a new experiment in internet community radio, SantaCruzVoice.com.
From Ashes to the Flight of the Squid
Rachel Goodman grew up in Berkeley and interned at KPFA, went to UC Santa Cruz where she started broadcasting at KZSC. She worked all over the country as a documentary producer (won a Peabody Award) and eventually hosted Talk of the Bay on KUSP and now KSQD. I asked her, “Why do you love community radio?”
“There’s something magic about it. It’s free. You can just dial it in on this little device in your car. And it feels like these people are your friends, you know, because they care about your local community and they’re making references to it. We’re not just catering to the local community; we’re exporting Santa Cruz culture to the world. People come to visit here and go, ‘I love this place, I’m going to miss it.’ And then they go back to Iowa and they listen on the internet, because they want a little bit of Santa Cruz.”
The Crash of KUSP
When a beloved community institution needs a responsible guiding hand, one person will rise to restate the mission, to lead the way, and sometimes that person is insane. Hired for his fiscal acumen, Terry Green took the reins of KUSP and fired all the community volunteers.
“He fired all the local programmers that people had become attached to over 40 years,” Goodman remembers. Then Green purchased NPR programming until debt drove the station into bankruptcy and KUSP crashed and burned.
In the end it was all sold: the frequency, the content, the music, the broadcast equipment. KUSP, which had served the community as a vibrant community radio station since 1974, went off the air in 2016.
Goodman says, “There was always a tension at KUSP between ‘let’s make a lot of money from NPR and brand ourselves as the NPR station’, versus ‘it started as a community station with no NPR at all.’ We pleaded with the final KUSP board to cut expenses and move into a smaller space and go local. I was told that it could never work, nobody could ever pull that off.”
Rachel Goodman
It was a hard blow for the KUSP community, but there was one voice that kept insisting we build a community radio station from scratch. It sounded preposterous, but her voice wouldn’t go away. I was one of those who publicly applauded her, “Go Rachel, go!” but in the back of my mind I was thinking, “This girl is fucking crazy. You can’t just build a station out of nothing.”
For starters, the broadcast license would cost $250,000. Rachel had nothing, she’s a folk singer for God’s sake. She pitched everyone on the idea and got used to seeing eyes glaze over. Then one man, who had inherited a windfall and wanted to do something good for Santa Cruz, donated $50,000, Rachel says.
“At first I couldn’t believe it, I thought it was a prank call,” but he was real, a former KFAT fan, and suddenly the dream had the odor of legitimacy. Santa Cruzans want their community radio and donations started trickling in– $100, sometimes less. Then two donors who had made millions in tech and who love Santa Cruz asked her, “What do you need?” Rachel went shopping for a broadcast license.
I asked her, “How did you weather all the negativity and push forward with fundraising? What kept you going?”
“Anger and indignation at the despoiling of something good can motivate you, but it only takes you so far. There was also that feeling of, ‘You can’t have a town like Santa Cruz without a community radio station, it’s just wrong.’ And that can take you quite a ways.
“But, it was my husband Steve Colter, behind the scenes saying, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work, but I support you all the way.’ You know, just having someone to bounce ideas off of, or when things aren’t going well, having a shoulder to cry on. You can’t underestimate that level of support. And the rest of the board believing in this. If you’re the only one holding this vision, it’s not going to happen. It’s a community project, I’m just one of the village.”
Once they had the license, pro bono tech help appeared, then a brick and mortar space, and Rachel woke up in the middle of the night, “Oh my God, we need a radio signal!”
“Okay, this is going to happen.”
Rachel remembers the moment she knew The Squid was going to happen. After she tracks down the old KUSP broadcast equipment that had fallen into the hands of a repo man, she and Sandy Stone drive an old SUV to a warehouse in Vallejo, CA, and find stacks of old equipment, covered with cobwebs and dust.
In the middle of the night they bargain hard with a rough character standing in shadows and cut a deal for the worn out broadcast equipment. When engineer Sandy Stone said, ‘I can make this equipment send our signal,’ Rachel knew, “Okay, this is going to happen.”
Rachel says they went on the air in late 2019, “… right before the pandemic, the windstorms, the CZU fires and Jan. 6. With radio, we can report faster than print media, and reporting during those disasters was key to keeping the community informed.
“Look at us now, we’ve reached Monterey, we have programming about Big Sur and things people care about at the Monterey Jazz Festival. We recently purchased an additional frequency located on Fremont Peak; it extends KSQD’s potential from 187,000 to 645,000 listeners.” [10]
You can hear Rachel Goodman on KSQD 90.7 FM, or online at kqsd.org, Sundays from 1pm to 3pm, and Thursdays, 5pm to 6pm.
KSCO’s Laid-off Hosts Fly Anew as SantaCruzVoice.com
For the past 31 years Rosemary Chalmers was the morning voice on Good Morning Monterey Bay, broadcast on KSCO radio five days a week. I asked my wife Julie why she listened to Rosemary every morning.
“I like her voice. You can tell who she is, not by her talking about herself, but by the way she treats her guests and callers. She’s kind, strong, and lets others make their case, but is knowledgeable and clear about the truth.”
Will Rogers said that he never met a man he didn’t like. I’d like to introduce him to Michael Zwerling. KSCO is a commercial station, but all of the broadcasters who provided a robust community component that built the station’s following were fired onDec. 1, 2022. Thirty-two stunned local broadcasters exited.
Rosemary Chalmers
In five days, Rosemary got them talking. “Are we just going to give this all up? We’ve built this entire station, are we just going to let this guy pull the plug on us?” And like another Phoenix rising from the embers, the former KSCO employees banded together with Chalmers to create SantaCruzVoice.com.
These broadcasters have over 300 combined years of broadcasting experience and within six weeks they put the station together. So many work so hard that Rosemary insists she is but a piece, but from the beginning she was at the helm.
Good Morning Monterey Bay Rises Again
From 6 to 9 am, Monday through Friday, Rosemary does her magic. First, there is that British accent, but this is not your father’s BBC. It’s matronly sexy, made rough and warm by that infectious husky laugh, it makes you stop your morning coffee in mid-air; you know you don’t want to miss this next one.
Rosemary booms, “Oh, this one is jolly good. The local restaurant owner of Tortilla Town and other San Luis Obispo restaurants said in a now-deleted TikTok video, ‘Fxxk the locals, they’re not going to be the ones that make us money, right? They’re not who this place is designed for.’ ”
The howl of laughter on the SantaCruzVoice.com morning show could not be jollier, because “the locals” are exactly who Rosemary and her side-kick Bill Wolverton pledge to serve. “Local, local, local,” is their mantra, they laugh with the joy of redemption.
Rosemary and Bill carry on about news, life around Santa Cruz and their personal lives, and their schtick is that they are so intent on making sense of it all. The comedy flows naturally but always towards the edge of discovery.
As they reveal their own stumbling journey through modern life, we can all relate. Bill laments to Rosemary, “My phone is always listening to me, I was talking to my wife in the vicinity of my phone about rat traps and up on my Facebook feed are advertisements for rat traps. This is so disturbing.”
Then we hear the semi-weekly interview with State Senator John Laird and finally a reminiscence about Rosemary judging an apple pie eating contest, “I have not eaten apple pie in 15 years.”
Rosemary and her second banana, Wolverton, are there to have fun, but even through laughter, the focus is on survival information; like a discussion of where poisonous tilapia comes from and where it’s safe to buy it. We get the current location of two mountain lions, facts about the Monterey Jazz Festival, and an account of a dog rescue.
“Once I hear it and talk about it, it’s in my head,” says Chalmers, She has heard it all and has trained herself to remember it all. We have our own version of AI, Rosemary Intelligence.
Chalmers has no intention of retiring. “We’re up at 3:30 in the morning and I’m prepping all the way to 6 o’clock.I’ve been working with Bill Wolverton for 18 months and it was clear from the beginning that he would be a good foil for me. Susan Simon gets our local news together and so many people help us technically.”
Chalmers remembers the station’s birth. “I skydived twice. On the first one I hit like a bag of cement.”
Bill goes, “But you got back on the horse.”
“There were no horses involved, but I was dragged over the rocks by my parachute.”
“So why did you jump again?”
“I wanted to get it right.”
This might be the closest I get to how Santa Cruz Voice happened; Rosemary wanted to get it right.
Rosemary and Bill close with the classic Burns and Allen bit.
Bill: Say Goodbye Rosemary.
Rosemary: Goodbye Rosemary.
I hope you take some time to go to SantaCruzVoice.com and KSQD.org, and click the Schedule page; I’ll bet you find programs that will excite and inform you in ways that show you new possibilities.
These two women grabbed ahold and lifted the weight, the bones, the soul of community spirit and created platforms to let neighbors talk to neighbors. As one of the most beloved American voices to ever put on a red sweater would ask, “Would you be my neighbor?”
Voices at SantaCruzVoice.com
Charming, cantankerous, comedic, and with a cornucopia of Americana knowledge, “Sleepy” John Sandidge is the consummate roots music talk show host.
His radio resume stretches from KPIG in Santa Cruz, to the Grand Ol’ Opry in Nashville, with fans from West Cliff Drive to Europe. Sleepy John’s second banana is computer whiz Luigi Oppido. Luigi knows everything about tech, he is brilliant, likable, and very, very funny.
Sleepy John Sandidge
You can call Luigi and Sleepy John about your tech issues on Tuesdays from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm. Or you may catch them bantering with with a woman about how to use AI and hear her say, “I don’t need AI, my husband knows everything.”
On SantaCruzVoice.com, Christopher Carr hosts Cannabis Connection. If you want to know anything about weed, how to grow it, use it, license it, how to not abuse it, this guy knows. I shit you not, Chris is a bass player in a reggae band, Ancestree. You can ask him your cannabis questions every Friday from 5pm to 6pm.
Raconteur and radio salesman Michael Olson calls himself a duck out of water. “I’m a Montana farm boy. I went to UC Santa Cruz and studied English and Chinese literature. There’s a certain contrariness there.” He says this ultimately led to his show, China Now! (China, friend or foe?) You can call Michael Olson on his shows China Now!, Thursday 3 to 5pm, and Food Chain, Saturday 9 to 10am on SantaCruzVoice.com.
Don’t Touch That Dial, It’s Got Squid On It
Monday through Friday, KSQD 90.7 FM offers progressive staples like Amy Goodman at 8am, “Your Call” from KALW in San Francisco at 10am, and Tom Hartman at 4pm, but the spirit of the station comes from the local voices, from Rick Kleffel’s digital mixes at 9pm on Sundays, to “Unheard Voices” every Friday at 3pm with Reverend Elisha Christopher, to the afternoon drive “Talk of the Bay,” which features local hosts talking with guests about local social, cultural and political issues at 5pm . Andy’s show highlights local musicians with a mix of classic genres including Brooklyn Doo Wop.
Not only does he sing lead with his own hard working band (often at MJA Winery) but with his deep basso Brooklyn voice Andy says, “I grew up in Coney Island and four guys would sing acapella doo wop underneath my window at night. I’m still in touch with one of them.” You can hear Andy every Tuesday at 11am on KSQD, 90.7 FM.
Special thanks to Contributor Julie Flannery, for editing assistance during manuscript development.
It is perhaps one of the greatest ironies within the Santa Cruz County community that many of the people who labor in the vast agricultural fields of the Pajaro Valley cannot afford the food they harvest.
According to the County of Santa Cruz, one in 10 people—which amounts to more than 26,000 people in the county—are considered “food insecure.”
Rising costs at the grocery store, at the gas pump and when paying rent worsen the problem.
“People are being crippled by the cost of food,” said Susan True, CEO of Community Foundation Santa Cruz County.
To help ease this problem, Second Harvest Food Bank gathers and distributes food and other resources to people who need it.
The organization on Friday kicked off its annual Holiday Food & Fund Drive with a rally at Cabrillo College, with the goal of raising 4.5 million meals.
But even as the crowd cheered the announcement, SHFB director Erica Padilla-Chavez warned that the crisis is getting worse, despite post-pandemic predictions that the numbers would decrease.
The organization is now serving some 65,000 people per month, 20,000 of whom are children.
Worse, inflation has forced SHFB to reduce its goal from 5 million meals.
Still, Padilla-Chavez said that the community will pull through to help meet this year’s “very, very real goal.”
“We’re going to achieve it, because if there’s anything Second Harvest Food Bank community does it make that goal,” she said. “We are going to do this together, and I know our neighbors are going to be better off because of it.”
Cabrillo College President Matt Wetstein said that the problem is also affecting the state’s community college students. A report released in September shows that 20% said they were homeless, with 2/3 reporting food insecurity.
“That means that they are skipping meals, they’re not sure they can get nutritional meals for the week and they are struggling with finding food for themselves and their families,” Wetstein said.
Santa Cruz County Superintendent of Schools Faris Sabbah said that the food bank helps bring the community together to care for their neighbors in need.
“(It) is a collection of people in our community that are coming together that are saying, ‘I am going to care not just for myself and my family, I am not only going to care about the people I know, I am going to care not only about my neighbors, But I am going take a stand to care about anybody who’s feeling hunger,’” Sabbah said. “To me that is so beautiful and powerful.”
•••To make a donation, you can drop food off at any of the Second Harvest food barrels throughout the county, click here or visit bit.ly/3QnyjAu.
Scotts Valley police arrested a 36-year-old San Lorenzo Valley man on burglary, rape and false imprisonment charges on Oct. 18.
When the call for service came in at 2:24pm, the day before, the Scotts Valley Police Department dispatched three officers to the location, in southern Scotts Valley.
“They arrived eight minutes later, and then—pretty immediately after—both of our detectives responded,” said Det. Sgt. Meredith Roberts. “It was a fresh crime.”
Investigators quickly developed a subject, who they said was a former partner of the victim.
According to Roberts, as part of the investigation, officers offered appropriate medical and emotional support resources to the victim.
“First and foremost, we made sure that everyone was safe,” she said. “We worked together to determine the best course of action moving forward.”
Police said they had to hunt the suspect down as he’d already left the scene.
“Detectives worked through the rest of the evening to find the suspect’s location,” Roberts said. “They were able to take him into custody the next morning.”
The arrest occurred in Ben Lomond without incident, she added.
Police said they aren’t aware of a restraining order taken out by the victim against the suspect.
Michael Richard Kelly was charged with eight crimes (seven felonies and a misdemeanor): felony burglary, felony domestic violence, felony assault with intent to rape, felony rape, felony oral sex assault, felony penetration with a foreign object, felony violent false imprisonment and misdemeanor possession of a controlled substance.
Kelly, who remains in custody with bail set at $150,000, is scheduled to make his next court appearance on Nov. 14.
Happy Halloween, your yearly reminder that no matter how normal cannabis becomes as legalization and popular acceptance grows across the land, there will always be cops and politicians out there spreading moral panic about the plant, and lots of reporters who are eager to help them do so.
This year, as every year, we’ve been subjected to a spate of scare stories about how some people like to toss cannabis edibles into the bags of trick-or-treaters. Never mind that 10 seconds of thought should be enough to convince anyone that this makes no sense. That’s because after 10 seconds, tops, the obvious question will arise: why would anybody do that? Cannabis is expensive. What would be the point of shelling out for the stuff only to slip it to a seven-year-old in a Barbie costume? To get a neighbor’s child high? To what end?
Scare stories like this long predate the moral panic surrounding cannabis. In the days of yore, the myths included the one about hiding razor blades in the center of apples (as if giving out apples on Halloween weren’t evil enough) and the one about people injecting heroin into Snickers bars.
There are, of course, people out there capable of doing such things, and much worse, and there have been sporadic reports over the decades of purposely tainted treats being passed out. But it’s such a tiny number over such a long period that it’s accurate enough to say: “That never happens.” One big reason it never happens is that it would be so easy to catch the psychos doing it.
The same is true of cannabis, but in this case it makes even less sense because, at least with the myths involving murderous lunatics, there’s a kind of motivation behind the act: murderous lunacy. But what would even a lunatic get out of some kid feeling kinda weird two blocks away and 60 minutes or more after having been slipped a cannabis treat?
No matter. This year, as in other years, law enforcement agencies are issuing dire-sounding warnings. Earlier this month, the St. Mary’s, Kan., police issued a “community advisory” about what it called “THC-infused gummies and snacks marketed to children ahead of the holidays.”
There is of course no indication that the gummies are “marketed to children,” much less that there’s any reason to believe anyone would toss them into kids’ treat bags. It’s all basically made up. That didn’t stop KSNT, the Topeka NBC affiliate, from passing along the “advisory” to viewers and readers with zero skepticism applied.
But it happens in big, sophisticated cities, too. Last year, WLS-TV, the ABC affiliate in Chicago, warned about “the risks of dangerous drugs being mistaken for candy.” CIting “doctors,” the station reported that “those incidents increase around Halloween, especially now with some drugs looking more and more like colorful treats.”
The online article for the report also mentioned “rainbow fentanyl” after the Drug Enforcement Administration issued an idiotic warning of “Mexican cartels” making colorful fentanyl pills in order to get kids hooked. NPR admirably exploded that myth.
The doctors in the WLS report didn’t really back up the warnings. They just said it’s a good idea to be careful with cannabis treats (not to mention dangerous narcotic drugs). Given that so many cannabis manufacturers insist on making their products look like they came from the candy aisle at CVS, that seems like good advice. And it’s true that accidental ingestion happens way too frequently, including with kids. Last year, it happened in Winnipeg, when a woman passed out some cannabis treats to kids, apparently by accident. As is always the case with cannabis, nobody really got hurt. In this case, there weren’t even any reports of kids eating the gummies.
The good news is that it seems like the scare stories are growing slightly less frequent, and are perhaps getting slightly less silly. Warnings from police agencies more often just warn about such accidental distribution rather than trying to get people to be terrified of their neighbors, though of course that’s still happening.
More good news: nothing this year has reached the standard established in 2017, when a TV reporter in Charlotte, N.C. issued grave warnings about people sneaking CBD treats into kids’ bags. That’s right, CBD, which doesn’t cause a high. The reporter warned parents about how CBD can cause “a relaxing feeling.”
“What is your favorite radio station? — What makes it great?”
Louisa Balderas, 24, Assistant Manager at Festa Coffee in Capitola Mall
“KZSC because it’s so random, and never the same songs like other stations. I don’t even know what genre they play, music that I wouldn’t ordinarily listen to. They play songs in other languages, and I’m like, cool!”
Matthew Domenicelli, 19, Deli
“I listen to the one my dad listens to, which is K-PIG. And also the nighttime alien conspiracy show. I really like the UCSC station, and I wish I could DJ there.”
“I like KKUP from Cupertino, it’s very eclectic, all different genres. I like K-PIG, but they’ve gotten too Western, like Nashville. I like Americana, but every time I listen to it, it’s more Country Western. And I like KSQD.”
Ryan Klaner-Glenon, 22, Graphic Designer
“I’ve gotta shout-out KZSC, UC Santa Cruz radio. I like how it’s student-run, so every person that’s hosting it has a personal connection to their music. It’s fun to listen to stuff that I wouldn’t listen to normally.”
Kris Berardi, 24, Student
“KZSC because I have a friend that works there, and they play a good, eclectic mix of music.”
Stephen Hekhuis, 70, Dog Walker
“KSPB from the Stevenson School in Carmel is pretty funny sometimes when a student hasn’t done it before. I listen in my car, but I just switch around a lot if the music is dorky or the talk is uninteresting.”
At the bottom of the metal staircase that shoots up from Laurel St. near the San Lorenzo River, three small trailers sit together.
They look like storage lockers on wheels. Built by Santa Cruz/San Jose-based non profit Simply Shelter, these “tiny shelters” serve as a refuge for unhoused individuals. They’re just big enough for a person to sleep in and store a few belongings. A vent on the ceiling provides airflow and a triangle-shaped aperture on the side brings in some sunlight.
“It gets you out of the weather, gets you some privacy. You don’t have to carry your bedding around. It’s very helpful,” says Marvin Griffith.
Griffith slept in a tiny shelter until recently. He stayed in it for about three months before moving on to transitional housing with the help of a county program.
He first noticed the shelters when an unhoused acquaintance of his acquired one. That led him to connect with Alekz Londos, who started a tiny home project in Santa Cruz that would eventually morph into Simply Shelter.
“Alekz got in contact with me and that kind of started the process,” Griffith says. “I had already known a couple of the people that were staying there. I think there’s five [tiny shelters] here in town right now.”
Londos’ project first gained notoriety in 2020 during the pandemic, when he built his first tiny shelter for Ken Atkins, an unhoused man with a congenital heart condition. Atkins wanted to isolate from others to protect his health. Local news outlets picked up the story and Londos’ project got wide exposure.
“I just thought ‘I’m gonna make something that is more mobile and more versatile,’” Londos says. “It’s like a survival shelter.”
Londos, who has a background in freelance journalism and environmental activism, was inspired by tiny homes in drawing up plans for his shelters. He created a GoFundMe to build his first shelter and raised over $6,000. One runs around $1,200 to build.
As buzz around the project grew, Londos knew he needed help if he was going to expand his operation.
“I was building my second unit and I got overwhelmed with the complexity of organizing people: getting volunteers, getting supplies and scaling up,” Londos says. “It was hard for me to scale up because just so many people wanted these units.”
Simply Scaling Up
Londos’ project grabbed the attention of San Jose resident Jay Samson.
Samson, who works as an aerospace engineer for NASA, was looking for a meaningful project to get involved with. At the outset of the pandemic, he was taking a leadership course that required him to put a team together and complete a project. While some groups tackled simple tasks like organizing a closet, Samson immediately thought of Londos’ tiny shelter project.
“Alex had this idea of bicycle locker-sized enclosures. So I remembered that when I was in the class and I said, ‘Damn, I can make hundreds of those.’ I could bring people together and just really transform homelessness,” Samson says.
Londos took him up on the offer and Samson began to expand the operation into what is now Simply Shelter. Samson began holding build days at his home with dozens of volunteers showing up to work on the shelters. Through word of mouth and tabling at events like First Friday, the project grew.
“The amount of support that we get is tremendous. I mean, so many people signing up and wanting to get involved in some capacity,” Samson says. “So, it’s really inspiring.”
Samson is now in the process of registering Simply Shelter as a nonprofit organization, which would give it access to grants and the ability to hire employees. At the moment, the project is primarily funded by Samson.
To date, the team has built 12 shelters after Londos’ initial two that he built himself. The demand for these shelters is high and the project is partnering with the Santa Cruz and San Jose Downtown Streets Teams to help reach potential candidates. A “community steward” program was also launched to vet potential candidates, check in with shelter residents and address any issues. Samson says that they are not opening up an official waitlist until they have more units built in order to not give “a false sense of hope” to people interested in them.
When speaking with potential shelter occupants, the community stewards will run through a list of qualifying questions. If claustrophobia is an issue, the shelters might not be a good fit, Londos says. Shelter occupants are also expected to follow certain guidelines, including a no hoarding policy. Occupants must also use the shelter for sleeping, not just as a storage unit.
Londos says that shelter occupants make the effort to follow the rules and have built a sense of community around the project.
Marvin Griffith recognizes that the tiny shelters are not for everyone, but that those who take advantage of them are one step closer to more permanent housing.
“It gave me the ability to kind of take care of my stuff and move forward,” Griffith says.”it’s a good step up, but [..] it’s got to be seen that way, not as an end-all [solution].”
Griffith has a medical condition that will require him to get surgery and is currently staying at a hotel while he goes through the process. He is hoping to save some money and find stable housing after he recovers.
Griffith believes it’s important for people to understand that the unhoused population is not all the same. While some individuals do remain in those circumstances by choice, most others, like him, are looking for a way back to permanent housing.
“You have to care if you want to get off the streets,” Griffith says.
Londos and Samson are happy to do their part in helping people get back on their feet. For Samson, stepping into a leadership role while working on Simply Shelter is gratifying.
“It’s really beautiful and it’s fun to lead people,” Samson says. “ I’ve never led before. My whole life, I’ve avoided leadership. I just chose to just do my work as an engineer and never lead so this is a huge motivator.”
Londos says that Simply Shelter is looking for more volunteers to join on build days as winter begins. They’re hoping to connect with others that are passionate about the unhoused issue.
“It’s like a puzzle and we have most of the puzzle together,” Londos says. “ And we were just missing a couple of [..] pieces.”
Visit simplyshelter.org for more information or to volunteer.
On Monday Oct. 30, Supervisor Zach Friend participated in a White House executive order event that established rules and regulations concerning artificial intelligence.
Back in September, Santa Cruz County became one of the first jurisdictions in the state to adopt a policy laying out guidance over how its employees use AI. Specifically, Friend said, the county wanted to ensure AI policies protected personal information and informed the public when they are interacting with an AI tool, and provide a choice to “opt out.”
It was due to the county’s work spearheading AI regulation that Friend was invited to the event at the White House. The new executive order, issued Monday, will implement checks and balances on the technology and will ensure AI systems are safe, secure and trustworthy, avoid discrimination and provide new tools to individuals to avoid fraud and deception.
“I think there’s a strong consensus that we didn’t get the regulatory frameworks around social media correct. So using AI as an opportunity as the next stage of technological innovation, there is a desire to harness what I believe will actually be even more transformational than social media,” Friend said.
At the county level, from May to September, county employees logged 33,000 sessions using AI tools, with roughly 10% using the tools. Friend said that employees mainly use AI tools like ChatGPT for writing emails and other correspondence.
“Our county policy created a value set of things that we thought were really important, such as data privacy and security in particular around health information and informed consent,” Friend said.
Friend, who is part of the National Association of Counties AI Committee, said that other counties reported using AI tools to streamline processes such as property taxes or generating board letters and meeting agendas packets. Santa Cruz County doesn’t employ AI tools in that way—yet.
“We can’t come from a place of fear of the technology and then regulate it to a point where it doesn’t serve a value but we need to be aware of the fact that it could create issues,” Friend said. “Harness its potential while still creating privacy, security and equity. Those were our values and very similar to the White House. They focused on workers rights, for example, to ensure that AI benefits workers as opposed to creating job displacement.”
I have seen the future of rock, as Jon Landau famously said, and it’s not a performer, but a venue—the Godzilla-sized golf ball of a hall in Las Vegas, named the Sphere.
U2’s show there last weekend was unlike anything I’ve seen in my years of concert-going. The sound was perfect, the videos, which covered the whole of the dome, from floor to ceiling, were mind-blowing and it was the apotheosis of the art of presenting a concert to an audience of 18,600 people.
It’s the largest spherical structure in the world at a cost of $2.3 billion. It has what looks like a typo–167,000 speakers– and features the highest definition LED screen ever made. It has haptic seats and artificial wind that pumps pleasing scents. There is also enough room in the spacing of the seats to be comfortable and each seat has high speed internet, which you will need to blow away your friends with videos.
I almost don’t have words to describe the two-hour performance of the band’s “Achtung Baby” album, along with some greatest hits.
A few impressions:
At one point they turned night into day. The sun rose, the dome seemed to fall away and we were all standing in the Nevada desert. This wasn’t like some Disney trick, where you feel skeptically manipulated the whole time. It was a complete take over of the senses. The light, the images, the air…it was like a 4-D experience. We were out there together and had a great band providing the soundtrack.
Not only could you hear every instrument more distinctly than on the best home stereo but you could really hear every word singer Bono said between songs, as if he were speaking directly to you in the front row. How many shows have I been to where the between-song patter was more of a blur of static than genuine communication? And no performer was better suited to be heard than this Irish poet, who spoke about religion, war, faith, marriage.
There are few bad seats in the house (some blocked views under an overhang in the 100 section). The rows are steep and tough to navigate, but not only does every row feel closer to the band than in any other arena, but the visuals extend from roof to floor, and can be seen as well from the highest and furthest seats.
Since the Beatles played baseball stadiums where they could barely be heard, rock shows have focused more on packing the house than on sound, with the exception of a few acts: Pink Floyd; the Dead; Springsteen; Taylor Swift. But none has devoted as much passion to the art of large concerts as U2, from 1993’s circus-like Zooropa tour to 2014’s Innocence + Experience show, where they built a screen down the middle of the arena.
What’s the local angle? We are looking at building a new arena in Santa Cruz for the Warriors, which will also feature music performances. Let’s make sure they give us the best in sound and lights for artists, not just sports. This thing will be dated the minute they build it, but we should make sure they go for the best quality for sound and vision.
As for the Sphere (which is really only 80 percent round) I’m going back ASAP, even though the trip costs about a month’s salary. I’ve waited a lifetime for a venue that made musical magic instead of killing it and I need to see it again.
Brad Kava Editor
THE FUTURE IS SPHERE Two views, inside and outside. Photos by Brad Kava
Quote of the Week
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time” —Leo Tolstoy
GOOD NEWS
The Watsonville City Council in March will consider either shortening the crosswind runway at Watsonville Municipal Airport—or deactivating it altogether—which is the airport’s effort to meet Federal Aviation Administration guidelines and keep its pilots safe.
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Included in the master plan update—which was paid for with a $550,000 grant from the FAA—is potentially lengthening the 4,500-foot main runway to 5,181 feet, reconfiguring several taxiways, improving airfield drainage and boosting security for the pedestrian and vehicle access gates.
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I have seen the future of rock, as Jon Landau famously said, and it’s not a performer, but a venue—the Godzilla-sized golf ball of a hall in Las Vegas, named the Sphere. U2’s show there last weekend was unlike anything I’ve seen in my years of concert-going. The sound was perfect, the videos, which covered the whole of the dome, from floor to ceiling, were mind-blowing...
