In honor of the second anniversary of the CZU Lightning Complex fires, Mountain Community Theater (MCT) Director Peter Gelblum did something extraordinary to commemorate the event: he made a film about it.
“Our idea was to create a living document about the fire and the effect it had on the Valley, as a gift to the community,” says Gelblum.
The result, The CZU Fire In Their Own Words: Fighting Fires, Losing Homes and Rebuilding Community, debuted last month at the Boulder Creek Recreation Center, with proceeds from the screening divided between Boulder Creek Fire Department and the Community Foundation’s Fire Recovery Fund. The film will be shown again on Tuesday, Aug. 16, at the Del Mar Theater in downtown Santa Cruz.
The film is done documentary-style, with members of MCT featured in the roles of fire survivors, resulting in a compendium of memories and local art, wrapped in music and presented to the community it reflects.
The script for the documentary is based on interviews Gelblum conducted with various community members, with members of MCT performing their testimonials.
Gelblum says the film is an emotional response to the CZU Fire’s wrath.
“The unprecedented destruction of both the forest and homes, the vast amount of emotional, material, and ecological suffering, and the enormous outpouring of love and support from neighbors and community,” he says. ”As a performing arts organization, we were in a unique position to create a document of this extraordinary event.”
When it came time to select the stories to share, Gelblum had many to choose from.
“I, and other people at MCT, knew people who had lost their homes, and who had interesting stories about their fire experiences,” he says.
MCT’s cast and crew found different messages and motivations in their roles. Actor Grace Peng—who plays Jenny Wu, owner of Boulder Creek restaurant the Red Pearl—says she felt honored to be a part of the project.
“I was touched that MCT was creating an homage to the victims of this tightly knit community to memorialize the devastating effects of the CZU fire and how the people of Boulder Creek came together to help one another,” she says
Wu, whose house was lost in the fire, returned to her restaurant as soon as she could after evacuation orders were lifted, and went to work feeding survivors at no charge.
“I met Jenny a few times, and she is so lovely, generous and kind,” says Peng. “In California, fire is a part of our new reality. While the fire destroyed so many homes and personal items, the power and generosity of community, of the human connection and love, is unwavering and endures. This film would be relevant to all, but may be particularly interesting to those who live in vulnerable regions that are prone to fire.”
Actor Sarah Marsh, who plays Mindy Lariz, found solace in the retelling of the survivors’ stories.
“There is power in sharing our stories,” she says. “I’m grateful to Peter Gelblum for leading, directing and editing this project, and I’m extremely thankful to those who shared.”
Cabrillo Stage and MCT are the home away from home for actor, singer and dancer Mindy Pedlar. In addition to promoting Cabrillo Stage’s various plays and musicals, she’s also a staple at MCT. She was given the role of Marj Young, wife of Steve Young, who is played by David Leach. She and Leach had the opportunity to meet the Young family, and visit their property.
“I wasn’t expecting to cry, but the sense of loss was overwhelming and tears flowed. The trees were trying to reassure me, telling me, ‘It’s OK, we’ll grow again,’” Pedlar says. “My heart ached for this couple that had lost so much, but I admired their desire to carry on, perhaps to rebuild, and their gratitude that their family was safe.”
Pedlar says the message of the film is one of resilience.
“To me, it’s an example of ordinary people going through a devastating experience, dealing with great loss yet somehow rising above the situation and coming together to help each other,” Pedlar says. “In these terrible pandemic and political times, it’s heartwarming to see the generosity of our community at large. For all of us, it’s important to be heard, particularly when trauma has been experienced. This film gives voice to the survivors.”
Gelblum said he is looking forward to sharing the film with audiences who were impacted by the fires.
“Mountain Community Theater funded the film as a gift to the community,” he says.
‘The CZU Fire In Their Own Words: Fighting Fires, Losing Homes and Rebuilding Community’ will be screened at 7:30pm on Tuesday, Aug. 16, at the Del Mar Theater in downtown Santa Cruz. More information at mctshows.org.
An on-stage cello—sensitively played by Michal Palzewicz—is the secret weapon of this summer’s production of The Tempest. Conjuring a cascade of moods, even detailing the meaning of each scene, Palzewicz’s music and sound design injects crucial atmosphere and continuity into the production.
Drawing on the considerable musicomedic skills of her cast, director Miriam Laube has opted for a throwback lens of postmodern pastiche through which to consider the 400-year-old masterpiece. This strategy makes the challenging play accessible to young audiences raised on rap, hip-hop, Disney animation and lighter shades of RuPaul. Older audiences will instantly recognize other resources at play here, from cinema’s Forbidden Planet and Robinson Crusoe to television’s Gilligan’s Island.
Without a doubt, The Tempest has spawned countless offspring in the past four centuries, and the Santa Cruz Shakespeare version toggles among at least half a dozen of them. Indeed, many of the characters appear to be engaged in adjacent tellings of the tale, rather than a single vision. Part of this is due to the nature of what was considered populist fun and games in the Elizabethan era. Shakespeare himself seasons this odd play with crowd-pleasing stereotypes—power-hungry royals, invisible fairies with limitless powers, drunken fools and a young couple instantly falling in love. The play gives us three groupings of players: first, Prospero the magician and his daughter Miranda, shipwrecked on the island 12 years earlier, along with their attendant, the supernatural sprite Ariel, plus the misshapen monster Caliban. Next, thanks to a shipwreck caused by Prospero, we have a quartet of disoriented Italian nobles. Crude and comical servants of the nobility make up the third cast of characters.
Opting for entertainment rather than magic, this production keeps the action (much of it musical) moving right along with a riotous burlesque involving two bumbling shipwrecked servants, Trinculo (a nimble Patty Gallagher) and Stephano (Cedric Lamar, chewing the scenery with abandon), getting drunk with the island’s petulant monster Caliban (intriguingly interpreted by Jonathan Smoots). As they cavort, in another sector of the island, the grieving queen of Naples Alonso (Maggie Bofill, channeling Bette Davis), her sister Sebastian (Safiya Harris), Prospero’s nefarious brother Antonio (Charles Pasternak), and a trusted councilor Gonzalo (Ward Duffy) all appear to have stepped out of a Renaissance mural. Costumed in rich colors and gold braid, they swagger and preen and plot against each other.
Meanwhile, in Prospero’s laboratory, the island’s control center, Ariel (Jennie Greenberry, playing for laughs to the delight of the opening night’s audience) is enlisted in the plan to make a match between Miranda (Maya Mays) and Alonso’s son Ferdinand (Gustavo Flores).
Shakespeare has the blithe spirit Ariel sing light-hearted songs throughout the play, and this production utilizes the Broadway voice of Greenberry (clad in glittering teal) to help piece together scenes. This style of music-making will please audiences raised on Frozen and the Grammys.
As the action quickens, and Prospero is successful in drawing together Miranda and Ferdinand in a sweet, chaste engagement, Shakespeare’s play calls for an elaborate floor show, a lavish musical vignette in which gods and goddesses come forth to sing and dance in honor of the young couple. Updating this—abruptly—director Laube has her entire cast step out of character, which unfortunately is a spell-breaking jolt.
The Tempest is filled with memorable lines, from the oft-quoted “oh brave new world” speech to Prospero’s final, poignant statement that “we are such things as dreams are made on.”
At the play’s end, Laura Gordon as Prospero did rise to the occasion, performing with dignity and insight the rare and fine words the magus is given. So let’s just say that all’s well that ends well.
Despite some missteps, your experience of Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s current season won’t be complete without a viewing of The Tempest, with bewitching cello music and some smashing lighting-in-the-trees by Kent Dorsey.
‘The Tempest,’ a Santa Cruz Shakespeare production directed by Miriam Laube, runs through August 28 at the Audrey Stanley Grove. More info and tickets at santacruzshakespeare.org.
The recent defeat of a sales tax increase in the city of Santa Cruz (GT, 7/13) reminds this community of the importance of our tourist industry. Visitors pay the hotel tax and spend money in local shops and restaurants; then they leave! Hotels provide jobs and fund social services, as well as projects that benefit all of us. We’re also reminded of the 2011 decision to deny approval of the replacement of the La Bahia apartments with a new hotel. Tax revenue paid by tourists was estimated to be at least $1 million a year and another million in tourist spending in local shops and restaurants. If the hotel had been completed in 2015, the city would have already received $8 million in taxes and another $8 million for our local businesses. For many years, this project was a political football for self-serving politicians and others who should be ashamed of their selfish political shenanigans. Fortunately, work has now resumed, and we can finally look forward to a beautiful hotel—for both tourists and locals alike.
Robert deFreitas | Santa Cruz
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Re: “Rail Call” (GT, 8/3): What’s been missing from post-election discussions of Measure D is context. Here’s a little perspective, to offset all the specious gloating from the No on D crowd: If there are 167,659 registered voters in Santa Cruz County, and only 78,952 voted, then the “75%,” “landslide,” “tsunami,” “crushing defeat” really amounted to only 33.5% of registered voters. Lest one is tempted to extrapolate this to reflect what the vote might have been if more registered voters turned out, consider this: many if not most people I spoke to during the weeks and months prior to the election were confused and discouraged by the ruthlessly crafted misinformation from No on D. They felt overwhelmed and intimidated, and had decided to either vote no, or not vote on Measure D at all. Given the shamefully low voter turnout, the outcome for Measure D could hardly be called a mandate, regardless of which side won. When the torches and pitchforks show up, demanding obedience, I hope the RTC will keep this context in mind and have the backbone to do what they already know is the right thing, rather than being (excuse the expression) railroaded into a terrible boondoggle.
Dee Vogel | Santa Cruz
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If you read my cover story this week on the Locals Only Music Festival, which debuts Aug. 20-21, I think you’ll see why it’s not like any other festival I can remember covering in three decades of writing about music around here. Showcasing only local musicians at a huge venue like the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, and turning it into a family-friendly event that celebrates the community? Sorry, that just isn’t supposed to happen in the big-money, high-pressure world of music festivals.
But then again, my story is also about how this is the farewell show for local music promoter “Sleepy” John Sandidge, and how he’s always been a guy who makes things that aren’t supposed to happen, happen. As a fan of punk and alt-rock, I certainly didn’t think I wanted anything to do with acoustic country-folk-type music when I was starting out as a young music writer in this area. But our office at the Register-Pajaronian, where I worked at the time, was practically next door to the KPIG studio in Watsonville, and one day Sandidge dropped by to introduce himself to me, and give me some CDs of musicians like Robert Earl Keen, Greg Brown and Iris DeMent. I was floored by the rawness and energy of that new generation of Americana artists, and I became a huge fan of the genre, while reconnecting with the classic, pre-hat-act country music I grew up with—Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson, etc.
That was a real gift, and I think this festival is kind of Sandidge’s gift to the artists he’s known and worked with for years, and that both he and the musicians involved see it as a gift to the fans who’ve supported them for so many years. Don’t miss this festival next week!
STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ONLINE COMMENTS
Re: Benchlands Clearing
We are going into a fire-danger period. The article states that the unhoused living in the Benchlands will move into neighborhoods after it is dismantled. Living along the perimeter of Arana Gulch, I am concerned that they will return to the gulch, with more likelihood for fire danger (as well as pollution of the waterway/riparian corridor).
There was a fire behind my house in the gulch last summer, which was extinguished by local firefighters. It was started in a homeless camp that was quite extensive; a human-made cleared, terraced hillside that accommodated a large amount of unhoused (behind Ramos Furniture Store).
I understand that the Benchlands is a potentially dangerous place for many reasons. To dismantle the camp without a solid plan for replacing it with adequate infrastructure is irresponsible.
And the timing is extremely poor given the fire season we are/have been entering as of late.
— Deborah Christie
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GOOD IDEA
VIRTUALLY NEW
Mountain Community Theater is presenting a play by recent Cabrillo alum Drea Kato, Eradicated—a fascinating, creepy exploration of the line between the digital and physical. The production is a reading without staging, with the author present for questions after the performance. Three performances only: Aug.12 , 13 and 14. Buy tickets at mctshows.org.
GOOD WORK
A BIRD IN THE GRANT
UCSC Ph.D. student Aspen Ellis won a prestigious fellowship this week that will support her research into solutions for mitigating the effects of offshore wind energy on seabirds. Ellis won the Nancy Foster Scholarship, which typically gives awards to only 2-4 graduate students nationwide annually, and prioritizes the careers of women and minority students in marine biology. Learn more at: fosterscholars.noaa.gov
I was at a KPIG Humbug Hoedown at the Catalyst in December of 2000 when I first realized that Robert Earl Keen’s “I’m Coming Home” had become Santa Cruz’s signature song. The album it was on, Gringo Honeymoon, had come out several years before, so I’d heard the Texas singer-songwriter—who already had a big following here, and was blowing up nationally throughout the late ’90s—play it several times at the Kuumbwa, and also at the 1997 KPIG Fat Fry.
But this was different. By the time he got to “I’m Coming Home” late in the set, just before his traditional closer, “The Road Goes on Forever,” the fans at this sold-out show were ready. They’d been waiting for it. When he sang the line, “Life is good out in Santa Cruz,” they made a noise unlike any I have heard at the Catalyst, before or since.
But there’s another line in that song that always got a gigantic whoop from a local crowd, and at this show it was nearly as loud as the Santa Cruz line: “They threw a party there from dusk ’til dawn/Seems like everybody knows ol’ Sleepy John.” The cheer was so loud, in fact, that longtime local music promoter “Sleepy” John Sandidge, the lyric’s namesake, actually stood up from where he was sitting on the corner of the balcony above the stage and waved in acknowledgement.
I was sitting at the table with him when it happened, and I remember actually laughing out loud, partially because of the semi-stunned look on his face, and partially because I was thinking, “This is the kind of weird shit that happens when you hang around with Sleepy John.”
Sandidge, I can tell you, is full of surprises. He throws pies at some of his longtime friends on their birthdays, and knows full well that he is going to get a pieing on his own—a tradition that goes back to his young hippie days in Malibu, before he moved to Santa Cruz 45 years ago. When he and his partner Bette Mathieson travel, they usually drive to remote spots in Mexico in a vintage trailer (one of those trailers, nicknamed Humphrey, was immortalized in a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith—who, like Keen, got hugely popular here because Sandidge brought him to Santa Cruz over a number of years). For fun, Sandidge takes his friends on miles-long hikes up and down the Northern California coast. He just doesn’t do anything normally.
So while his recent announcement that, after four decades, he’s going to be retiring from putting on shows is also a surprise—and for local music fans, not the good kind—it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s going out in a typically unexpected way: by throwing a two-day blowout show, the Locals Only Music Festival, Aug. 20-21 at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, featuring top acts from the local music scene.
The festival’s roster is a who’s who of the most popular Santa Cruz County musicians, most of whom fit roughly into the Americana genre that Sandidge has proselytized as a DJ on KPIG and for the entire existence of his promotion company, Snazzy Productions, which he started in 1983. But like the KPIG Fat Frys he was the driving force behind for many years, there is definitely an eclectic quality to the line-up.
Vocal powerhouse Sharon Allen, who has been singing folk, country and blues here for nearly as long as Sandidge has been promoting music, headlines on Saturday, Aug. 20, with her band Dusty Boots; also performing that day are Bonny June and Bonfire, Hank & Ella with the Fine Country Band, Mira Goto and Band, the Te Hau Nui School of Hula and Tahitian Dance, Patti Maxine and Christie McCarthy, and Bean Creek. On Sunday, iconic Santa Cruz folk musician Keith Greeninger headlines with frequent collaborator Dayan Kai; the bill also includes bluegrass songstress AJ Lee and her band Blue Summit, who have found a new level of success after a whirlwind of national touring; Carolyn Sills Combo; Michael Gaither; Coffis Brothers; Space Heater; Rosa Azul; and Alex Lucero and the Live Again Band. The Pleasure Point Brass Band and Ginny Mitchell will perform both days.
The idea originally came to Sandidge when he was trying to get PPP money from the government to local artists who were struggling during Covid.
“The local scene is so good and so connected that I thought this would be a good way to get this government money through me to the bands,” says Sandidge. “That’s what the whole idea of it was, to help support the music.”
NO LAWN CHAIRS, EVER
Snazzy Productions is probably most famous for fostering the careers of KPIG-fave Americana artists who would go on to be stars of the genre like Keen and Eaglesmith, as well as Greg Brown, Iris DeMent, Todd Snider and more. But Sandidge’s idea when he started it was actually to get away from big shows. Since moving to Santa Cruz in 1977, he had been working for the promotion company Northern Stage on what would turn out to be some of Santa Cruz County’s most legendary concerts.
“We had done all these big shows—Bob Marley; the Grateful Dead; Crosby, Stills and Nash; Bonnie Raitt; Jackson Browne. Rick Springfield!” he says with a laugh. “Really big acts. And there was so much paranoia around it, it just wasn’t fun. And I said, ‘If I’m going to do this, I want it to be fun. And I want to work with people I can talk to. And it wasn’t that I couldn’t talk to Bonnie or these people, they were all nice—except David Crosby. But it’s just a different scene when it gets to that level. There’s so much money involved, and the egos get out of control. So we decided we would do smaller shows. Kuumbwa, Rio and even smaller.”
Though the Snazzy slogan “Never too late, never too loud” would come later, the sense of humor and casual culture around the whole thing was part of it from the beginning.
Bonny June (center) and Bonfire (Snail’s Ken Kraft, left, and Craig Owen) have earned a reputation for “Americana meets Vaudeville.” They play the Locals Only festival on Saturday, Aug. 20. Right photo: Santa Cruz’s most successful folk artist Keith Greeninger (right) headlines the festival with longtime collaborator and Santa Cruz expat Dayan Kai, who got his start in the Moe’s Alley house band the Blues Houndz, on Sunday, Aug. 21.
“We started out that way,” says Sandidge. “Our logo is a joke. It was a play on Bill Graham, and his big outdoors shows with the posters that said, ‘No bottles, cans or lawn furniture, please.’ We took the lawn furniture part, and John Johnson drew that chair with the red circle and the line through it. It didn’t say anything, just the drawing. I had everybody asking me about that.”
The first Snazzy show Sandidge ever did featured a Santa Cruz musician who would go on to be a local legend in his own way, William Strickland—perhaps best-known as the voice who sings “I got a hog call for you baby, here on 107-oink-five.” He’s done other songs for KPIG, as well, including the theme to Sandidge’s own Sunday morning live show, “Please Stand By.”
“How I met William Strickland is I bought a house in Pleasure Point,” says Sandidge. “When the paperwork was all done, I went over and William was squatting there.”
It turned out someone had told Strickland he could stay there, and subsequently he ended up living with Sandidge and Sandidge’s son.
“He lived with Ernie and I for about six months. And we’re still really, really close friends,” he says.
In fact, Sandidge says his proudest moment as a promoter came in 2019, when he did a benefit for Strickland, who had lost his house in a fire. The benefit featured local musicians performing the songs of John Prine; the twist was that Prine himself heard about the show, and his wife Fiona Whelan called Snazzy to say that the Prine family would match the money raised at the show dollar-for-dollar. Sandidge ended up presenting Strickland with a check for $10,000.
“William was overwhelmed,” he remembers.
PROMOTING THE SCENE
Sandidge also got well-known among local musicians for helping Santa Cruz’s beloved Americana band the Devil Makes Three achieve national success—a rare instance where he actually managed a band rather than just booking them at his shows.
Meghan Leslie, who plays bass in Hank & Ella with the Fine Country Band, who perform at the Locals Only Festival on Saturday, remembers the impression that made.
“Maybe a year or two after we started, I would always hear these advertisements on the radio, like, ‘This week, Snazzy Productions presents this band or that band,’” she says. “I said, ‘Okay, we need to get that gig, so they can say our name on the radio.’” Soon after, they were invited to play on Sandidge’s radio show. “It was at that time that Hank [Warde] said, ‘John, you know, you were one of the people that made the Devil Makes Three famous. You got them their start, help us get our start,’” says Leslie.
Sandidge began doing regular shows with the band, which had already honed its stylish, catchy take on the vintage country sound. Last year, their song “Good at Being Lonely” got all the way to number three on the Roots Music Report’s Americana-Country chart.
Mira Goto, who will play with her band at the Locals Only festival on Saturday, credits Sandidge with helping her get her first national radio exposure.
“He’s awesome,” she says. “He’s been a champion of me since I met him. I remember our first meeting; a friend said, ‘Hey, you should do Sleepy John’s show on KPIG.’ I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I would love to get on KPIG, I’ve never done anything on the radio before.’ And I was so nervous. I showed up to his show and I played the cat song [“Crazy Cat Lady”]. And he told me afterwards, ‘Hey, you’ve got to give me a copy of that.’ And of course, he played it on air, and it got picked up at stations across the country.”
In that first KPIG appearance, Goto got a taste of Sandidge’s unconventional streak. “I remember being so nervous, and we were about to go on air, and he held up a sign. He said, ‘Hey, this is really important,’ and he lifted up a little sign. The sign said ‘Don’t eff this up.’”
Goto is being polite; the sign really says “Don’t fuck this up,” and as she notes, “Everybody knows that sign. It was just enough to make me laugh and go, ‘Okay, don’t take yourself so seriously, and have fun, and have a real conversation with somebody who loves music.’ He was genuinely there to support me and encourage me; his love for independent music and independent artists and great songwriting is not seen as much today as I wish it was.”
“You know, the first one I did that to was [singer-songwriter and Santa Cruz native] Tess Dunn,” says Sandidge. “She was nervous, and I said, ‘Tess, don’t fuck this up,’ and she started laughing. And we open the mic, and the show is on, and she’s laughing. It works for pretty much everybody.”
Personally, my favorite memory of being in the studio for “Please Stand By” (which, full disclosure, I have guest hosted on several occasions) is when popular Austin newgrass band the Greencards were on, and after one song, Sandidge told fiddler Eamon McLaughlin that he had particularly liked his part, and asked him to do it solo, without the rest of the band. Well, McLauglin’s part in that song had just been to make the sound “boop, boop, boop” over and over again in the background. So the rest of the band stood around laughing (with everyone else in the studio) while McLaughlin sheepishly chanted “boop, boop, boop” until Sandidge let him off the hook.
“Another time, I had the Austin Lounge Lizards on,” Sandidge remembers, “and they’d just done a song, and we were talking back and forth, and I said, ‘Hey guys, you know, I’ve had a number of people who wanted me to ask you this question: how many of you were circumcised?’ And there was this long silence. And then Hank said something funny, I can’t remember what. Those kinds of things really make it fun.”
MEET UNCLE LARRY
Some of the musicians at the Locals Only festival go even further back with Sandidge—and have even weirder stories. Like Mike Spooner of Space Heater, the funky Santa Cruz rock band that plays at the festival Sunday.
“My parents were friends with John since like, I don’t know, the ’60s,” says Spooner. “I was born in ’79. So I’ve known him my entire life as a family member, essentially. Our families are super tight.”
This bond, however, did not exempt Spooner or the other kids around on Santa Cruz visits from Sandidge’s pranks, which earned him a special love/hate nickname.
“Our name for him was Uncle Larry,” says Spooner. “I don’t know how many people know that name, or call him that. But the reason we call him Uncle Larry is because when we were little kids, when there was, like, multiple kids around, he would always call us by the wrong name. And you know, when you’re like 4, 6, 8 or whatever, you’re just like, ‘That’s not my name!’ You get really worked up about it. And so my mom said, ‘Well, you guys should just start calling him Uncle Larry to get back at him.’ Ever since, as long as I can remember, I’ve been calling him Uncle Larry. So it’s kind of weird to even call him John.”
Despite this family “feud,” Spooner remembers being rather in awe of Sandidge growing up, especially when his family would take him to Snazzy shows.
“Things seem larger than life when you’re young—you know, I’d see all the stage lights and I’d see John on stage,” he says. “Or, like, we’re driving in from out of town, and he’s on the radio. It just seems like there’s this larger-than-life thing that he always maintained, every time we came to see him.”
OUT WITH A BANG
To have a larger-than-life presence like Sandidge retire from promoting is a huge loss for the Santa Cruz scene. He’ll continue to host “Please Stand By,” and DJ at KPIG and other radio gigs, but when it comes to doing shows, he says he feels like the time is right to get out. It’s largely a matter of economics, and Covid has played a role in that.
“Our shows are at about 50%, 60% of what we were doing,” he says. “And the cost of the bands has gone up, the cost of the venues has gone up. You get squeezed out, and you’ve got to start charging $40, $50, $60 for a show. Not everybody can afford that, so you lose more audience there. It has just gotten out of the price range that I can deal with.”
Snazzy Productions will continue, led by his brother Ron Sandidge and son Ernie Sandidge, along with other partners. He says he plans to help them, and will support whatever direction they choose to go.
For him, the Locals Only festival is a fitting farewell because he has always enjoyed showcasing the local musicians that he himself is excited to see.
“Part of the joy of it is finding these people and giving them a place to play and getting them on the air. And I have to like the music before I jump in and want to help them,” he says. “So there was a selfish part of it, because it’s something I really liked.”
Sharon Allen, who will headline Saturday’s Locals Only roster with her band Dusty Boots, knows what it means to have Sandidge like your music—he has been promoting her work for decades. She got her start as a singer in the late ’70s in the San Lorenzo Valley, and in the ’80s performed with the Back Alley Band and Blind Alley, before eventually leading her longtime blues band Sharon Allen and the Firebirds.
“We were playing a lot of clubs, and you really needed to make people dance,” she says.
But in the early 2000s, Allen changed up her style. “I started writing some of my own songs, and they weren’t bluesy,” she says. “They were more folky, Americana.”
She hooked up with local singer-songwriter Sherry Austin, performing in Henhouse for many years. At the same time, she was still singing the blues and also leading her Americana band Sharon Allen and Dusty Boots.
“It’s crazy when you have that much music going on,” says Allen, who has been moving between genres for more than 20 years now. “I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or what,” she says. “I really should pick a genre and go with it.”
But a much better option is to combine her many musical loves into one band, as she does when she brings the full Dusty Boots ensemble—what she calls “Dusty Boots and Blues”—to the stage, as she will at Locals Only. It’s fitting, as Sandidge and Snazzy have booked Allen through all of her projects and genre crossovers through the years.
“I owe a lot to John,” says Allen. ““I told him, ‘If I didn’t have you in my court, I don’t know where I’d be.’”
PARTY TIME
Goto thinks the event is not only a great platform for the local music scene, but a perfect representation of it, as well.
“I love our community. I love it. I grew up here. I love living here,” she says. “And so what John is doing to kind of celebrate our community as his last hurrah, his retirement show—and not only is there going to be music, but the children’s activities and the food vendors, and at our local fairgrounds—I just think it’s a really great idea.”
AJ Lee, who performs on Sunday with her band Blue Summit, says Locals Only is not like any other music festival.
“There’s just a huge pool of incredible talent in this town,” says Lee. “Everyone on the list, we’re pretty much all friends. So it’s gonna be a really fun time for all of us locals here. It’s funny, because even if you play with one band that you’re friends with on a bill like that, it’s super fun. But then times that by, like, 10—what’s that going to be like? It’s just gonna be a huge party.”
“There’s no way that we could have possibly included all the amazing talent in this town, because you would need two weeks,” says Goto. “But these are some highlights. It’s a really good representation of what kind of music this town can create. And it’s also a really good representation of the careers and the lives and the people that Sleepy John has touched over the scope of his career.”
The Locals Only Music Festival will be presented Saturday and Sunday, Aug. 20-21 at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds, 2601 E. Lake Ave., Watsonville. Tickets are $40 one-day, $70 two-day for adults; $25 one-day, $35 two-day for teens age 13-17. Kids 12 and under are free with parent or guardian. For tickets, go to snazzyproductions.com or call 831-479-9421.
There are many things that Santa Cruz County residents can boast about, including the astounding natural beauty of the place they live and its proximity to the coast.
But there is one aspect that will likely not be found on a tourism brochure, and will likely come as no surprise to residents: The region is the second-least-affordable place to live in the nation.
According to the report, county residents need to make at least $60.35 per hour to rent a two-bedroom apartment without spending 30% of their income. This number, known as the “housing wage,” is higher only in San Francisco, where residents must earn $61.50 per hour.
The statewide housing wage is $39.01, according to the report, while nationwide it is $25.82.
A closer look at the local data shows that the average wage for the more than 38,000 county residents who rent is $19.78. With the fair-market rate for a two-bedroom apartment at $3,138, those workers must work four full-time jobs to afford rent.
The report comes as the median monthly rent in the most populated cities has for the first time exceeded $2,000, meaning that in only 9% of all U.S. counties can a full-time minimum-wage worker afford to rent even a one-bedroom home.
It also comes amid skyrocketing homelessness, rising inflation and gas prices, and a looming economic recession that financial experts say is imminent. The housing affordability issue, county officials say, was compounded in 2020 when the CZU fires damaged or destroyed more than 1,600 structures, displacing hundreds of people.
More recently, emergency rental assistance programs and eviction moratoriums put in place to help renters impacted by the pandemic have expired, while many renters face increases of 18% since last year.
Laws designed to boost minimum wages, meanwhile, are woefully inadequate, with the federal number stagnant at $7.25 per hour and $15 the current minimum wage in California. The crisis is worse among Black and Latino workers, who on average earn 23% and 25% less than the median white worker, respectively, according to the report.
The news locally is not all bad, with numerous affordable housing projects under development.
In Watsonville, this includes eight projects, including the 144-unit Hillcrest Estates on Ohlone Parkway, where 29 are slated as affordable. The South County city also plans 53 units at 1482 Freedom Blvd. and 72 units at 139 Miles Lane, all of which are affordable.
Santa Cruz has its own projects in the works, with 750 rental units in the city’s development pipeline, according to Santa Cruz Housing & Community Development Division Manager Jessica de Wit.
This includes the 831 Water Street project, which when completed will contain 151 market-rate, workforce and affordable-housing units. Of these, 77 would be affordable, 47 very-low-income and the remainder market-rate. The Library Mixed Use project at the site of the downtown farmers market will include a new library, with housing on the upper floors with a minimum of 50 affordable units.
“This additional federal investment in affordable housing is of great help, and we’re thrilled to see new shovel-ready affordable-housing developments break ground,” says Santa Cruz County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty.
While such influxes of funding do happen, it is still a Sisyphean task to fund affordable housing, which carries the same costs as market-rate projects without private investment and bank loans, de Wit says.
“We have to leverage so many different sources of funding,” she says. “There are usually six or seven different sources.”
Don Lane, who chairs Housing Santa Cruz County, says the report is a reminder of the need for low-income housing projects, and for a sea change in the way those projects are viewed. Instead of resisting these projects, he says, community members should acknowledge that many more affordable housing projects are needed, and then embrace them and find ways to make them work in their neighborhoods.
“The local government and the community needs to embrace the idea that we’re going to have more fights for affordable housing to be built,” Lane says. “And not resist so many projects, because historically that’s been one of the biggest challenges.”
Rafa Sonnenfeld, director of legal advocacy for Santa Cruz YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), says that attitude change is urgent, as roughly 10,545 locals do not have access to an affordable home in Santa Cruz County. As one of those renters, Sonnefeld says he has been waiting for a decade just to be put on a waitlist that has never opened.
“There just isn’t enough housing, even when someone has a voucher,” Sonnefeld says. “That’s why Santa Cruz YIMBY advocates for housing for people of all income levels, from low-income to market rate.”
Sonnefeld says that jurisdictions across the county are set over the next two years to update the housing elements of their general plans, with an increased capacity for housing in mind. In all, the county’s four cities and the unincorporated county will have to change zoning regulations to allow nearly 13,000 homes to be potentially built by 2031. These alterations are required by the state under its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) program, which is implemented in eight year cycles.
While changing these regulations does not guarantee that more homes will be built—dozens of cities across the state have consistently failed to meet their RHNA (pronounced “ree-na”) allocation—the adjustments are one of the few tools city officials have available to help promote housing construction.
“That’s the most tangible way that jurisdictions in our county will be planning to provide more housing,” Sonnefeld says. “Literally change the zoning and change the general plan to allow this kind of housing to be built.”
He adds that jurisdictions should move forward with an eye on “substantially large” apartment projects, with housing for everyone from low-income people to families to young professionals.
“We need it all,” he says.
Lane says the numbers mean that everyone must shift away from a business-as-usual approach to affordable housing.
“It’s really about how this current situation is hurting people,” he said. “It’s hurting families. It’s just causing so much strain on so many people individually, and right out of that comes the damage to the whole community when we have so many people struggling in it.”
The sale of Watsonville Community Hospital to a nonprofit that would bring local leadership to the 127-year-old institution after two decades of corporate ownership is entering its final stretch, with roughly $6 million still needed to close the deal.
In a meeting on Aug. 4, the Pajaro Valley Health Care District (PVHCD) heard a report that shows, among other things, that a recent $7 million donation by Community Foundation Santa Cruz County has brought the purchase within throwing distance of the $67 million goal.
Dozens of nurses spoke during the three-hour meeting, many of them expressing concern about their requirement to reapply for their positions, which frequently happens when a company or organization goes under new ownership.
“I am dismayed by this proposition,” said Louise Pearse, who says she has been a registered nurse at the hospital for 16 years. “This at a time when I have many choices in other places to work. The turnover that will surely happen will hamper our delicate transition to a district hospital, and I hope you will reconsider this abominable rebid.”
Registered nurse Roseann Farris said that during a rebid in 2013, some departments lost as much as 30% of their nurses that left to find different jobs.
Much of the stress, she said, is that nurses can’t be certain about how their job will change. A part-time nurse, she explained, might be reassigned to a full-time position, or a day-shift nurse may be required to work night shifts.
This uncertainty can upend the work-life balance upon which they have come to depend, she said.
“You’re not going to know where you fall until you’re in there seeing what’s left,” Farris said.
The nurses also voiced their concerns about reported plans by the hospital to eliminate part-time nursing positions, and require all of them to work full-time.
But Cecilia Montalvo, a consultant hired to help PVHCD with the transition, said that those concerns are unfounded.
“I have never seen a version of any proposed schedule that eliminates part-time positions,” she said. “And I don’t think I will.”
Montalvo added that PVHCD is looking to reshape the hospital’s overtime for part-time employees, a cost that numbers in the millions.
The board also announced that a tentative plan to recruit Community Health Trust of Pajaro Valley as PVHCD’s philanthropic and fundraising arm has fallen through. The Health Trust, which formed in 1998 after the hospital was first sold to an out-of-state corporation, has contributed $6 million to help PVHCD complete the purchase of the hospital.
Board member Jasmine Najera said that finding a different partner will allow PVHCD to better have direct oversight over its fundraising efforts.
“We’re incredibly thankful to the Trust, and we’re disappointed that this didn’t work out,” she said. “This is the hospital. It’s a huge institution in our community, and we need to do what’s best for the hospital to make sure that we have a hospital moving forward and that we’re able to bring in the funding we need.”
Health Trust CEO Deandre James said the organization will continue to support the healthcare district in its efforts to keep the hospital open.
“We’re not going away,” James said. “It’s just in this particular venue it might be better to have both organizations go in another direction but also support each other.”
Board member Marcus Pimentel said that the hospital’s plans to look holistically at the entire community as PVHCD creates the new hospital means the two organizations could have slightly different visions for how fundraising would work.
“I can see this board and this foundation that we might form—that could really attract some major grants and some major donors to really make some significant community changes,” he said.
PVHCD—created solely to purchase and run the financially ailing hospital—became official last year after Sen. John Laird hammered through Senate Bill 418, in a whirlwind legislative feat that garnered rare unanimous concurrence in both the state Assembly and Senate.
The group’s precursor, the Pajaro Valley Healthcare District Project—composed of local health care, nonprofit and government leaders—wanted to bring local control to the hospital. It was sold in 1993 to Community Health Systems, which created a spinoff company called Quorum Health Corporation in 2016, which then sold the hospital to Los Angeles-based Halsen Healthcare in 2019.
That company was ousted in 2021 after the hospital’s finances took a nose dive.
In its place, the board of directors installed Los Angeles-based Prospect Medical Holdings.
PVHCD will at first lease the building and property from Alabama-based Medical Properties Trust (MPT), which purchased it from Halsen.
Pimentel says the organization eventually hopes to change this arrangement.
“I think we all recognize that there is a huge value in the very near term in creating a pathway to acquire the land,” he said.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Tips to get the most out of the coming weeks: 1. Exercise your willpower at random moments just to keep it limber. 2. Be adept at fulfilling your own hype. 3. Argue for fun. Be playful and frisky as you banter. Disagree for the sport of it, without feeling attached to being right or needing the last word. 4. Be unable to understand how anyone can resist you or not find you alluring. 5. Declare yourself President of Everything, then stage a coup d’état. 6. Smile often when you have no reason to. 7. If you come upon a “square peg, round hole” situation, change the shape of the hole.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): If I had to choose a mythic deity to be your symbolic helper, I would pick Venus. The planet Venus is ruler of your sign, and the goddess Venus is the maven of beauty and love, which are key to your happiness. But I would also assign Hephaestus to you Tauruses. He was the Greek god of the metalworking forge. He created Zeus’s thunderbolts, Hermes’ winged helmet, Aphrodite’s magic bra, Achilles’ armor, Eros’ bow and arrows and the thrones for all the deities in Olympus. The things he made were elegant and useful. I nominate him to be your spirit guide during the next ten months. May he inspire you to be a generous source of practical beauty.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): To be a true Gemini, you must yearn for knowledge—whether it’s about coral reefs, ancient maps of Sumer, sex among jellyfish, mini-black holes, your friends’ secrets or celebrity gossip. You need to be an eternal student who craves education. Are some things more important to learn than others? Of course, but that gauge is not always apparent in the present. A seemingly minor clue or trick you glean today may become unexpectedly helpful a month from now. With that perspective in mind, I encourage you to be promiscuous in your lust for new information and teachings in the coming weeks.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Cancerian drummer Ringo Starr is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though he has received less acclaim than his fellow Beatles, many critics recognize him as a skillful and original drummer. How did he get started? At age 13, he contracted tuberculosis and lived in a sanatorium for two years. The medical staff encouraged him to join the hospital band, hoping it would stimulate his motor skills and alleviate boredom. Ringo used a makeshift mallet to bang the cabinet near his bed. Good practice! That’s how his misfortune led to his joy and success. Is there an equivalent story in your life, Cancerian? The coming months will be a good time to take that story to its next level.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): One of the inspiring experiments I hope you will attempt in the coming months is to work on loving another person as wildly and deeply and smartly as you love yourself. In urging you to try this exercise, I don’t mean to imply that I have a problem with you loving yourself wildly and deeply and smartly. I endorse your efforts to keep increasing the intensity and ingenuity with which you adore and care for yourself. But here’s a secret: Learning to summon a monumental passion for another soul may have the magic power of enhancing your love for yourself.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Musician Viv Albertine has recorded four albums and played guitar for the Slits, a famous punk band. She has also written two books and worked as a TV director for 20 years. Her accomplishments are impressive. Yet she also acknowledges that she has spent a lot of time in bed for many reasons: needing to rest, seeking refuge to think and meditate, recovering from illness, feeling overwhelmed or lonely or sad. She admiringly cites other creative people who, like her, have worked in their beds: Emily Dickinson, Patti Smith, Edith Sitwell and Frida Kahlo. I mention this, Virgo, because the coming days will be an excellent time for you to seek sanctuary and healing and creativity in bed.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran author Katherine Mansfield wrote, “The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two and a pool that nobody’s fathomed the depth of.” Be inspired by her in the coming weeks, Libra. I suspect you will flourish if you give yourself the luxury of exploring your untamed side. The time is ripe to wander in nature and commune with exciting influences outside your comfort zone. What uncharted frontier would you enjoy visiting?
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): When you are functioning at your best, you Scorpios crave only the finest, top-quality highs. You embrace joys and pleasures that generate epiphanies and vitalizing transformations. Mediocre varieties of fun don’t interest you. You avoid debilitating indulgences that provide brief excitement but spawn long-term problems. In the coming weeks, dear Scorpio, I hope you will embody these descriptions. It’s crucial that you seek gratifications and delectations that uplift you, ennoble you and bless your future.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “Wish on everything,” advises Sagittarian author Francesca Lia Block. “Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth.” Your homework during the next two weeks, Sagittarius, is to build a list of further marvels that you will wish on. It’s the Magic Wish season of the year for you: a time when you’re more likely than usual to encounter and generate miracles. Be proactive! Oh, and very important: What are your three top wishes?
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Author Aldous Huxley wrote, “That people do not learn much from the lessons of history is the most important lesson that history has to teach.” While his observation is true much of the time, I don’t think it will be so for you in the coming weeks. I suspect you will triumph over past patterns that have repeated and repeated themselves. You will study your life story and figure out what you must do to graduate from lessons you have finally, completely learned.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In the film I Origins, a scientist says this to a lover: “When the Big Bang happened, all the atoms in the universe were smashed together into one little dot that exploded outward. So my atoms and your atoms were together then . . . my atoms have always known your atoms.” Although this sounds poetic, it’s true in a literal sense: The atoms that compose you and me and everyone else were originally all squeezed together in a tiny space. We knew each other intimately! The coming days will be an excellent time to celebrate your fundamental link with the rest of the universe. You’ll be extra receptive to feeling connection. You’ll be especially adept at fitting your energy together with others’. You’ll love the sensation of being united, merged, blended.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): My Piscean friend Luna sent me a message that sums up how I feel about you these days. I’ll repeat it here in the hope it will inspire you to be perfectly yourself. Luna said, “Every time I meet someone who was born within like two weeks of my birthday, I end up with the impression that they are the loopiest and wisest person I’ve met in a long time. They are totally ridiculous and worthy of profound respect. They are unhinged and brilliantly focused. They are fuzzy-headed dreamers who couldn’t possibly ever get anything practical accomplished and they are lyrical thinkers who charm me with their attunement to the world’s beauty and impress me with their understanding of how the world works. Hahahahaha. Luckily for me, I know the fool is sacred.”
The County of Santa Cruz recently received a grant that it hopes will help reduce recidivism for 300 people currently enmeshed in the criminal justice system.
The grant, totaling nearly $6 million, will be used to expand diversion opportunities, including greater substance-use-disorder and mental-health treatment options, an expansion of the county’s Neighborhood Courts program and earlier interventions for those accused of low-level, non-violent offenses.
The grant is the second awarded to the county through voter-approved Prop 47, a 2014 law that reduced certain low-level drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors in an effort to divert people from the criminal justice system. The resulting savings from Prop 47 are deposited into a statewide Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Fund, which is then distributed to local jurisdictions through a competitive grant process.
The county used a portion of its first grant allocation to establish the pilot for Neighborhood Courts, a program that uses trained citizen volunteers to determine the outcome for offenders who commit low-level misdemeanor crimes. The program’s goal is to reduce the caseload on the overburdened local court system, as well as reduce reoffense rates and allow offenders to keep criminal convictions off of their records.
The most recent grant will help the county expand its Coordinated Access for Empowering Success (CAFES) program, a collaboration of the Santa Cruz County Probation Department, the newly formed Public Defender’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office, Santa Cruz County Superior Court and County Behavioral Health. According to the county, 72% of the funding will be allocated to community-based organizations to support CAFES. The grant includes an independent evaluation component to assure the program is delivering results. For information, visit tinyurl.com/SCCProp47.
Mountain Community Theater’s ‘The CZU Fire in Their Own Words: Fighting Fires, Losing Homes and Rebuilding Community’ is a living document and gift to the community
