When the pandemic hit last year, the dance world came to a grinding halt. As studios across the country struggled to shift classes online, teach on Zoom, and adjust to the new Covid-19 reality, many sought the support of other teachers and students.
“One of the things that has been really unexpected was, when everything started happening, lots of studio owners and dance group leaders started communicating and asking questions about what other studios are doing for the first time,” Motion Pacific Director Collette Tabone says. “It’s been a time where people started coming together and relying on each other and helping one another. It was incredible to see.”
Dance Week, Motion Pacific’s largest annual event, was canceled in 2020 because of the pandemic. But this year, the group is hosting Dance Week in a modified form. While Dancing in the Streets won’t return until next year, Motion Pacific is partnering with other dance programs and organizations across the county to host “Dance in Unlikely Places”—a performance pop-up around Santa Cruz—and an open class weekend that will offer free, socially distanced outdoor dance classes at Motion Pacific and the Tannery World Dance and Cultural Center.
“Last year, we were all getting ready for Dance Week, which has become such a lynchpin for the entire dance community in Santa Cruz,” says Caitlin Fahey, co-owner of Synergy Dance, Fitness & Tai Chi. “I talked to other dance teachers because we were all really trying to support each other and share information.”
Likewise, Motion Pacific has invited dance studios and programs around the county to share their stories of what the pandemic has been like for them. Hoping to showcase the stories on social media, Tabone says that the idea was to create more visibility around the diversity and resilience of the dance community during the pandemic.
A full schedule of classes will be presented on Saturday, April 24, and Sunday, April 25, with a mix of artists including the Barre Collective, Folklorico, Palomar, and more. Participants must purchase an all-class pass that gives them access to whichever classes they like. Classes cap at around 14 students, so early sign-up is recommended.
NEW CHALLENGES, NEW CONNECTIONS
One Dance Week collaborator working to bring dance back to the community is Senderos, which teaches Latinx culture and history through dance and music. Because the organization serves many low-income families, it has—like them—been particularly hard-hit by the pandemic.
“During the year, we lost families and family members,” says Senderos founder Silva-Robles says. “We faced the challenge of how to keep our kids connected and keep them busy, but at the same time we were faced with the challenge of how to find food for our members, how to be able to survive without food or money because they could not work.”
For the first few months of the pandemic, Senderos offered weekly Zoom and technology classes for its members, in anticipation of school commencement in the fall. But many Senderos students are new immigrants who do not speak English or necessarily know how to operate digital technology.
With that in mind, the organization focused its resources on technology classes taught by young Senderos students who were more familiar and comfortable with the technology. The students would then teach the older generation how to use Zoom, check emails, set up doctor’s appointments, and become more familiar with the internet.
Despite the challenges, the pandemic also brought some good: Senderos could stream dance and music classes with maestros (teachers)from Mexico.
“We started to develop classes with the maestros in Mexico with our young high school students and children in elementary school,” Silva-Robles says. “That way they have the opportunity to see Sinaloa, Campeche and Tamaulipas through Zoom. That helped take some of the stress off, and, through dance and music, we gave some therapy to our members.”
International dance and communication is something that many studios have been able to do for the first time in the pandemic. In particular, the collaborative classes helped some Senderos students connect to their roots for the first time ever. “We can share from Santa Cruz to Mexico, without the thing we call a border. Without the paper that we call visas. We can do it,” Silva-Robles says.
Now, in its 20th anniversary year, Sendedoros is looking ahead to virtually host their annual Vive Oaxaca Guelaguetza event next month. The event will include many of the students and maestros from Mexico. Senderos will also be participating in the social media collection part of Dance Week.
“The whole dancer community really came together to share information and support each other. It’s pretty impressive to me, it was a stressful situation for teachers and students. We had to change on a dime, and that is just amazing,” Fahey says. “I always knew dancers would find a way. Dance is our lifeblood, it’s part of our lives and our identity.”
After reading the “Good Riddance, Regal” letter (GT, 3/31), I must point out one thing the sellers had done brilliantly: Metropolitan Opera Saturday Matinees, airing at 10am or so, our time, live, from New York! Interviews with stars, set designers, and so forth during intermissions, terrific filming technique of the opera itself—everyone gets the best seat in the house.
Walking on Pacific Avenue a few days ago, I found myself chatting with the new owner of the theater and asked whether the live Met Casts were in his plan.
His response was, “If there’s sufficient demand.”
Opera-loving folks: let your demand be sufficient!
Side note to GT letter-writer Terry M.: The main profit in the movie business is (I’m told) snack sales, which is why the aisles and spaces between seats are “generous,” to put it mildly—easy in/out for additional overpriced snacks, and eventually, to the john.
Jane Walton | Santa Cruz
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When I finished watching Santa Cruz filmmaker Jordan Graham’s new movie Sator for the first time, I was left a little stunned by the unsettling final scene. I sat there looking at the screen for a couple minutes just thinking about it, and suddenly noticed two names I didn’t expect in the credits that were rolling by: me and Santa Cruz musician Keith Greeninger. Both were listed under “pre-production assistance.” I figured mine was because I mentioned this project years ago in a story I wrote about Graham’s previous film, but what about Greeninger? Had he composed something for the film? Nope. Asking Graham about it, I learned that Greeninger was credited because he had donated some wood while Graham was building the cabin that is one of the main sets in Sator. That’s right, he built a cabin from the ground up, pretty much by himself, to use in the movie. And as a “creepy cabin a mountain man would live in,” I can attest that it is 100% convincing in the final film.
The cabin and Greeninger’s credit are just two examples of Graham’s remarkable attention to detail. I explain a lot more of them in my cover story on the film this week. I hope you’ll give it a read and catch Sator when it begins streaming on Shudder on May 10, or on pretty much all of the VOD services.
Ten big ideas, but only one mentioning the elephant(s) in the room. Anyone who has worked with the homeless knows that unmanaged chronic mental illness and untreated substance abuse disorders play a significant role in chronic homelessness. Data varies by source, but statistics from the county, the United Way and others peg it at somewhere around 30-40%. You can have all the affordable housing in the world (and I definitely I wish we did), but those with unmanaged chronic mental illness are still not going to be able to sustain independent living without significant support and treatment. Ditto with chronic substance abuse disorders. Pretending that this is “just” an affordable housing problem denies the bigger root cause for many suffering homelessness. California needs to recreate supportive housing for the chronically mentally ill with significant services, including lifetime support for those are never able to live independently, and needs to provide long term residential inpatient substance abuse treatment for those with long time substance abuse disorders. Until we realize that all homeless people are not homeless for the same reasons, and that one size definitely does not fit all, we are doomed to repeat this cycle of failure no matter how much “affordable” housing we create. My suggestion? The county should create multiple, small supportive shelter situations in various parts of the county using Pallet structures or other tiny home structures (not tents), with robust services including mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, case management, job training (as appropriate), and progress from these shelters to supportive “halfway” situations with extended social service support, and from there, if possible, to independent living. If we could at least address the approximately 30% of the homeless who are chronically mentally ill we would make a huge impact in their quality of life, as well as the community’s. Allowing chronically mentally ill, psychotic, schizophrenic people live outside without treatment or services is unconscionable.
— Carol Polhamus
Going to be the bad guy in the room and point out that most of the unsheltered don’t want to be sheltered because they don’t want to follow the rules on drugs or other issues.
Focus on people who are on the cusp of homelessness with affordable housing coupons, work-to-rent programs. People who aren’t drug addicts and mentally ill get first priority to care so they can move back into normal society before they are leashed to their vices.
The mentally ill, criminals, junkies need either a bus ticket to Mississippi or to be locked away. Remove the limits on LPS and be done with people that have no intention of helping society or them selves
— Rem
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GOOD IDEA
AUTHOR! AW, FUR!
The Palo Alto Humane Society is now accepting submissions for its third annual Ambassadors of Compassion Story Writing Contest. The contest encourages students in seventh and eighth grade in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties to submit fiction or nonfiction stories encompassing the theme of animals and people helping each other. The deadline to submit a story is May 31. The winning author will receive a $500 prize, and two runners-up will receive $200 each. Submit at paloaltohumane.org.
GOOD WORK
DIGITAL SCHOOL PRIDE
Despite the challenges of Covid-19, UCSC is carrying on with its annual alumni celebration as it brings 2021 Alumni Week to computer screens for an all-virtual celebration. The university has planned 60 events through April 25, featuring its top experts and alumni. Notable highlights include UCSC professor Ed Green’s lecture on DNA-based forensics and an up-close virtual tour of the elephant seal colony at Año Nuevo led by UCSC Reserve Director Patrick Robinson. The full calendar of events can be viewed at calendar.ucsc.edu/alumni_week.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The only way to get rid of my fears is to make films about them.”
In the early days of film’s rise as a global phenomenon, European filmmakers developed the idea of “pure cinema,” a style that relies as much as possible on visual storytelling. For its most extreme adherents, any exposition at all delivered by title cards (in the silent era), narration or even dialogue is considered a betrayal of the cinematic ideal.
“Pure cinema is what I believe in,” Alfred Hitchcock, the director often credited with bringing the philosophy to American suspense films, once told an interviewer. “The assembly of pieces of film to create fright is the essential part of my job.”
Sator, the newest feature from Santa Cruz filmmaker Jordan Graham, is likely as close as indie horror can come to pure cinema. Quiet, beautiful and yet chilling, it’s a movie that demands the viewer pay close attention to its visual clues—even more than the characters’ sparse, guarded dialogue—to unlock its mysteries.
In a film like this, the setting has to almost be a character in itself, and Graham gave the Santa Cruz Mountains, where most of Sator was shot, a major starring role. From ghostly fog to majestic sunrises to the deep greens and blacks of the forest interiors, these are undoubtedly the most gorgeous shots of the local landscape ever captured for a dramatic film. But over the long process of making the movie, Graham and his cast—especially lead actor Gabriel Nicholson, who plays Adam—learned nature can be a temperamental star that always decides when it’s ready for its close-up.
“The shots where there was really dramatic weather, where it’s just completely foggy in the trees, that was just complete luck,” says Graham. “It was me driving around the mountains by myself—I think I was looking for a location to shoot at—and I came across that. It was like 12 noon, and that fog was so packed in there. I race out of the mountains and call Gabe and say, ‘Are you off work right now? I’d like to go and shoot this.’ And he’s like, ‘I’m getting off right now, come pick me up.’”
Aurora Wonder Lowe, who plays Adam’s sister Deborah, remembers the unorthodox shooting schedule, and how long it lasted. “We’d film at night a lot of times. And there’d be times where we would wait hours to get the right lighting,” she says. “I was pregnant with my first child when we started filming, and I was pregnant with my second child when we ended filming. That’s how long the whole process took.”
What’s especially surprising in this age of digital filmmaking, when post-production can improve the look of any shot, is the authenticity of the camerawork.
“A big thing was I did not want to do sky replacements. There’s barely any digital stuff in there,” says Graham. “I was very particular about the weather. One of my rules was ‘No sun coming through the trees.’ I didn’t want to see any evidence of sun.”
He also wanted to “show Santa Cruz without showing Santa Cruz, so only locals would know,” giving the forest an unsettling, almost alien feel while throwing in little clues here and there for those who know the area, like a shot of a banana slug, or the lime kilns, or the Moon Rocks.
“I got lucky with the one major sunset where he’s up on top of the Moon Rocks in Bonny Doon and you can look over and see everything. We were coming from shooting somewhere else and it was like, ‘It’s a beautiful sunset!’ We park and I’m running up the hill with all my heavy gear, and we were luckily just able to set up and get that in five minutes.”
Since Sator’s release on VOD and Apple TV (it comes to the Shudder streaming service on May 10), reviewers have taken note of Graham’s arrival as a director. Variety called Sator “strikingly atmospheric,” while The Guardian, in its four-star review, said the film is “not quite like anything else” and declared it “a truly disturbing work that relies not so much on gore as the uncanny in its most potent form: stillness, pools of darkness and just-visible figures.”
Graham is delighted by the response; it’s exactly why the 34-year-old filmmaker, who has been making movies in Santa Cruz since he was 13 with his friends in middle school and high school (some of whom are also in Sator), spent so long crafting it on a minimal budget, handling almost every aspect of production himself.
“This film was very important to me, because I wanted it to be my calling card. I was like, ‘I’m going to give my all to this, but I want to do it in a particular way where I can show different parts of myself, with sound and visuals and writing,” he says.
“I didn’t care how many years it was going to take; I thought it was going to take three years, but it took seven years by the end.”
Graham directing Gabriel Nicholson (standing, left) and Michael Daniel (sitting) before shooting a scene for ‘Sator.’ COURTESY PHOTO
THE CABIN NOT IN THE WOODS
I last interviewed Graham several years ago, after he sold his micro-budget found-footage film Specter. (His first foray into full-length filmmaking, 2008’s Midground, almost made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for cheapest feature film ever made.) I thought Specter was a clever piece of filmmaking with a satisfying Twilight Zone-type twist. But Graham, always overly self-critical, could barely stand to watch it even then (and likes it even less now). At the time, he was already deep into prepping his next film, which he told me would be about a main character who seems to be slowly losing his mind while living in isolation in a cabin in the woods.
To start pre-production, he knew he at least needed a cabin. So he built one.
“There was a house I originally wanted to shoot that didn’t look anything like a cabin. It was in Paradise Park, and the woman who owned the place said she’d allow me to do it,” he says. “Then I was thinking of the stuff I wanted to do to that house, like redecorating it, and I didn’t know if she would be down for that. Then it took a lot longer to get financing for the film, and she was starting to get iffy about it. And I was like, ‘I don’t even know how long this film’s going to take, I’d love to have a place I can just go to wherever I want and mess it up however I want.’ I was looking at my mom’s backyard, which is in the Circles, and I was like, ‘Can I build a cabin in your backyard?’ It’s only six blocks away from the ocean.”
One person who wasn’t surprised by that decision was Michael Daniel, who plays Adam’s brother Pete in Sator and has been working with Graham on his films and in their longtime videography company Ocean House Productions since they were teenagers. Well, maybe kind of surprised.
“He built a fucking studio in his mom’s backyard,” says Daniel. “It’s insane, Jordan’s attention to detail. Especially with sound design and production, as well. Jordan had to create every single sound in this film. He spent over a year just on sound. It’s crazy, I can’t believe it.”
“Since Santa Cruz is so loud, I could only record from 11 o’clock at night until 4 in the morning,” says Graham. “That was one of the most difficult things on this film, doing the audio. I could predict the lighthouse, because that was like every 30 seconds. But we have our mile buoy out here, and that drove me insane, because I could never predict it. I got to the point where I wanted to find a boat, go out there really late at night and destroy that buoy. It was doing this, ‘Naaaaaaa, naaaaaaa,’ and it would go off at random times, and I couldn’t figure it out.”
It was times like that, or when he was spending 1,000 hours in a blacked-out room getting the colors right on the film, that made doing Sator mostly by himself a test of endurance. Or a downright hazard to his health, as when he made a fireplace for the cabin out of cement and then had to install it.
“I couldn’t lift that thing by myself. It was three or four panels of this heavy rock,” says Graham. “When we went to lift it, something popped in my chest, and I thought, ‘Oh, I wonder what that’s about.’ The next morning I woke up at 2am and could barely move. I ended up going to the doctor and was diagnosed with something called costo condritis, which is an inflammation of the ribs that attach to the sternum. There was part of the joint there that was inflamed. It’s supposed to go away with rest, but I couldn’t rest because I had a movie to do. I can still feel it. It’s still there.”
Graham built the distinctive cabin that is one of the main sets in the film. COURTESY PHOTO
MAKE WAY FOR SATOR
The central premise of a man in the cabin in the woods actually did stay the same over the course of making Sator—but almost nothing else did.
“The film started very differently, we had a completely different storyline,” says Lowe. “The one that we table read and workshopped was a completely different movie, pretty much.”
Sator tells the story of Adam, a quiet loner living in a cabin near Midground (Graham’s stand-in name for Santa Cruz, where all of his movies have been set). Glassy-eyed and quiet—he doesn’t even speak until 15 minutes into the film—he spends all of his time hunting in the woods and obsessing over tapes recorded by his mother, who has disappeared. The tapes tell of a creature of some type called Sator: “All upon the face of the forest shall tremble at his presence, and the mountains shall be thrown down, for Sator’s eyes are in every place on those who fear him, on those who hope for his coming, his acceptance. Every beast of the forest, every thing that moves, is his.”
What makes Adam’s fate and questionable mental state even more complicated is that the lines his mom recorded come straight from journals kept by her own mother. Indeed, back in the family home, Adam’s grandmother Nonny (June Peterson) regales his brother Pete and sister Deborah with tales of Sator, the being she’s obsessed over for years in journal after journal filled with automatic writing. The family has fractured after the death of Nonny’s husband and the disappearance of Adam’s mom. Pete is an alcoholic whose body was wrecked in some kind of accident; he goes hunting with Adam regularly, but they can barely look at each other, let alone communicate. Meanwhile, Deborah is trying to hold the family together—it was her who sent Adam off to live in the woods, just to get him away from the ever-growing toxicity of their family life. But it doesn’t seem to be helping, as he is visited by mysterious creatures clad in furs and deer skulls, and by an equally mysterious woman named Evie (Rachel Johnson). Or is he? Are these things all in his head, manifestations of the mental illness that runs in his family? Or are they signs that Sator is really coming for him, and perhaps for everyone?
CLOSE TO HOME
That question of monster versus mental illness, of internal versus external threat, is a big part of what has fascinated reviewers and fans. And Sator’s ambiguity around the issue (although I personally believe it is undeniably settled by the haunting final scene) is purposeful. Not only is the issue of mental illness something Graham pulled from his real family history, but in fact the idea of Sator is something that was, at one time at least, very real to Peterson, who plays Nonny. All the pages of automatic writing used in the film really were written by her. She heard voices in her head on and off throughout her life, and was briefly institutionalized in 1968. Over the years, Sator became a family story.
“I knew about Sator. But all I knew was that he was a guardian of my grandmother, a guardian spirit. I’d known that my entire life, I just didn’t know the extent of it,” says Graham. At first, he thought he would have her improvise with the actors in a quick cameo. But the stories she told (a few of which are in the film) piqued his interest.
“We brought up the spirits, and then she started talking about the voices that came into her head and how she used to communicate with them through the automatic writing,” says Graham. “I went home and was editing the footage and started asking my family, ‘What is this automatic writing stuff?’ My mom was saying, ‘Oh yeah, she used to write with spirits that way, but she burnt all that years ago.’ But my mom was way too young at the time that was happening, so I didn’t really get a lot of information out of it.”
When Peterson had to be moved to a home, Graham helped pack her belongings—and discovered two boxes, one with thousands of pages of her automatic writing that her family thought had been burned, and one with a 1,000-page journal in which she documented every day she had spent with Sator over a three-month period before she was institutionalized.
“Then I learned about more family history,” says Graham. “My great-great-grandmother also had voices in her head, and had been in a psychiatric hospital. My great-grandmother had voices in her head, and killed herself because of it. It wasn’t Sator, it was just voices talking. Then when my grandmother was in her 40s, that’s when Sator came to her.”
Even though he’d already completed shooting, Graham began rewriting his script radically and reshooting with his grandmother as a central character. Peterson is a natural presence onscreen; warm and jovial in contrast to the other characters’ tight-lipped anxiety—even when she is talking about some unsettling things. But everyone involved knew time was short, as Peterson’s growing dementia further complicated shooting.
“She was such a good sport,” says Lowe. “She’d be like, ‘Oh, you guys are filming again.’ But then she’d go into these moments where she’d talk about Sator. And when I looked through all of those papers—I mean, that was all real stuff. It was kind of creepy. But when you think about mental illness as something someone is going through, you hold compassion for them; that’s real to them, and it’s not real to us. Going through all the drawings, those were pretty trippy. Faces that she had seen in the past, you know? She was fine talking about it, so for that there wasn’t a problem. It was, like, you don’t want to conjure it up or anything. But she didn’t have any negative feelings about it. To her, It was like an old friend. That’s what it seemed like.”
And Graham wasn’t the only person on the shoot for whom the issues explored were very real.
“It was interesting,” says Lowe, “because I come from a family with mental illness in it. Dealing with that and then dealing with the movie—talk about method acting.”
Peterson died in 2019, and the movie is dedicated to her. Most dedications are placed at the end of a film; Graham placed Peterson’s at the beginning, a sign of her inestimable impact on Sator, and on him as he works on his next scripts.
“My grandmother changed me, how I want to approach things in the future,” he says. “I was so lucky, having her stories and having them be as interesting as they are. I’ll never get that opportunity again. But it did make me want to approach things in a more real way.”
MAKING THE SCENE
Sator comes at a time when horror movies like The Witch, Hereditary and Midsommar have redefined the genre. Like Sator, they take a moodier, more dramatic and naturalistic approach, focusing more on family stories and big ideas than jump scares. In one case, director Ari Aster’s 2018 film Hereditary, Graham even worried they might be too similar.
“Hereditary, I was in in postproduction when that came out. When I first heard about it, when it played at Sundance, what I read about it is that it’s about the Graham family, which is my last name, it’s about a grandmother who’s dealing with spirits, and I was like, ‘Dude, this guy stole my movie.’ So I went and found a screenplay and read through that thing as quick as I could. His script is so well-written, but nothing like my film. I was very, very happy about that.”
Seeing this new wave of films, especially The Witch, made him more confident about how Sator would be received.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, there are movies coming out like this. This is right where I want to be. I want to be associated with these people. I want to get this thing out there,’” he remembers.
When he did, he was still a bit shocked at first when film festival offers began rolling in—he even got to go to a couple before Covid-19 hit—and the movie rose to number two on Apple TV’s horror charts.
When it was distributed overseas, the press started telling him how much Sator recalled European filmmaking, with its ideal of pure cinema. It was one of the highest compliments he could get.
“When I was a teenager, horror movies were the ‘dumb’ movies,” he says. “It was like, ‘You can’t get any prestige out of that, you can’t be taken seriously if you’re doing a horror movie.’ That was what was in my mind back then. I don’t feel like that now at all. Now you have these indie filmmakers who want to tell good stories with horror. It’s changing the direction, where you don’t have to have pop-outs all the time. You don’t need it to be cheesy. You can make these dramas, but have them be maybe a little more marketable by having them be horror.”
Meanwhile, the friends who have come up with Graham over the years aren’t shocked that Graham—like the mythical Sator itself—has arrived. Daniel says Graham’s breakthrough film was not a question of if, but when.
“I always believed in Jordan,” says Daniel. “I’ve been friends with him for so long, and I always had faith. I knew he was insanely talented, and in the back of my head, I knew—but, I mean, I didn’t know I would be acting in it.”
‘Sator’ begins streaming on Shudder on May 10, and is available for digital rental and purchase on Apple TV, Amazon Prime and Google Play.
In early March, the city of Santa Cruz got word that it had scored $5 million from the competitive federal Local Housing Trust Fund (LHTF), which is administered by the State Housing and Community Development department. It was part of $57 million in competitive grants doled out statewide.
The money, which will be allocated over five years, will help provide matching funds for several projects in Santa Cruz that are bringing much-needed affordable housing units for low-income families.
Santa Cruz was one of 33 applicants vying for the funds, says Economic Development Director Bonnie Lipscomb, who called the grant “key money” for at least three current projects. The city has about $3 million in its Affordable Housing Trust Fund, she says, which is funded by developer fees and used to close the financing gap for affordable housing projects in the city.
“Having that money means we can leverage that many more projects,” Lipscomb says. “We typically come in as the last financing on projects, particularly ones that may be stalled in their projects.”
Lipscomb says that the city currently has around 1,000 housing units in various stages of development, many of which are considered affordable. Affordable housing projects could also get a boost from the ongoing work of a volunteer group looking at potential revenue streams.
In November 2018, a bond that would have funded affordable housing in the county failed after falling just short of the two-thirds it needed. But the numbers by jurisdiction told a different story. The city of Santa Cruz overwhelmingly approved it, and it nearly passed in Watsonville, says retired county treasurer and former state lawmaker Fred Keeley, who is a member of Housing Santa Cruz County. That group—formed about one year ago in the wake of those efforts—took the near success as a cue that voters might give a nod to a similar measure in the future.
The group tackles the affordable housing crisis with a multi-faceted approach. This includes advocating for affordable housing projects countywide, supporting efforts by local jurisdictions to increase affordable housing stock and connecting with and supporting elected officials who list housing as one of their top priorities.
“So many people wanted to continue to move forward,” Keeley says.
And so as part of those efforts, he says the group is in the early stages of a possible affordable housing measure for the November 2022 ballot. Group member Don Lane, a former Santa Cruz mayor and community organizer, says that the work will mean looking into the specific needs for each jurisdiction in the county.
“There is just a good amount of discussion going on in a lot of different places around the need for some new local funding sources for affordable housing,” Lane says. “That will be a major point of discussion for us going forward.”
The quickly-growing nonprofit group is made up of 25 organizations and about 100 members, Lane says.
“We are trying to build a very big tent for this organization,” he says, “and we’re off to a very good start.”
Statewide, the numbers are grim. According to the U.S. Census bureau, 1.4 million Californians—nearly 8% of the population of people 18 and older—are experiencing housing insecurity. Housing Authority of Santa Cruz County Executive Director Jenny Panetta estimates that about 30,000 households—roughly one-third of all households in the county—are income eligible for federal rental assistance, defined as earning less than 50% of median household income.
“We are among the least-affordable rental markets in the nation,” she says.
Panetta says the organization is assisting roughly 5,000 households, and another 12,000 are on the waiting list for the Housing Choice (previously known as Section 8) voucher program, a process that can take about 10 years.
Mayor Donna Meyers says that the state next year will adjust its Regional Housing Needs Allocation (RHNA) numbers—which lays out the amount of local housing programs that jurisdictions must include when developing their housing elements, a long-range plan of how a city plans to develop its housing stock. The Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments oversees those allocations.
The city adopted its plan in 2016 and is set to do so again in 2023. She also says that the state will likely begin holding jurisdictions responsible for failing to meet their goals by withholding funding for housing projects, putting more pressure on cities.
“I have a feeling that the state is going to put out a bigger number for us to achieve,” Meyers says.
Meyers says she hopes to see a mix of housing for all income levels—from market-rate to affordable—as the city looks to ease its housing crisis and considers new projects. That can be a tough sell in any jurisdiction, with many residents ready to fight changes to their neighborhoods.
“Housing is a hard, moving target to really develop comprehensive public policy for, because people react to development in different ways,” Meyers says.
While the ongoing work in Santa Cruz was helping the city reach its RHNA goals of 180 very-low income units, 118 low-income units and 136 moderate units, next year’s goals will essentially start the clock over again with the city’s housing needs obligations, Meyers says.
Reach for the sky
Lipscomb says various downtown projects making their way through the design phase will allow vertical, high-density development in the corridor, bringing residents’ homes closer to where they work, shop and eat.
“That whole local context will help our downtown really thrive into the future,” she says. “This is a really good situation for our community right now.”
These projects run the gamut from 100% affordable to a mix of market-rate and low-income. What’s clear is that there is no solution that will satisfy everyone, particularly when considering projects that potentially alter the look and feel of neighborhoods.
Political consultant Bruce Van Allen, who served as Santa Cruz mayor and led several housing projects in the city, called the affordable housing problem “a big, intractable mess.”
“Many people feel that higher density is the way to expand the inventory, but that’s a volatile subject,” he says.
That is especially true in neighborhoods made up of single-family homes, Van Allen says.
“A lot of those neighborhoods like it the way it is,” he says.
Van Allen says the problem won’t simply be solved by building more units. Raising wages, lowering the cost of housing and regulating the market all factor into solving the issue. It’s also important, he adds, to subsidize both potential homebuyers and developers to make including affordable options more attractive. But those subsidies can also be a touchy subject, Van Allen says.
“Regulating the market is a tough ask in our country, and subsidizing people is tough, too, because of the impression that you’re encouraging laziness,” he says. “There is really no other way to do it, which is why there is so much homelessness now because of the disparity between what people can earn and the cost.”
Van Allen says he managed several affordable housing projects for the nonprofit Community Housing Corporation in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta Earthquake. Getting through the red tape, he says, brought another hassle.
“It would take sometimes two or three years to line up the funding and get everything in place,” he says.
Housing activist Charlie Vaske says he came to Santa Cruz to attend UCSC in 2003, and started delving into the issue when he began to look for his own apartment.
“I was wondering why all my friends were leaving town and why the rents kept going up,” he says. “And why there isn’t enough housing, why when I went to apply for an apartment to rent, why there were 80 people looking for one apartment. It seemed like that was all wrong.”
He says he found a “systematic manipulation” of housing by property owners over the past 50 years who have opposed numerous apartment projects, thus making them scarce and driving up prices. The average rent currently for a one-bedroom apartment is now $2,200, he says.
This skepticism includes the 831 Water Street project, which would bring 77 affordable and 47 very-low-income units. It would also include about 9,000 square feet of retail businesses on the ground floor, about 80 underground parking spaces and a 2,000-square-foot community space on the top floor of one of the two buildings. Despite the high number of affordable units that it will provide, it has garnered opposition even by people who support affordable housing. One such person is Simon Ghorbani, who lives behind the strip mall where the project would be located. He says the large development would be jarring when juxtaposed near his neighborhood of single-family homes.
“A lot of people would say, ‘not in my backyard, not in my backyard,’ and I never imagined I would be saying this, but, literally, this would be impossible to have in my backyard,” he said during a public comment period on Jan. 27 as the public information phase of the project kicked off.
Vaske says the city needs more duplexes, triplexes and quadplexes, which are discouraged or even prohibited in many communities. Berkeley, Oakland and South San Francisco recently changed their zoning rules to allow them, Vaske says, adding that no such change is slated for Santa Cruz.
“But I’d like to create some movement,” he says.
Senate Bill 9, introduced in December by a half-dozen senators, would allow those developments in neighborhoods zoned for single families. The bill is currently making its way through the normally circuitous approval process.
Rafa Sonnenfeld of Santa Cruz YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) cites numbers from the California Housing Partnership showing that 1.3 million low-income renter households statewide—10,000 locally—don’t have access to affordable homes.
“We’re way behind the curve in what the need is and what the supply is,” he says.
In Santa Cruz County, Sonnenfeld says, 75% of people earning less than 35% of median household income are paying more than half of their paychecks on housing costs, which he says is an “incredible cost burden.” Inclusionary ordinances—such as Santa Cruz’s requirement that any project with five or more units must be 20% affordable—often shifts the onus of adding affordable housing onto private for-profit developers, he says.
“So it doesn’t always pencil out for developers or the community,” Sonnenfeld says.
“There is really a need for more affordable housing, especially at the deepest levels of affordability, and right now we really don’t have any great way to produce that kind of housing,” he adds.
Keeley says that any discussion of creating affordable housing should be based on taking action.
“We are long, long, long past the time when the case needs to be made in the need for affordable housing,” he says. “This is now part of the fabric of California, especially on the coast. It is part of the reality of our community as well, which is that there continues to be a growing divide between those that can’t afford housing and work in the community.”
COMING SOON
The city is in the midst of several projects that include affordable housing, and while officials tout them as a step in the right direction, housing advocates say they do not do enough to meet the need.
Where: Just south of Maple Alley where Tampico restaurant used to be
Developer: For The Future Housing
Details: Offers 80 units of very-low income affordable housing. Will include a new home for Santa Cruz Community Health Center and Dientes Community Dental Care, offering low-cost dental and medical care.
Stage: City has approved the application and is seeking final funding and applying for tax credits.
Pacific Station North
Where: Downtown corridor
Developer: First Community Housing
Details: About 100 units of affordable housing. This ambitious project includes a plan to relocate the Metro center to Front Street and develop Pacific Street frontage with commercial retail on the ground floor, with affordable housing on top. “The idea is that we’re realigning the metro, making a very active streetscape and pedestrian-enhanced area and providing much-needed housing by going vertical, so we’re going denser,” Lipscomb says.
Where: At the site of the downtown farmer’s market
Developer: Design firms Project for Public Space and Group 4 Architecture have been chosen to lead the development process.
Details: Approved by the City Council on June 23, 2020, this project will include a new library, with housing on the upper floors with a minimum of 50 affordable units. It will also include a parking structure with 400 spaces.
Stage: This project recently kicked off, and is a few months behind Pacific Station North, Lipscomb said. A request for proposal will be sent out soon.
Calvary Church project
Where: Adjacent to the church at 532 Center St.
Developer: By Calvary Church
Details: This 100% affordable housing project adjacent to Calvary Church is slated for 60 units. Assembly Bill 1763, signed into law on Oct. 9, 2019, provides density bonuses for projects that offer 100% affordable units.
Details: The project would be a mixture of 151 market rate, workforce and affordable housing units. Of these, 77 would be affordable, 47 very-low-income and the remainder being market-rate. It would also include about 9,000 square feet of retail businesses on the ground floor, about 80 underground parking spaces and a 2,000-square-foot community space on the top floor of one of the two buildings.
Stage: Still working through the pre-application and design processes.
Details: A seven-story, mixed-use building with 175 residential condos, 15 of which will be affordable to incomes at 50% of the Area Median Income (AMI) and 5 at 80% AMI. In addition, it will have 11,498 square feet of ground floor and levee front commercial space.
Stage: The city approved the project on Jan. 12.
Other possibilities
Santa Cruz School District is looking to build a workforce housing program, Lipscomb says, and the Santa Cruz City Council is looking at changes to the city’s inclusionary ordinance to allow employer- and school-sponsored housing. This project would be located where Natural Bridges School now stands on Swift Street.
Seabright resident Paige Concannon says that an influential neighborhood movement she helped create all started with a reflection about her community.
Concannon says she feels police response times have always been slower east of the San Lorenzo Rivermouth, and people in her community are scrappy and have always looked out for each other. “We’re strong,” she says.
That’s what gave her an idea.
In recent months, when Santa Cruz’s city staff laid out places for unsheltered Santa Cruzans to sleep at night as part of the Temporary Outdoor Living Ordinance (TOLO), they cordoned off much of the city as off-limits to camping. However, a sizable chunk of the area where unhoused residents would still be allowed to sleep was in Seabright. Residents in that neighborhood voiced opposition to the ordinance, many of them out of concern that an influx of campers would overrun the sidewalks and hurt businesses. Concannon, who was one of them, helped launch a campaign. She called it “Seabright Strong,” and friends started printing signs with that message on them.
“Seabright is saying to the City Council, ‘We’re strong; we’re gonna make you do your job, and we’re gonna keep hounding you until it’s done, because we are a gathered force,’” Concannon says.
Seabright residents ultimately convinced the Santa Cruz City Council to scrap the TOLO and head back to the drawing board to draft a new ordinance. Nonetheless, the “Seabright Strong” campaign gave a queasy feeling to some of Concannon’s neighbors.
Fellow Seabright resident Kelsey Hill opposed the TOLO for her own reasons. She worried less about the impacts on Seabright in particular and more about how she felt the ordinance—which would have banned camping citywide during the day—would be far too restrictive and too disruptive to the city’s unhoused residents.
Hill, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for the City Council in 2020, notes that slogans like “SLV Strong” or “San Bernardino Strong” normally crop up after a local trauma, like a terrorist attack or a natural disaster, not in response to a homelessness policy. Also, she says “Seabright Strong” implied a unified opposition to the TOLO for shared reasons, when the reality is more complex. More than anything, Hill, who works in communications, felt “Seabright Strong” sent a loud “othering” message, not just to the homeless people made to feel unwelcome on Seabright streets, but to the neighborhood’s progressives who criticized the ordinance for their own reasons.
Concannon, who ran for the City Council in 2016 as a Republican, knows her messaging got some pushback from critics. But she stands by it, saying that, at the end of the day, she and her neighbors achieved their goal.
“I understand some of them are like, ‘That’s kind of shitty,’” says Concannon, who works as a cook at St. Francis Soup Kitchen. “Believe me. I know that. But how else do you get the City Council to move?’”
The challenge now is how to move forward. Concannon says pretty much everyone she talks to is pressuring the council for a resolution.
“All the neighborhoods are coming together and saying, ‘You keep talking about this, and nothing changes, and now, we’re telling you, you have to change it now,’” she says. “Things have to change now. Not another focus group. None of that. Let’s fix it.”
Fixing a crisis, however, means different things to different people, especially when it comes to a topic as complex as homelessness—and in a town where oftentimes the only things more controversial than the status quo are the various solutions that city staffers, politicians and activists have thrown against the wall in recent years.
In scrapping the TOLO, the Santa Cruz City Council, on a 5-2 vote, has now given staff until May 11 to draft a revision to the ordinance.
Janice Bisgaard, a city spokesperson, says staff are on schedule to bring back a revised ordinance, along with implementation and engagement plans for the safe sleeping and storage programs, which they anticipate will be set up on city parking lots downtown. Staff are working on identifying sites, she says, and will be taking applications from potential service providers interested in partnering.
The downtown parking lot idea isn’t new. The council identified a lot on Washington Street for a safe sleeping zone two years ago, then threw the plan out rather promptly, due to neighborhood opposition. One year later, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the city opened a camping zone at a different parking lot in the same area, only to close it within two days. Other local managed camps—like one that the county moved from the San Lorenzo Benchlands to DeLaveaga Park—have seen some success, however.
In Seabright, the issues stretch beyond homelessness, says resident Shelley Hatch, whose family bought a home in Santa Cruz in 1969 because they couldn’t afford a home in San Francisco.
Hatch, who helped organize meetings about the TOLO, says she’s still reeling from organizing around the successful effort a couple years ago to get the city to nix its plans to upzone corridors, like Soquel Avenue, for greater density of market-rate and affordable housing. If the city builds more housing, the influx of new cars would be too great for Santa Cruz roads to bear, she says, given many people like to drive and she doesn’t know how many people would want to ride bikes.
A former restaurant owner, Hatch says much of her concern around the TOLO was for businesses. The potential for sidewalk camping wrought by the hypothetical ordinance, she feels, would have dealt them a significant blow.
But homelessness is a regional and statewide crisis, she says, and one that merits regional and statewide solutions, a challenge that she hopes is now obvious to everyone.
And as for the options locally, none of them come easy, especially when critics lash out at any plan to let people sleep near neighborhoods, near businesses or in parks.
“I go on Nextdoor, and I see residents of a lot different areas say they’ve had it,” Hatch says. “I know people who live off Ocean Street have been unhappy for a long time. It’s big, and it’s going to get bigger. The haters are maybe starting to get the idea that it isn’t just a Santa Cruz problem.”
The former Minneapolis police officer who was seen in a video killing a Black man by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes was convicted Tuesday on counts of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter.
Derek Chauvin faces 12 years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, according to multiple national media reports. Prosecutors, however, could seek a longer sentence up to the maximum of 40 years, Reuters reported.
The conviction brings to an end a case that sparked global outcry about the treatment of Black Americans by law enforcement, and systemic racism still alive today in the U.S.—but by no means does it end the conversations spurred by the killing.
The four Santa Cruz County mayors—Capitola Mayor Yvette Brooks, Watsonville Mayor Jimmy Dutra, Santa Cruz Mayor Donna Meyers and Scotts Valley Mayor Derek Timm—released a joint statement asking the community to “join together as we move toward justice and healing.”
“The heartbreaking murder of George Floyd and many other people of color has highlighted the systemic problem of racism throughout our country,” the statement read. “We are by no means close to ending the hundreds of years of injustices put on the shoulders of people of color. As leaders in Santa Cruz County we have the responsibility to implement and encourage change in our region. We stand with all communities of color, including the very ones we represent here in our diverse county.
“We urge our community to come together today and everyday in peaceful solidarity.”
Chauvin, 45, who is white, in the video was seen forcing his knee into Floyd’s neck on May 25, 2020, during an arrest in connection to Floyd’s alleged use of a counterfeit $20 bill at a grocery store. Floyd, 46, was handcuffed while laying on the floor face down with Chauvin’s knee pressing on his neck. He could be heard saying he could not breath before he went unconscious.
The Santa Cruz County branch of the NAACP in a statement said that the trial “serves as a reminder of the urgent need to pass legislation to hold police accountable, change the culture of law enforcement and build trust between law enforcement and our communities by preventing police brutality and allowing survivors and families of victims access to justice.”
“Countless victims like George Floyd, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor and now Daunte Wright have had their obituaries reopened, edited, rewritten, day after day,” the statement reads. “Our country has been relegated to no longer allowing the victim to rest in peace, but forcing their lives to be marred by public perception, criticism, and opinions as methods of rationalizing death as if our lives are expendable. Enough is Enough. This verdict offers a measure of justice but no consolation to the family and friends of Mr. Floyd. The time is now to not only reform but completely rethink the U.S. system of law enforcement.”
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Blogger Emma Elsworthy wrote her “Self-Care List.” I’ll tell you a few of her 57 action items, in hopes of inspiring you to create your own list. The coming weeks will be a perfect phase to upgrade your focus on doing what makes you feel healthy and holy. Here are Elsworthy’s ideas: Get in the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. Organize your room. Clean your mirror and laptop. Lie in the sunshine. Become the person you would ideally fall in love with. Walk with a straight posture. Stretch your body. Challenge yourself to not judge or ridicule anyone for a whole day. Have a luxurious shower with your favorite music playing. Remember your dreams. Fantasize about the life you would lead if failure didn’t exist.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Some traditional Buddhist monks sit on city streets in Asia with a “begging bowl” in front of them. It’s a clay or iron container they use to solicit money and food from passers-by who want to support them. Contemporary American poet Mariannne Boruch regards the begging bowl as a metaphor that helps her generate new poems. She adopts the attitude of the empty vessel, awaiting life’s instructions and inspiration to guide her creative inquiry. This enables her to “avoid too much self-obsession and navel-gazing” and be receptive—”with no agenda besides the usual wonder and puzzlement.” I recommend the begging-bowl approach to you as you launch the next phase of your journey, Taurus.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Gemini-born Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) is today regarded as an innovative and influential painter. But his early years provided few hints that he would ultimately become renowned. As a teenager, he attended naval preparatory school, and later he joined the French navy. At age 23, he became a stockbroker. Although he also began dabbling as a painter at that time, it wasn’t until the stock market crashed 11 years later that he made the decision to be a full-time painter. Is there a Gauguin-like turning point in your future, Gemini? If so, its early signs might show itself soon. It won’t be as dramatic or stressful as Gauguin’s, but I bet it will be quite galvanizing.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): A research team found that some people pray for things they are reasonably sure God wouldn’t approve of. In a sense, they’re trying to trick the Creator into giving them goodies they’re not supposed to get. Do you ever do that? Try to bamboozle life into offering you blessings you’re not sure you deserve? The coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to dare such ploys. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll succeed, but the chances are much better than usual that you will. The universe is pretty relaxed and generous toward you right now.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): In 2013, the New Zealand government decided to rectify the fact that its two main islands had never been assigned formal names. At that time, it gave both an English and Māori-language moniker for each: North Island, or Te Ika-a-Māui, and South Island, or Te Waipounamu. In the spirit of correcting for oversights and neglect, and in accordance with current astrological omens, is there any action you’d like to take to make yourself more official or professional or established? The coming weeks will be a favorable time to do so.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Author Grant Morrison observes that our heads are “big enough to contain every god and devil there ever was. Big enough to hold the weight of oceans and the turning stars. Whole universes fit in there!” That’s why it’s so unfortunate, he says, if we fill up our “magical cabinet” with “little broken things, sad trinkets that we play with over and over.” In accordance with astrological potentials, Virgo, I exhort you to dispose of as many of those sad trinkets and little broken things as you can. Make lots of room to hold expansive visions and marvelous dreams and wondrous possibilities. It’s time to think bigger and feel wilder.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran author bell hooks (who doesn’t capitalize her name) has a nuanced perspective on the nature of our pain. She writes, “Contrary to what we may have been taught, unnecessary and unchosen suffering wounds us, but need not scar us for life.” She acknowledges that unnecessary and unchosen suffering does indeed “mark us.” But we have the power to reshape and transform how it marks us. I think her wisdom will be useful for you to wield in the coming weeks. You now have extra power to reshape and transform the marks of your old pain. You probably won’t make it disappear entirely, but you can find new ways to make it serve you, teach you and ennoble you.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): I love people who inspire me to surprise myself. I’m appreciative when an ally provides me with a friendly shock that moves me to question my habitual ways of thinking or doing things. I feel lucky when a person I like offers a compassionate critique that nudges me out of a rut I’ve been in. Here’s a secret: I don’t always wait around passively hoping events like these will happen. Now and then I actively seek them out. I encourage them. I ask for them. In the coming weeks, Scorpio, I invite you to be like me in this regard.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): “Where did last year’s lessons go?” asks Gillian Welch in her song “I Dream a Highway.” Now I’m posing the same question to you—just in time for the Remember Last Year’s Lessons Phase of your cycle. In my astrological opinion, it’s crucial for you to recollect and ruminate deeply on the breakdowns and breakthroughs you experienced in 2020; on every spiritual emergency and spiritual emergence you weathered; on all the scary trials you endured and all the sacred trails you trod.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Capricorn painter Henri Matisse had a revolutionary influence on 20th-century art, in part because of his raucous use of color. Early in his career he belonged to the movement known as Fauvism, derived from the French term for “wild beasts.” During his final years, he invented a new genre very different from his previous work: large collages of brightly colored cut-out paper. The subject matter, according to critic Jed Perl, included “jungles, goddesses, oceans, and the heavens,” and “ravishing signs and symbols” extracted from the depths of “Matisse’s luminosity.” I offer him as a role model for you, Capricorn, because I think it’s a perfect time to be, as Perl describes Matisse, both “a hard-nosed problem-solver and a feverish dreamer.”
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, ‘Seek simplicity, but distrust it.’” Aquarian philosopher Alfred North Whitehead wrote that, and now I’m proposing that you use it as your motto in the coming weeks, even if you’re not a natural philosopher. Why? Because I suspect you’ll thrive by uncomplicating your life. You’ll enhance your well-being if you put greater trust in your instinctual nature and avoid getting lost in convoluted thoughts. On the other hand, it’s important not to plunge so deeply into minimalism that you become shallow, careless or unimaginative.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): In ancient Greek comic theater, there was a stock character known as the eiron. He was a crafty underdog who outwitted and triumphed over boastful egotists by pretending to be naive. Might I interest you in borrowing from that technique in the coming weeks? I think you’re most likely to be successful if you approach victory indirectly or sideways—and don’t get bogged down trying to forcefully coax skeptics and resisters. Be cagey, understated and strategic, Pisces. Let everyone think they’re smart and strong if it helps ensure that your vision of how things should be will win out in the end.
Homework: I’m in the mood for you to give me predictions and past life readings. Send your psychic insights about my destiny. tr**********@gm***.com.
When you go all-out to make a terrific Chardonnay and you win a double gold for your efforts, then you know you have done a good job.
This would be the case for Eric Stockwell, owner and winemaker at Stockwell Cellars. His 2018 Tondre Chardonnay ($35) won double gold at the San Francisco Chronicle Wine Competition—a prestigious event held annually in January.
A beautiful straw color greets the drinker, along with the fragrance of bright pineapple, poached pear and honey. “This is a dry, oaked wine of medium body, possessing a good backbone of fresh acidity which provides structure prior to the long finish,” says Stockwell. I love the wine’s tropical notes, balanced acidity and lingering flavor of ruby grapefruit. Grapes are from the esteemed Tondre Grapefield in Monterey County.
Every time I go to Stockwell’s industrial-chic tasting room, the place is full of happy imbibers—and there’s always a good vibe going, too. Swag is piled up by the entrance with lots of good buys on T-shirts, hoodies and fleece blankets for the typical Santa Cruz chill.
Stockwell Cellars, 1100 Fair Ave., Santa Cruz. 831-818-9075, stockwellcellars.com.
There’s a Catch
The Santa Clara Marketplace has recently opened up over the hill. It contains a variety of businesses, banks, shops, and restaurants—Whole Foods, Starbucks, Lula’s Chocolates and more to come. A brand-new Pacific Catch fish restaurant just opened its doors there at the end of March, and it’s well worth a visit. With its modern design interior, wonderful service, and a menu of ultra-fresh fish, we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch there.
There’s a fish bar with pokes and ceviches, a taco bar, bowls and greens such as Japanese Wasabi and Hawaiian Teriyaki, and fresh-catch entrees for every palate. Some choices for meat eaters include Korean barbecue and Wagyu burger, but the main focus is on fish. Margaritas, beer, wine and cocktails abound—and windows open for an inside/outside feel.
Pacific Catch, 3315 Coronado Place, Santa Clara. 669-342-4327, pacificcatch.com.
Reef Dog Deli in Capitola Village is a gourmet sandwich shop that also offers grab-and-go meats and seafoods, housemade sides and snacks, and breakfast comfort food.
Just in the puppy stage of business, they opened in December 2020 and are open 8am-4pm Wednesday-Monday (Saturday until 5pm). Owner and chef Anthony Kresge has over 35 years of culinary experience, from comfort food cafés to fine dining. GT talked to him recently about the origins of the deli as well as its most inspired sandwiches.
Where did the name ‘Reef Dog’ come from?
ANTHONY KRESGE: The whole idea and concept behind our deli is to love and honor our late white Labrador named “Reef,” who was a local legend for beachgoers. He lived and loved and embraced people like we do with food. My sous chef is Aaron Cunningham, who I’ve worked with in the past, and our deli is family-owned and -operated. My wife Jennet is co-owner, and my two kids Leo and Maya work here, too. My youngest daughter Kaitlyn is only six years old, but she also helps out and greets guests with a smile, even though she’s currently missing her two front teeth.
What are the craft sandwich highlights on the menu?
I would say our housemade pastrami. It’s an elongated process of brine, cure and smoke, all done in-house. It’s served on locally made rye bread with stone ground mustard, stout caramelized onions and melted white Vermont cheddar cheese. Guests often say it rivals classic East Coast pastrami sandwiches. One sandwich that I’m most proud of is our “Maestro Giacomo,” which is a porchetta sandwich with pesto mayo and mojo de ajo—it’s an industry favorite.
Our rendition of porchetta has butterflied heritage pork tenderloin stuffed with melted fennel, herbs and chili, and rolled and wrapped with pork belly bacon. It is an homage to my late friend and colleague Jaime Pitale who I studied and worked with in southern Italy. We have many other show-stopping sandwiches, too, such as our house-smoked turkey with pickled root vegetable slaw, cranberry compote barbeque sauce and melted pepper jack cheese. We also have a local seafood sandwich called “Surf Trip,” and a vegan sandwich that rivals the meat sandwiches and is called “Happy Cow.” It’s a medley of sous vide and roasted vegetables with fresh chimichurri, a vegan olive/Sriracha aioli and smoked eggplant spread.
