Three bold actors bathed in brooding light and soundwork take charge of the outdoor stage in Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s ingenious production of RII, a compressed adaptation by Jessica Kubzansky of Shakespeare’s King Richard the Second. Given the circumstances this year, SCS wisely selected a showcase for a small cast, three actors playing eight characters. The effect is by turns brilliant and surprising. Hearing Shakespeare explore the power of the English language makes RII a mesmerizing experience. The drama unfolds through the recollections of Richard (the adroit lead actor M.L. Roberts) as the former king steps back and forth in time, from his adventures as monarch to his ignoble end in the Tower of London.
In a nutshell: Richard has played fast and loose with his citizens’ lands and fortunes. Various noblemen—notably cousin Henry Bolingbroke—plan his overthrow in this prequel to Shakespeare’s Henry trilogy. The issues of revolt and treason against a rightful leader resonate hugely in our present day. The lean adaptation lasers in on the duplicity of the monarch and those plotting to throw him in prison—which is where the play opens (at roughly Act Five of the original).
Playing the part of King Richard throughout, Roberts is exceptional, vocally eloquent and physically nimble, changing back and forth from king to meditating prisoner. Shakespeare’s Richard unleashes a torrent of spoken arias crafted almost entirely in dazzling rhyming couplets. His musings, reminiscent of Hamlet’s, as to how he ended up betrayed and without identity are illustrated in clever flashbacks. The clash between the young, pragmatic Bolingbroke (played by the award-winning Paige Lindsey White) and the dynastic monarch drives this drama. SCS Artistic Director Mike Ryan is the third actor powering the eclectic roles of cousins, henchmen, boytoy, bishops, and traitorous noblemen. As Richard’s dying uncle John of Gaunt, Ryan articulates epic soliloquies and metaphors of England as an unparalleled world power: “This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England.”
The actors move fluidly in and out of their various parts, bodying forth all the intrigue, allegiance, and plotting that will launch the Hundred Years War. Thanks to intelligent direction by Melissa Rain Anderson, we are never in any doubt as to who’s who—although I advise theatergoers to read over the program notes before the action begins. The set is smart enough to serve as royal dungeon and royal throne room, depending upon the costuming of the moment. And I do mean moment, since there are times when Ryan must begin a speech wearing the red robe of a cardinal, and end the same speech as an attending duke, solely by doffing the robe and hiding it under his arm. Roberts meanders back in time to Richard’s heyday by donning his kingly cape and sparkling crown. The removal of those trappings places him back in prison. And back and forth. Stage magic.
Fine acting and inspired light and soundwork keep the various flashbacks moving swiftly, interweaving the doomed Richard and his chequered past into a shimmering organism. The compelling music design by Rody Ortega brings us huge crowds applauding Bolingbroke and vast armies fighting to overthrow Richard. Kent Dorsey’s light design has never been better. What keeps RII from being simply an elegant history lesson is Roberts’ interpretation of Richard as both corrupt ruler and sympathetic victim of the forces of revolution. Is power always ultimately corrupt? Can a coup be justified by the will of the people? These issues are spun through Shakespeare’s unparalleled language—as sobering now as it was when the first Queen Elizabeth was in the audience.
RII is worth its weight in dramatic gold. Skillful acting, pliant adaptation, and the exciting stagecraft we’ve come to expect of Santa Cruz Shakespeare. Remember, due to Covid restrictions there are far fewer seats available this season, so get your tickets now!
Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s production of ‘RII,’ starring M.L. Roberts, Paige Lindsey White and Mike Ryan; directed by Melissa Rain Anderson; written by Jessica Kubzansky; and adapted from Shakepeare’s ‘King Richard II.’ Runs through August 29 at the Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga Park, 501 Upper Park Road, Santa Cruz. Go to santacruzshakespeare.org for a complete calendar of performances, and for tickets.
As The Agitators opens, we meet a figure in a grey frock coat carrying a violin, an arresting image against a marigold yellow set. It is the magnificent Allen Gilmore, who for the next two-and-a-half hours will open up the towering figure of Frederick Douglass for us to consider. Gilmore’s companion in this dramatized history lesson is the resourceful Patty Gallagher, playing iconic suffragist Susan B. Anthony.
The issue, of course, is the fight for voting rights, and Mat Smart’s play partly makes its case. There’s much to enjoy, not least of which are the conversations based upon letters of these two American activists. We learn details of their lives, about Anthony’s Quaker roots and choice of mission over marriage—“As soon as a woman marries, she dissolves into her husband,” she says—and about Douglass’ nostalgia for a mother he barely knew.
The irresistible Gilmore is given rich lines pouring out Douglass’ affection for his wife and family. The Agitators provided a crisp afternoon of theater to which opening week’s audience responded with a resounding ovation. Clever staging that moves us swiftly through time, the distinctive costumes by B. Modern and direction by Paul Mullins help give substance to the material’s potential. Yet we long for more character development from Smart’s material.
Thanks to the remarkable chemistry between these two actors, the play unfolds with ease. Gallagher meets the great man, and the parallels between her cause and his emerge. The two friends, our playwright insists, are bound together by their astonishing energy, a seemingly common cause for equal voting rights, and their personal simpatico.
Especially charming are scenes in which the political declamations they fire at each other are set amidst simple, everyday activities. The two watch a ballgame together, reacting to off-stage strikes and balls, while talking political strategy. There are a few other moments that capture the sense that these are not only historical legends, but flesh and blood people watching their lives rush by.
The past is only important as it is useful to the present and the future, believes Douglass, thundering that “slavery is what stole the first 20 years of my life.” Inevitable barriers appear to threaten their friendship, as when he uses his influence to get the vote for Black men first. Only afterward will he agree to add his weight to the women’s vote. Anthony is outraged, and Gallagher’s finest moments in The Agitators come when she lays on her considerable skill in striking back at her trusted ally. We not only believe her rage, but the women cheering her in the audience last week obviously shared it.
However, Gilmore’s part is so much better written that his Douglass, a towering figure who was internationally famous in his lifetime, emerges more fully as a charismatic, multi-dimensional, and highly sympathetic figure. With his delicate bodily nuances, and his booming torrents of reproach, Gilmore fills the stage with an authentic individual. Would that Gallagher’s role (or perhaps the real Susan B. Anthony) had offered a deeper glimpse of the woman herself. Perhaps the documents from which playwright Smart worked failed to yield more insight. Yet since this is a work of fiction, I can’t help but imagine the missed opportunities in developing our affection for this character. Gallagher uses her full arsenal of stagecraft, but is hampered by the writing. Many speeches are numbingly didactic, preaching to the converted to the point that it was hard to tell where a play ended and a press conference began.
Still, there is plenty of lively and highly enjoyable debate about the compromises needed to move a passionate cause up through the labyrinths of politics into the law of the land. I learned a lot from this vivacious production that illuminates 45 years in the lives of two political legends. I also learned that I would gladly listen to Allen Gilmore recite the alphabet.
Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s production of ‘The Agitators,’ starring Allen Gilmore and Patty Gallagher; directed by Melissa Rain Anderson; directed by Paul Mullins; written by Mat Smart. Runs through August 29 at the Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga Park, 501 Upper Park Road, Santa Cruz. Go to santacruzshakespeare.org for a complete calendar of performances, and for tickets.
In 2006, 192 Republicans voted to renew the Voting Rights Act. Now, we can’t get a single Republican senator to come out and unequivocally support protecting the freedom to vote for the American people. That tells you everything you need to know about the state of bipartisanship in Washington.
It’s time for Senators Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and other lawmakers who want to protect the filibuster on bipartisan grounds to wake up. We are up against the clock to pass voting rights and secure access to the ballot box ahead of the midterms. Without abolishing the filibuster, our chances of passing voting rights legislation like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act are incredibly slim.
Please, Democratic lawmakers, put the hard-earned rights of the American people ahead of your commitment to working with the bad faith GOP.
Daniel Goldberg
Santa Cruz
This letter does not necessarily reflect the views of Good Times.To submit a letter to the editor of Good Times: Letters should be originals—not copies of letters sent to other publications. Please include your name and email address to help us verify your submission (email address will not be published). Please be brief. Letters may be edited for length, clarity and to correct factual inaccuracies known to us. Send letters to le*****@*******es.sc.
Friday evening, my husband and I had dinner at Otoro Sushi in Scotts Valley. As they were leaving, the couple from the table next to ours looked at us and said, “Have a wonderful evening!” We were somewhat taken aback, given they were strangers. When we asked for our check, the server said, “Those people paid for your dinner. They thought you looked like a nice couple and bought you dinner.” I mean, wow! We were simply stunned! In this still harsh and angry Covid world, kindness rises up. Thank you so much, whoever you two are, for your random act of kindness and your active inspiration to do the same!
Suzy Hunt
Scotts Valley
This letter does not necessarily reflect the views of Good Times.To submit a letter to the editor of Good Times: Letters should be originals—not copies of letters sent to other publications. Please include your name and email address to help us verify your submission (email address will not be published). Please be brief. Letters may be edited for length, clarity and to correct factual inaccuracies known to us. Send letters to le*****@*******es.sc.
Re: “What’s In Door” (GT, 5/19): We need multifamily housing in Santa Cruz—apartments, duplexes, row houses, quadplexes, dingbats, all of it. More options than the current 70+% of the city that is single-family homes only. There has been an old guard of savvy elite property owners who talk a progressive game while being on the wrong side of history for several decades, reinforcing segregation and furthering climate change through pro-sprawl and anti-city notions. We can build up and share the cities. The time is now.
Kyle Kelley
Santa Cruz
This letter does not necessarily reflect the views of Good Times.To submit a letter to the editor of Good Times: Letters should be originals—not copies of letters sent to other publications. Please include your name and email address to help us verify your submission (email address will not be published). Please be brief. Letters may be edited for length, clarity and to correct factual inaccuracies known to us. Send letters to le*****@*******es.sc.
I don’t know if anyone could have written this week’s cover story except Jacob Pierce. On the face of it, it’s a progress report on the tenure of SCPD Chief Andy Mills, on the four-year anniversary of his hiring this week.
But Pierce makes himself part of the story too, as he considers some of the most complex issues facing Santa Cruz right now, through the lens of how policing has changed—or not changed—here over the last few years. He brings a wealth of experience to that examination, having not only covered Mills’ work over the last four years, but also reporting on the work of the previous SCPD administration under former Chief Kevin Vogel and retired Deputy Chief Steve Clark. The way he compares and contrasts the stated ideals of the SCPD with the community’s experience of local policing is another great example of how Pierce can bring an unexpected depth of analysis and humanity to a story like this.
One other thing I want to address this week is that several readers have reported finding nutso anti-vax flyers inserted into their Good Times when they pick them up on the racks. They want to know, of course, if we have anything to do with them, and the answer is an emphatic “no freaking way.” We first reported on anti-vax crazies slipping their pamphlets into our papers way back in 2016. Perhaps it’s the price of success, but they’ve continued to try to use GT to gain a legitimacy they don’t have or deserve by illicitly slipping their harmful materials into our papers on the racks. It’s difficult to stop on our end; if you witness anything that would help, please contact us. And whatever you do, get vaccinated!
The problem with allowing ebikes on sidewalks is they are sidewalks. It might be more convenient/safer for the rider, but pedestrians are then put at risk by bikes zipping along at 15mph–very dangerous for anyone exiting a business, or just walking. Significant liability issues.
— Eric Rowland
A good solution would be to have great bike lanes along San Andreas as it is part of the Pacific Bike Trail and has less traffic than Freedom. This would give the program time to develop the resources for Freedom, which really would require major upgrades to make safe. Also, having the bike path end up in the newly developed shopping center at the south end of Watsonville would drive traffic to that end of town. Might be a great way to market this.
— Thomas Voorhees
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
natural bridges
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GOOD IDEA
GIVE LIFE, GET LIVE
The American Red Cross has an emergency need for lifesaving blood, and needs to collect more than 1,000 blood donations a day to end the severe shortage. Now through Aug. 15, all donors who give blood or platelets will be entered for a chance to win a trip for two to the sold-out 2021 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival. Donors will also receive a free four-month subscription to Apple Music (new subscribers only). Schedule your appointment at RedCrossBlood.org or call 1-800-RED CROSS.
GOOD WORK
BUS YOUR COMMUNITY
In an effort to support cleaner transportation, Central Coast Community Energy (CCCE) is providing $200,000 to local schools and school districts that purchase an electric school bus, with priority given to disadvantaged and low-income communities. The CCCE is also providing rebates for EV charging stations to homeowners, multi-family properties, commercial, industrial and schools through September 30. Learn more at 3CEnergy.org.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“A good society is characterized not just by liberty, but by mutual respect and responsibility. When this breaks down, it takes a lot more than police officers to put things right.”
As he walks down Lincoln Street in downtown Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz Police Chief Andy Mills is blowing off steam.
It’s Monday, July 26, and Mills has spent the day working on the investigation into vandalism on a Black Lives Matter mural that volunteers painted onto Cedar Street last summer. Two suspects, Brandon Bochat and Hagan Warner, have been arrested on felonies. Mills says he’s since confirmed that there were also juveniles involved, and SCPD is sending the information to the District Attorney’s Office. Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) officers say that the young men left vehicle tread marks over the mural. Part of Mills’ day has been spent fielding angry messages and phone calls from community members claiming that this was just a couple of kids burning rubber—not vandalism.
“Out of 5,000 street segments in the city, they just happened to choose that one to burn rubber? C’mon,” Mills says. “I’m not that stupid.”
One Pacific Grove resident even wrote in to say that he was “angry” about the police response.
“I said, ‘I’m glad you’re angry,’” Mills explains. “‘Maybe you need to look in the mirror and find out whether you’re biased.’”
Mills, 64, is walking with an open Diet Coke in his hand as we stroll back from Jack’s Hamburgers to the police station. He’s coming up on the four-year anniversary of his swearing-in as chief of SCPD on Friday, Aug. 7. A community hiring committee chose Mills as a more compassionate replacement to his retiring predecessor Kevin Vogel. A more hardline approach to policing—embraced by both Vogel and Deputy Chief Steve Clark, who retired in 2016—had fallen out of favor in Santa Cruz.
Upon Mills’ hiring, he was seen as a champion of liberal values. Four years in, his supporters have as much faith in his compassion as ever. But others have begun to question his commitment to issues like police reform and managing the homeless crisis.
The past year and a half has not been easy on law enforcement officers—with a global pandemic, the difficulty of enforcing shelter-in-place orders and, locally, the murder of Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller. Then there was the nationwide reckoning over racial injustice and implicit bias, especially in regard to policing. It was at one of 2020’s first major racial justice protests that a masked Andy Mills knelt down next to a masked Justin Cummings—the city’s first Black male mayor—in honor of George Floyd, who was murdered by Minneapolis Police a couple weeks earlier. A photo of the two taken by Santa Cruz Sentinel photographer Shmuel Thaler became national news.
Brenda Griffin, the president of the NAACP’s Santa Cruz branch, served on the committee that hired Mills in 2017, and she remembers his answers in the interview process being deep and substantive. His responses reflected the experience of a police leader familiar with working with communities of color, she explains.
Since then, Griffin—who now serves on the Chief’s Advisory Committee, weighing in on police policy—says that, since taking over, Mills has been easy to communicate with and very responsive to the needs of the NAACP.
“He’s really trying to make a difference,” Griffin says.
Force Correction
Ayo Banjo, a policy researcher and analyst at UCSC, has ambitious ideas for reimagining police reform, rooted partly in his years of activism.
Last year, as he and fellow Black Lives Matter protesters elevated discussions of police reform, Banjo helped shift the discussion away from “defund the police” and toward “community refund”—the idea being that the focus should be less on taking something away from the police and more about reinvesting in the community. And right now, Banjo is working to plan a local conference about police accountability and reconfiguring how law enforcement operates. “My end goal is creating alternative models,” Banjo says.
Banjo says all his interactions with Santa Cruz Police have been positive, although he can’t help but wonder if officers recognize him as a prominent Black activist and treat him differently because of it. His friends’ experiences have been more mixed, he says.
Banjo freely admits Mills is a better police chief than most communities have. There’s real power, he says, in having a police leader who proudly proclaims that “Black lives matter,” as Mills often does.
But Banjo also believes that Mills—with his mix of charisma and personal connections—puts a positive face on policing to the point that it can stand in the way of deeper systemic change.
Banjo believes the most substantive version of reform might include a new citizens’ police accountability review board with full independence and the ability to investigate complaints against SCPD and its officers with full cooperation from the department. It could also include new crisis response teams that respond to those struggling with substance use disorder and mental health challenges, as well as victims of sexual assault. Eugene, Oregon has a 31-year-old such program called Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets (CAHOOTS), wherein social workers respond to calls and coordinate with the local police department. The program has earned praise around the country, especially over the past year, but, so far, no other community has adopted the model.
Mills’ standard response over the past year—including on his blog, in an opinion editorial and in remarks to the City Council—has been that Santa Cruz can defund his department if it wants to, but that no one will want to take over the tasks of responding to quality-of-life and crisis calls.
Banjo isn’t so sure. He believes that Mills, in sharing that view, is revealing something that he doesn’t intend to. Banjo thinks others would happily step up to such a challenge if given the opportunity. He says Mills and his officers may not see it that way because they don’t like handling those tasks themselves.
“What he’s saying is ‘we don’t want to deal with these people,’” Banjo says. “You should never say you don’t want to deal with some subsection of the community. You want a public safety model that’s saying that ‘we want to engage with these communities.’”
Mills says he’s supportive of launching a crisis intervention team, although he would want to be involved in the discussion, especially if it means reorganizing resources. He notes that the department already employs mental liaisons.
“Ayo can have whatever opinion he wants,” Mills says. “It’s not that the police don’t want to work with a segment of the community. It’s ‘are the police best suited to work with a segment of the community?’ And so if there are people better trained to do something, why wouldn’t we just have them do it?”
Mills adds that he thinks Banjo and some of his young allies don’t speak for the Black community. He calls their ideas “fringe”—a term that Banjo does not appreciate when told of Mills’ remarks.
“There is no one Black voice,” Banjo says. “For you as a white police officer to tell a Black young organizer that his service to the Black community—that he doesn’t get paid for—does not represent the community that he’s serving? The Caucacity! How dare you speak like that.”
Vandalism on the Black Lives Matter mural on Cedar Street
Blue Grit
Lee Brokaw, an activist who was galvanized by the debates over a controversial militarized Bearcat vehicle that Santa Cruz purchased in 2015, also served on the committee that hired Mills two years later.
A member of the ACLU Board of Directors, Brokaw says he’s had Mills over at his house to eat stuffed padrons and drink wine. Mills, Brokaw says, is the kind of chief who will answer when a community member like himself calls on the phone. Mills is willing to be scrutinized, Brokaw adds.
“What we’ve got with Andy Mills, first and foremost, is a good man and a decent human being, and he’s a cop,” Brokaw says. “And he’ll always be a cop, and there will be times where he and I agree to disagree because he’s coming from being a cop. But that doesn’t take away from the human being.” Brokaw additionally cites Mills’ willingness to reform use-of-force procedures, a process that Mills began before the reckoning over racial injustice sparked by the George Floyd killing.
This is all true, but what’s also true—to my eye, anyway—is that Mills does sometimes show different sides of himself than what Brokaw or I see when we meet up with him personally.
I have, for instance, seen both Mills’ and the SCPD’s Twitter page publicly shame suspects on social media—both shortly after they get arrested (i.e. before they’ve been tried in court) and also after they get sentenced.
Mills says the intent is not to shame people, but just to inform the public.
“It’s a balancing act between the community having a right and need to know what these people might be doing—also what we’re doing—and [the suspect’s] right to privacy,” Mills says. “We tend to put on the more egregious stuff.”
A newly signed law, AB 1427, will stop law enforcement from posting mugshots of suspects unless the suspect is suspected of a violent crime or still at large. SCPD has scrubbed its social media accounts and removed posts that would violate the new law.
Outside Pressures
In a city with an unhoused population that totals above 1,000, a significant portion of officers’ time will inevitably include interacting with those experiencing homelessness.
Homeless advocate Steve Pleich says that, in between the Covid-19 pandemic and a court decision—Martin v. Boise—declaring many camping bans unconstitutional, outside forces have made it difficult to put together nuanced solutions that would reduce suffering among the unsheltered. Nonetheless, Pleich appreciates that Mills is always open to feedback and to discussion.
“He’s an interesting guy. He’s a complicated guy in the way that Kevin Vogel was not,” Pleich says. “He and Steve Clark wanted to do everything they could to suppress and contain homelessness. They took the part about social services completely out of the equation. They were no fans of the houseless community or homeless advocates at all. We were hoping it would get better when Andy came in. He makes all the right noises, but his policies don’t always reflect that liberality that we’re calling for. But again, he’s in a difficult situation.”
One of the things that struck me when Mills first got hired in 2017 was the empathy with which he repeatedly talked about the plight of those experiencing homelessness to me and my colleagues. He dismissed the idea that handing out citations was even a remotely effective way of dealing with the unsheltered.
I would never forget the things he said at the time because I’d never heard a law enforcement leader talk about homelessness with so much care and compassion.
To my ears, I’ve often heard a different tone in Mills’ rhetoric in the years since, but he insists he looks at the issues the same way he did then.
“I don’t know that my views have changed greatly,” Mills says. “My core values for homelessness is we really need to try to help people, but the reality is there’s a pretty substantial service-resistant population who are more interested in a party lifestyle or the homeless lifestyle than they are in getting the help they need to fix the things that are wrong. Between us and the county’s social workers, we’ve handed out fliers and tried to cajole people into getting housing or getting help, and there’s a significant group of people who are truly not interested. And that’s harmful. There are a lot of homeless advocates here who are really willing to step up to help people get housed. [Housing] is pretty scarce.”
Warming Center founder Brent Adams says that, in mentioning the scarcity of affordable housing, Mills is pointing to the real core of the problem. Adams doesn’t exactly agree that there’s a “party” problem among the unhoused, but he knows drug use is common on the streets and in parks; many users didn’t start until after becoming homeless.
Additionally, Adams and fellow community activist Denise Elerick wonder how “service-resistant” unhoused residents really are. Both activists say the problem is not that people resist services, but rather that available services are much too far and few between.
Elerick, cofounder of the Harm Reduction Coalition, expresses skepticism at some of Mills’ other claims. She says she’s seen countless interactions between SCPD officers and those experiencing homlessness, and she’s never once seen one hand out information on how to get help. She’s shown up to police sweeps of homeless encampments, and she says she often just saw SCPD officers walking around with their hands in their vests, making passive-aggressive comments about trash.
Mills says he values the opinions of people like Elerick and Adams who regularly work with the homeless community and that many of his understandings of the unsheltered are based upon multiple one-on-one conversations with those living in large unmanaged encampments.
Adams says the challenges extend well beyond matters of leadership at SCPD. The real problem, he says, is that Santa Cruz has repeatedly failed to create enough safe spaces to sleep.
Uniform Opinion
Mills will point out that it isn’t just Martin v. Boise and the pandemic that are changing policing.
After the U.S. Supreme Court declared overcrowding in California’s prison population unconstitutional, California passed a series of reforms—AB 109, Prop 47, Prop 57. The gist of these changes involved the state shifting some inmates from state prisons to local jails. This also meant more local inmates getting shifted from local jails to parole.
The chief recently wrote an op-ed about the headaches, as he sees it, caused by a shifting prison population. He shared it with the county’s four other law enforcement leaders, all of whom signed off on it. Mills sent the op-ed to the Sentinel, which ran the piece. In it, Mills briefly explained the case for realignment—including that over-incarceration led to disproportionately large numbers of people of color behind bars.
But Mills also suggested that some of the more recent realignment efforts may be contributing to an increase in crime, and implied that it may be about to get worse. One passage that jumped out at me was Mills’ acknowledgement of community complaints regarding quality-of-life issues.
“Many residents are fed up with petty crime,” he wrote. “Residents do not want to be panhandled for money at an intersection or see someone pushing a shopping cart. They tire of the adverse effects of social issues such as homelessness, substance abuse and mental illness. From Davenport to Watsonville, the greater Santa Cruz community tells the police they want more rigorous enforcement of quality-of-life crimes. We frequently hear, ‘If you are tough on crime—they will leave.’ Others want criminals to fear the police and going to jail.”
A more conservative City Council majority did outlaw loitering on Santa Cruz’s medians eight years ago, and no subsequent council has repealed it, so it’s still on the books.
When I ask about the op-ed, Mills tells me that his point is it’s time for an honest discussion about local roles and community expectations. And his piece does go on to argue that if people feel frustrated with the state of public safety, everyone needs to get together to collaborate on a different path forward. It also goes on to say that Santa Cruz repeatedly supported realignment efforts at the ballot. But when I ask Mills if he’s frustrated with the state-level criminal-justice reforms himself, he says that he isn’t, and it wasn’t the point of his op-ed.
“I just wanted to tell people, ‘Look, you want to bark at the chiefs and be angry with the chiefs and the sheriff for not putting people in jail for long periods of time, you voted for Prop 47 and 57 and the legislators who implemented AB 109 and Prop 36—by a 75% margin in this county. And now you’re complaining that there’s people in the streets. And what we frequently hear is there’s a homeless guy there; why aren’t you putting him in jail? OK, I just want to get it straight. We’re really trying to understand: you don’t want this burglar in jail… but you do want this homeless guy in jail?’” Mills says. “It’s a mixed message that needs to have a robust community discussion. If you think that all these problems are solvable by incarceration, then you need to build: fund a bond, give the sheriff a couple hundred more deputies and build a big prison system here in Santa Cruz—if you think that’s going to work. And I think that the academic literature would tell you that that’s not going to work.”
Splitting the Difference
It sometimes seems like Santa Cruz is a difficult place to take important stances on contentious issues. This area certainly has its quirks. All-Democrat City Councils have wielded power for well over a decade in a town where progressive activists know how to make a lot of noise—but so do conservative public safety activists. We so often see debates over policy devolve into abstract, partisan squabbles over whether Santa Cruz is doing a poor job living up to its liberal reputation on the vanguard of progressive policy—or if it’s alternatively gone too far already and needs to pull back.
But Mills says he doesn’t think too much about that stuff. Those schisms happen in every community, he says.
“It’s not any more difficult here than anywhere else. Every chief has to deal with this,” he says. “A lot of people have opinions. Of course, if they read it on social media, they become an expert. That’s modern-day policing. I take it with a grain of salt. People can be angry and hate all they want. If you don’t have tough skin, you’re not a chief.”
Mills says he has no plans for retiring or going anywhere. If it helps Mills’ case, the city of Santa Cruz’s roster has thinned out a bit both above and below him, so his experience stands out.
City Manager Martín Bernal is retiring; SCPD Deputy Chief Dan Flippo retired at the end of last year; and Deputy Chief Rick Martinez retired the year before that.
Mills says he has the energy to keep working on Santa Cruz’s most pressing issues. And that’s what he says he plans to do.
“I’m a young man. I have no plans of retiring. I’m in my 60s,” he says. “I figure, if Joe Biden can become president at 78, what’s another few years for me?”
In the fishing world, sustainability comes in many forms. Those who catch wild salmon locally will tell you they pump less carbon into the atmosphere compared to fish farmed on other continents. Squid harvesters refer to new studies suggesting the species may survive an era beset by climate change better than others. And then there are the local residents who support themselves working on the dock or at sea, in an industry that connects them to a valuable source of protein.
Over the last few months, hundreds of boats have been fishing off of—or transiting along—Santa Cruz County’s coastline. Industry analysts report plenty of bright spots in both the salmon and squid markets this season. But after some scientific studies were scuttled last year because of the coronavirus pandemic, and other research couldn’t be completed due to wildfires, fisheries management is still undergoing its own pandemic comeback, as climate change fears remain ever-present.
“It’s definitely been a good season,” Scotts Valley resident Hans Haveman, the CEO of H&H Fresh Fish at the Santa Cruz Harbor says during a late-June interview. “Unfortunately, regulation from the state and feds have shut us down right when it’s goin’ good.”
Salmon Stock
Serious drought conditions in California have led to less water moving through the Klamath River Basin, up north near the Oregon-California state line, prompting the state’s largest native tribe, the Yurok, to warn in May that “unless groundwater extraction is moderated, it is a virtual certainty that Chinook and Coho salmon will not be able to reach their spawning grounds due to insufficient flows for migration.” Its fisheries department discovered an “extremely abnormal” number of juvenile salmon dying, with 97% of the small fish infected by a parasite called C. shasta. And when authorities are forced to take action to mitigate such problems, the effects ripple down to Santa Cruz County, Haveman says.
“They don’t want us to catch any of the fish from the Klamath River—like, zero,” he says, explaining how restrictions in other areas increased the number of Chinook, or king, salmon fishermen docked here. “That pretty much makes Monterey Bay the hotspot for the entire fleet.”
The season started with a bang. At one point there were about 45 salmon boats with slips in Santa Cruz, according to harbor staff. Mike Conroy, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, a trade association representing West Coast commercial fishers, said the price was good, too—$12 a pound for king—at the outset.
“Because this is a ‘down year’ in terms of ocean abundance, the fishery had to be more highly regulated compared to years past,” he says, referencing the “in trouble” Klamath stocks, and noting the uncertainty around the effects of the pandemic on fish stewardship. “Impacts of Covid on salmon management are yet to be clearly understood.”
One thing the coronavirus has spurred is more dock sales, as fishermen looked for new outlets for their catch when restaurants closed. On a recent Sunday, 39-year-old David Toriumi, who maintains a slip in Santa Cruz, set up shop in Moss Landing to take advantage of the interest from returning tourists and locals hoping to score some fresh fish.
“The past few years have been pretty good,” Toriumi says, adding this season was going great until the market was flooded by fishermen located several schools north of San Francisco. “We just ran into a good pile of fish.”
As an advisor for the Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust, he knows all about how connected fishermen based here are to the die-offs occurring on the Klamath—not to mention the persistent battles between agricultural interests and environmentalists.
“It’s a water war,” he said. “This is going to be a consistent thing.”
Squid Life
Of the 72 seiner, 32 light boat and 46 brail boat permits given out by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife to fish for squid, a huge portion descended on the spawning grounds in the Monterey Bay area in the past several weeks. At least 43 boats “landed” squid at Moss Landing, Monterey or Half Moon Bay in the last three months, according to state records. That’s on top of the light boats contracted to lure the catch.
For 55-year-old Daniel Rasler, who has more than three decades of squid fishing experience under his belt, it isn’t a point of pride. Aboard the Lady J, at port in Monterey, he heads into the cabin and grabs some squid from the freezer he put in recently. He hints at a friendly rivalry between the north and south ends of the Monterey Bay, showcasing the difference between squid caught at Monterey (larger) and around Santa Cruz (smaller). His feelings toward those coming to fish from elsewhere, however, are much less amicable.
“I’ll be real with ya,” Rasler says. “There’s more light boats this year than there’s ever been down here. And that’s sad.”
Squid fishermen illuminate the ocean to attract the invertebrates, before snagging them with nets. At port, they’re frozen into blocks and transferred to foreign-bound vessels via the San Francisco Bay. Rasler says that from what he’s seen this year, some out-of-state fishermen are pushing the limits of sustainability.
“The boats that are coming from down south, from Alaska, Canada and them, they’re bringing three, four light boats with ’em, OK?” he says. “So, you figure, if you got only a couple tons of squid here and couple there, and these guys go out, now what pile [of] squid gets to go in and lay their eggs?”
In fact, he says, some fishermen want to cut back the number of hours they fish each week—forcing squid boats to wait until Monday at 6am to start fishing, instead of the current Sunday-through-Friday schedule.
“We did that about a month ago, we tried it for the first time,” he says, describing the effort as a success. “That next day [the entire fleet] caught 900-and-something tons in nine hours.”
But the idea didn’t stick, and he says the area is fished out—with his boat soon averaging around five tons every couple days. With so many of the West Coast boats concentrated in a single area, the squid get “traumatized” and scatter, he says.
“They hear all the boats and the vibrations,” he says, adding the out-of-area fishermen are attracted by the prices paid (upwards of $1,000 per ton) by importers in places like Japan. “And we’re risking our life now, and fishing in weather that we never fished in, and dealing with stuff we never dealt with our whole life.”
Rasler also claims to have seen some using illegal fishing methods, and pointed to the DUI arrest of a 50-year-old squid fisherman who crashed the 30-foot “Crystal Shine” into a Monterey breakwater in May, to back up his point of view.
“It’s just insane,” he says, noting many out-of-staters have already decamped for Alaska. “The reason they went to Alaska: salmon season started. So, they’re up there right now purse seining and gillnetting. Thank you, Lord! All right? Thank you! Because now, we get a breather. The squid get a breather.”
Sink or Squid
John Haynes, the Monterey harbormaster, says it’s normal for local fishermen to get frustrated at sharing the catch with boats from elsewhere. Then when they head to other ports to fish, they become the out-of-towners putting pressure on the fishery there. But the Felton resident says that after speaking with local fishermen about the proposal to change the weekly schedule, he believes their concern for sustainability is genuine.
“The squid fishery’s kind of unique in that the squid fishermen have a lot of input into the conservation of the species,” he says, adding in the past they’ve even agreed to limit the brightness of their lights. “They don’t want to see the squid population diminish.”
Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association, confirmed there was a voluntary move by squid fishermen not to fish on Sundays, earlier this year. But she says there wasn’t really a consensus, and notes any changes to the state’s Market Squid Fishery Management Plan must go through an official process.
But as far as population health goes, she says, their latest report suggests the squid are more successful at adapting to changing environmental conditions than previously believed. “Which is a good thing with climate change coming,” she says. “We were actually able to document an environmental change that started up in the Monterey Bay area.”
Unlike the “infinitesimally small” returns of years past, squid have been pumping out more babies in central California than at any time since 2015, researchers found. That was when El Niño and a “marine heat-wave” teamed up to invite more warm-water species here and reduce oceanic productivity, according to the association’s study. But surface temperatures have been cooling, bringing back nutrients like zooplankton—and the squid have also returned in abundance, the report states.
They were only able to come out with this new finding because they didn’t have to call off the research, the way the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration did with some of its work during the pandemic.
“They wouldn’t allow the ships to go out,” Pleschner-Steele said. “Covid interrupted everything.”
Katie O. Grady, an environmental scientist for Fish and Wildlife’s Pelagic Fisheries & Ecosystem Program, says squid abundance is also affected by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a variable ocean pattern that researchers are trying to learn more about.
“The availability of squid fluctuates based on environment, meaning landings can change dramatically across fishing seasons and regions,” she says. “Oceanographic models indicate that the California Current is moving away from a warmer water regime and into a neutral/cooler one, though it is unclear exactly how the California squid population will respond to these changes.”
Grady says Fish and Wildlife is looking for ways to work with the squid industry to introduce appropriate updates to fishery rules.
“The Department is proposing the formation of a squid fishery advisory committee to gather broad stakeholder input and review changes in fishing activity among other opportunities for management review,” she says. “Pending funding, this process would ideally begin in 2022 and would include not only the fishing industry, but scientists, conservation groups, law enforcement and other essential representatives.”
When four concertgoers who attended a Grateful Dead cover-band show in Felton last month tested positive for Covid-19, it set off a new wave of self-imposed safety measures across Santa Cruz County.
So when Talal Janbay, co-owner of Scopazzi’s Restaurant in Boulder Creek, got wind from a waitress that she’d caught Covid alongside teammates on the Joe’s Bar softball team, he decided they better shut down temporarily.
“We closed for four days just for precautions, for the safety of our employees, the safety of the customers,” Janbay says, adding that after their regular off days, they’re planning to reopen Wednesday for outdoor-only service. “We don’t want to take a chance.”
And when they do start cooking again, there will be new rules for staff.
“All our employees coming next week, the ones that want to come, they either have to be vaccinated, or tested on a regular basis,” he says. “Most of the employees now, they’re getting vaccinated.”
Janbay wonders if their employee’s infection was part of the spread from the Felton Music Hall outbreak, after Los Angeles-based Grateful Shred played a pair of weekend dates July 17 and 18. The first was held outdoors at Roaring Camp, and there are no reports of Covid cases coming out of that event.
But at least nine people (including the band) out of the 291 attendees at the second performance, held inside the Felton Music Hall, came down with Covid, says Thomas Cussins, owner of the venue.
According to Cussins, at least one of the infected people emailed Felton Music Hall afterward claiming to be vaccinated.
“This is a very trying time as a small business,” says Cussins, noting that he closed the club, required all staff to get tested, and mandated masks for future shows. “Having this happen is just devastating.”
Santa Cruz County spokesperson Jason Hoppin says the people who are most seriously affected by Covid are those who haven’t been vaccinated.
“That’s why we would encourage everyone to get vaccinated,” he said. “It does keep you out of the hospital or the morgue.”
The Grateful Shred had just come off playing the Moroccan Lounge in downtown L.A. on July 15, and at Libbey Bowl some 80 miles northwest of L.A. on July 16.
A week after the first Felton concert, the band posted an Instagram update saying that, in addition to fans testing positive, “Nearly all of the band and crew have also tested positive and are at home recovering with their families.”
The band urged attendees to quarantine if experiencing symptoms.
“Apparently the vaccine does not prevent transmission,” the post reads. “But fortunately, it does seem to really help with reducing sickness and preventing hospitalization.”
Instagram user @gratefulstardust, aka Bradley Stockwell, replied to the post saying he attended both LA-area shows and tested positive the following Tuesday—despite being fully vaccinated.
“Had fever, chills, and flu-like symptoms,” he said, reporting that he’s “all better now except I still have no smell. Get vaxxed and be safe everyone!”
IG user Holly Bailey (@mother.planter) said she also tested positive after the Moroccan show.
Colleen (@cocoriggs) commented that she attended a Felton performance, but said “it felt way too crowded” and that she left after about 20 minutes.
“I’m fully vaccinated and tested positive,” she wrote. “I wish I had masked up. I will in the future.”
Hoppin said health officials are investigating whether a lack of airflow in the Felton Music Hall is what allowed the virus to spread so quickly.
“The ventilation is not exceptional,” he says. “That may have been a contributing factor.”
But the venue has been “very helpful” in the aftermath, according to Hoppin. Felton Music Hall plans to reopen on Thursday, Aug. 5.
Fifth District Supervisor Bruce McPherson said he understands some residents don’t want to get vaccinated due to privacy or health worries, but urges those people to at least get checked frequently.
“Be tested for it,” McPherson says. “That’s just a civil thing to do.”
MaKendree VanHall, a manager at Greater Purpose Brewery in Santa Cruz, says the Felton outbreak played into the restaurant’s recent decision to begin requiring proof of vaccination for indoor seating.
“We’re just going to be proactive instead of reactive,” he says, noting none of their staff has tested positive before adding, “Get the damn vaccine! You can quote me on that.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently changed course on some of its mask-wearing guidance, recommending that fully vaccinated individuals in areas of the country with high Covid-19 infection rates should wear masks indoors. And several neighboring counties took that a step further on Monday, mandating that everyone, regardless of vaccination status, had to resume wearing masks indoors in public settings.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Filmmaker Federico Fellini had an unexpected definition of happiness. He said it was “being able to speak the truth without hurting anyone.” I suspect you will have abundant access to that kind of happiness in the coming weeks, Aries. I’ll go even further: You will have extra power to speak the truth in ways that heal and uplift people. My advice to you, therefore, is to celebrate and indulge your ability. Be bold in expressing the fullness of what’s interesting to you.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Look for a long time at what pleases you, and longer still at what pains you,” wrote the novelist Colette. What?! Was she making a perverse joke? That’s wicked advice, and I hope you adopt it only on rare occasions. In fact, the exact opposite is the healthy way to live—especially for you in the coming weeks. Look at what pains you, yes. Don’t lose sight of what your problems and wounds are. But please, for the sake of your dreams, for the benefit of your spiritual and psychological health, look longer at what pleases you, energizes you, and inspires you.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): If you deepen your affection for butterflies and hummingbirds, I will love it. If you decide you want the dragonfly or bumblebee or lark to be your spirit creature, I will approve. You almost always benefit from cultivating relationships with swift, nimble, and lively influences—and that’s especially true these days. So give yourself full permission to experiment with the superpower of playful curiosity. You’re most likely to thrive when you’re zipping around in quest of zesty ripples and sprightly rhythms.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Life is showing you truths about what you are not, what you don’t need, and what you shouldn’t strive for. That’s auspicious, although it may initially feel unsettling. I urge you to welcome these revelations with gratitude. They will help you tune in to the nuances of what it means to be radically authentic. They will boost your confidence in the rightness of the path you’ve chosen for yourself. I’m hoping they may even show you which of your fears are irrelevant. Be hungry for these extraordinary teachings.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The next two months will be a propitious time for you and your intimate allies to grow closer by harnessing the power of your imaginations. I urge you to be inventive in dreaming up ways to educate and entertain each other. Seek frisky adventures together that will delight you. Here’s a poem by Vyacheslav Ivanov that I hope will stimulate you: “We are two flames in a midnight forest. We are two meteors that fly at night, a two-pointed arrow of one fate. We are two steeds whose bridle is held by one hand. We are two eyes of a single gaze, two quivering wings of one dream, two-voiced lips of single mysteries. We are two arms of a single cross.”
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo spiritual author Don Miguel Ruiz urges us not to take anything personally. He says that if someone treats us disrespectfully, it’s almost certainly because they are suffering from psychological wounds that make them act in vulgar, insensitive ways. Their attacks have little to do with what’s true about us. I agree with him, and will add this important caveat. Even if you refrain from taking such abuses personally, it doesn’t mean you should tolerate them. It doesn’t mean you should keep that person in your life or allow them to bully you in the future. I suspect these are important themes for you to contemplate right now.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “People who feel deeply, live deeply, and love deeply are destined to suffer deeply,” writes poet Juansen Dizon. To that romanticized, juvenile nonsense, I say: NO! WRONG! People who feel and live and love deeply are more emotionally intelligent than folks who live on the surface—and are therefore less fragile. The deep ones are likely to be psychologically adept; they have skills at liberating themselves from the smothering crush of their problems. The deep ones also have access to rich spiritual resources that ensure their suffering is a source of transformative teaching—and rarely a cause of defeat. Have you guessed that I’m describing you as you will be in the coming weeks?
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Professor of psychology Ethan Kross tells us there can be healthy, creative forms of envy. “Just as hunger tells us we need to eat,” he writes, “the feeling of envy could show us what is missing from our lives that really matters to us.” The trick is to not interpret envy as a negative emotion, but to see it as useful information that shows us what we want. In my astrological opinion, that’s a valuable practice for you to deploy in the coming days. So pay close attention to the twinges of envy that pop into your awareness. Harness that volatile stuff to motivate yourself as you make plans to get the very experience or reward you envy.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Poet Walt Whitman bragged that he was “large.” He said, “I contain multitudes.” One critic compared him to “a whole continent with its waters, with its trees, with its animals.” Responding to Whitman, Sagittarian poet Gertrud Kolmar uttered an equally grandiose boast. “I too am a continent,” she wrote. “I contain mountains never-reached, scrubland unpenetrated, pond bay, river-delta, salt-licking coast-tongue.” That’s how I’m imagining you these days, dear Sagittarius: as unexplored territory: as frontier land teeming with undiscovered mysteries. I love how expansive you are as you open your mind and heart to new self-definitions. I love how you’re willing to risk being unknowable for a while as you wander out in the direction of the future.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Poet Ezra Pound wrote a letter to novelist James Joyce that included the following passage: “You are fucking with my head, and so far I’ve been enjoying it. Where is the crime?” I bring this up, Capricorn, because I believe the coming weeks will be prime time for you to engage with interesting souls who fuck with your head in enjoyable ways. You need a friendly jolt or two: a series of galvanizing prods; dialogs that catalyze you to try new ways of thinking and seeing; lively exchanges that inspire you to experiment.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Blogger Mandukhai Munkhbaatar offers advice on the arts of intimate communion. “Do not fall in love only with a body or with a face,” she tells us. “Do not fall in love with the idea of being in love.” She also wants you to know that it’s best for your long-term health and happiness if you don’t seek cozy involvement with a person who is afraid of your madness, or with someone who, after you fight, disappears and refuses to talk. I approve of all these suggestions. Any others you would add? It’s a favorable phase to get clearer about the qualities of people you want and don’t want as your allies.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): I gave my readers homework, asking them to answer the question, “What is your favorite rule to break?” In response, Laura Grolla sent these thoughts: “My favorite rule to break is an unwritten one: that we must all stress and strive for excellence. I have come up with a stress-busting mantra, ‘It is OK to be OK.’ In my OKness, I have discovered the subtle frontier of contentment, which is vast and largely unexplored. OKness allows me not to compete for attention, but rather to pay attention to others. I love OKness for the humor and deep, renewing sleep it has generated. Best of all, OKness allows me to be happily aging rather than anxiously hot.” I bring this to your attention, Pisces, because I think the coming weeks will be a favorable time for you to investigate and embody the relaxing mysteries of OKness.
Homework. Tell me what subtle or not-so-subtle victories you plan to accomplish by January 1, 2022. Ne********@***************gy.com
