In Paul Skenazy’s new novel Still Life, new widower Will Moran makes tentative, seemingly aimless moves to rebuild his world. Gathering rocks and odd throwaways, he starts to draw and then paint these unlikely subjects. Obsessed with this project, he lets his house fall into bohemian disarray as unexpected intruders—some welcome, some questionable—disturb his solitude. Filled with sparkling dialogue, obsessive discoveries and a few flings, Still Life offers readers unexpected epiphanies.
What kick-started your latest book project?
PAUL SKENAZY: There are a lot of different elements that converged into what eventually became this novel. In 1978, I went to an exhibit of Georgio Morandi’s lithographs and watercolors. I remember it was on the top floor of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. I bought a poster from that exhibit that I still have on a wall in my living room. That began a lifelong obsession with Morandi’s work, and that’s where my protagonist, Will, came from. His last name, Moran, is my thank you to, and private joke about, Morandi. It has over the years made me think about obsessions—which ones we follow, and what they do to and for us. I started to imagine a book with almost no backstory: a guy locks himself away and starts to paint pictures on the walls of his house. Why? I didn’t want to know. Until eventually the character forced me to think about that. Which launched me into learning what story I had to tell.
Do you see ‘Still Life’ as a parable, a realist novella, or both?
I’m very much a realist in my thinking; almost a pedant about it. I can’t create a scene without a sense of the objects in the room, or in a park, or on a walk. If this novel is a parable, that’s a side effect. Still Life doesn’t have a moral, or point. It’s a story of one man in one town at a certain moment in time—a cranky, likable but at times unpleasant man who is in pain from his wife’s death—what he does to avoid that pain and how what he does transforms him.
Will, your protagonist, keeps a notebook into which he pours the puzzles that emerge as he rebuilds his life and embarks on obsessive/compulsive behavior. Do you keep a notebook?
I’ve tried to keep a notebook all my life. When I taught writing, I sometimes required, sometimes encouraged students to keep notebooks. But I’m erratic, always trying unsuccessfully to get myself back into one habit or another, like keeping a notebook. Will’s notebook came to me as a device to convey Will’s inner life while keeping much of it hidden—and also a way to muse about art more generally. It’s not a surrogate for me, except in that way that what we write always changes us. In retrospect, I realize that the deep substructure of Still Life comes from me thinking about aging, loss, grief, and what it means to live while others around you don’t. But saying that makes the book sound more maudlin and darker than it is. To me it’s a funny novel, built on awkward encounters that keep Will stumbling along and learning each time he falls and gets himself up—the way we do if we’re lucky enough to have experiences, and people around us to help us.
This book contains a rich sense of Santa Cruz as a place. Tell us about some of these settings.
There’s a way that place inhabits you as you inhabit it. Eudora Welty calls place in writing the “heart’s field.” I love Santa Cruz; it’s one of those great accidents of my life that I’ve had a chance to live here since 1971.
When you write about a place, you want to represent it in all its actuality. But you also want to explore its mystery, that feeling it provides that is unlike any other home ground. And exploring that mystery, you want to discover something new about where you are that you didn’t know before.
Kierkegaard wrote ‘Stages on Life’s Way.’ Your book might be seen as ‘Stages on Life’s Reawakening.’
I resist generalizing about life as a journey, or stages in our development, or even the sense that we move from path to path as we live. I am not who I was in my twenties or thirties, nor who I imagined I might be in my seventies. But I also don’t think I’ve made peace with those earlier mes, or with my present self. Maybe Will does, for a moment. It’s one of the gifts of art that it offers form and shape while life, at least as I know it, doesn’t. All I can do is try to tell Will’s story—offer a reader this particular adventure—and step aside.
Every senator who protects the filibuster is guilty of protecting a Jim Crow relic that was used to block civil rights legislation for decades. There’s simply no way to get around its sinister legacy.
In the 20th century, the filibuster was used to block over 200 anti-lynching bills and held up the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for 60 days. Over and over again, it’s been a weapon wielded by segregationists and white supremacists. We can’t let the filibuster continue to block the voting and civil rights of Black and brown Americans in the year 2021—which it’s currently poised to do unless we get rid of it.
I hope senators like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are acutely aware of this history as they continue to express support for the filibuster. I am urging them and the rest of the Senate to have courage and get rid of the filibuster as soon as possible. A minority of senators shouldn’t be allowed to stop the progress the majority of Americans voted for.
Dolores Bornstein
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.
Re: “Policy Blowback” (GT, 7/7): Who is better protected if Notices of Intent (NOIs) are posted publicly?
Farmworkers, most likely to be exposed, yet often not informed on what’s being applied nearby.
Agricultural communities—especially the most vulnerable, like pregnant women, babies and children, seniors and those with chronic health conditions—and organic farmers and gardeners who want to protect their crops from drift.
Consumers, who prefer their food poison-free, and also care about the health and safety of those who grow it.
Everyone concerned about the environment, the water, air, and soil, the plants and animals. We need to change the way our food is grown to preserve diversity in our ecosystems and reduce climate change. Let’s make Santa Cruz County a model for these changes! Posting NOIs is a step in that direction. We have the right to know.
Kathleen Kilpatrick
Watsonville
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’ve been thinking over the last couple of weeks about trying to evolve my rather grim view of the pandemic. I’ve seen its devastating effects, and I’ve commiserated with everyone who’s wished for a return to “normal,” aka the Before Times, aka the way things used to be.
But the people I talked to for this week’s cover story made me see some other possibilities. Maybe it seems weird that the story is about Santa Cruz Shakespeare—what does one theater company’s attempt to return to the stage have to do with the larger question of how we think about our place in the world after more than a year of Covid-19? But then again, don’t we often look to our artists for inspiration?
In this case, for me at least, they delivered. Just read what Lorenzo Roberts, who plays King RichardII in this summer’s production of RII, has to say about the idea of theater returning to “normal.” I think it’s profound, and I think you can apply it to many different aspects of our lives. Read what Patty Gallagher, a beloved actor here in Santa Cruz for many years, has to say about the play she’ll be starring in this summer, The Agitators. It’s an incredibly relevant work for SCS to be producing in 2021, and let’s face it, there’s no way a two-person play—and a three-person play, in the case of RII—could have been a tentpole production of an SCS season in any other year. In the wake of being shut down, losing an entire season, and then scrambling to find a new path, the people I talked to for this story talked about opportunity and new possibilities. They had a real impact on me, and I’m sure their work this summer will have one on all of us.
I was 16 and we had to enter through the bathroom window. The place was small so the music was right there with you—saw Hot Tuna, the Doobs. It was fun, and even funner after smokin’ some weed.
— Martha Tousseau
Had so much fun at the Chateau in the late ’60s-early ’70s. Probably would have been there more often if it wasn’t for my jealous boyfriend. The music, the people and just the general ambiance are some of my happiest memories.
You can always tell when someone from Silicon Valley moves into Boulder Creek—the first question they post on social media is, “Who do we call to get rid of the mountain lion in my front yard?” The answer is “Nobody.” The giant cats lived here before you, and you need to learn to share their space. Keep your pets in at night and be aware of your surroundings. They are such beautiful critters, just sit back and admire them.
—Wildegurl
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
Submit to ph****@*******es.sc. Include information (location, etc.) and your name. Photos may be cropped. Preferably, photos should be 4 inches by 4 inches and minimum 250dpi.
GOOD IDEA
BOOK RETURN
There’s been a bit of confusion about the changes throughout the county’s library branches this month. So here’s the deal: the Aptos, Boulder Creek, Branciforte, and Garfield Park branches remain closed for construction. The correct extended hours at open branches—Downtown Santa Cruz, Capitola, Felton, La Selva Beach, Live Oak and Scotts Valley—can be found at santacruzpl.org/branches. The Scotts Valley branch will close on July 31st for remodeling, which is expected to be completed in the Spring of 2022. The Live Oak Branch will also close for remodeling later this year.
GOOD WORK
CLUB BENEFITS
The Rotary Club of Santa Cruz recently awarded more than $63,000 in scholarship funds to 35 area students. First-time scholarships were awarded to several local high-school seniors, including Anahi Barroso, JT Beard-Moore, Jasmin Madan-Niccum, Pranav Parekh, Frances Radovan, Ixchel Aguilar-Moore, Carina Bunch, Maya Goldfield, Jassenia Guerrero-Hilario, Ayana Hunt, Emily Jasso Estrada, Zora Kreisher, Dayana Lopez Guervara, Gloria Panttija, David Bonilla, Marina Ceja, and Jeydon Hernandez-Cordero.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good–in spite of all the people who say he is very good.”
One of the recurring themes to emerge from the last year of pandemic hell is our collective obsession with a return to “normal.” This is pretty understandable, especially in the arts, where individual careers and entire organizations were sidelined or lost to an almost complete shutdown of live events.
So yeah, to the theater world, the former normal looks like a great alternative to the recent nothing. But as Lorenzo Roberts, who plays King Richard II in Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s new production of RII, points out, it’s not the only alternative. Nor, he says, the right one.
“I hope it never goes back to the way it was,” says Roberts. “Because we are different people in the world now. And theater is ephemeral. That’s the reason we come to theater, because it is a reflection of what we’re going through. And so I hope with everything that’s been going on—economic crisis, racial unrest, all of the things that have been affecting people on a day to day basis—that theaters change their model.”
The New York-based actor, who first came to Santa Cruz for the group’s 2018 season, sees SCS making exactly those kinds of changes. And it’s not just the Covid-ready scale of this summer’s season, which runs live in the Audrey Stanley Grove July 20-August 29 with Jessica Kubzansky’s RII, a three-person take on Shakespeare’s historical play Richard II, and Mat Smart’s The Agitators, a two-person production about the lifelong friendship between Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass.
“It’s not as extravagant and elaborate,” says Roberts of this season, “but they are taking care of everyone on staff in a different way. Now they’re making people have enough time off, they’re making sure people are compensated fairly. They’re doing all of these things that acknowledge the full humanity of their company. And I think that is something that a lot of theaters are thinking about in a different way for the first time.”
Patty Gallagher, the SCS regular who plays Susan B. Anthony in The Agitators, has also been thinking about how this summer’s productions connect thematically to our new pandemic (and, hopefully, post-pandemic) reality, ever since Artistic Director Mike Ryan reached out to her about performing this summer.
“When Mike made the call, and it was a conversation about how we were coming back, and the season that we were going to do, I felt so much gratitude in so many different directions,” says Gallagher. “Because it wasn’t just that we were coming back. It was also that we were going to do a season that has to do with the present moment that we are living, and the state of who we are as a nation. So it was both the joy of being able to be back, and to know that we were going to come back changed—from both the pandemic, and the moment where this country is really starting to think about who it is, and who we are to each other.”
If that’s the intellectual excitement of this surprise summer season from Santa Cruz Shakespeare, it’s also had a far more visceral effect on those involved.
“I have to tell you that I was driving to work yesterday, crying my eyes out at the prospect of being able to do this work, and be with my collaborators and just start this again,” says Gallagher. “I didn’t realize how much pain I have been holding. I had to pull over before the first meeting like, ‘Okay, I gotta work on my mascara.’ Because I was a wreck.”
Lorenzo Roberts stars as King Richard II in Jessica Kubzansky’s Shakespeare adaptation ‘RII.’ PHOTO: TARMO HANNULA
CONSTRUCTION TIME AGAIN
For months, no one was sure if SCS could do a season at all in 2021. Certainly not Larry Mabrey, the company’s managing director, who was plenty dubious after his experience last year. He had started at SCS in January of 2020, traveling back and forth between Santa Cruz and his previous home in St. Louis. While he prepped for the summer 2020 Shakespeare season, he got his house there ready to sell, finally driving cross-country with his dog to move here for good. He arrived on March 14, unloaded his things on March 15, went to his new SCS office on March 16—and then started working from home in lockdown on March 17.
The company did some innovative things last year, including the “Undiscovered Shakespeare” Zoom readings that allowed them to explore plays by the Bard that they would realistically never be able to produce in a normal season. But Mabrey was holding out hope for a return to live performances in the company’s Audrey Stanley Grove in DeLaveaga Park.
“The first thing that we looked at, of course, was, ‘What would it take to do a regular season, even if we did a shorter run?’” says Mabrey. “But we also had to look at limited capacity, because we didn’t know if we’d be able to have more than 30% capacity in the grove, which would be about 150 people. And the numbers did not work. So then Mike started looking at some smaller shows, and a reduced company. He even looked at some really interesting one-person shows, and things that were Shakespeare related or Shakespearean adaptations, but settled on these as something that was probably more of a socially relevant season to everything going on. That was a real part of the discussion as we started looking at things.”
That kind of scaling down would already be a difficult pivot for most arts groups, but the uncertainty about the state of the pandemic, and its corresponding regulations on openings and closings, made it far worse.
“This has actually been the hardest part of pandemic life in the workplace,” says Ryan. “Instead of creating a budget, you create five budgets, because you are looking at, ‘Well, what happens if we can only produce one play? What does it look like if we can produce two plays? What is it for three plays?’ What is it for all of these things, because at the end of the day, what we knew we had to be was nimble. We knew that we wouldn’t really have the information we needed about the kind and shape of season we would have until probably March, which is really late in the day for us. So we explored lots of stuff.”
They looked at doing one big Shakespeare play. They looked at doing selections from Tim Crouch’s “I Shakespeare,” a series of monologues from secondary characters in Shakespeare’s plays. But none of the available Shakespeare-adjacent works seemed to click, until L.A.-based actress Paige Lindsey White, who has previously performed in SCS’s Love’s Labours Lost and Romeo and Juliet, told Ryan about a three-person version of Richard II in which she had co-starred in Pasadena in 2013. She gave him her script from the production, and the email address of its author. Ryan loved it, and when he reached out to playwright Jessica Kubzansky, he discovered something unexpected: despite the fact the 2013 debut of RII in Pasadena had been critically acclaimed, it had never been produced since.
Mike Ryan (left) and Paige Lindsey White co-star as all the non-Richard characters in ‘R2.’ PHOTO: TARMO HANNULA
KING ME
Kubzansky—who not only adapted the play, but is also the artistic director of the Boston Court Pasadena Theatre Company that staged it in 2013—did not write her stripped-down version of Richard II because she thought the original play was too wordy, over-plotted or suffering from any other flaws that required editing. In fact, quite the opposite—she was a little obsessed with a Shakespeare work she found gorgeously crafted.
“First of all, I’m a Shakespeare freak. I love this play,” says Kubzansky. “I mean, even just purely in terms of its poetry. It’s one of the few Shakespeare plays that is almost entirely written in verse. But more important, the whole kind of generation of the project was that I was fascinated by the story of a man who, in the middle of his life, suddenly didn’t know who he was anymore. And I found that incredibly profound.”
The first play in Shakespeare’s second “history tetralogy”—which traces the rise of the house of Lancaster to the throne in Britain—Richard II follows the troubled last two years (1398-1400) of King Richard II’s reign, as the former Boy King stumbles through a series of political disasters which ultimately lead to Henry Bollingbroke’s rise to power as Henry IV, and Richard’s subsequent imprisonment. Generally well regarded among Shakespeare’s plays by critics, it nonetheless tends to rank somewhere in the lower half of his oeuvre in terms of actually being produced. In modern times, it is probably John Gielgud who delivered the most-lauded portrayals of King Richard II, returning to the part throughout his career. It was last staged locally in 1986, when Michael Edwards directed a production for Shakespeare Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s forerunner) that starred Paul Whitworth.
In RII, one actor plays Richard—and only Richard—while two other actors (for SCS, Mike Ryan and a returning Paige Lindsey White) play all of the secondary characters, darting on and off stage to interact with the king. To accomplish this, Kubzansky had to cut much of Shakespeare’s play that isn’t specifically about Richard, and some of the characters, while reassigning lines from certain characters to others. What she wanted to do with her adaptation was focus in on the main character himself—to literally get into his head.
“I was really interested in setting it in the prison and having Richard have this moment of reflection where he is trying to figure out how the hell King Richard ended up this guy named Richard in the prison alone,” she says. “When I describe this play to people, I say it’s 95% Shakespeare and 5% Kubzansky.”
In preparing to play Richard, Roberts is also seeking to find the right mix. He started by reading the original play and the adaptation over and over, “to fill myself up with those words.”
“That’s the baseline before I do anything else, and then I go and look at all the historical records,” he says. “What was Richard like in real life? And then I’m trying to figure out how are he and I different. Him born, you know, ages ago in England, as the king, and me, a young Black man in the United States of America, from South Carolina. You know, how do we connect those two things? That’s what’s so exciting about doing Shakespeare now is that we can connect those things. The universality of it is what keeps me coming back to it.”
That’s exactly the kind of enthusiasm for the role that Kubzansky believes RII requires.
“Any role anyone plays in Shakespeare can be rich and interesting, but these are going to have to be three tour-de-force performances, because so much is demanded of each of them,” she says. “So what I hope it’s also doing is giving each of them an opportunity to really flex and use every single muscle they have. Because there are roles that are really fun where you come in, you do a thing, you go away, you sit down. No one is going to be sitting down in this production! I’m really excited about that, which is why I was never interested in adding more people, because part of it is, ‘How are these three people going to make the world?’”
PURE AGITATION
Meanwhile, Gallagher has a real problem with Mat Smart’s dramatization of Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony’s battles against the powers that be—and sometimes each other—in The Agitators: it’s too relevant.
“One of the reasons that it’s painful to do this play is you’re looking back at a historical moment, and the conversations that they’re having around justice, and equality and the nation, and it would be so nice to think, ‘Oh, look at all those things that those heroic people solved for us, how mighty they were and how wonderful they were, and what a different time. It’s so great that we’re living in a time where all those problems are solved,’” she says. “And yet, here we are, in moments when they’re talking about people’s rights being taken away at the polls, and limitations on voting rights. And those questions are still with us, which is almost inconceivable. Questions about equality, questions about how we treat one another. It’s shocking that the questions in that play, the things that those two mighty people wrestled with, are still at play.”
And that’s just the policy level. The personal conflicts are even more emotional, she says.
“There are those moments in which you have two people who agree and love each other look each other in the eye and say, ‘This compromise leaves you out.’ ‘Well, this compromise leaves you out.’ We were talking [in rehearsal] about a particular scene in which Frederick Douglass says that he’s going to support the 15th Amendment, which leaves women out. You know, that’s the universal suffrage. Part of it disenfranchises women, the 15th amendment. And she says, ‘But we are universal suffrage for all.’ And at a certain point, he says, ‘Sometimes you need to take it piece by piece.’ And then she says—just after she said our thing is universal suffrage for all—‘If I have to take it piece by piece, I would first give it to women,” says Gallagher. “And in a much later scene in the play, Frederick Douglass is saying, ‘I thought we could make that compromise, because I thought you were right behind us. I thought it was going to happen to you next.’ And yet, that scene is 24 years later.”
These are the same synchronicities and contradictions that inspired Smart to write The Agitators in the first place. Like many people, he was surprised to learn that the two famed 19th-century social reformers had been friends throughout their lives.
“I think the biggest thing was at the Susan B. Anthony Museum, they mentioned that they had a big falling out over the 15th Amendment, which gave Black men the right to vote, but not women, in 1870,” says Smart. “And so I thought, ‘Well, what was that falling out about? If you look up ‘Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony,’ the first thing that comes up is his New York Times obituary, and it talks about how he was with Susan B. Anthony at a Women’s Council meeting all day long in D.C. on the day that he died. He didn’t die at the meeting, he died later in the evening of a heart attack in his house in Cedar Hill. But that told me that they had a reconciliation of some kind. So I was interested—how did they fall out of favor with each other? How did they come back? And then as I did more research, I was shocked to see that nobody had written anything of real rigor about their friendship. So I just started digging, and I learned that they had this amazing 45-year-long friendship full of peaks and valleys and fights and reconciliations.”
Premiering in 2017, The Agitators has struck a cultural chord—there were six different stagings of it in production when Covid hit last year. SCS’ production is the first since the shutdown.
A two-person play is unheard of as a centerpiece of an SCS season, and that means a lot more pressure on Gallagher and her co-star, Allen Gilmore as Douglass.
“I feel such a weight,” says Gallagher. “It’s just a different kind of balance when you’re doing a character; it is more difficult to stand in the shoes of a historical figure. I mean, one wants to be respectful, and do one’s research. But there’s also the imaginative and creative leap that one has to do when one walks into this play that is both incredibly well-researched, but is its own embroidery of history, and it’s an imaginary context of history. There’s so much at stake in wanting to do this right.”
There is so much at stake in this season of Shakespeare, as well. It’s the continuation of a long local tradition, but also the start of something new.
Roberts is optimistic about the prospect of real, sustained change in the theater industry, and the effect that it can have.
“When you treat people in the theater as fully human beings, and you now acknowledge that people are parents, and people are brothers and sisters, and people are having bad days—and that all is not a hindrance to the work, that is actually a way into the work—then I think we can’t help but grow,” he says. “I think we can’t help but create great art because of that, because we are fully invested, and we are a family in this endeavor of life. And so I think it will be radically different. And theaters that try to go back to the way things were before are, I think, missing an opportunity.”
‘The Agitators’ begins with previews July 20-22; opening night is Saturday, July 24. ‘RII’’s previews are July 21 and 23; opening night is Sunday, July 25. The two plays run concurrently through Aug. 29. All performances will be in the Audrey Stanley Grove at DeLaveaga Park, 501 Upper Park Road, Santa Cruz. Both productions will also be recorded, and some virtual tickets will be available. Go to santacruzshakespeare.org for a complete calendar, and for tickets.
Anyone who lived in or visited Santa Cruz in 2018 and 2019 most likely noticed the bright red electric bicycles being ridden and parked across the city.
Santa Cruz had partnered with Jump Bikes, a transportation company that provided affordable short-term bike rentals for trips within city limits. It was the first bike-share program ever implemented in the county.
Jump Bikes pulled out of the area in 2020, after the pandemic brought business to a halt. But local jurisdictions are once again looking to bring back a bike-share program—and this time it would be countywide.
A coalition from Santa Cruz County’s four cities, as well as UC Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College, have been working together to find a program that would, in theory, allow riders to take a trip from North Santa Cruz County all the way to Watsonville.
Claire Gallogly, a transportation planner with the city of Santa Cruz, said at a June 22 City Council meeting that this countywide expansion is overdue. When a Jump rider had tried to travel beyond city limits, the bike would shut down.
“We heard over and over that folks who were using the bikes didn’t necessarily stop their trip at city limits, and you would often see bikes piling up at Arana Gulch, or other various endpoints,” Gallogly said. “People were wanting to continue into Live Oak, into Capitola for further trips, but were not able to with the system we had at the time. Setting up a countywide system would allow those trips to take place.”
Gallogly said the bike-share market and technology have drastically changed since Santa Cruz last released a Request for Information (RFI) in 2017. The countywide group has been looking at which vendors would be able to bring a sustainable, safe and reliable system to the entire county.
The group considered a number of factors, including the cost for residents in lower-income areas, increased customer service and the ability for each jurisdiction to sign its own individual contract. The program must also be of no cost to the jurisdictions.
Proponents of the program say that having more transportation options will also help the environment. For example, Senior Civil Engineer for the city of Watsonville Alex Yasbeck said that such a program could help aid in Watsonville’s Climate Action Plan. The city created the plan in 2015, aiming to address issues of climate change by the year 2030.
“Transportation is the biggest source of greenhouse gas,” Yasbeck says. “[This] would help our residents by offering options that are not expensive or cumbersome, and don’t generate pollution.”
Santa Cruz City Councilman Justin Cummings expressed his support at the June 22 meeting, saying he had used Jump when it was around.
“So many people were using [the bikes],” he said. “I personally used my car way less … I’m glad to see this emphasis on bikes.”
Controversy Cycle
Not all residents were happy with Jump Bikes. Abandoned bikes were not only being left on sidewalks, obstructing paths for pedestrians, but also in the middle of bike lanes, streets and even in front of people’s homes.
One woman called into the June 22 meeting to tell the story of how a Jump bike ended up in her driveway, blocking her way out.
“The problem is … if you don’t pay for it, you can’t move it,” she said.
Another woman, who said she was blind, claimed that Jump bikes were often left at intersections and in the way of ADA areas, and that there was no easy way for disabled people to report these issues.
Vice Mayor Sonja Brunner recalled that one of the biggest customer concerns with Jump was over their lack of responsive customer service.
“[Jump] had a local operating team, but the number to call was unresponsive,” Brunner said. “I think that was a missing component that did damage to a lot of public perception of the program.”
Gallogly said that all of these issues are being addressed in the new Request for Proposal (RFP). A major focus, she said, will be on providing better parking solutions for the bikes and increasing the number of docking stations throughout the county.
“If you can solve that parking issue, you can more easily address the problem of customer service and responsiveness,” she said.
They also plan to request for the selected vendor to hire a local team who is knowledgeable about the region and can respond to issues faster.
Stricter fees for parking violations, as well as incentives for using bikes properly (such as credits for future rides), are also possible.
Yasbeck points out that in Watsonville, certain laws should be changed in order to better serve the community through a bike-share program. This includes allowing bikes to ride on sidewalks if necessary, which would help seniors and slower riders stay out of fast, dangerous traffic.
And lowering the age of riders from 18 and over to 16 should be addressed as well, he says.
“A third of Watsonville residents are under 18,” he says. “It’s my personal feeling that if we allow 16-year-olds to have driver’s licenses, why can’t they ride an e-bike? I would love to see a push to allow younger riders to legally use these programs.”
Hesitancy in South County
Yasbeck presented the program to the Watsonville City Council at its meeting on June 22, on the recommendation of Public Works Director Steve Palmisano. The response was mostly positive, but some had concerns.
Compared to other areas of the county, Watsonville does not have that many safe bike lanes, especially on busy roads like Freedom Boulevard. Councilman Francisco Estrada cited this fact, along with a general lack of biking infrastructure, as reasons to be wary of bringing the program to the city, which has continuously ranked as one of the most dangerous municipalities of its size for pedestrians and cyclists.
“I feel like there will need to be a lot more work done, infrastructure-wise, education-wise, before the bikes can be rolled out here,” he said. “I love the idea, I just don’t want any more accidents in Watsonville. Anything we can do to make this program safer, I’m up for it.”
Some expressed concern over the bikes ending up on the slough trail systems or being stolen. Others wondered if Watsonville should look into doing its own program, so it can offer different types of bikes (tandem, tricycles, etc.) or scooters.
Yasbeck says that the outpouring of concern was somewhat surprising, but he understood that bike share is a new kind of venture for Watsonville.
“We really don’t know how this will work here,” he says. “We are a very different demographic. We don’t have the same number of tourists, or attractions. But if we implement it, stats will show what happens. From there we can see if there are better, more long-term solutions.”
When asked about Estrada’s concern, Yasbeck says that oftentimes, a stronger infrastructure follows an increased use of bikes.
“As more people ride bikes, support increases,” he says. “If you only build more bike lanes, people will be like, ‘Why’d you take my parking away?’ If we actually increase ridership, that can help shift perceptions.”
What lies ahead
The city councils have unanimously approved the RFP for the countywide bike-share program, and are now in the midst of commenting.
Yazbeck said that it was “amazing” to see all of the jurisdictions working together so well.
“I hope there are more interactions, more projects like this,” he says. “Honestly, it’s silly that we have these boundaries that keep us from working together more often.”
The countywide group aims to release the RFP in August, and from there they will begin the vendor selection process, which will probably take a few months.
After a vendor is selected, each jurisdiction will negotiate its own contract. That will allow them to decide things separately, make changes and fine-tune their specific programs.
At both the Santa Cruz and Watsonville meetings, council members brought up the possibility of the bike-share program bringing revenue to each city. Gallogly said that they are looking at revenue-sharing items, but that they didn’t want revenue to outweigh the public and environmental benefit of bike share.
“I don’t want more fees to be passed on to the users,” she said. “We want to keep prices low enough to get people to think, ‘Bike share can be my first choice.’”
Steve Trujillo, Watsonville resident and current Cabrillo College trustee, echoed those sentiments during the Watsonville meeting.
“Sure, we need to bring money to the city, but we also need new forms of transportation,” he said. “It’s about expanding our horizons. We need to realize that we have to get away from cars as our sole source of transportation.”
The man who police say murdered his ex-partner on June 28—and then turned himself in and confessed to the unreported crime three days later—had been released from Santa Cruz County Jail on June 25, where he was serving time for a felony assault conviction against the same victim.
Beau Joseph Paepke, 30, was prohibited from contacting 33-year-old Rachel “Elias” Meisenheimer by a restraining order. According to court records, Paepke had ignored at least three other similar orders that were supposed to stop him from contacting Meisenheimer.
The day before the suspected murder, Meisenheimer posted an announcement on Facebook about the news of the couple’s split.
“You ever broke up with someone and your WHOLE FAMILY was relieved?” the post reads.
Meisenheimer, who went by the pronouns they and them, was a model and music consultant at The Box, a goth club in Santa Cruz. They were also a prominent member of the greater Bay Area goth scene.
Meisenheimer’s friends say that the relationship between Paepke and them was fraught with abuse before he was arrested for it in December 2019.
Meisenheimer’s friend Sara Bucholz says that they were an innately creative person who infused art into everything they did, and inspired others to seek their own artistic passions.
“Everything was an art,” she says.
Meisenheimer was also a strong-willed person with a similarly strong moral compass, Bucholz says.
“There was definitely no bullshit. If they had something to say to you, you would know for sure,” Bucholz says.
According to Bucholz, the relationship between Paepke and Meisenheimer was turbulent and on-again, off-again, but took a turn for the worse after Meisenheimer became pregnant with their child and suffered a miscarriage.
“They were excited, and at that time Elias had a lot of nice things to say about him,” Bucholz said. “I think the miscarriage really screwed up things with them a lot.”
Bucholz says that the Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) did not notify Meisenheimer when Paepke was released, which may have given them a chance to avoid him.
SCPD officials did not return a call for comment for this story before press time. The Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office also did not return calls seeking comment.
In a press release, SCPD said it found Meisenheimer’s body in a recreation vehicle (RV) parked on the 100 block of Front Street, after Paepke showed up to county jail and confessed to the murder. Paepke told investigators that he killed Meisenheimer inside the RV while it was parked on the 900 block of Soquel Avenue.
Bucholz says she wonders why he was released from jail with time served after having violated several protective orders, and several times abusing Meisenheimer.
“He is clearly not someone who should just be out and about,” she says.
Trouble between the two appears to date back to at least December 2019, when Paepke was charged with assaulting Meisenheimer, inflicting corporal injury, violating a protective order and committing a felony while on bail.
He was released on his own recognizance (O.R.) on Jan. 2, 2020, pending trial.
He was back in custody on Feb. 20 of that year for violating that restraining order. He was released again on O.R., which was revoked on May 18 of that year after he failed to report to pretrial services.
He was apparently out again when, on June 7 of this year, he was arrested for violating the protective order and assaulting Meisenheimer.
On June 25, Paepke pleaded no contest to the 2019 assault charge, and was sentenced to 88 days in jail, with credit for 44 days time served. The judge suspended the remainder of his sentence, and released him with 36 months probation and a new restraining order.
Paepke is in custody in Santa Cruz County Jail, where he is being held without bail on murder charges, jail records showed.
The fact that Paepke violated several restraining orders is not uncommon, says Laura Segura, co-executive director for Monarch Services, which helps domestic violence victims.
According to Segura, perpetrators violate roughly 50% of the restraining orders that Monarch Services helps victims attain.
Making the situation more complex is the myriad factors that make each case different, including whether children are involved.
“Every case and situation is unique and has a variety of circumstances,” Segura said.
Segura says that the most dangerous time for domestic violence victims is when they leave the relationship. Then, they face a 75% increase in risk for violence. This can last as long as two years, she adds.
That’s why when Monarch Services helps the victims develop escape plans, they include having a spare phone and cash, important documents and other essentials at the ready, in addition to having a place to go.
“They have to understand that this is going to be a dangerous time for them,” Segura said. “Things like this do happen, and that’s why it’s so important for survivors to know that support is available. It’s also important for us as a community to really take this issue very seriously and for bystanders to help when they can.”
The 24-Hour Domestic Violence, Sexual Abuse and Human Trafficking Crisis Line is 888-900-4232.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): In his poem “Litany,” Aries poet Billy Collins testifies that he is “the sound of rain on the roof.” He also claims to be “the moon in the trees, the paper blowing down an alley, the basket of chestnuts on the kitchen table, and the shooting star.” He does make it clear, however, that he is not “the bread and the knife” on the table, nor the “crystal goblet and the wine.” What about you, Aries? What are all the earthy and fiery phenomena that you are? Are you, as Billy Collins suggests, “the dew on the morning grass and the burning wheel of the sun and the marsh birds suddenly in flight”? Now would be an excellent time to dream up your own version of such colorful biographical details.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Why else keep a journal, if not to examine your own filth?” wrote poet Anne Sexton. And yes, Sexton did have a lot of filth to explore, including the physical abuse of her daughters. But most of us don’t need to focus so obsessively on our unlovely aspects. Keeping a journal can also be about identifying our ripening potentials and unused riches. This approach would be especially fun and wise for you Tauruses right now. The coming weeks will be an auspicious time for deep introspection that frees capacities and powers you have only partially activated up until now.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Journalist Sam Anderson marvels at his young daughter’s project: a small, plastic dome-like structure that houses a community of ladybugs. All they need to consume, for weeks at a time, are “two water-soaked raisins.” I don’t think you’ll need to be forever as efficient and hardy as those ladybugs, Gemini, but you may have to be like that temporarily. My advice? Don’t regard it as a hardship. Instead, see it as an opportunity to find out how exquisitely resourceful and resilient you can be. The skills you learn and refine now will be priceless in the long run.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Cancerian poet Linda Hogan says she doesn’t like to be parched. She wants to be like “a tree drinking the rain.” I think every Cancerian has similar dreams: to be steadily immersed in engrossing feelings, awash with intimate longings, flowing along in rhythm with the soul’s songs. The coming weeks will be prime time for you to relish these primal pleasures. It’s probably best to avoid an outright flood, but I think it’s wise to invite a cascade.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Actor Lupita Nyong’o had a starring role in Steve McQueen’s film 12 Years a Slave. She praised his directorial skills. She loved the fact that he told her, “Fail, and then fail better.” Why? “That kind of environment, where failure is an option, is magical,” she said. It allowed her to experiment freely, push herself beyond her previous limits and focus on being true to the character she was playing rather than trying to be a “good actor.” I think these are excellent principles for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo-born Wayne Shorter is a legendary jazz composer and saxophonist. He has been making music for over 60 years, often with other legendary creators like Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock. The New York Times described Shorter as “jazz’s greatest living small-group composer and a contender for greatest living improviser.” Bass prodigy Tal Wilkenfeld, who is 53 years younger than Shorter, tells the story of a show she performed with him. Just before going on stage, Shorter came up to her, sensing she was nervous, and whispered some advice: “Play eternity.” Now I’m offering that same counsel to you as you carry out your tasks in the coming days. Be as timeless as you dare to be. Immerse yourself in the most expansive feelings you can imagine. Authorize your immortal soul to be in charge of everything you do.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran author Paula McLain says the word “paradise” is derived from the ancient Persian word pairidaeza, meaning “walled garden.” For her, this association suggests that making promises and being faithful to our intentions are keys to creating happiness with those we care for. Paradise requires walls! To scrupulously cultivate freedom, we need discipline. If we hope to thrive in joyous self-expression, we must focus on specific goals. I bring these thoughts to your attention because now is a pivotal time to work on building, refining and bolstering your own personal version of paradise.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Thousands of 28-pound bars of 24-carat gold are stored in the Bank of England’s underground vault. To gain entry to the treasure trove, bankers use metal keys that are three feet long. They must also utter a secret password into a microphone. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you Scorpios can now gain access to a more metaphorical but nevertheless substantial source of riches. How? The key is a particular scene in your imagination that has recently begun to coalesce. It is an emblem of a future triumph or breakthrough that you will accomplish. As for the password, which you will also need, it’s vigorous rigor.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Somehow, I have lived all these years without ever coming across the rare English word “selcouth.” Today, as I meditated on the exotic astrological portents coming up for you, that word appeared—arriving on my phone via text message from my Sagittarius friend Lila. She told me, “I have a feeling that life is about to get intensely SELCOUTH for us Sagittarians.” I looked up the unfamiliar word and found these synonyms: unusual, marvelous, strange, magnificent, scarce, wondrous, weird, rare and exotic. Those terms do indeed coincide with my interpretation of your immediate future. So Happy Selcouth to you, dear Centaur! Celebrate with awed appreciation!
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Lexicographer Jonathon Green provides us with the following 19th-century slang words for the sex act: horizontal refreshment, strumming, playing at romps, cully-shangie, taking a turn at Mount Pleasant, dancing the blanket hornpipe, honeyfugle, giving a hot poultice for the Irish toothache and—my favorite—fandango de pokum. In accordance with astrological potentials, I recommend you consider trying them all out in the next four weeks. In other words, experiment with shifting your approach to belly-bumping and libido-gratifying. If you don’t have a human partner, do it alone or with an angel or in your fantasy life.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): If a lover or spouse is perpetually churning out fantasies of you in their imagination, they may be less than totally tuned in to the real you. Instead, they may be focused on the images they have of you—maybe so much so that they lose sight of who you genuinely are and what you are actually doing. The same possibility exists for other allies, not only lovers and spouses. They may be so entranced by their stories about you that they are out of touch with the ever-changing marvel that you are always evolving. That’s the bad news, Aquarius. Here’s the good news: The coming weeks will be a decisive time to correct such distortions—and revel in the raw truth about you.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Here’s how art critic Walter Pater characterized the work of Piscean artist Michelangelo: “sweetness and strength, pleasure with surprise, an energy of conception which seems to break through all the conditions of comely form, recovering, touch by touch, a loveliness found usually only in the simplest natural things.” I’ve been waiting for the arrival of astrological aspects that would mean you’d be an embodiment of that description. And now they are here. Congrats! For the next 13 days, I will visualize you as a fount of ever-refreshing grace—as a fluid treasure that emanates refined beauty and wild innocence.
In time to celebrate warm summer months comes a fabulous 2018 Sparkling Riesling. Made by accomplished winemaker Nicole Walsh, this Wirz Vineyard Riesling ($34) is an impressive sparkler that’s sure to bring out the festive in you. Made in the Methode Champenoise style, the wine spent 16 months en tirage. Walsh describes the end result as “bright acidity with citrus and green apple aromas and flavors. Bubblicious!”
Walsh has collaborated with Chef Katherine Stern and her company the Midway. Regular checks of Ser Winery’s website will inform you of upcoming wine and food pairings. What could be nicer than ordering a delicious plate of La Quercia prosciutto, Black Mission figs, sorrel and walnuts for a mere $14 to pair with Walsh’s Sparkling Riesling? And then finish with a marvelous dessert, like the Peach and Almond Galette ($8).
Ser Winery’s tasting room in the newly vamped up Aptos Village is well worth visiting.
Ser Winery, 10 Parade St., Suite B (next to Cat and Cloud Coffee), Aptos, 612-6062. Serwinery.com.
Stay Cool Ice Cream Casey Cowden realized that all those good-old ice cream trucks of yesteryear that used to drive around the neighborhoods seem to have disappeared. So Cowden (who is no relation to me) decided to go into business doing just that. He has called his new venture Stay Cool Ice Cream. “We’re carrying Marianne’s ice cream,” he says, “with lots of fun stuff such as Ninja Turtles, Cookie Dough, Rocky Road, Chocolate, Vanilla Bean, Mint Chip, Neapolitan, and more.” Cowden says there will be heart-healthy choices on the menu, including organic fruit. Spoons are made of wood, not plastic, and the bowl-shaped Waffle Cone means zero waste. Look for the Stay Cool Ice Cream truck in Santa Cruz and Capitola, and then Seacliff and Rio Del Mar beaches. Cowden also caters private parties and functions. “We are the only ones right now who do deliveries and have an ice cream truck,” he adds.
Visit staycoolicecreamsc.com or email st**************@***il.com. 831-234-1912.
Cliff Café is a cozy and quaint Pleasure Point neighborhood fixture located right at the corner of 41st Avenue and Portola Dr. Currently closed Wednesdays, they are open every other day from 8am until last seating at 12:45pm. Susan Edson has been owner and operator for the last 31 years, originally working there as a waitress and cook and then purchasing it from the previous owner after the earthquake in 1989. She spoke to GT recently about her restaurant and some highlights from the menu.
What is the vibe and ambiance you’re going for?
SUSAN EDSON: It’s a casual spot that serves mostly breakfast with a few lunch items, too, and we’re also known for serving excellent coffee from Pacific Coffee Roasting Co. of Aptos. We have indoor and outdoor seating, and plans in the future include a permanent outdoor patio space. We’ve been around for a while; we have had a lot of locals throughout the years come in—and now their kids are coming in, too.
What are the most popular breakfast dishes?
We do a lot of omelets, they have three eggs and the way that I do them is unique. We have a lot of options including our Spanish omelet, which has a house-made salsa, white cheddar cheese and a dollop of sour cream. Another popular one is the Veggie Plus, which has cream cheese, avocado, tomato, olives, and sprouts. And I would say our most popular one has bacon, avocado, tomato, and cheese. We’re also known for our honey whole-wheat pancakes, which are made from scratch. They’re unique and delicious, people love them and they can come with bacon or ham, too. The tofu scrambles are something we’re really known for as well, and we do them differently than anyone else in town. The most popular ones are the veggie tofu scramble and the red pesto tofu scramble. We do have vegan options, and we really have something for everyone including meat eaters, too.
What are a couple of lunch specialties?
One popular lunch item is our tuna melt, which has albacore and apple chunks and is served on whole wheat bread with a slice of white cheddar cheese. And we also have a great B.L.T. sandwich, with really thick cut bacon and optional avocado.
