The Santa Cruz Vets Hall has reopened in downtown Santa Cruz, and local singer/songwriter Trianna Feruza will take the stage with dancer Maleah Rose for a musical extravaganza with special guests like Side Piece, plus artists Genoa, Know Morals and live spoken-word poetry.
INFO: 6 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 31. Veterans Hall, 846 Front St., Santa Cruz. 454-0478. $10/$15.
Green Fix
Breath and Oneness Anniversary
Breath and Oneness in Capitola is celebrating the end of its terrific twos and the beginning of its third year of keeping the community happy, healthy and well. In celebration, they are inviting everyone to a weekend of yoga, movement, music, meditation, and more at discounted rates. There are classes happening all day, everyday, all weekend long. Check online or call for a full schedule.
INFO: Friday, Aug. 30-Sunday, Sept. 1. Breath and Oneness, 708 Capitola Ave., Capitola. 515-7001, breathandoneness.com. $20 two-day pass/free for members.
Monday 8/26-Friday 9/20
‘Time Untethered: Creative Life after Cabrillo’
The newest Cabrillo exhibit features the work of seven artists who have retired from the Cabrillo College Art Studio and Art Photography programs. Honoring each artist’s time and legacy at Cabrillo, the exhibit also spotlights personal artistic practice and the joys of retirement. An eclectic range of disciplines, materials and approaches are represented, from oil paintings and pastels to textiles and experimental analog photography. Special reception 4-6 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7.
Join Indie Award-winning Scottish fiddler Alasdair Fraser, Ryan McKasson, Eric McDonald, and more than 200 musicians, singers and dancers in a celebration of music, song and dance at the culmination of this year’s Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddling School. All seating is general admission—first come, first served—so get there early for the best seats!
INFO: 8 p.m. Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium, 307 Church St., Santa Cruz. valleyofthemoon.org. $25.50/$27.50 general admission.
Wednesday 8/28
‘The Two Noble Kinsmen’
Each year, Santa Cruz Shakespeare continues the tradition of showcasing the season’s intern acting company with its celebratory Fringe production. This year’s effort, The Two Noble Kinsmen, is a world premiere adaptation of what is believed to be Shakespeare’s last play, and a possible collaboration with Jacobean tragedian John Fletcher. The Two Noble Kinsmen is directed by Dash Waterbury and features an all-intern cast and crew. The play tells the story of two best friends who fall in love with the same woman, exposing the adventures and absurdity of love at first sight. How drama-tic.
INFO: 7:30 p.m. The Grove in DeLaveaga Park, 501 Upper Park Rd., Santa Cruz. 460-6399, santacruzshakespeare.org/tickets. $27.50.
This is part one of a two-part series on the city of Santa Cruz’s harassment policy. — Editor
“Caustic.”
That’s how Santa Cruz City Manager Martín Bernal describes the current work environment at City Hall in his cover letter atop a new report investigating the conduct of two Santa Cruz city councilmembers.
“It is imperative that we refrain from engaging in conduct that might be reasonably perceived as abusive, or that which may create an intimidating and uncomfortable working environment or cause morale problems,” Bernal writes in the letter.
The much-anticipated report detailed employee complaints that the city’s Human Resources Department received earlier this year concerning the conduct of councilmembers Drew Glover, who was elected in November, and Chris Krohn, who was elected in 2016. It all started at a February City Council meeting, when Mayor Martine Watkins referenced “perceptions” that Krohn and Glover had been bullying her because she’s a woman. She attributed that observation to people in the community, but she didn’t deny it, either. As reported in a GT cover story at the time (“Bully Pulpit,” 3/6/19), other politicians and community members echoed Watkins’ concerns—among them, county Supervisor Ryan Coonerty, former Mayor Cynthia Chase and former Councilmember Richelle Noroyan.
The new report, which was released last week, deemed that claim unsubstantiated. But the report also addressed other complaints against Krohn and Glover—both of whom are now facing a combined recall effort—and each had one conduct complaint against them substantiated. Although all five of the complainants were women, independent investigator Joe Rose did not confirm any instances of gender discrimination.
In his cover letter, Bernal writes that morale at City Hall “has suffered considerably” in the current work environment. “This is completely unacceptable,” he adds.
The report attempts to lay out what the city can do better in the future, including tips for councilmembers like Krohn and Glover, but also for Bernal and Watkins.
“There’s work to do,” Watkins tells GT. “I know the report findings have recommendations. I’m 100% open to that, and I hope my colleagues are as well.”
ON HALL
It’s not clear whether the report will do anything to ease tensions at City Hall.
Less than 24 hours after its release, Glover had two Thursday morning meetings. The first meeting was with Vice Mayor Justin Cummings, City Councilmember Sandy Brown and a city staffer.
Some details of the conversation are unclear, but the meeting became heated, and the staffer became upset. Bernal had a meeting with Glover later that morning. By 11:30 a.m., Bernal had sent out a message to employees across the city outlining new instructions for interacting with Glover. Effective immediately, the only employees who were to interact with Glover would be department heads, Bernal and the assistant city manager.
“I felt like I had a duty and responsibility to ensure that it didn’t happen again with any other staff,” Bernal says of the reported heated exchange. “But I did tell him in my conversation that I was going to do that, because I didn’t get any response from him with respect to taking any accountability at all.”
The decision has frustrated Glover.
“I don’t think I can talk about it,” Glover says. “It’s an internal matter. Regardless of the cause of it, I disagree with the decision to do it. For this exact reason—why? What’s going on? Can I talk about it? Probably not. It’s indicative of the way that conflict is dealt with in the city.”
This past November, voters elected Glover, along with Vice Mayor Cummings and Councilmember Donna Meyers.
JUST ASKINGCity Councilmember Drew Glover says that it’s his style to ask tough questions in council meetings.
Glover and Cummings serve in a council majority with Krohn and Brown. Together, the four of them make up the more left-wing faction of Santa Cruz’s all-Democrat city council, although Cummings has shown an independent streak, occasionally serving as a swing vote on the seven-member body.
According to the report, Cummings told the investigator that he’s seen some councilmembers “interrogate” others, in an apparent reference to Krohn and Glover’s style of questioning their colleagues.
Cummings added that when councilmembers start “calling people out,” “grandstanding” or acting “grandiose,” their behavior could be considered “demeaning, humiliating or offensive” to others, and some other councilmembers and many community members feel that these theatrics get in the way of the substance of the meeting.
“That starts to compromise the city’s ability to function,” Cummings said in the report.
Council meetings over the past few months have not just been characterized by clashes between councilmembers, but also by tense exchanges with city staff.
The only conduct complaint against Krohn that was substantiated actually happened at a council meeting. It involved a sarcastic snorting laugh at a meeting after a staffer began an answer with a phrase along the lines of “In my professional opinion.” Krohn says he doesn’t remember that moment, but two witnesses remembered it, and he’s apologized.
The only substantiated claim against Glover was submitted by Councilmember Meyers.
As the appointed independent investigator, Rose looked for possible evidence as he tried to corroborate the narratives in the conduct complaints. The Sacramento-based lawyer did not deem any of the claims unfounded or false.
Responses to the report have ranged from anger at the councilmembers’ behavior to sarcastic indifference about the findings.
Such emotions were on full display on the Santa Cruz and Central Coast Politics Facebook page last week. “My goodness.. so someone’s feelings got hurt on the council?” user Denica De Foy asked facetiously in one comment. Most comment threads devolved into arguments about the recall, for which groups are gathering signatures.
Glover and Krohn both openly admit that they ask tough questions of other councilmembers and staff, and they say it’s their style. Perhaps as a result, meetings have been running long. Under the current council, meetings have been starting as early as 10 a.m. and sometimes going past 11 p.m. The new majority has also directed staff to bring back items to the City Council on tightened deadlines. Bernal hinted in his letter that the current approach doesn’t lead staffers to create their best work, and even suggested that it may open the city up to potential lawsuits.
It’s worth mentioning that the city staff has seen two recent high-profile departures.
Although neither mentioned the current work environment as a reason for leaving, former Santa Cruz Assistant City Manager Tina Friend took a pay cut to become city manager for nearby Scotts Valley in June, and Finance Director Marcus Pimentel left this month for an administrative post at the Santa Cruz County Health Services Agency.
Krohn and Glover both believe their approach is good for the city, and Krohn says he wants to make sure that important policy work is done in public.
Glover says that he knows tough conversations can make people “uncomfortable,” but he’s repeatedly argued that it’s time to move away from the notion that being uncomfortable is necessarily a bad thing. He also says he doesn’t want to be “a rubber stamp” for staff recommendations.
“That’s one thing I’ve become known for in my time on the council, is asking tough questions,” Glover says.
CLASH AT CITY HALL
Just after 11:15 p.m. on Feb. 1, Councilmember Donna Meyers was wrapping up a 45-minute meeting with two community members, both UCSC officials, in a City Hall conference room.
Glover had the room reserved for the next slot, when he planned to meet with three or four of his several interns. Meyers says it was about 12:03 p.m. when they got up to leave—a fact that one of the UCSC officials verified to Rose. (Glover remembers the time being closer to 12:10.) When Meyers and the community members opened the door to leave, they found Glover standing in the doorway, where he expressed his disapproval that Meyers had gone over her time, and taken up some of his.
“We’re done. I’m sorry that we ran a bit late,” Meyers remembers telling Glover, according to the report.
“This is very inappropriate that you don’t respect the calendar for the meeting,” he responded in Meyers’ recounting. The community members, who go unnamed in the report, felt uncomfortable as they squeezed by, cautiously sliding out around either side of Glover and into the hallway. Meyers apologized again, waiting for Glover to back up. She remembered it being difficult to get out of the room. Meyers said that as she walked toward her office, Glover followed her, repeating his frustration and saying that she wasn’t appreciating or valuing him.
Partly based on witness testimony, Rose substantiated the claim and wrote that Glover had embarrassed Meyers by being “needlessly and unjustifiably antagonistic.” Rose wrote that the encounter did long-term damage to Glover’s working relationship with Meyers. The newly elected council had only met twice at the time the run-in occurred.
Glover contends, however, that even before their run-in at City Hall, he already had an icy relationship with Meyers, who declined to comment for this story. Meyers also had a second claim against Glover, which went unsubstantiated.
Glover says he’s not sorry about what happened that winter afternoon, but he is sorry that it made Meyers feel uncomfortable, and he wants to ensure that doesn’t happen again.
“It’s a great opportunity and learning experience for me, with engaging with Donna Meyers and potentially other people in general,” Glover says. “I could have brought up the issue of being late in a one-on-one meeting with her, but that would be assuming that we have a relationship that allows us to have one-on-one meetings, which I don’t believe that we do. And that comes from our ideological differences, her behavior towards me, her perception of my behavior towards her. It’s just an uncomfortable situation.”
In addition to the two substantiated complaints against Glover and Krohn, there are six other claims in the report, including three informal claims initiated by Watkins. The mayor tells GT that when she first made her comments, she didn’t realize that they would spur an investigation, but according to a city memo from Human Resources, the follow-up is required under California law. It’s Watkins’ understanding that the investigation began as a result of other complaints, starting with one the following day.
Some of the complaints detailed multiple instances of conflict. One female staffer who came forward recounted to Rose, through tears, Glover’s “really upsetting” pattern of questioning her morals, character, professionalism, competence, and ethics.
That was one of several complaints that went unsubstantiated.
Former mayor Chase, who has criticized Glover’s and Krohn’s styles of discourse, says that it is important to look at the bigger picture of all complaints and their context, even though the investigator didn’t establish any evidence of gender discrimination. A clear pattern of problematic behavior starts to emerge, she says.
“A lot of it is just being able to find evidence to prove that things happened,” says Chase, who has cited the behavior of her colleagues—Krohn included—as a reason she didn’t run for re-election last year. “I don’t know all of the circumstances. But I do know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If more than one person complained, that shows a pattern of behavior, and that’s troubling.”
PATH FORWARDCity Councilmember Chris Krohn says he’s sorry for a sarcastic laugh at a staffer earlier this year, though he says he doesn’t remember it. PHOTO: JULES HOLDSWORTH
The Rose Report noted that Watkins didn’t reach out to Krohn and Glover in advance of going public, or try to mediate her concerns in private conversation before her remarks.
Even though the mayor’s own complaints weren’t substantiated, Watkins doesn’t have any regrets about speaking up. She says that her words created a space for other women to come forward, including women who otherwise may not have. (The staffer who came forward the day after the mayor, for instance, had her complaint substantiated, Watkins notes.)
Afterward, Krohn sent two emails to the mayor hoping to discuss the matter and never heard back. Watkins says HR advised her not to respond until the report was finished, as there would be an opportunity for dialogue at that time. The report’s release, she adds, took longer than anyone anticipated.
As it considers possible next steps, the City Council will have an opportunity to address the matter, and could even issue a public censure—a form of reprimand—against the two councilmembers.
But the report also sheds light on a few possible procedural flaws.
Cummings says one takeaway from the investigation is that neither he nor Glover received a copy of the city’s Respectful Workplace Conduct Policy until they were more than a couple of months into their terms. Cummings received his copy in late February. Glover received his copy in March, after complaints had begun rolling in. Glover and Krohn both describe the on-boarding process as terribly inadequate.
Be that as it may, Watkins says that everyone on the council is an adult, and they should know how to behave like it.
Glover, for his part, notes that the concept of conduct policies is not new to him, given that he sees himself as “someone that supports worker rights and policies that support workers.”
But it’s still difficult for Cummings to put the on-boarding process and timeline out of mind when trying to figure out how to think about Glover’s alleged violation.
“If someone breaks a rule, you should sit them down and let them know they did something wrong,” Cummings says. “And if it continues, then you should do something.”
MEND TIMES
Some Krohn and Glover supporters have groaned at the Rose Report’s $18,000 price tag, but if the city pays careful attention to pages 123 and 124, it could get its money’s worth.
The report’s final section has five recommendations, all of which Human Resources Director Lisa Murphy has signed onto. One is that the City Council should receive immediate training in three areas, including Santa Cruz’s Respectful Workplace Conduct Policy.
Additionally, Rose wrote that, “Councilmembers should avoid making public accusations of misconduct against one another and against staff without first privately and internally addressing these concerns and attempting conflict resolution and rectification when possible.”
He added that the city should review its post-election on-boarding process for new city councilmembers, and that all councilmembers and “selected staff members should participate in professional mediation and conflict resolution services.”
Glover says that Rose is the third outside expert, in recent months, to recommend that the City Council seek conflict resolution services.
Rose referred all questions for this story to Murphy’s office, which referred GT to Santa Cruz Management Analyst Ralph Dimarucut. Dimarucut says that the city is working on a scope of services to hire a mediator.
The Rose Report mentions the Conflict Resolution Center of Santa Cruz County as a possible resource. Lejla Bratovic, that nonprofit’s executive director, hasn’t heard from the city, but she says that the center does handle work like this.
Bernal says that it has typically been the city’s policy to send councilmembers a copy of the conduct policy after they begin harassment training, which they have six months to complete.
But he says that he’s receptive to making changes, including the ones outlined in the report.
“We’re completely open,” he says. “It’s not like we say, ‘Here’s the on-boarding process. Take it or leave it.’ If [councilmembers] come and say, ‘Hey, I don’t think I got enough information on this,’ then we’ll arrange for something else. We’re always available to them to help them with whatever they have. We make staff available to them all the time. It’s not like it ever ends. There’s a lot to learn and take in when you’re a councilmember, particularly who’s never been a councilmember. It takes a while.”
This fall, Santa Cruz County could become one of the first local governments in the country to take decisive action on sea-level rise by altering permitting rules for residents who want to build seawalls or other forms of armoring around valuable coastal real estate.
But as property owners confront the potential eye-popping costs of warding off rising tides, environmental advocates also warn of a catch-22 scenario. Further armoring the coastline, agencies like the U.S. Geologic Survey and California Coastal Commission have warned, will also speed up the demise of vulnerable landscapes—namely, public beaches—that make the area desirable in the first place.
“You essentially drown the beach or flood the beach,” says Gary Griggs, a UCSC earth sciences professor who has studied the effects of armoring on California beaches.
Still, he says, there are few easy answers to the existential crisis that comes with trying to prepare a beach town for dramatic changes in the coastal environment. Denial is more untenable with each new shattered heat record, and paying millions of dollars for “beach nourishment,” or adding tons of sand back to waning beaches, is another expensive Band-Aid. Retreating from the shoreline and forfeiting billions of dollars in coastal property may be the surest bet, but there are obvious drawbacks.
“The scientists have been dealing with this for a while, but it’s going back to local governments,” Griggs says.
In September, Santa Cruz County spokesperson Jason Hoppin said the Board of Supervisors will wrestle with these questions when they revisit a long process of updating local rules for coastal development.
Among the changes proposed in a 248-page county report released earlier this year are allowing for more armoring within urban areas of the county, establishing new mitigation fees and criteria for geologic monitoring, and shifting financial liability to private property owners in the event of climate-induced damage to homes in hazardous areas.
The result is a “hybrid approach,” the county report says, where rural areas would be prescribed a “managed natural retreat” as tides rise, and urban areas around the city of Santa Cruz would hew toward “conditional accommodation, acceptance of risk, amortization and adaptation.”
“It’s one of the first examples of a county adopting a policy to armor an urban area,” says Dan Carl, a Santa Cruz native and Central Coast district director for the California Coastal Commission. “A lot of people don’t seem to realize that this debate is going on, and this debate will go a long way towards identifying, what is this county gonna look like along the shoreline in both the short and the long term?”
It’s also not just seawalls. At both the city and county level, policymakers are moving beyond years of climate studies to grapple with what to actually do about increasingly immediate risks for the region’s shoreline, water supply and famous agriculture industry.
In addition to the county’s local coastal program update, the city of Santa Cruz is evaluating how to adapt West Cliff Drive to increasingly unavoidable climate impacts, and how to expand emissions-reducing measures like electric transportation beyond the most affluent residents.
“Over the past few years, there’s definitely been a significant increase in awareness and knowledge on climate and where things are going,” says Nancy Faulstich, a teacher turned director of Regeneración-Pájaro Valley Climate Action. “Frankly, it’s all so little and so late.”
Amid a national conversation about the feasibility of a New Green Deal to jumpstart renewable energy, job training in sustainable industries and large-scale climate mitigation, one big question is how to balance property concerns and concerns about people likely to bear the brunt of extreme heat, stronger storms and potential complications like food or water shortages.
“I’m concerned about life and death,” Faulstich says. During heat waves in the Watsonville area impacting farm workers in recent years, she says, “We’ve heard reports of people fainting, getting taken to the hospital.”
While much of the political conversation revolves around coastal real estate, Regeneración is lobbying officials to consider solutions like reducing emissions by locating farmworker housing closer to jobs, or new kinds of funds that could compensate farm workers for days when it is unsafe to work outdoors. At the county’s more northern end, advocacy groups Santa Cruz Climate Action Network, the Romero Institute and a local branch of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby are organizing events like a “Global Climate Strike” planned for Sept. 20-27.
Regeneración has also launched an “ambassador program” where locals share infographics and climate updates in either English or Spanish.
“There’s a lot about the general environmental movement that’s been very alienating to a lot of people,” Faulstich says, which she hopes may be changing. “Spreading information one by one is really key.”
CLIMATE COSTS
Just how much it might cost to try to climate-proof the Central Coast, even temporarily, is still an open question.
A 2018 study focused on the nine-county Bay Area put the current market value of 13,000 properties at risk of “chronic inundation” at $8.6 billion, illustrating a disconnect between short-term property values and longer-term climate risks. In late June, a recognizable home on the ocean side of West Cliff Drive sold for $5.5 million, despite a track record of battles about armoring with the Coastal Commission.
Armoring projects can cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and Carl says there is the potential for “fees up into millions of dollars” if the county or state agencies like the Coastal Commission strictly enforce efforts to mitigate impacts on public spaces.
Already, groups including the Coastal Property Owners Association and two organizations affiliated with the Pajaro Dunes development near Sunset State Beach have raised concerns about hurting home values if the county moves ahead with a proposal to add deed restrictions noting geologic hazards to properties that add new coastal armoring.
“The public should not be responsible for risks undertaken to benefit private property owners in voluntarily developing within hazardous areas,” states the county’s report on the issue.
How armoring may hold up over time is also uncertain.
“At what point do you say we can’t build walls any higher?” Griggs says.
As it stands, about 25% of the Santa Cruz County coast is armored. After high-profile debates about adding seawalls in areas like Opal Cliffs, the county estimates that about half of the shoreline in the urban area around the city of Santa Cruz is armored. In Southern California, where Griggs says 38% of the coast is armored from Santa Barbara to the Mexico border, about two-thirds of beaches are expected to disappear by 2060 if current trends hold.
“The same thing would happen in Santa Cruz,” Griggs says.
As another winter storm season draws nearer, local officials are attempting to balance efforts to reduce carbon emissions that fuel climate change and brace for more immediate fallout, says Tiffany Wise-West, the city of Santa Cruz’s sustainability and climate action manager.
“We have to do both,” she says. “I mean, I don’t know what more there is to say about it.”
Kyle Meyers and Brian Crabtree say they were surprised when they saw a Los Gatos musician complain on social media about an email he’d received from Santa Cruz Music Festival (SCMF).
An organizer had emailed the guitar player Kevan Smedt, offering his band Skyline Hot Club the opportunity to play one of the event’s unpaid slots, which Smedt found insulting. A post from the guitar player went viral on social media and later turned into a San Francisco Chronicle story.
Meyers and Crabtree, both SCMF founders, say that they normally pull from some 600 festival submissions to fill free slots, but they reached out to Smedt on the advice of a friend. The festival does pay about four-fifths of performers, they say. What hurt the most, the organizers add, was Smedt’s claim that they don’t care about local artists.
“We did some math,” Meyers says. “Sixty-five percent of the lineup is Santa Cruz, with 95% of the lineup being Bay Area. And 70% of our budget goes to the artists.”
Myers says that all sizable music festivals book unpaid shows, with the difference being that SCMF’s unpaid gigs are free to the public. Artists at unpaid stages do sometimes renegotiate for some compensation, they say. This year’s festival will be held Oct. 19 and 20. Meyers, who isn’t sorry about what he chalks up to miscommunication, believes that Smedt isn’t used to receiving offers from festivals.
Reached for comment on Tuesday, Smedt tells GT that he’s been asked to play a few festivals, like San Jose Summer Jazz Fest, but never without pay.” It’s different than volunteer labor because we’re dealing with people’s passion, life-path and chosen profession,” he says, in an email.
Do you remember the first time you saw one of the emails you sent out posted online?
KYLE MYERS: The offer sheet. Yeah, we saw it from the beginning … The meat of it is we have free-to-the-public stages that require no wristband. Those stages—some of them—have unpaid artists. For instance, Abbott Square is free to the public. Abbott Square did their best bar days since they’ve opened on SCMF, made a ton of money.
This year, we have artists being paid via sponsor. We asked Abbott if they wanted to kick in money. It’s always no. None of the venues want to help pay for anything. The city doesn’t want to help us pay for anything. Nobody wants to help us pay for anything. We have to work all year to save and pay these artists. This year, we have a sponsor for Abbott Square, so that’s cool. All the artists are going to get paid here, that are playing free to the public. And then 100% of our wristbanded stages are paid. That was our main disconnect with that SFGate article—“SCMF doesn’t pay local artists.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. We have Schlump on the bill this year, that we’re paying to headline the Catalyst. He’s played with us for years, in the beginning for very little, and now for over $5,000, and he’s a local. Minnesota we’re paying $7,000. He’s a local.
How many of your artists get paid?
KM: In the 80% range are paid, I would say. We haven’t done that math.
BRIAN CRABTREE: We’re still not done with the booking, so it’s hard to say where these last bookings go.
KM: Also, we’re not done getting sponsors for these stages. Every year, I spend a lot of my time reaching out to hundreds of Santa Cruz businesses and beyond asking for this. ‘Hey, this brings money to downtown. You’re part of that. Help support us by paying artists playing stages that are free to the public.’ … The question is always, ‘Should we just not have those free stages?’ Because that would erase the issue. There’s eight this year.
But the email offer also included a radius clause, asking that unpaid performers not play any shows in Santa Cruz for the two months preceding the festival.
BC: If you read it closely, it says we prefer you not to. Really that is us reaching out. We want to know about other shows or gigs they do have. As far as the free artists performing, we waive the radiuses on them all the time. The thing is knowing about their other shows and gigs to see if they’re the right fit for us. And in the offer, you’ve got to find out about their availabilities and what they already do or if they have a gig the week before. The radius is in the industry offer to find out what other shows or gigs they have in your area.
KM: Every offer sheet from festivals and clubs has a radius clause. Coachella has one of the most aggressive radius clauses in the industry, and people play there for free. The radius clause is considered highly negotiable. It’s determined on mutually agreeable terms. We waive the radius clause for even paid acts. The radius clause gets waived all the time for all kinds of random shit. … We will be changing the verbiage to make it more clear that these terms are mutually agreeable.
The email offer says at the top, ‘Pay: $0.’ Later in the email, it reads, ‘Guest passes: 0.’ At the very least, someone could view the wording as poorly phrased, maybe even tacky.
BC: But when you don’t know anything about an act and you look them up on Facebook, and they have 200 followers, not a real big draw, where do you sell your starting point?
KM: It could have fluffier verbiage.
BC: But after years of doing this, you have to be direct. The more gray room you leave leaves more issues when you come to ticketing day of and payouts, and people are a little confused.
What do you think of the saying that there’s no such thing as bad publicity?
BC: There’s always a limit somewhere where things can go bad. But if anything, this whole situation has brought awareness about the event.
It was clear from the response on your website that you guys were upset. Organizational statements are often more conciliatory. How did you think about the tone?
KM: There’s a big group of us, from people that work directly with the festival to friends of the festival to other business owners in town. And to be honest with you, we got input from everybody. We reached out to all constituents of the festival, and everybody put down their points. And we put it together. The tone is that we all agree that we want to make sure that everyone at these free-to-the-public stages gets something. The question is how do we do it? The only answer I really have is sponsors. People have said other things, like, ‘Well, you could not have big headliners and you could pay all the little artists.’ But we’ve learned that when you do that, nobody comes, and then the festival loses a bunch of money. And then there isn’t another next year. Until me and Brian save up everything we have, and then go broke doing it again, which is what we’ve done forever.
The festival has floated around to different times of the year over the past six years. Why is that?
BC: The first year, on the advice of the city, was to do it in the summer, so it was just contingent on the rest of the crazy summer crowd. So we did it in July of 2013. After that, they asked us to move out of the summer. Getting the dates, we have to confirm with the city. It can’t conflict with any other event, marathon, something else going on. And then, we moved to October for two years. Then, we moved to February, trying to get into the spring, and then March was this last one.
KC: It’s a balance between three main factors: the city, when they allow us to have it; the rest of the festival scene and budgetary. After 2013, there was a huge loss of money, and we’ve had to recuperate from that. Me and Brian have never gotten back our investment. We brought all this money together and then we put it into the event. There’s been some good years, but we’ve never been able to take any of that money out because we need to use that money to create the following year. This year, we had to switch dates because Lighting in a Bottle switched their dates from Memorial Day to our weekend that we had already sent out offers for. We had artists on board. We had the city confirmed. We work with Lightning in a Bottle. We ran a stage for Lightning in a Bottle—of unpaid acts, because that’s how Lightning in a Bottle does it. … We had to switch our dates because they switched their dates. We’re hoping to stay in October.
How much did changing dates affect the festival’s bottom line? There hasn’t been enough continuity for a music fan to say to themselves, “It’s that time of year again, Santa Cruz Music Festival is coming up!”
KM: Exactly. That’s how Lightning in a Bottle lost millions of dollars this year. When they had to switch from Memorial Day, which everybody plans around every year, they lost 10,000 tickets. So absolutely. These are the things we struggle with. What are we supposed to do? We can just not have the event, or we can just roll with the punches.
BC: And we’re not out of competition, going with October. That weekend we have there are several other events going on that we are competing with—the Burning Man Decomp in San Francisco, which is huge. There’s a couple big shows in the Bay Area.
I want to ask about the challenges of putting on a music festival.
BC: How long do you have?
Woodstock 50 was supposed to be a huge event. It had the date changed, it got moved, it got canceled. And two recent documentaries showed everyone the quagmire that was the Fyre Festival. I realize its leaders were idiots. But I do wonder if planning festivals is getting more difficult. Or at the very least, have these high-profile failures have made the public aware of the challenges?
KM: These high-profile failures are making people more willing to scrutinize a festival.
BC: But you hear it about every festival now. If on the first day, something goes wrong, it’s like, ‘That’s an instant Fyre Festival.’ It happened at the big one in Miami, Ultra. Ultra moved to a separate area of Miami this year, and transportation was horrible, and the first day, the hashtag wasFyre Fest 2.0.
KM: But also, it’s become a saturated market. LiveNation and AEG and Another Planet have bought everything up, so they control the acts who plays where and how it goes down. As the market’s gotten more saturated with festivals, big corporations have come in and bought them up and funded them heavily to out-compete every independent festival like ours
Will you ever turn a profit with this festival? Or sell?
KM: The dream for us would be to create a living wage for ourselves doing it full-time. And we’ve had offers from companies to invest in SCMF, but their terms were not something I was willing to agree with. Namely, they don’t give a shit about our locals. We had a deal on the table that we turned down. And it was mainly about we have an idea of who we want to book in the industry. Like I said, 95% Bay Area. We know who we want to have on the bill for the most part. If we bring in the wrong company, they might say, ‘We’re taking that artistic direction that you have for money.’ I wouldn’t give up artistic direction of the festival for money.
Santa Cruz County is officially one of the hardest places in the country to be a single mom, according to a new analysis of federal income, education and housing data.
The Santa Cruz-Watsonville metro area ranked No. 1 on the list of the toughest cities for single mothers from financial news site 24/7 Wall St. That’s in large part because it’s “practically impossible,” the report notes, for those who earn the area’s median $31,000-a-year income for households headed by a single mom to pay the going $2,400 a month for a two-bedroom apartment on the Central Coast.
Women earning that local median wage would have to work more than 181 hours per week—spoiler: there literally aren’t that many hours in a week—to avoid draining more than 30% of their incomes on rent (a common threshold for “affordable” housing, leaving money for health care, food and other necessities).
Beyond that daunting math, the report factored in access to early-childhood education, public transit and local poverty rates. For those keeping score, Santa Cruz also has the state’s No. 2-highest overall poverty rate when adjusting for housing costs.
While California does generally offer higher wages and better access to health care than other states, the report notes that expensive regions like New York City offset some costs for families with programs like universal kindergarten and affordable (if not exactly kid-friendly) mass transit.
Still, misery loves company, and Santa Cruz is by no means alone when it comes to California cities inhospitable to working class families. Also on the list for the toughest cities for single moms were Madera (No. 3), Salinas (No. 4), Visalia (No. 5), Hanford (No. 8), and Bakersfield (No. 9).
The housing crisis isn’t going anywhere soon, but Gov. Gavin Newsom has singled out universal preschool and statewide full-day kindergarten as two education priorities. In the meantime, here’s to an equally happy back-to-school season for all local families.
We’ve entered Virgo, sign of service (to self first, then others), health, wellness, gardens, devas, and our food systems. Virgo is also the sign of purity, discernment and discrimination, detailed order and organization, and information (Mercury) flowing into our minds.
Virgo is the mother of the plant kingdom, bearing sheaves of corn and wheat, the mother (Demeter) of Persephone soon to enter the underworld (Autumn). Virgo is the pregnant Madonna, the World Mother hiding the Light of the Soul. In Virgo, two “lights” are seen. One waxing, one waning.
The multiple crises in our world today concern the daily needs of humanity. Concerns are the quality of our food, farms, farmers, children, their education, and care of our elders. The Ageless Wisdom tells us to tend to humanity’s daily needs with care, purity, awareness and grace–qualities of Virgo.
Humanity—this round of humanity—is called the 5th Root Race (“race” means all of humanity). The task is to develop and cultivate our mental faculties and abilities, to become deep thinkers able to research, compare and analyze information (all Virgo tasks) in order to become discerning, and make appropriate life-affirming decisions. We have all month to develop and become sensitive to the Mercury’s call in Virgo.
Friday is a new moon festival (6.47 degrees Virgo). The meditation theme during new moons is to “strengthen, uphold and support the work of the New Group of World Servers (NGWS), men and women of Goodwill everywhere working for justice, understanding and right relationships.”
ARIES: You will more fully, over time, be able to accept responsibilities greater than your desires. You will seek to go home (childhood) and find it’s no longer approachable. You learn blame doesn’t fix situations. Eventually, security comes when you create your life from a foundation of understanding and responding to the needs of others. Comfort emerges from defining goals for the new age. A serious endeavor, indeed. You are to initiate the building of the new world.
TAURUS: You’ll be on overload the next two years, tending to the fragile balance of health while gathering information in order to make appropriate decisions that affect the welfare of others. Details are important. However, the larger view is where you must begin. What you are to create (community, food sources, healing, education, etc.) must be considered an adventure. This will help you work with inspiration. Others will then follow.
GEMINI: It’s in your best interest to remain flexible, to be able to change your mind, include others (ask for help) and let go of old limiting ideas and things (possessions, habits) no longer useful. Should you accomplish any of these, you may create a life crisis, which is good. Do not be afraid to investigate new realities. Much is becoming outdated in your world. And this is not attractive for you. What are your soul’s needs? Ask that all that is needed magically appear.
CANCER: These are the rules of life for the coming times. Refrain from impatience, competitiveness, “me-first thinking,” and taking anything personally. Observe if those around you are sensitive, thoughtful, discreet, and work in cooperation with others. It’s good to see through others’ eyes, and work always towards creating community. Find what feeds your hunger and nourishes you.
LEO: It’s most important to be practical in the coming times, to not leave anything up to chance. Create a schedule that includes daily health routines, right foods, times of eating, and exercise. It’s important to cultivate order and organization. This allows the mind to focus with clarity and confidence. You will encounter deadlines and details. New realities and awarenesses occur through dreams. Be sure to care for the smallest aspects in your life. Then the large ones take care of themselves.
VIRGO: Study symbols that provide material for new dreams. Joseph Campbell’s books on symbols are perfect for you. It’s time to no longer act out old dreams. Merge the gap between what you dream for and what truly is. Virgos are above all practical. Begin to express this practicality in daily life. Then a new surge of creativity emerges. You must not rely on others. A great artistic stream lies within. What do you create that is beautiful, harmonious, and real?
LIBRA: Try not to over-manage your life and to relax old standards of achievement and perfection. Whatever you do and achieve is good enough, and that’s better than perfect. Allow yourself to be vulnerable, exposed, insecure, fearful. These are human realities, and they provide needed information about our wounds. Make home and family the most important place on earth. It is your hideaway, refuge, shelter, and sanctuary.
SCORPIO: Are you at times unable to perceive or understand others’ feelings and opinions? Are you experiencing excess nervous energy that interferes with true, real and kind relationships? Are you pressured and hurried and afraid your freedoms will be obstructed? You’ll find that learning to listen deeply to others leads to meaningful and intelligent relationships. Listening is also the secret to having social graces and forming substantial and sustainable social networks. Try.
SAGITTARIUS: You’ve entered a topsy-turvy time in life. Everything’s changed and changing. As you go forward into your new life, remember this: Your value has nothing to do with the values of others, and your needs do not need to be enfolded into the needs of others. Should these occur, you’ll find you attract confusion and intensity in relationships instead of peace and comfort. What are your values? What do you enjoy, and what of your own needs must you realize? Self-worth is being learned here. Be patient with these questions. Ponder them.
CAPRICORN: Slowly and quietly, without fear, you learn to stand alone, relying on instincts, intuition and inner knowings. Slowly and quietly, you’ll learn your wishes, hopes and needs are most important, eventually expressing them to others without restraint or fear of consequences. You are indeed very, very good. A bit of impulsiveness always adds a bit of glamour and glitter to all that goodness. Ponder on the difference between achieving peace in relationships and having inner peace. Interesting thoughts follow.
AQUARIUS: Do you worry often that you do not achieve enough? Do you ever lack trust in yourself and in God? Do you over-analyze any situation until it simply expires out of exhaustion? It’s most important to focus within your heart more. This will develop the soul virtue of compassion toward yourself—and then, later, to others. They, like you, traverse the difficult path of life. A great sense of balance comes from patience, understanding and compassion. Always beginning with the self first.
PISCES: There’s a difference between seeking what we want and seeking what we need. If we drop the wants, needs are met seemingly by magic. You will experience great changes in the coming two years. Everyone will. You have known about them for a long time. You will begin to simply surrender to what is most practical. The outcome turns out to be a most loving and protective state of being. This will be a surprise and a comfort. Invoke courage to help others along the Way.
On last year’s To Rise You Gotta Fall, alt-country singer Nicki Bluhm sings, “How can you know good until you know better?” with soulful passion. If that sounds like the sentiment of a break-up record, well, there’s a reason for that.
In 2017, the celebrated Bay Area folk-rocker split from both her longtime band the Gramblers and her husband (who doubled as her musical director), and left California for a new start in Tennessee. It was a painful, tumultuous time. A lot of that pain can be heard on the record. But if To Rise You Gotta Fall says anything, it is that the pain was always worth it.
“The content is personal,” Bluhm says from her new home in Nashville, “but the reason people keep writing about love and heartbreak is because it never stops happening. It doesn’t matter what country you live in. It doesn’t matter what you believe, your religion—we all fall in love, and get our hearts broken. There’s something oddly comforting about that.”
More importantly, she adds, you recover.
“There’s so much growth that happens. That’s the hope,” she says. “You get beat down, but you will get back up.”
Recorded in Memphis at legendary Sam Phillips Recording, To Rise You Gotta Fall was a collaboration with producer Matt Ross-Spang, whose recent credits include producing an album’s worth of unreleased songs by Elvis Presley.
In addition to being Bluhm’s first time recording outside of her home state, it was her first time recording without the Gramblers backing her. In true Nashville fashion, Ross-Sprang hired a group of studio musicians to back her—a choice that greatly influenced the feel of the record.
“I liked the idea of people not knowing me or the story I was recording, because it was so personal,” she says. “It would have been too vulnerable if I did it with a bunch of people I knew. Instead, it brought this professionalism to these super painful songs.”
Even with the comfortable emotional distance, Bluhm still had to get outside of her comfort zone a bit for the recording.
“When I went into the studio, I thought I was going to sing scratch with the band, but then I realized they didn’t know the songs or the energy, so I needed to sing them for real so they knew where to put the emphasis,” she says. “I had to guide them in that way.”
Throughout, Bluhm’s live vocal takes lend to Rise’s raw, performative feel. On tracks like folk-rock opener “How Do I Love You,” Bluhm sets the tempo, gently pulling the beat forward or getting it to lay back, depending on the lyric. And on the title track (a great bit of Dusty Springfield by way of Curtis Mayfield), Bluhm’s interplay with the band gives the song a sinuous feel, bobbing and weaving through the punches that come. Across the album’s 11 tracks, there’s a voice crack here and there, but instead of sounding loose, the performances feel full, lived in and more powerful than something artificially polished through dozens of takes.
“My goal with this record was to capture the moment, not perfection,” Bluhm says. “There’s a lot of imperfections in my singing, but I thought it was more important to be authentic. I wanted people to hear me the way that it happened, not the way I manipulated it to be.”
Now on the other side of the pain, Bluhm is on to better things. She loves playing the songs—it’s just that they’re not for her anymore. They’re for anyone who needs them.
“I’m definitely emotionally beyond it all,” she says, “I still like to play these songs because there are a lot of people who are in that space I was in when I wrote them.”
Nicki Bluhm performs at 8 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 31, at Felton Music Hall, 6275 Hwy. 9, Felton. $24.50 adv/$29 door. 335-2800.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Here are examples of activities I recommend you try in the coming days: 1. Build a campfire on the beach with friends and regale each other with stories of your most interesting successes. 2. Buy eccentric treasures at a flea market, and ever thereafter refer to them as your holy icons. 3. Climb a hill and sit on the grass as you sing your favorite songs and watch the moon slowly rise over the eastern horizon. 4. Take naps when you’re “not supposed to.” 5. Sneak into an orchard at night and eat fruit plucked just moments before. 6. Tell a beloved person a fairy tale in which he or she is the hero.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The hardiest creature on the planet may be the bacterium known as Deinococcus radiodurans. It can endure exposure to radiation, intense cold, dehydration, acid, and vacuum. I propose we make it your power creature for the coming weeks. Why? Not because I expect you’ll have to deal with a lot of extreme conditions, but rather because I think you’ll be exceptionally robust, both physically and psychologically. If you’ve been waiting for the right time to succeed at demanding challenges that require you to be in top form, now is a good time to do it. P.S. Deinococcus radiodurans is colloquially referred to as Conan the Bacterium, borrowing from the spirit of the fictional character Conan the Barbarian, who is renowned for his strength and agility.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In the yearly cycle of many Geminis, retreating into a state akin to hibernation makes sense during the end of August and the first three weeks of September. But since many of you are high-energy sophisticates, you often override your body’s signals. And then nature pushes back by compelling you to slow down. The result may be a rhythm that feels like constantly taking three steps forward and two steps backward. May I suggest a different approach this year? Would you consider surrendering, even slightly, to the invitation to relax and recharge?
CANCER (June 21-July 22): If you decide to travel to a particular place via hot air balloon, you must be prepared for the possibility that your route will be indirect. At different altitudes, the wind may be blowing in different directions: toward the east at 100 feet high, but toward the southwest at 200 feet. The trick for the pilot is to jockey up and down until finding a layer that’s headed toward the desired destination. I see your life right now as having a metaphorical resemblance to this riddle. You have not yet discovered the layer that will take you where you want to go. But I bet you will soon.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Considering how bright you have been burning since the Flame Angels designated you as the Hottest Cool Person of the Month, I hesitate to urge you to simmer down. But I must. Before there’s a meltdown in your vicinity, please lower your thermostat. Not a lot. Just a little. If you do that, everyone will continue to see your gleaming charisma in the best possible light. But don’t you dare extinguish your blaze. Don’t apologize for your brilliant shimmer. The rest of us need your magical radiance.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Shogun is a bestselling novel about an Englishman who transforms himself into a samurai warrior in 17th-century Japan. Written by James Clavell, it’s over 1,100 pages long. Clavell testified that the idea for the story sprang up in him when he read one line in his daughter’s school book: “In 1600 an Englishman went to Japan and became a samurai.” I suspect it’s highly likely you will soon encounter a seed like that, Virgo: a bare inspiration that will eventually bloom into a Big Thing.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libran athlete Mickey Mantle is in Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame. He had a spectacular 18-year career, winning the Most Valuable Player Award three times, playing in 12 World Series and being selected to the All-Star team 16 times. So it’s astounding that he played with a torn ligament in his knee for 17 years, according to his biographer Jane Leavy. She quoted an orthopedic surgeon who said that Mantle compensated for his injury with “neuromuscular genius.” I’m thinking that in the next few weeks, you’re in a position to accomplish an equivalent of Mantle’s heroic adjustment.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Most people who belong to the Church of Satan neither believe in nor worship Satan. (They’re atheists, and don’t believe in the supernatural.) I think a comparable principle is true for many right-wing fundamentalist Christians. Their actions and words are replete with bigotry, hard-heartedness, materialism, and selfishness: so contrary to what the real Jesus Christ taught that they in effect don’t believe in or worship Jesus Christ. I mention this, Scorpio, in hope of inspiring you to take inventory of whether your stated ideals are reflected in the practical details of how you live your life. That’s always an interesting and important task, of course, but it’s especially so for you right now. The coming weeks will be an excellent time to purge any hypocrisy from your system and get your actual behavior in close alignment with your deepest values.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): It’s the right time for you to create a fresh mission statement and promotional campaign. For inspiration, read mine: “My column Free Will Astrology offers you a wide selection of realities to choose from. With 4,212 years of dedication to customer service (over the course of my last 13 incarnations), I’m a reliable ally supporting your efforts to escape your oppressive conditioning and other people’s hells. My horoscopes come with an ironclad guarantee: If the advice you read is wrong, you’re under no obligation to believe it. And remember: a panel of 531 experts has determined that Free Will Astrology is an effective therapy for your chronic wounds and primordial pain. It is also dramatic proof that there is no good reason to be afraid of life.”
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Here are good questions for you to meditate on during the next four weeks: 1. How can you attract resources that will expand your mind and your world? 2. Are you bold enough to reach out to wise sources and provocative influences that could connect you with useful tricks and practical treasures? 3. What interesting lessons can you stir up as you explore the mercurial edges, skirt the changeable boundaries, journey to catalytic frontiers, and make pilgrimages to holy hubbubs? 4. How best can you encourage lyrical emotion over polished sentimentality? Joyous idealism over astringent zealotry? Exuberant integrity over formulaic kindness?
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “It is the beginning of wisdom when you recognize that the best you can do is choose which rules you want to live by,” wrote author Wallace Stegner, “and it’s persistent and aggravated imbecility to pretend you can live without any.” That will be an excellent meditation for you during the coming weeks. I trust you are long past the time of fantasizing you can live without any rules. Your challenge now is to adjust some of the rules you have been living by, or even dare to align yourself with some new rules—and then completely commit yourself to being loyal to them and enjoying them.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Given the astrological omens that will symbolize your personal story in the coming weeks and months, I think Piscean author Nikos Kazantzakis articulated the perfect prescription for you. I invite you to interpret his thoughts to fit your circumstances. “We’re going to start with small, easy things,” he wrote. “Then, little by little we shall try our hand at the big things. And after that, after we finish the big things, we shall undertake the impossible.” Here’s an additional prod from Kazantzakis: “Reach what you cannot.”
Homework: What do you want most for the person or animal you love best? freewillastrology.com.
Santa Cruz County live entertainment picks for the week of Aug. 28
WEDNESDAY 8/28
INDIE
ON DRUGS
Some of On Drugs’ songs sound like they were recorded on a tape recorder; screams cut to buzzy screeches, interrupted by background conversations that fade to droning instruments. Other songs are surprisingly heartfelt; sweeping falsettos croon over twinkling guitars while a comforting, Pavement-esque drumbeat keeps all those sad feels moving toward angsty release. No matter the song, fun or sad (at shows, they’ll let you choose), On Drugs has affable punk energy to bolster the eccentric mood swings and anthemic tirades. Like many drugs, On Drugs takes what’s comedic and makes it deep. Or is it the other way around? I dunno. I’m high. AMY BEE
What makes a great country song? Good pickin’ and singin’ is a start, but songs about hard living and sad heartbreaks are essential. Just like the blues or punk, it has to be authentic, because true believers can spot a fake a mile away. Folks, it doesn’t get much more authentic than Vincent Neil Emerson. This Texan’s tales of inebriation, sobriety, bad luck, and dreams of stardom travel on a road of twangy guitars, haunting organs and a wounded voice. Joining him will be local honky-tonk torch bearer Jesse Daniel. MAT WEIR
Catching a Blasters show is like strolling through the annals of American music, an audio tour of blues, country, rock, and R&B by a band whose members have been playing for decades. Today, the Blaster’s lineup includes vocalist-guitarist Phil Alvin, guitarist Keith Wyatt, bassist John Bazz, and drummer Bill Bateman, who all have impressive chops and distinguished musical careers. They’re the perfect group to explore the diverse musical legacy of American music with an energetic passion born from the love of playing live shows. AB
During his life, San Jose bassist John Shifflett earned universal recognition as a consummate jazz musician whose commanding tone and supple sense of time elevated countless ensembles. With drummer Jason Lewis, he formed one of the region’s definitive rhythm section tandems that recorded with everyone from pianist Taylor Eigsti and saxophonist Mike Zilber to guitarist Mason Razavi and reed expert Kristen Strom. Following Shifflett’s death in 2017, Strom set about revealing that Shifflett was more than a first-call sideman. On last year’s Moving Day, she recorded a gorgeous album of his compositions. She’s been playing Shifflett’s music ever since. ANDREW GILBERT
7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $21 adv/$26.25 door. 427-2227.
FRIDAY 8/30
COMEDY
TORIO VAN GROL
Torio Van Grol isn’t a stoner, but he does have some hilarious weed stories, like the time he got so high that when he played foosball, he got too distracted by the inner lives of each individual “player.” His entire delivery and point of view is stoner-esque, with his oddball perspective and left-field takes. Maybe that’s because all his friends are stoners. As he points out, he likes to hang out with people that are having snacks. Whether you partake or not, you will enjoy Grol’s absurd observational humor. AC
7 & 9:30 p.m. DNA’s Comedy Lab, 155 S River St., Santa Cruz. $20 adv/$25 door. 900-5123.
SATURDAY 8/31
POP-PUNK
PEACH KELLI POP
Peach Kelli Pop’s Gentle Leader sounds like a punk album recorded after hours in a Sanrio store. Not that PKP’s earlier albums don’t—the Canadian one-woman-band has always had been endearingly sweet, making a point to expand the punk-rock cannon beyond male misanthropes and ‘80s outsiders to include characters like Sailor Mars, Lisa Frank, Keroppi, and Badtz Maru. On tracks like “Cherry (That’s Not Her Real Name)” and “Hello Kitty Knife,” PKP veers towards art-punk weirdos like Eat Skull and OOIOO, but without losing the music’s candy-coated core. MIKE HUGUENOR
Australian singer-songwriter Xavier Rudd is an optimist. On his latest single “Walk Away,” he captures our moment in time of social inequality and political dysfunction. In the midst of highlighting how dire everything is, he closes the song with a call for action and hope over an uplifting folk-rock melody. Rudd has always highlighted social injustices like the plight of indigenous Australians, the decay of our environment and racism. But he creates arena-worthy folk-rock songs that will fill your heart with the possibility of all the good we can do if we just try a little harder. AC
9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $23. 423-1338.
TUESDAY 9/3
REGGAE
STEPHEN MARLEY
Perhaps you’ve heard of Stephen Marley’s father, Jacob Marley. An ex-business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge, Marley visited the “Humbug” businessman on Christmas Eve to offer him a chance of redemption from his greedy ways. Wait! No, hang on. I might have that wrong. Let’s start over. Stephen Marley is a six-time Grammy winner, and a living link to the roots of Jamaican popular music. His 2011 album Revelation Part 1: Root of Life won Best Reggae Album and features the beautiful “Made in Africa” (featuring the cast of Fela!), a powerful reminder of the genre’s transformative, spiritual power. MH
Pablo Helguera only thought his art project would run for a few months. But six years later, he’s still collecting books and getting invitations to set up shop in cities across the U.S.
Helguera, a New York-based artist, opened the first Spanish-language bookstore in Brooklyn, Librería Donceles, to address a lack of bookstores that serve the growing Hispanic and Latin communities in the United States.
“Books are quickly disappearing. Brick-and-mortar bookstores are having a hard time keeping up with giants like Amazon,” Helguera says. “The experience of the book has completely changed, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t appreciate the very physical, sensory experience of the book. That can’t be transmitted online. Through this art project, I am trying to create an experience of reading and learning and living that I feel is getting lost.”
The exhibit is a pay-what-you-wish bookstore, with all proceeds benefiting Latin organizations. The Librería has set up in the Museum of Art and History (MAH)—replacing the Chamber of Heart and Mystery—this month. All proceeds support the Hablamos Juntos Project run by the Young Writers Program Santa Cruz. The name Librería Donceles comes from Donceles Street in Mexico City, a second-hand bookstore destination. “The stores were packed spaces where you’d get lost,” Helguera recalls. “It was an expedition to find something interesting there.”
Fast forward to New York in 2013. There were around 2 million Latinos and not a single Spanish-language bookstore. “To me, it was ironic that we had such a big Latinx population and no books,” Helguera says. “I felt it would be really important to address this issue through an art project. That’s when I started accepting book donations from Mexico.”
The response was so enormous that Helguera had to fundraise to ship all 20,000 donated books to the U.S. Mexican libraries donated, as did families and other people looking to get rid of clutter. The exhibit received every kind of book imaginable, from student textbooks to poetry, cooking and children’s books. The art project became a miniature Donceles Street. It’s intimate and comfortable, but also new and different, like a stranger’s living room.
“People had very emotional and strong responses to some of the books that I had for sale,” Helguera says. “They remember different parts of their lives, editions from the past. Books contain parts of our lives, and that’s something that became very clear from exhibit.”
Despite the strictly Spanish content, Helguera notes that there is more about the exhibit than the books that resonates with people. It’s the cultural exchange of information and experience that is particularly impactful to everyone, including non-Spanish speakers. It’s the freedom to get lost in the store, to thumb through old editions and marvel at found objects in the pages.
“When we opened the bookstore and started going through all of the donated books, we started finding things,” Helguera says. “From movie tickets to love letters, business cards and pressed flowers and religious images, we found things—secrets—that people put in their books. They become biographies of people’s lives. That can’t happen digitally.”
Helguera references his upbringing as some inspiration for the project. Growing up without the internet, he often looked to books for entertainment, many of which were handed down from his relatives.
“In the past, you could give your books to your kids, which is why I have my parents’ and grandparents’ books. But I can’t give my daughter my iTunes library, because I don’t own it. I am leasing those songs, they are never mine,” he says. “There is something special about really owning an object.”
The project has been to California before, including a stop in San Francisco’s Mission District. Helguera says that California in particular has an interesting response because of the large number of Hispanic and Latino residents, compared to other stops like Anchorage, Alaska. “Anchorage has maybe a 3% Latino population, but still lots of people came because it was such an exciting and new thing to experience,” he says. “In California, the reception is different. There are a lot more people that remember books from their childhood, or can resonate with particular stories. It’s fascinating.”
Librería Donceles runs through next summer at the Santa Cruz MAH, 705 Front St., first floor Lezin Gallery, Santa Cruz. 429-1964, santacruzmah.org.
