Integrity Wines’ 2017 Pinot Noir is simply outstanding. It has already won serious awards, including the Director’s Award for best Pinot Noir in the 2019 Monterey International Wine Competition in May with a score of 95 points (platinum), plus 91 points from Wine Enthusiast.
On top of these prestigious accolades, Integrity’s Riesling Santa Lucia Highlands won gold at the Orange County Fair.
Integrity wines get better and better, thanks in huge part to Proprietor and Winemaker Mark Hoover, who goes all-out to produce top-notch elixirs. Wines are made in small batches, and Hoover cares about handcrafting, carefully sourcing all the ingredients.
The Pinot Noir 2017 Santa Lucia Highlands ($36) has deep notes of Bing cherry, pomegranate seed, red raspberry, fresh violets, black tea, fennel, and cured leather. With its “damp soil on the nose, along with raspberry jam, ripe strawberry, dried lavender, and crushed graphite on the palate,” this intensely complex wine crescendos to a gorgeous mouthful of Pinot. Hoover says it pairs well with ribs, pork chops, roasted duck breast, fresh salmon, and halibut.
For those who truly appreciate exceptional food and wine, there will be a Taste of Integrity Summer Harvest Dinner at the winery on Saturday, Aug. 3, with Chef Diego Felix at the helm. Felix, of Colectivo Felix, will create seven Argentine-inspired courses that perfectly pair with seven newly released Integrity wines. Hoover will talk about his wines at the evening feast.
The event is open to the public and reserved for guests 21 and over. Tickets cost $150.
Integrity’s wines are also now available in many liquor stores, clubs and restaurants, such as Soif Restaurant & Wine Bar, West End Tap & Kitchen, East End Gastropub, Gayle’s Bakery, Cantine Winepub, and Kuumbwa Jazz Center. The winery’s Watsonville tasting room is open from noon-5 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.
Integrity Wines, 135 Aviation Way Suite 16, Watsonville. 322-4200, integrity.wine.
Let’s be honest: no one is here to sweat. We’re here for the tiny hooves and the bleats. Forget the planks and down dogs, and bring on the baby goats.
In retrospect, it’s astounding we haven’t covered goat yoga yet given how obsessed Santa Cruz is with yoga. There’s laughing yoga, stand-up paddle board yoga, even broga yoga (yoga for the bros). Humble Sea, Mount Madonna and Beer Thirty have all jumped on the goat yoga bandwagon with the help of Aptos’s Kinderwood Farm, which breeds Kinder goats perfect for yoga because of their small size—only about 5-7 pounds as babies.
Goat yoga is a form of animal therapy and emotional support (which doesn’t involve unnecessarily taking them into restaurants). Coupled with the relaxation of gentle yoga, an adorable, cuddly baby goat bouncing around the mat is cathartic. Socialization is also an important step in rearing tame and gentle adult goats, so it’s a win-win for people and goats alike.
“I wanted goats growing up, but my mom said no,” says Kinderwood Farm Owner Lauren Linkemyer. “My husband agreed, since he loves cheese.”
Linkemyer and her husband, Mack Ellis, bought goats around three years ago to start a small-scale dairy farm. With the help of online resources and mentors, they now have their very own Kinder herd.
“We are having trouble producing enough goats for the people that want them,” Linkemyer says. “We sold a couple of babies to Rocking Horse Ranch Daycare in Soquel, but there are still people that want to buy them.”
While the couple didn’t start the farm for goat yoga purposes, the idea coincided with the rise of the trend that started in Oregon.
“I didn’t have to go north to do goat yoga. We have baby goats,” Linkemyer says. “We started working with Beer Thirty, and more and more people wanted to have goat yoga events. They are almost all sold out now.”
To be clear, this isn’t hot power yoga, and no one is trying to do a handstand with a goat. Goat yoga is gentle yoga, and Linkemyer puts some grain on each mat to entice the kids to jump all over the yogis. Child’s pose, down dog and plank are some of the preferred poses to accommodate people and goats alike.
“The classes are like 70% goat and 30% yoga, maybe higher on the goat percentage,” Linkemyer says. Each class includes a bottle-feeding session with the baby goats.
Linkemyer has hosted more than 30 classes, both private and public. While they can’t host goat yoga on the farm because of space constraints, Kinderwood has partnered with breweries around town to host events while also getting leftover grain to feed the goats. They bring between seven and 12 goats per class, and classes are usually around 25 people.
On Memorial Day, a few attendees were lucky enough to also get piglets at their baby goat yoga. “They aren’t as cuddly as the goats, but they are hilarious little creatures,” Linkemyer says. “They are huge now, though. My favorite one, Popcorn, is like 45 pounds now, so I don’t think they would be great for yoga.”
After more than two years in the goat yoga game, Linkemyer says one of the best parts of her job—among many perks—is the gratitude and happiness people get from the goats.
“People always talk about how happy it makes them, and how they are in a much better mood and much more joyful,” she says. “I wasn’t really surprised, because I love them. They are just fantastic.”
As summer winds down, Kinderwood Farm is taking a break from goat yoga to train their new puppies and build puppy-goat relationships. They expect to resume classes in September. “This is the best job I’ve ever had,” she says. “And I’m so glad other people can appreciate the goats, too.”
When Tim and Helen Korinth moved to the U.S. nearly 20 years ago, there was one big thing the England natives missed: fish and chips. Everywhere they tried was a disappointment, so they decided to make their own. They progressed from serving family and friends to hosting pop-ups under the name Scrumptious Fish and Chips, recently adding a food trailer to serve more at local breweries.
Since their fish is beer battered, the recipe changes based on what beer is available at each brewery. Coupled with hand-cut chips, homemade tartar sauce and curry ketchup, the Korinths are bringing the chippy to Santa Cruz with a fresh, local, sustainable spin on the British classic.
Do you notice a difference in the types of beer you use depending on the brewery?
TIM KORINTH: There is a slight difference in saltiness, but the main difference is in the color of the batter. We typically use an amber ale. That gives the batter a nice golden color.
Do you miss the fish and chips from home?
I go back to English once or twice a year, and maybe I’m a bit biased, but I think mine are better. People are starting to cut corners. I try to make everything to order from scratch. We use Pacific Cod, and it’s about making the freshest, best product that I can.
Are you expanding the menu? Where are the mushy peas?
We just added mushy peas, and I’m doing a pickled onion now too. When you go into fish and chip shops in the U.K., there is a big jar of pickled onions. We have also just added British bangers for those who don’t like fish. We can do it naked or battered in the same batter as the fish.
Scrumptious Fish and Chips will be at Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery on Sunday, July 28 from 7-11 p.m. Check online for other pop-ups at scrumptiousfc.com.
We’ve been planning this week’s cover story for quite a while. With the second anniversary of Charlottesville approaching, and former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe in town with his new book on the subject, it seemed like an important story. McAuliffe was thrust into the national spotlight when he spoke out defiantly against the white supremacists who had come to his state in August 2017 to stage a violent “Unite the Right” rally, with one of them murdering Heather Heyer and injuring 19 others by driving his car into a crowd of counter-protestors. McAuliffe’s condemnation of the racists stood in stark contrast to the infamous remarks made by President Donald Trump, who outrageously declared there were “very fine people on both sides.” With his credibility as a leader well-established, and his first-hand insights into the state of emergency that the violence in Charlottesville created, McAuliffe is a natural choice to turn this tragedy into an opportunity to set an agenda for combatting the new wave of white supremacy. Likewise, our own Steve Kettmann, who worked with McAuliffe on the former governor’s previous book, and was actually the one who suggested that he pursue this Charlottesville book in the first place, seemed like the ideal person to interview him for the cover story.
There was no way we could have known that the events of last week would make this story even more timely. Trump’s attacks on four Democratic congresswomen of color at a rally in North Carolina last Wednesday—which led to chants of “Send her back!” that the president later falsely claimed to have tried to stop, before flip-flopping again to praise the widely-denounced racist agitators—added a level new level of intensity to the battle to protect the basic rights and moral principles of our country that are under attack.
Kettmann was able to update the story with McAuliffe’s thoughts on these latest events, tying them in to how racial issues have surfaced recently in the 2020 presidential campaign. So after you’ve finished the cover story, I urge you to also take a look at those comments in the Q&A sidebar. Thanks to Kettmann for his extra work on this story, and as always, thanks for reading.
As an educator, parent, and active volunteer with the Friends of the Capitola Library, I was thrilled to see Wallace Baine’s article (GT, 7/10) celebrating our brand-new library, now under construction. This is a real community accomplishment—the result of years of planning, fundraising, and campaigning for Measure S—the 2016 bond measure that’s now funding improvements at all 10 branches in the Santa Cruz Public Library System.
And even though Capitola is my local branch, I want to add a strong voice of support for the library mixed-use project now planned for downtown Santa Cruz. The downtown branch is the largest, most heavily used branch in the system, and it holds many special collections and services that all the other branches depend on, but it’s in terrible condition and way past its useful lifetime. The library mixed-use project can be a keystone project for downtown, providing a first-class new library, affordable housing, and much-needed parking for workers and visitors. Including libraries as part of mixed-use projects, with housing and other amenities, is a successful trend all over the country. This is an opportunity that Santa Cruz cannot afford to miss.
Toni Campbell
Soquel
Transform Our Political Culture
Dave Ceppos from Sacramento State’s Center for Consensus and Collaboration recently told the Santa Cruz City Council, “I feel badly for this community…This community is about to go on a war footing for the next two years.” He was referring to the recall attempt of two City Council members. Overheated rhetoric and mudslinging are nothing new to Santa Cruz. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
Now more than ever, we need to transform the political culture in our local community. I want to invite people from all political perspectives to join me in a workshop to explore “Politics and the Art of Communication.” We’ll use role plays to practice how we can express our needs clearly and powerfully, and in a way that is least likely to provoke defensiveness. And find reasons to empathize with the needs motivating opponents. Saturday, July 27, 9:30-12:30, Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St. Please pre-register at NVCsantacruz.org as space is limited.
Rick Longinotti, MFT
Santa Cruz
Justice Served?
Re: “Musical Justice” (GT, 7/17): Is it unreasonable to wonder if the Ruth Bader Ginsburg cult—is there any other word for it?—is really a healthy thing in a constitutional republic?
Are the Ginsburg cultists—again, can anyone say that is an unreasonable description?—remotely capable of a critical judgment of any of her acts as a public servant? Do they find it offensive that anyone would refer to her as a public servant?
Albert Alioto
San Francisco
Dunn It Again
Geoff Dunn has done it again! “In Search of Ah Fook” (GT, 7/10) has to be one of the best pieces of local historical writing published in Good Times.
Hope to see more of these. Thank you, Geoff, and keep up the good work!
Edita McQuary
Watsonville
Showing Initiative
Geoffrey Dunn did a great job with the Ah Fook article. I am sure the Ow Family enjoyed it, and, as it turns out, Santa Cruz has already reaped the benefits from the Ow Family—it is called “community private initiative in action.”
Ben Vernazza
Santa Cruz
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
HART OFFER
Recruitment is underway for Sheriff Jim Hart’s advisory team. Sheriff’s Advisory Team members meet with Hart once a month to share concerns and solutions that will make our community a better place to live. The team will also get a behind-the-scenes look at the county’s facilities and jails, and go on ride-alongs with patrol staff. For information, call 454-7618 or email Da*************@*************ty.us.
GOOD WORK
SCURRY OF INTEREST
We would like to congratulate Emily the Live Oak squirrel, who dominated news coverage this month. In the process, the infamous squirrel gave us a respite from the normally grim local news cycles. She garnered headlines first for biting her human neighbors, then for getting kidnapped (ahem, we mean relocated) and finally for escaping and running away. Here’s hoping she moves to Santa Cruz, so that she can run for City Council.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Quote of the Week “‘Those who are preaching hate in our country will be asked to leave,’ says Donald Trump, not understanding irony.”
We may be living in a dog’s dream, but we this ‘Doggo Dreamland’ is no delusion. The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History and Santa Cruz SPCA are teaming up for a celebration to help local dogs. There will be adoptable pups, plus plenty of room to bring your own furry friends. There will also be a DIY dog toy station, face painting (for humans only) and a selection of animal portraits by local artist Janice Serilla.
INFO: 6-8 p.m. Friday, July 26. Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz. santacruzmah.org. $10 admission includes museum access.
Art Seen
‘Pinocchio: A Bot-Treemian Rhapsody’
Pinocchio meets futuristic techno-rock plus magic fairies? Sure, why not. In retro-futuristic Italy, the poor woodcarver Gepetto carves a puppet from an enchanted log that was the very last tree in the forest, because the greedy Stromboli family makes robot toys and games as their factory pollutes the water and destroys the environment. The puppet Pinocchio must resist temptation to join the lazy children in their endless gaming, and help the Green Fairy and her magical forest friend the Loraxini save the forest. In other words, you have to see it to believe it.
INFO: 7:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Wednesday, July 24, through Sunday, Aug. 4. Park Hall, 9400 Mill St., Ben Lomond. lprt.org. $20.
Saturday 7/27
‘Books and Brews’ La Selva Beach Summer Fair
Over 50 arts and crafts vendors will sell their handmade jewelry, pottery, photography, jams, soaps, succulents, garden art, woodcraft, books, cards, bags, clothing, and more. The one-day Books and Brews festival also includes the Friends of the La Selva Beach Library Book Sale, with a giant selection of all genres of books and media at great prices. Food trucks, local craft beers, live music, and kids’ activities like facepainting are all on tap as well.
INFO: 10 a.m.-4 p.m. La Selva Beach Clubhouse, 314 Estrella Ave., La Selva Beach. bo**************@***il.com. Free.
Saturday 7/27
Puppeteers for Fears
This isn’t your stereotypical lo-fi puppet show. This is a puppet show on drugs, plus a full rock band. The play tells the story of a sasquatch hunter and a sasquatch, both of whom are abducted by extraterrestrials and subjected to kooky medical experiments on a UFO. Imagine the sci-fi camp of Plan 9 From Outer Space paired with the bawdy comedy of Avenue Q. Despite its off-the-wall nature and somewhat cutesy puppets, be aware that this is not a show for children. It’s R-rated, for mature audiences only.
Back in the age of when people actually watched cable TV, the Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” was a national summer event. In the age of the internet, we can now watch shark attack videos whenever we want; unfortunately, they don’t always give much educational context (gasp). Luckily, the Seymour Center is coming to the rescue. For a full week, they are hosting a Shark Science Week full of facts about the cartilaginous fish with big teethies. They will be exploring shark adaptations like sharks’ extraordinary senses and the unique ways in which they reproduce (hint: there are sometimes teeth involved). The shark touching pool will also be open every day.
INFO: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Seymour Marine Discovery Center, 100 McAllister Way, Santa Cruz. $9 general admission.
If there is one day from the Trump presidency that will be remembered as a key turning point, my pick is Aug. 12, 2017. The footage coming out of Charlottesville, Virginia, that weekend was horrifying: first, on Friday night, a torchlight rally of pallid-faced white nationalist marchers on the University of Virginia grounds, chanting “You will not replace us” and “Blood and soil!” Then on Saturday morning, Aug. 12, melee in the streets of Charlottesville, a surreal mix of self-caricaturing militia and KKK types parading in broad daylight—white supremacist groups cranked up on years of midnight chat-room binges, now out in numbers looking to hurt people.
The nation saw, and shuddered. This was not coded racism, like the Willie Horton ads the George H.W. Bush campaign for President ran in the 1988 campaign. This was Nuremberg in 1934, a rally of the right conceived as an exercise in self-justifying propaganda. Hate-filled cultists on a mission, preening and strutting and showing us all they think they’re superior and that many of their fellow citizens are subhuman. The mob in Charlottesville made clear they felt encouraged and even egged on by the demagogue in the White House, with David Duke, a national KKK leader, confirming that very point in Charlottesville that day.
The question was, how would President Trump respond? I’ll make an admission that might make me sound like a naif: Watching the horrors unfold from here in Santa Cruz, I actually thought Trump might condemn the white supremacists who had come from 35 states—some of them from Northern California—to gather in Charlottesville and revel in hate and violence. I know I wasn’t alone in thinking that the reality-TV president might actually decide to act presidential.
It’s more than an idle point, as former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s new book, Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism, makes clear. McAuliffe, who was governor at the time, talked with Trump on Aug. 12, and hung up the phone convinced Trump was going to do the right thing.
“I had no illusions that a guy whose favorite thing to do was watch himself on TV was suddenly going to turn into Bobby Kennedy,” McAuliffe writes on the second page of the book. “Eloquence was no more his thing than consistency. But in the middle of a crisis like this, I honestly did expect him to rise to the occasion. That’s what presidents do.”
Instead, infamously, Trump showed up before the cameras that afternoon at his golf course in New Jersey, condemning “in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence”—and then, in a Dadaist twist, adding, “on many sides, on many sides.” Donald Trump had just hit the gas and barreled past the last exit ramp left in his presidency; instead of veering toward decency and democracy, he went with his base impulses, choosing blatant racism.
“I was shocked,” McAuliffe writes. “I felt our nation had just been suckerpunched.”
It fell to McAuliffe, as the sitting governor, to say the words many thought the president of the United States should have spoken. “I have a message to all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today,” McAuliffe said on national TV that afternoon. “Our message is plain and simple: go home and never come back. You are not wanted in this great commonwealth. Shame on you. You pretend that you are patriots, but you are anything but a patriot. You are a bunch of cowards.”
LEAD TIMEThough he was already known as the governor of Virginia and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, McAuliffe’s response to the violence in Charlottesville thrust him into the national conversation on racism.
McAuliffe’s words were widely cited. He had shown leadership when the man in the White House showed none. Congressman John Lewis, one of the giants of the Civil Rights movement, heard those words and called the Virginia governor the following Monday to thank him. “I cried when I heard your speech,” Lewis told McAuliffe. “That was one of the great speeches I’ve ever heard in my life.”
I was struck immediately with the importance of what happened in Charlottesville. Later, I reached out and urged McAuliffe to do a book about it. I was the co-author of McAuliffe’s first book, What a Party!: My Life Among Democrats: Presidents, Candidates, Donors, Activists, Alligators, and Other Wild Animals, which hit the New York Times bestseller list when it was published in March 2007.
I helped him with this project, as well, and it was fascinating to be there with McAuliffe as he talked to a variety of people about what went wrong in the preparations for Charlottesville, and what lessons need to be drawn. McAuliffe can come across as very sure of himself, and always ready with an answer, but he learned from doing this book about listening—as all of us, especially white people, are going to have to do if we’re going to make any real headway.
“I wrote this book because I wanted people to have a full understanding of what happened in Charlottesville,” McAuliffe told me on the phone last weekend. “It was such a shocking moment in U.S. history that a thousand people could walk down a city street spewing the most hate-filled, vile, disgusting language at fellow Americans.”
I asked him what he learned from working on the book.
“Upon reflection, as I wrote the book, as bad as Charlottesville was, there was an upside to it, which was that we exposed this sickening underbelly in American culture and realized that we have to do much more to deal with racism and its effects,” he said.
Charlottesville was not a wakeup call for African-Americans, McAuliffe added, as they did not need a wakeup call—they knew all about these racist white supremacist organizations. But for a lot of the rest of us, the horror of Charlottesville endures in a way that needs to be explored. What more can we do? How do we truly keep alive the memory of Charlottesville?
Susan Bro lost a daughter in Charlottesville, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was peacefully protesting when James Fields drove his car into a crowd, killing her and injuring many others. (Two Virginia State Police pilots, Berke Bates and Jay Cullen, were also killed that weekend when their helicopter went down.)
“Heather helped to open my eyes to a lot of things I’d been putting my head in the sand about,” Susan Bro said recently. “If, after Charlottesville, we just talk about ‘Love one another’ and have a kumbaya moment here, then we accomplish nothing. We’re back to square one. If we don’t do it now, then we definitely wasted an opportunity—and wasted a life, frankly.”
Beyond Charlottesville details how the governor and his advisors considered declaring a state of emergency late on the morning of Aug. 12, finally doing so in time to clear the park where the “Unite the Right Rally” was centered just before noon, the scheduled start time for the gathering of white supremacists.
“Once we’d cleared the park and everybody had been dispersed, outside of several violent fist fights, there had been no damage to property,” McAuliffe told me. “My biggest relief was that, even with so many people with firearms, nobody got shot. It wasn’t until later that I was informed that this maniac James Fields had weaponized his car and run into a crowd in downtown Charlottesville. Soon after that, I was told that one of our State Police helicopters had gone down and we’d lost two pilots, Berke Bates and Jay Cullen, who were friends of mine and my family. So in a matter of just a few hours, what had seemed like a successful operation had turned into a nightmare.”
It’s always hard to say, but there are indications that a new urgency on fighting against racism might shape up as a major component of Democrats’ path to victory next year against Trump, assuming he’s actually running for re-election. Political reporters who work in Washington would have us believe there is a difficult choice for Democrats to make between emphasizing a positive alternative vision to Trumpism, on the one hand, and fighting back against his demagoguery on the other.
But both can happen, even with intermediaries in the press seeking to sabotage the effort. It’s not dangerous for Democrats to have differences of opinion on how to call Trump out for the racist he is. It’s healthy and productive; let different voices come at Trump from different directions, and we’ll see how it all adds up.
The main point is: No Democratic candidate who is flying on auto-pilot when it comes to issues of racism will survive the primaries. The historical moment—and a lot of angry voters, including many young people—demand much, much more. Joe Biden seems to be slowly tuning into that reality, with his new one-liner about Trump being “more George Wallace than George Washington.” It’s worth noting that Biden dropped the line last week in California, and we’re sure to hear more about Trump and Wallace, the notorious white supremacist governor of Alabama in the 1960s and 1970s.
McAuliffe’s new book has a real shot at becoming part of that larger discussion. Newsweek is planning a cover package next week, including excerpting an entire chapter. Biden has said he was inspired to run for president this time around because of what happened in Charlottesville—and he’s liable to get a book.
Just last week, the White House issued a statement condemning Beyond Charlottesville. “Terry McAuliffe’s slander against the president is nothing short of disgusting,” Judd P. Deere, a White House spokesman perhaps unaware that slander refers to spoken speech, not the printed word, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
Trump himself is sure to get involved, firing back at McAuliffe one way or another, but for people who actually read the book—as opposed to just looking at the pictures and searching the index for their own name—the tense run-through of events will be disturbing and thought-provoking. That’s McAuliffe’s hope, to generate a deeper and wider discussion of the need for major change than we’ve ever had.
“For me, if we’re going to have discussions on racism, we have to talk about looking forward and how we deal with racism today,” he told me. “I don’t want to go back 30 or 40 years. I want to look at today and the future. I want discussions of dealing with these problems. It’s not about statues and hateful symbols, it’s about actionable items that deal with the horrible effects of racism.
“My goal is that the book will help open peoples’ eyes. For far too long, we’ve tried to sweep racism under the rug. It’s important that this be brought ought into the light of day for a full discussion. Until we all realize that, we’re going to be in the same place.”
He’ll be meeting with some local community leaders and office holders here in the Santa Cruz area when he arrives for an Aug. 7 book discussion and signing at Bookshop Santa Cruz. It’s a great chance to ask Gov. McAuliffe your own questions about Charlottesville, and to share your own perspective. He may or may not give you an answer you like, but he’ll be listening.
Terry McAuliffe will discuss and sign his new book ‘Beyond Charlottesville: Taking a Stand Against White Nationalism’ at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 7, at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. 423-0900, bookshopsantacruz.com. The event is free.
Half Moon Bay’s Bob Dooley has been fishing since he was 11, and as a boat owner, he’s traveled many times to the waters off Alaska searching for pollock and other whitefish.
Now 65 and retired, Dooley serves on the Pacific Fishery Management Council, weighing in on regulatory policy. He realizes the term “fishery management” inspires suspicion among fishermen, especially those from the generation prior, but Dooley credits federal regulations with keeping the nation’s fisheries sustainable and letting populations rebound—ultimately giving fishermen like himself a shot at a career.
The backbone of this framework is the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, which passed in 1976. Among its provisions was an outline for a system to create fish allotments for individual fisheries. Congress has reauthorized the act a few times over the years, most recently in 2006. In the years since, efforts to revisit the law have stalled out before netting any results. Now, Congressmember Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) is starting a “listening tour” to get perspectives on how to improve Magnuson–Stevens. Huffman plans to introduce a bill to tackle the reauthorization within the next year.
Looking ahead, Dooley says Congress may take this important opportunity to clarify wording that often gets misinterpreted. By and large, though, he’s hoping that legislators hold interest groups at bay.
“The problem is when you open the door, a lot of special interests can climb through. It’s a good act, and I don’t think we need to fool with it much,” he says.
As the recently appointed chair of Congress’ Democrat-controlled Water, Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee, Huffman says his goal is to help manage oceans and fisheries “to be as environmentally and economically resilient as possible.” He’s asking how issues like global climate change should be considered in a revised version of the act.
Noah Oppenheim, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, is looking forward to the listening tour. Oppenheim has his doubts about how Congress can make any legislative progress on global warming under a White House that denies the existence of climate change.Nonetheless, he believes the opportunity will prompt fishermen to start thinking more globally and get involved outside of the individual policies undertaken by local fishery councils.
Representative Huffman, for his part, enjoys support from an environmental community that’s aligned with his values. Huffman riding herd over the process, Oppenheim says, “will be an interesting dynamic to watch.”
“He needs to understand that fisheries management is about the industry first,” Oppenheim adds, and that the Magnuson-Stevens Act wasn’t intended to shut down the industry, but to figure out how to make it work in a manner that’s sustainable for the fish and fishermen alike.
Oppenheim knows full well that fishing has an impact on fish stocks. “But we’ve brought back many stocks from the brink,” he says. He adds that California fishermen have, if grudgingly, “throttled back their activities to protect them.” Overfishing is one issue, but it’s “climate impacts and industrial activities outside of fishing,” he says, “that are the biggest impact” on fish stocks.
Oppenheim says that lawmakers should take a hard look at any offshore industry development as they study reauthorization. He says external threats to fishermen’s livelihoods—offshore oil and gas rigs or wind farms—should be a part of the discussion. Concerned about the impacts of a proposedwind farm south of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, Oppenheim notes that current law doesn’t allow for any regulation of industries that might have a deleterious impact on fishermen’s livelihoods.TheBureau of Energy Management oversees the leasing for such projects.
With Huffman still testing the waters on this topic, it’s unclear which direction policy discussions might take.
In Santa Cruz, Tobias Aguirre, CEO of sustainable seafood advocacy group FishWise, believes Congress should strengthen the act’s environmental protections to let fisheries keep rebounding. “We need to keep our foot on the gas,” says Aguirre. With its focus geared toward international issues, FishWise has been collaborating on the internationalSeafood Alliance for Legality and Traceability, which aims to improve transparency in global seafood markets. FishWise’s next mission, he says, will be improving the working conditions of fishermen.
The livelihood of fishermen is certainly a chief concern for Oppenheim. A fisherman himself, he’s the first to admit that they have occasionally been part of an “anti-science” agenda when it has helped business interests, but he says the industry provides valuable data to scientists and regulators. “Fishermen can both be far better observers of ocean conditions and the real-time status of fisheries,” he says, “and simultaneously be in denial over the impacts that broad-scale fishing can have over time.”
But it’s also true that the scientists can make mistakes, and they’ve missed the mark when it comes to fish stocks, he says, with poor survey data. The bottom line for Oppenheim when it comes to fisheries management is that, “We’re doing better than we ever have in the past”—though he admits there’s much to be done. He believes the “ship can be righted to some extent by bringing in the fishermen,” especially small-scale operators. “One of the more interesting things to note about fish politics is to notice how ‘flipped’ it is,” he says. “The quote-unquote ‘liberal’ politics of egalitarianism and support for communities” has not been the traditional Democratic Party approach, he argues.
At the same time, conservative lawmakers pegged as being too pro-business at the expense of the environment, he says, have led the charge to focus on localities and small-time operators.
“Fundamentally, liberals should be about supporting communities,” he says. “Partisanship in fisheries is terrible, counterproductive, and we’ve been seeing too much of it lately.”
Jimmy Grey started building houses with his father as soon as his hands could properly hold the tools. He completed his first electrical wiring job at 13.
When Grey’s father died four years ago, he decided it was time to do some soul searching. “I was just trying to figure myself out after that, after my rock left my life,” he says.
Grey quit his job in sales to travel in Thailand and Bali. After returning to Santa Cruz, he purchased his first van, a 2014 ProMaster, and set off to explore the country with partner Bez Stone and her two children.
Now, the 37-year-old craftsman is combining his flair for construction with a passion for adventure in the grand opening of a full-service van-conversion business, Levity Vans. Considering operations have been underway for about a year now, the grand opening on Saturday, July 19, was really more of a coming out party. “It feels like a declaration. It’s us saying, ‘We’re here, we’re ready, and we know what we’re doing,” says Stone, who is a partner in the business.
The 17th Avenue shop specializes in upgrading ProMaster, Transit and Sprinter cargo vans into full-fledged adventure vehicles complete with tailored kitchens, rooftops decks, customized windows and whatever else customers need to feel at home on the road. “Lots of companies make cookie-cutter RV-type vans, which are great, but I like Jimmy’s style because he really gets to know who people are and what they want, so they can have things like that special little perch for their cat, which more people have wanted than you might suspect,” Stone says.
The social media-fueled #vanlife trend has romanticized the urge to hit the road in recent years, but Levity’s grand opening comes as Outwesty, a company that rents tricked-out, modernized Westfalias to customers for their California vacations, is closing up shop in Santa Cruz.
Outwesty is returning to Lake Tahoe after a two-year stint on the Central Coast. Owner Dave Phelps says that Santa Cruz “is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, and you’ve gotta pay your employees a lot to make it work. I don’t think anyone could say it’s an easy place to do business.”
Because Outwesty also assists customers with the booking and planning of their trips, the travel agent side of the business was always a challenge in Santa Cruz’s over-saturated tourist scene. “It’s a little bit over-populated in these regions,” says Phelps. “If you don’t book a campsite far enough in advance, it’s very hard to do a last-minute camping trip to Big Sur in June, July, August. That’s one major issue we ran into.”
For Grey, whose full-scale adventure conversions can run between $30,000-55,000, the high cost of living comes with benefits from a business perspective: the wealth in the area makes it easier for customers to meet his price point. For those not looking to shell out so much cash, however, Grey offers priced-per-job window installations, electrical wiring and other specified services.
“The DIYer aspect is a customer base that we’re really passionate about,” says Stone. “If somebody was on a budget, I wouldn’t want to dissuade them. Instead, let’s get creative. Come here, and we’ll do the few things that you can’t do alone, or that aren’t safe for you to do alone.”
Customers at Levity range from corporate executives looking to downsize to retirees on the hunt for adventure. “There’s such a broad spectrum. It’s not just hippies who want to drop out of society,” says Stone. “It’s people who want the freedom to go away from their life and take a break, whether it’s for a year or a month or a day.”
While van life represents an exciting break from normalcy for some, Grey knows that life on wheels can be a grimmer experience for many in Santa Cruz. An estimated 30% of Santa Cruz’s homeless residents were living in their cars in 2017, according to the county’s most recent Homeless Census and Survey. The right to park has long been a contentious topic in the county.
The cities of Santa Cruz, Capitola and Watsonville all have laws that ban camping in public places, although recent court rulings have taken some of the teeth out of those sleeping bans. Efforts this year from Santa Cruz city councilmembers like Drew Glover to expand car camping and create new areas to park legally faced resistance and criticism that Glover hadn’t done enough public outreach. The right-to-park movement has gained attention at UCSC and around the state as students fight for their right to sleep in vehicles on campus. At California community colleges, 19% of students experienced homelessness in the past year, according to a recent study conducted by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice.
Grey believes van dwellers should have a safe space to go. He says everyone should have the right to park and sleep in their vehicles, regardless of their circumstances.
“I personally think this is a really great opportunity for us to set up some communities and safe places for people to park their vans,” he says, “whether they’re transients or permanent locals.”
For Grey, who has never run a business before, Levity’s opening represents a leap of faith. “There was that one cliff-jumping moment when Jimmy quit his job … then, there was that moment of, ‘OK, let’s do it,’” says Stone. “We ordered some signs, made the website and just said we’re going to go for it. I think it takes a lot of bravery for somebody like Jimmy to quit his day job and just go for it.”
Levity Vans, 1010 17th Ave, Santa Cruz. 531-4151, levityvans.com.
Ever since Museum of Art and History Executive Director Nina Simon announced her departure from the organization this past fall, museum leaders have made it sound like they were mere weeks from announcing their next executive. But after waiting eight months, the MAH has only just now named an interim director in Antonia Franco, an experienced nonprofit executive who’s been involved with the museum over the years. From Franco’s résumé, she looks enormously qualified. But it isn’t clear whether she could be the long-term pick—or what the hold-up is at an institution known for its vibrancy under Simon’s direction.
Honestly, if the MAH doesn’t pick an official director soon, the museum’s gonna find itself the butt of many a joke around town … à la, “Your MAH’s so slow, it took her two hours to watch 60 Minutes.”
FLOWING DOWNHILL
Bill Smallman has resigned from the San Lorenzo Valley Water Board after a year in which he leaked sensitive information and made homophobic remarks. He’s the second boardmember to resign over the last four months, and his departure leaves the district just one former boardmember of the now-defunct Lompico Water Board, which merged with San Lorenzo Valley three years ago.
With its various scandals in recent years, the rural water district may look more polluted than a mountain reservoir under a mudslide. But things could always be worse, and progress is easy to miss. After all, back when the Lompico Water District was a thing, Smallman was one of the board’s saner members.
WARRIOR POSERS
As families of immigrants sit separated in detention camps at the border, Santa Cruz County yoga studios are coming together to organize a Yoga Day of Action on Saturday, July 27. All yoga studios will be putting out collection boxes, with the proceeds going to the National Bail Fund Network, Room for Refugees and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES). Participating studios include Luma, Nourish, Divinitree, Yoga Within, Santa Cruz Yoga, Estrella Collective, Pleasure Point Yoga and Breath + Oneness.
It also makes you think back on the comments we’ve heard from middle-aged homeowners in public meetings, and in letters to the editor over the years that say, “People shouldn’t live here if they don’t want it bad enough”—all while many families live on the verge of homelessness. To be frank, anti-housing Democrats sound a lot like anti-immigrant Republicans, telling everyone, “If you don’t like it, you can leave!”
We typically think of these local “progressive” whiners as not-in-my-backyard—or NIMBY—activists, but one might just as easily call them simply BANANAs, which stands for “build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.”
But in light of Santa Cruz’s homegrown poverty problem, perhaps the term we’re really looking for is “jerks.”
ARIES (March 21-April 19): After analyzing unusual animal behavior, magnetic fluctuations, outbreaks of mayhem on Twitter, and the position of the moon, a psychic has foretold that a moderate earthquake will rumble through the St. Louis, Missouri, area in the coming weeks. I don’t agree with her prophecy. But I have a prediction of my own. Using data about how cosmic forces are conspiring to amuse and titillate your rapture chakra, I predict a major lovequake for many Aries between now and Aug. 20. I suggest you start preparing immediately. How? Brainstorm about adventures and breakthroughs that will boost exciting togetherness. Get yourself in the frame of mind to seek out collaborative catharsis that evokes both sensory delights and spiritual insights.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): “Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are,” wrote Taurus philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. You could use that idea to achieve a finer grade of peace and grace in the coming weeks. The navel-gazing phase of your yearly cycle has begun, which means you’ll be in closest alignment with cosmic rhythms if you get to know yourself much better. One of the best ways to do that is to analyze what you pay most attention to. Another excellent way is to expand and refine and tenderize your feelings for what you pay most attention to.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano wrote that in Havana, people refer to their friends as mi sangre (my blood) or mi tierra (my country). In Caracas, he reported, a friend might be called mi llave (my key) or mi pana (my bread). Since you are in the alliance-boosting phase of your cycle, Gemini, I trust that you will find good reasons to think of your comrades as your blood, your country, your key, or your bread. It’s a favorable time for you to get closer, more personal and more intimate. The affectionate depths are calling to you.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Your emotional intelligence is so strong right now that I bet you could alleviate the pain of a loved one even as you soothe a long-running ache of your own. You’re so spiritually alluring, I suspect you could arouse the sacred yearning of a guru, saint or bodhisattva. You’re so interesting someone might write a poem or story about you. You’re so overflowing with a lust for life that you might lift people out of their ruts just by being in their presence. You’re so smart you could come up with at least a partial solution to a riddle whose solution has evaded you for a long time.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): The Queen of North America and Europe called me on the phone. At least that’s how she identified herself. “I have a message for your Leo readers,” she told me. “Why Leo?” I asked. “Because I’m a Leo myself,” she replied, “and I know what my tribe needs to know right now.” I said, “OK. Give it to me.” “Tell Leos to always keep in mind the difference between healthy pride and debilitating hubris,” she said. “Tell them to be dazzlingly and daringly competent without becoming bossy and egomaniacal. They should disappear their arrogance but nourish their mandate to express leadership and serve as a role model. Be shiny and bright but not glaring and blinding. Be irresistible but not envy-inducing.”
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Congrats, Virgo! You are beginning the denouement of your yearly cycle. Anything you do to resolve lingering conflicts and finish up old business will yield fertile rewards. Fate will conspire benevolently in your behalf as you bid final goodbyes to the influences you’ll be smart not to drag along with you into the new cycle that will begin in a few weeks. To inspire your holy work, I give you this poem by Virgo poet Charles Wright: “Knot by knot I untie myself from the past/ And let it rise away from me like a balloon./ What a small thing it becomes./ What a bright tweak at the vanishing point, blue on blue.”
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): I predict that between now and the end of the year, a Libran genetic engineer will create a new species of animal called a dat. A cross between a cat and a dog, it will have the grace, independence and vigilance of a Persian cat and the geniality, loyalty and ebullient strength of a golden retriever. Its stalking skills will synthesize the cat’s and dog’s different styles of hunting. I also predict that in the coming months, you will achieve greater harmony between the cat and dog aspects of your own nature, thereby acquiring some of the hybrid talents of the dat.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Scorpio poet Marianne Moore (1887–1972) won the Pulitzer Prize and several other prestigious awards. She was a rare poet who became a celebrity. That’s one of the reasons why the Ford car company asked her to dream up interesting names for a new model they were manufacturing. Alas, Ford decided the 43 possibilities she presented were too poetic and rejected all of them. But some of Moore’s names are apt descriptors for the roles you could and should play in the phase you’re beginning, so I’m offering them for your use. Here they are: 1. Anticipator. 2. The Impeccable. 3. Tonnerre Alifère (French for “winged thunder”). 4. Tir á l’arc (French for “bull’s eye”). 5. Regina-Rex (Latin for “queen” and “king”).
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): It’s conceivable that in one of your past lives you were a pioneer who made the rough 2,170-mile migration via wagon train from Missouri to Oregon in the 1830s. Or maybe you were a sailor who accompanied the Viking Leif Eriksson in his travels to the New World 500 years before Columbus. Is it possible you were part of the team assembled by Italian diplomat Giovanni da Pian del Carpine, who journeyed from Rome to Mongolia in the 13th century? Here’s why I’m entertaining these thoughts, Sagittarius: I suspect that a similar itch to ramble and explore and seek adventure may rise up in you during the coming weeks. I won’t be surprised if you consider making a foray to the edge of your known world.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): When the dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago, the crocodiles didn’t. They were around for 135 million years before that era, and are still here now. Why? “They are extremely tough and robust,” says croc expert James Perran Ross. Their immune systems “are just incredible.” Maybe best of all, they “learn quickly and adapt to changes in their situation.” In accordance with the astrological omens, I’m naming the crocodile as your creature teacher for the coming weeks. I suspect you will be able to call on a comparable version of their will to thrive. (Read more about crocs: tinyurl.com/toughandrobust.)
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “My only hope is that one day I can love myself as much as I love you.” Poet Mariah Gordon-Dyke wrote that to a lover, and now I’m offering it to you as you begin your Season of Self-Love. You’ve passed through other Seasons of Self-Love in the past, but none of them has ever had such rich potential to deepen and ripen your self-love. I bet you’ll discover new secrets about how to love yourself with the same intensity you have loved your most treasured allies.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “Poems can bring comfort,” writes Piscean poet Jane Hirshfield. “They let us know … that we are not alone—but they also unseat us and make us more susceptible, larger, elastic. They foment revolutions of awareness and allow the complex, uncertain, actual world to enter.” According to my understanding of upcoming astrological omens, Pisces, life itself will soon be like the poems Hirshfield describes: unruly yet comforting; a source of solace but also a catalyst for transformation; bringing you healing and support but also asking you to rise up and reinvent yourself. Sounds like fun!
Homework: What’s the most amazing feat you ever pulled off? What will you do for your next amazing feat? Tr**********@***il.com.
