“We want to sell you what you never knew you wanted and will be unable to live without,” bookstore empresario Andrew Sivak told me. Now that’s a manifesto I can live with.
The result of this ambition was on display last week at a debut dinner hosted by Bad Animal entrepreneurs Andrew Sivak and Jess LoPrete, who have given those mourning the loss of Logos a reason to rejoice. Books—with real, turnable pages—are the heart and soul of the newly opened combination bookstore and wine bar at the top of Cedar Street. Lavish with space to wander and browse, Bad Animal is a seductive environment. Enormous central tables laden with independently published exotica are surrounded by several rooms of floor-to-ceiling vintage treasures. Ginsberg, Eco, Neruda, Burroughs, Dickenson—Anais Nin would love this place. The focus is on the humanities (Sivak’s PhD is in history of consciousness), and specifically the non-digitized humanities, wildly independent and fierce explorations into literature and philosophy.
More than a bookstore, however, the bold concept includes an attractive wine bar, as well as an inviting café oasis for on-site indulgence. Smart plates full of seasonal ingredients designed by a former Manresa sous chef and terroir-driven wines from small producers (think Birichino) form the basis of the café side of Bad Animal. Sexy bar snacks will offer a way of settling in with that book purchase, as well as a pit-stop for downtown flaneurs and a choice location for upcoming rendezvous. A wine bar inside an enlightened used book store! Sounds like Paris or New York. Or Santa Cruz, in its reinvented Golden Age.
Seated on handsome banquettes amongst assorted winemakers, authors, the odd professor, and several poets, I sampled BA’s café potential. The meal began with Grenache (or Muscadet for white winers) and pretty plates of fresh asparagus with a feisty caper-studded sauce of mustardy mayonnaise (gribiche) and salads of red and pink beets flecked with goat cheese, bits of walnut, adolescent arugula, and wheat berries. Kierkegaard would have loved this salad. Then came brown butter rye gnocchi with peas, minced trumpet mushrooms and pea sprout adornment. Dessert of clafoutis with cherries and almonds brought a satisfying close to the meal’s procession of flavors. Good-looking dishes.
Bad Animal’s eclectic wall art and glittering chandeliers cut an appealing contrast with the industrial candor of the exposed ceiling and bookshelves. What a great spot for a book signing, poetry reading, wine tasting or simply a Dionysian revel over a rousing chapter of Nietzsche. “I think Bad Animal will be an exciting and beautiful novelty,” a flushed-with-pride Sivak told me. Oh and so much more—this place will also become a ritual addiction for those maxed out on screens and electronica, who grew up searching for truth and beauty in the sanctuary of a well-stocked used book store.
Bad Animal, 2011 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. Bookshop open 10 a.m.-10 p.m.; bar and kitchen noon-10 p.m.; dinner 5-9:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday.
Botanical Wellness
On Saturday, May 25, from noon-5 p.m., join the Botanical Healing Arts folks at their May Flower Festival up at the UCSC Arboretum (on Empire Grade Road, halfway between High and Bay streets and the west entrance to the campus). Take a docent-led tour of the splendid grounds, filled with fragrance and eye candy. Speakers Robert and Sheva Browning from HeartMath Institute will share their expertise on the healing power of the heart. Along with live music by the Wave Tones and the Elizabeth Van Buren Essential Oil blending bar, enjoy a specially crafted catered lunch by The Brown Bag, which will include edible flowers as well as GF mushroom-almond paté, avocado-radish canapes, spring salads involving dried cherries, Greek pasta, beets, and a rainbow of seasonal veggies. $100/person.
Not all adventures involve dragons, and not every drama has to be epic. Emotions can run just as deep in small-scale stories set in the real world, with lives, futures and the possibility of happiness all at stake.
Take the very small, gently rendered Indian film Photograph. Set in modern-day Mumbai, it’s about two people of very diverse backgrounds who may have the chance to alter the course of their own and each other’s lives—if only they dare to seize the day. Writer-director Ritesh Batra, who made the charming middle-aged romance The Lunchbox a few years back, is not as sure-footed in his storytelling this time. Still, Photograph is an unassuming, life-sized antidote to the grand-scale blockbuster mentality.
Rafi (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) is a street photographer haunting the Gateway of India monument in Mumbai, taking pictures of tourists on site for a small fee. (He carries a portable printer with him to process the image.) His line of patter is unchanging, and a trifle bored, pitched to hundreds of passersby every day. He shares a tiny living space (accessible only by a trap-door in a ceiling) with a bunch of other guys who all crash on the floor communally every night.
Fortysomething Rafi sends almost all of his earnings home to his grandmother in the small outlying village where she raised him and his sisters. He has a grandiose plan to ultimately pay off a debt incurred by his late father and buy back the family home for her, a plan he doggedly pursues. But all she really cares about is seeing him married and presenting her with great-grandchildren.
Miloni (Sanya Malhotra) is a shy, middle-class girl who lives in a nice apartment with her family and a cook/housekeeper. She’s taking a class in accounting, but she has no other particular direction. She does nurture a tiny rebellious streak, however, as we see her ditch her Mum and sister on a shopping trip to melt into the crowd outside the Gateway of India for some free time to herself.
When Rafi offers to photograph her, she poses and pays—but disappears before he can complete the transaction. He learns his grandmother has stopped taking her medications to protest his bachelorhood, so he sends her the photo of Miloni, saying she’s his fiancée. Of course, his granny wants to come meet her, so Rafi has to track down Miloni and beg her to play the part of his fiancée.
We know where this story is going, but filmmaker Batra makes some endearing choices along the way. Farrukh Jaffar is great as the cranky, opinionated granny, Dadi. (When Rafi stoically pledges to buy back her home and make up for the lean times, Dadi barks, “Stop wearing those years like a medal!”) There’s a timely appearance by the roommates’ resident ghost, who also advises Rafi to make the most of his life.
Malhotra’s reserved Miloni is lovely, but scowling Rafi is kind of a stick. Dadi keeps saying he has the same “crooked smile” as his grandfather, but we (and Miloni) hardly ever see it. And Batra is so intent on sticking up close and personal with his characters, charting their subtle emotional shifts in observant close-ups, that he sometimes cheats the viewer out of the bigger scenes.
We see Rafi stalking Miloni around the neighborhood, working up the nerve to speak to her again, then we see her considering his proposal. But we don’t see him make it, and we’re left wondering how he framed the idea to induce this complete stranger to go along with his plan. Later, he goes far out of his way to track down an item he knows she likes but is no longer commercially available, but we’re not shown any scene where he presents it to her. These are small things, but in a movie of tiny moments, they might have made the bond at its center that much more persuasive.
PHOTOGRAPH
**1/2 (out of four)
With Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Sanya Malhotra and Farrukh Jaffar. Written and directed by Ritesh Batra. An Amazon release. Rated PG-13. 110 minutes.
I am never going back to right-side-up gardening ever again. There’s no reason why I should. When I planted my tomatoes upside down a month ago, I knew they would die. I felt guilty even attempting it, given my past failures at growing them in the ground.
But, to my astonishment, within a week they had started sprouting new leaves and winding their way toward the sun.
I never knew about upside-down gardening until it came across my desk a few weeks ago. But since then, I’ve started to notice how upside-down gardens are popping up everywhere. GT’s resident accountant/business guru Sarah says she’s been upside-down gardening for years. Not only does it keep the pests away, she says, but it looks amazing, too.
So I decided to take a shot at the trend myself. Here are some field notes from my upside-down adventures:
March 16
I wouldn’t like it if someone turned me upside down for the rest of my life, so would my plants be OK with it? To the very limited extent of my gardening abilities, I’ve always lived by the idea that if I wouldn’t enjoy it, I shouldn’t do it to the plant. So far, this rule has kept my tiny garden box away from evening waterings, freezing temperatures and general malnourishment. But upside-down gardening is beyond the realm of the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” gardening commandment.
Today, I planted my first upside-down tomatoes. Full transparency: I have planted tomatoes before, both from seed and small starter. Both attempts failed miserably. Planting tomatoes upside down seems like a fool’s errand, given that I can’t even grow them right side up. I’ve also been told that it’s slightly early to plant tomatoes—they’re ideally planted in April or May when nighttime temperatures are warmer. The San Lorenzo Garden Center still has their tomato starts in a cute little plastic greenhouse.
After extensive research this time around, I planted sweet cherry tomatoes, because once they start growing they will weigh less on the branches compared to a beefsteak tomato or a larger varietal.
Serious upside-down gardeners use big, 5-gallon buckets—the plastic kind readily available at Home Depot. They have strong handles and thick, insulating sides. The much-less-serious gardeners use milk or juice cartons with wide mouths hung by string. I put myself somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, so I bought smaller plastic planters. After cutting a hole in the bottom, I used hemp twine to hang them, but in retrospect I should have used wire. Twine isn’t element-resistant, but more on that tragedy later.
Once upside down, the tomatoes got a really sad drenching of brown stained water. I was told to use coffee filters before putting soil in (this prevents the soil from running out the bottom hole)—but unfortunately I didn’t make the hole small enough, and soiled water gushed through the bottom onto my baby plants. I’m already a bad tomato mom.
March 20
I don’t think tomatoes particularly enjoy being upside down, because they have managed to defy gravity and loop back up. They’re now growing straight up the side of the pot? This is not what I saw online.
March 21
I’ve had to put plastic baggies over my tomatoes each night because it’s been getting cold. I nearly snap off their little leaves every time I cover them. This is more work than I signed up for.
March 27
My plants have their first flowers, but I’m not going to get too excited because they may just fall off. I also planted herbs, sage and thyme, at the top. Those seem to be doing well, too, given the amount of sunlight they have been getting. I sometimes feel bad that they have to share a pot with the tomatoes, especially because the pot isn’t very big. I now completely understand why people use giant buckets—and in retrospect, I wish I had, too.
I planted a tomato in the ground, too, for purposes of comparison, and that one hasn’t grown nearly as much. I’ve been watering it the same and it gets the same(ish) amount of sunlight. Maybe I should uproot it and plant it upside down with its friends.
March 29
How is this working? The reason for my success so far, I figure, must be that I used too much vegetable fertilizer. I mixed a couple of teaspoons in with the tomatoes when I planted them, and that’s probably a basic gardener’s no-no. I’m convinced that when they run out of nutrients, the flowers will probably fall and die, shortly followed by the rest of the plant.
April 3
The tomatoes are good; the twine holding up the tomatoes, not so much. With all of the rain we got this spring, they have started to shred and get moldy, and I know it’s only a matter of time before they fall.
April 4
They fell. The tomatoes are okay, bless them. The herbs need a little manual reconstruction and surgery. Will use wire this time around.
April 6
Considering how poorly I thought upside-down gardening would go, I’m ecstatic with the results. Hopefully the tomatoes will continue to grow through the summer and I’ll be eating tons of bruschetta by July/August. Next year I will definitely be growing them again, though I will likely plant them later on—maybe late April—and get larger buckets so they have more growing room. I haven’t had any major issues with the holes in the bottom, though the plants do get a little brown when I water them. Next time I may make the holes smaller and use a coffee filter or something more substantial than newsprint as a filter.
The control-subject plant in the ground has grown maybe an inch or two, but nowhere near as much as those planted upside down. The slugs have also started to investigate the ground tomato, but so far no trails around the planted pots. I may re-pot the ground plant—someone tell me if that’s a bad idea. No more ground gardening for me.
Surprise! It’s a whole Home & Garden issue full of surprises.
Starting with how surprised Georgia Johnson was to discover the benefits of upside-down gardening. I think she even pitched the story to me as something like, “a chronicle of my attempt and failure to grow tomatoes upside down.” You can read in the story her growing astonishment at the fact that her experiment is not failing as she keeps a diary of her grow. It’s a fun read, and there’s a lot to learn in there about the power of readjusting our perspectives.
Another surprise success came when Chris and Paige Curtis started using old wood piled in their backyard. Their early experiments with repurposing wood led to their business Alibi Interiors, which eventually led to national exposure on the Today show. How they’ve managed their success and stayed true to their aesthetic mission is a fascinating story.
If you’re in the know as a Santa Cruz County gardener, you may not be surprised to read about Ortega Nursery, but I certainly was. If you didn’t know about this little slice of plant paradise before, you’ll definitely want to check it out by the time you’re done reading Lauren Hepler’s story.
There are a lot of other surprises in store for you in this issue. May they serve you well this year in your home and garden adventures!
Nestled in the tall redwoods near the Aptos Post Office is Salamandre Wine Cellars, where you can taste Wells Shoemaker’s beautiful wines—but it’s by invitation only.
Shoemaker doesn’t have a tasting room, so you have to contact the winemaker and pediatrician to set a time. He’s been making wine for 30 years with dermatologist Dave South, and they certainly know what they’re doing when it comes to the intricacies of the grape.
Take their 2013 Meadowridge Pinot Noir ($30)—a well-made, voluptuous red that Shoemaker says has matured into a fragrant and beautiful wine that he, “would happily serve to any visitor from Burgundy.” Its tantalizing red-fruit flavors of strawberry, tart cherry and pomegranate, plus earthy aromas of leather, spice and clove, are all captured in a bottle for you to enjoy. Shoemaker says this Pinot works with almost any meal, but a good pairing, he suggests, is with salmon, lemon slices and fresh dill.
Situated in the sunny climes of Corralitos, Meadowridge Vineyard was established in 2001 and gets the right amount of heat and cool for the delicate Pinot Noir grape.
And why Salamanders? “Aptos is the last, lonely refuge of the Santa Cruz long-toed salamander,” says Shoemaker. He calls them slithering crusaders of the marsh, and happens to love these little creatures. He feels it’s only right to protect them.
Salamandre wines are sold at local restaurants and markets, and you can contact Shoemaker about his next tasting at ne**@****io.com.
Salamandre Wine Cellars, 108 Don Carlos Drive, Aptos. 685-0321, salamandrewine.com.
Cheese-Making Class at Love Apple Farm
Ever thought about making your own cheese? If so, then Love Apple Farm will show you how. The next class is from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, May 25. The workshop will focus on three basic soft cheeses that are easy to recreate at home—and taste a lot better than store-bought stuff.
Lots of food trucks throw around the word “authentic,” but when Nomad Momo rolls up with Tibetan prayer flags in the window, the one-man operation serving golf ball-sized dumplings filled with beef, chicken or veggies packed with fresh herbs is the real deal.
He goes by one name only, Rabgee, and moved to Santa Cruz in 2011 after stints in New York and India (since there isn’t a Tibetan grocery store nearby, he still uses Indian spices in his addictive, face-sweat-inducing hot sauce). Rabgee has brought his momos all over Santa Cruz County since he started up three months ago, to locations like Land of Medicine Buddha, Elkhorn Slough Brewing, Steel Bonnet Brewing, and Beer Mule.
What is a momo?
RABGEE: A momo is basically a dumpling. In Asia, every country has a different style or flavor of dumpling. Here no one served Tibetan dumplings.
How did you learn to cook?
Oh my god, I was a little kid. In Tibet we lived in the little village, you know, and your favorite food was a dumpling. Always your parents have you make the dumplings, so all little kids know how to cook.
Did you work in food before you started the truck?
Yeah, I worked at Whole Foods. I still work at Whole Foods now. It’s crazy busy.
How fast can you make a momo?
If you see it, it’s really, really fast. We make our own dough, everything by hand. We just buy flour, add water, make dough. I thought I would buy a machine, but I’m faster than the machine. Seriously, it took forever to roll. You gotta get the shape right, so that takes a little bit of time.
You serve at a lot of breweries. What beer pairs best with momos?
Any kind of beer. My food is kind of light. I thought I was gonna pan fry or deep fry, but everybody likes steamed. Especially if you eat veggie. In Santa Cruz, it’s a lot of veggie and chicken. In Watsonville, a lot of beef.
You can love someone and be mad at them. That’s how the concept of “dialectics” was introduced recently, on a podcast about relationships, of course. Ever since, I’ve been noticing the coexistence of seemingly diametrically opposed things in all areas of life.
To clarify, Buti Yoga is not yoga, it’s a yoga-and-dance-inspired workout. This was the extent of my knowledge of the intriguingly named trend when the final day of Dance Week landed me at Estrella Collective in downtown Santa Cruz, along with several other ladies and a few gentlemen also visiting for the first time.
A smile blooms as the opening song, “B.I.A” by TroyBoi, pumps through the speakers, and I do my best to imitate the grace modeled by instructor and owner Tara Murphy, who pulls from her years of tribal fusion and belly dance (she’s trained in Middle Eastern cabaret and has been dancing since childhood). By song two, we are all beginning to sweat.
I’m not mad at Buti Yoga, but my left calf is close to having an outburst when the music shifts and we move on to a new rarely targeted muscle—a choreography of plyometrics and short intervals of intensity (think gentle burn followed by swift relief) that may appeal to those who prefer exercise that stays interesting and also doesn’t feel like exercise. We spend a lot of time on our knees—the shiny black studio floor offering just enough give under our yoga mats to make this pleasant—and return often to the transverse abdominals. “Circle clockwise!” is a common cue. By the time Full Crate and Gaidaa’s “A Storm on a Summer’s Day” bleeds into something I really wish I could Shazam, I’m in love with this workout, and considering ripping off my shirt Brandi Chastain style.
“Buti is the black sheep of yoga,” says Murphy afterward, sitting on Estrella Collective’s velvet couch. “I feel like either people love it or they don’t. And that’s cool.”
That’s also the attitude at the center of Estrella Collective, which celebrates one year in business on June 21. Murphy’s Estrella Collective is a beauty salon and a dance and yoga studio, melding the 41-year-old’s lifelong passions in a way we have honestly never seen before, anywhere. At Estrella, tooth gems, microblading and hair appointments are sandwiched between morning and evening workout classes, and “Thug China” (china plates and tea cups printed with rappers by a local artist) has found a home on a high shelf.
Murphy’s mission to fuse inner and outer beauty may not be as overtly defiant as her passion project, Wu-Tang Yoga—a Vinyasa workout done to Wu-Tang that began with an in-class joke (“tuck your chin and protect your neck just like Wu-Tang”), and that she now hopes to trademark.
After the idea was born, she collaborated with a partner yoga studio in New York. “I booked a workshop, it sold out, then I did one at Village Yoga in Santa Cruz, it sold out,” says Murphy. “People are craving something different, that’s what we keep hearing. And I think that it’s time to realize that you can have things that don’t go together. Like hip-hop and yoga.”
I nod, because dialectics, and because while I will always embrace practicing with this town’s oldest and wisest yoga masters, my quest for novelty in bodily movement has been leading me outside of my comfort zone. Oddly enough, I feel quite at home at Estrella. The aesthetic is New York City—an intentional influence that blends a checkered black-and-white floor with exposed brick and a sea of ivy wound into the ceiling.
“For years I think I always thought, ‘I’m this, so I can’t be that,’ and then I realized I’m a walking fucking contradiction—I’m everything, and everyone is like that,” Murphy says. “You can’t be a certain way all of the time.”
One of the things that impressed me about the documentary RBG was how it tracked Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s transformation from flesh-and-blood individual to iconic symbol. She still is a person, of course—and long may she be so—but now all of the things she does, all of the words she writes about American law, seem bigger. Every dissenting opinion is less like a legal document than a major campaign in an epic conflict—and these are not just legal battles, but also cultural and political ones. She’s become someone who we can talk about as a way of starting conversations on larger issues.
The event in Santa Cruz this week called “My Own Words: The Law and Legacy of RBG” does just that, and so does Georgia Johnson’s cover story about it. In talking to three of the participants in the panel discussion—UCSC professor Bettina Aptheker, Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Syda Cogliati and local attorney Anna Penrose-Levig, Johnson is able to get into issues of gender in jurisprudence that go beyond just the question of Ginsburg’s influence, although that is hugely important as well. I like how the different perspectives of these three women—a judge, a lawyer and an activist—provide a well-rounded look at RBG’s legacy in the story, and no doubt at the event, too.
Let it be known that not everyone in Aptos supports highway widening or more parking. This thinking of making the car king is why we are now dealing with the consequences of allocating so much living space on Earth to wider roadways in order to travel between unending parking lots. Rather than continuing to compromise quality of life (which presently also includes requiring an extra hour to get across the county), there are better alternatives which don’t waste millions, and yet ensure safer travel that could have been implemented 50 years ago. This also will not involve making matters drastically worse during the months of construction. Please Google, “Public transportation: If you build it (properly), they will come.”
Bob Fifield
Aptos
Re: “Earth to Santa Cruz”:
Dear Mary,
On your way to Watsonville, stop in our new shop in Soquel. There is parking in the back and friendly faces in the shop. We appreciate your business.
Elaine Sherer | Owner, Found Art Collective
I’ll Have What She’s Having
I’ve been watching my carbs and fats of late, but Christina Waters’ description of GF carrot cake (GT, 5/1) has me tumbling off the wagon. I’ve heard desserts described as “orgasmic,” or “better than sex,” but I’ve never seen (one of my favorite words) “tumescent,” in a food column. It caught my eye right away. A faux pas, for sure, I sniffed. Then I looked again. Phrases like “a midday second breakfast (to) share with someone,” “inspired partner” and “glorious morning,” made me reconsider my scoff. Maybe it was intentional. I’m all for creative use of language, but “tumescent” carrot cake? I’ll just have to take a bite and see for myself.
Foxtrot Moss
Capitola
Nonprofits have special status because they are supposed to provide a public benefit, not just make money. Clearly they need to provide a public benefit greater than just paying a contractor that does pay taxes to do the same. Nonprofits can and sure do solicit the public for donations. If they are unsuccessful at this, it means the public doesn’t want to fund them.
Why then should the government fund them? It is hubris, special-interest lobbying, conceit, self-interest and all the other factors that have no part in the government’s purpose at work.
They are paid not much sometimes, unjustified amounts other times, and many nonprofit workers are also on government support, another drain on government. There are minimum wage requirements, even double minimum wage requirements for nonprofits in some cases where all the money goes to them, not so much to performing public benefit.
— Garrett Philipp
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
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GOOD IDEA
This weekend marks the 40th anniversary of UCSC’s Multicultural Festival, which runs noon-6 p.m. on Saturday, May 18. The free festival raises money for the cultural student organizations that make the event possible. This year’s theme is “Together We Resist, Together We Persist.” Ruby Ibarra, a Pilipino rapper from San Lorenzo, California, will headline. On the school’s Lower Oakes Lawn, there will be 17 student organizations selling food and drink ranging from Thai tea and egg rolls to tofu and steak tacos made on the festival grounds.
GOOD WORK
Aristeo Flores, a custodian at Scotts Valley Middle School, will be crowned the winner of the nationwide 2019 Cintas Custodian of the Year contest in a surprise 11 a.m. school ceremony on Wednesday, May 15. Flores, a 17-year employee, will be presented with a $5,000 cash prize during an all-school assembly. Scotts Valley Middle School will also receive $5,000 in products and services from Cintas Corporation and Rubbermaid Commercial Products. The students and staff will get an ice cream truck break.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“I’m constantly amazed by the number of people who want to take my picture.”
Taking steps to reduce meat consumption even slightly has been proven to not only aid human health, but also the environment. Join cookbook author David Gabbe in a demo and lecture class on how to prepare quick, easy and low-stress plant-based meals that are tasty and nourishing. Recipe handouts and food samples are included. This workshop is designed both for adults and teens, advance online registration is recommended.
INFO: 6-8 p.m. Tuesday, May 21. New Leaf Community Market, 1101 Fair Ave., Santa Cruz. newleaf.com/events. Free.
Art Seen
Mountain Community Theater’s ‘Rapture, Blister, Burn’
Written by Gina Gionfriddo and directed by Mountain Community Theater’s Peter Gelblum, Rapture, Blister, Burn is a comedy about feminists and love that garnered a Pulitzer Prize finalist spot. The play tells the story of two women who chose opposite paths; while one built her career in academia, the other built a home with her husband and children. Years later, the two women wonder if they made the right decisions. Photo: Alaina Boys.
INFO: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday. Show runs Friday, May 17-Sunday, June 9. Park Hall, 9400 Mill St., Ben Lomond. 336-4777, mctshows.org. $17 student or senior/$20 general.
Saturday 5/18
Staff Of Life 50th Anniversary Party
Whether it’s the unparalleled bulk bins, healthy snack selection or impressive charcuterie, every Santa Cruzan has a special Staff of Life product or memory. It’s no surprise that Staff of Life has been around for 50 years; it is, after all, one of the local businesses at the core of Santa Cruz’s very identity. Join the staff and community in toasting the last half century, and celebrating the next 50 years, with more than 100 of Staff of Life’s suppliers offering free product samples and tastings, wine and beer tastings, cosmetic makeovers, kid’s activities and face painting, vitamin and supplement samples, and free all-natural BBQ samples from Staff of Life Natural Meats.
INFO: Noon-5 p.m. Staff of Life Natural Food Market, 1266 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. 423-8632, staffoflifemarket.com. Free.
Thursday 5-16-Saturday 5/18
Palace Art 70th Anniversary Celebration
Join Santa Cruz County’s most iconic art supply store for three days of arts workshops, demos and art exhibitions in celebration of their 70th anniversary. There will be festivities at both the Santa Cruz and Capitola locations, and activities will include everything from printmaking to watercolor painting to paper marbling to card making. All events are free, but some do require pre-registration, so check out the schedule at stores.gopalace.com/anniversary.
INFO: 1-5 p.m. on Thursday, 9:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday-Saturday. Palace Art and Office Supply, 1407 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz, 427-1550 and 1501 41st. Ave., Capitola, 464-2700. gopalace.com. Free.
Saturday 5/18
Art Expo
This outdoor inaugural Art Expo will feature artwork from over 50 individual artists and galleries throughout the greater Bay Area and Northern California Regions, from Sacramento to Monterey. The weekend event at the Old Wrigley Building lot will also include food from Ate3one and Chuy Santa Cruz, plus guest wineries. This art block-party is sponsored by Event Santa Cruz, the Art Cave and Idea Fab Labs Santa Cruz.
INFO: 3-7 p.m. The Art Cave, 2956 Mission St., Santa Cruz. (949) 413-9104. $5-$10.
Saturday 5/18
Funniest Student in Santa Cruz
DNA’s Comedy Lab is looking for the funniest student in Santa Cruz. Winners will receive cash, prizes, a chance to work a weekend show at DNA’s Comedy Lab and radio time on KPIG. It’s first-come, first-served, and every student will be judged to see if they progress to the big show the following day. All you need to do is show up and audition. Each audition is three minutes long. Those 16 and over must bring a current, valid student ID. Those under 16 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian. If selected, you must be able to compete the following day.
INFO: 10 a.m.-1 p.m. DNA’s Comedy Lab, 155 S. River St., Santa Cruz. dnascomedylab.com. Free.
Friday 5/17
Women Who Rock Our World
Meet the Ace Of Cups—the beloved female rock group from the 1960s San Francisco psychedelic scene. From the Acid Tests to the protests, the free concerts in Golden Gate Park to the ballrooms of San Francisco, they shared stages with everyone from the Band to the Grateful Dead, and were chosen to open for Jimi Hendrix the week after his performance at The Monterey Pop Festival. It isn’t surprising that in the midst of it all, they didn’t have much time for an album—until now. Join historian Douglas Brinkley, Kate Bowland, Lynda Francis and Anne Steinhardt for an evening celebrating women of the counterculture. Proceeds benefit Monarch Family Services.
INFO: Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. riotheatre.com. $25.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has fought the good fight for women and underrepresented groups for the better part of her 86 years—long before her appointment to the Supreme Court in 1993, and her recent rocketship to pop culture icon.
After graduating from Columbia Law School in 1959, she struggled to find employment because of her gender. She eventually landed at Rutgers University as a law professor, and was told that she would be paid less than her male colleagues because she had a husband with a well-paying job. At the time, she was one of less than 20 female law professors in the U.S.
She co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), eventually becoming the Project’s general counsel, and went on to litigate several gender-related discrimination cases in front of the Supreme Court—winning the majority of them and spearheading the fight for women’s justice one argument at a time.
Don’t be fooled by her stature, she’s a woman’s warrior and a force to be reckoned with. So much so that both the documentary RBG and the biopic about her, On The Basis Of Sex, came out in the last year alone—as did her latest book My Own Words. She also has her own action figure.
Ginsburg garnered the nickname “The Notorious RBG.” after fellow Brooklynite and rapper Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie Smalls. The moniker stuck after an NYU law student started the blog “The Notorious RBG” in 2013 in response to Ginsburg’s dissenting opinions. Although she’s a steadfast lover of opera, she’s said to have looked into Biggie’s background and music, according to the New York Times.
After battling cancer twice, she most recently fractured three ribs and had two cancerous nodules removed from her lung, only to return to the bench a few weeks later while the entire internet volunteered their own vital organs to ensure the associate justice’s recovery.
But when it comes to Justice Ginsburg, it turns out that everyone has a different story to tell. In connection with her latest book and the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music’s upcoming concert When There are Nine, inspired by the life of Justice Ginsburg, Bookshop Santa Cruz, the UC Santa Cruz Humanities Institute and Cabrillo Festival will present “My Own Words: The Law and Legacy of RBG,” a discussion about Ginsburg, her achievements and how gender influences legal discourse today.
Moderated by UCSC Distinguished Professor and feminist activist Bettina Aptheker, the panel will include Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Syda Cogliati and attorneys Anna Penrose-Levig and Jessica Delgado. The panelists come from different legal backgrounds, and each works in a different field of specialization, but they are all united by a deep respect and appreciation for Justice Ginsburg. Ahead of the event, panelists spoke to GT about women in law, RBG and other role models who influenced them. (Due to extenuating circumstances, Jessica Delgado was unable to participate in this article.)
Syda Cogliati
Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge
Syda Cogliati is Santa Cruz County’s newest superior court judge. She deals with misdemeanor cases, and previously worked as senior appellate research attorney at the Sixth District Court of Appeals. After graduating from UCSC as a politics and environmental studies double major, she says she was most interested in environmental law when she decided to pursue law at UC Hastings.
In your time from law school to now, were you particularly influenced by Justice Ginburg’s work?
To be honest, as a young law student and lawyer I wasn’t that keyed in to who she was. I have been lucky in my life to have other similar, female groundbreaking role models. My Justice Ginsburg is actually Justice Patricia Bamattre-Manoukian; she’s at the Sixth District Court of Appeals. I worked for her for over 12 years, and she was a woman who was a first in so many ways. Her grace, intelligence, diligence, and respect for the law really inspired me. I recognize those qualities in Justice Ginsburg.
I also love that Justice Ginsburg has become this cultural phenomenon. In law we can start to feel like we are in our own little world, like law dorks or something, but Justice Ginsburg has broken through to modern culture, and I love that she has made law and the Supreme Court so much more accessible to people, especially young women. People know her, even if they have nothing to do with law whatsoever.
What were some of the differences between UC Santa Cruz and UC Hastings Law School?
In the early 1990s, UC Santa Cruz was a pretty progressive place, and Hastings wasn’t quite that kind of institution yet, I think it’s come quite a long way, but one of the things that will always stand out for me is in my first-year class, I had a young female professor who was a woman of color. She was brand-new, and was teaching property. She was teaching this concept, remainderman, and she used the term “remainderperson.” There were some conservative students in the class, and one of the students in the class had the gall to raise his hand and say “the book says remainderman.”
I will never forget that—it was just a moment where the professor realized that not everyone was with her on being more progressive on including women in the law, and including women in basic legal terminology in the law. I love that she had the guts to change that term, and I appreciated that she did so. That’s one of the things that stood out for me, for why I want to make sure that the law includes women in every way.
Historically speaking, the majority of laws were made by, and interpreted by, white men. How do you think having more underrepresented voices in jurisprudence and in the legal field has affected law and how we think about law today?
Everyone brings their own perspective when they think about the law or how laws are applied. It’s best for our whole society to have different voices from different backgrounds interpreting the law and looking at historical developments of the law and how they apply today. Whether that’s women or other underrepresented groups, that’s important.
It makes a difference, my being a woman in the courtroom. It makes a difference to have people equally represented. I happen to have a courtroom right now where all four calendar attorneys are men. It’s a nice balance to have a woman in the judge role. It’s a comfort when a woman walks in and sees another woman involved in the process for her, whether she’s a litigant, defendant or attorney.
Do you think gender bias is something that women in law experience frequently?
I think that there are some subtle things. Right now for example, for this event, I’m researching women arguing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, because one of the things that RBG did was she won these very important cases there. When I was going back to dig into them, I realized that for the most significant one, even though she wrote the briefs and significantly participated, she didn’t actually give the argument, which was in front of nine men.
I started thinking about how that still persists to some extent. In a big case, if there is a man making a decision, the male partners may argue it themselves because they think they may connect more with that judge. The percentage of women today who argue in the Supreme Court is certainly not as high as the percentage of women lawyers that there are. It’s a place where improvement definitely needs to come. We still aren’t there yet, there’s a glass ceiling still there.
Bettina Aptheker
UCSC Professor, UC Presidential Co-Chair, Feminist Critical Race & Ethnic Studies, Feminist and Activist
Search “Bettina Aptheker” online and the official title bestowed by Google is “American Activist.” Rest assured, she holds many more titles than that. Aptheker is a professor, author, activist and feminist. She taught one of the country’s largest and most influential introductory feminist studies courses for nearly three decades at UCSC, and also holds the Jack and Peggy Baskin Foundation Presidential Chair for Feminist Studies.
What’s your relationship to Justice Ginsburg? When was it that you first heard about her?
I do not know Justice Ginsburg personally. However, we both grew up in Brooklyn. She is about 10 years older than I am, and we had very similar experiences in elementary school and our early lives. I was at UC Berkeley, so I wasn’t in law school, but in terms of the sexism we encountered, she describes that beautifully in her book. I was aware of her early on because I had been following her court cases about sex discrimination while I was teaching. I needed to know the cases when I started teaching as San Jose State, I think in ’76. She’s the chief architect of the legal struggle for women’s equality in the law. She did a brilliant job.
It’s interesting that you’ve known who she is for decades, especially since she’s only really garnered the recognition she deserved in the last 10 years or so.
That’s right, yes, it’s been really amazing. I think she captured the imagination of many young people because of the speaking that she does. She’s out and about—and has been for years—talking to college audiences, especially women. She’s a delightful person, you can see that. She’s a workaholic, and brilliant and delightfully funny. She’s captured the imagination of young women. They started to promote her as an iconic figure, and she certainly didn’t try to stop it.
Something that struck me when I was researching Justice Ginsburg is her relationship with the late Justice Scalia. Especially now, in a time of intense tribalism, do you think people have something to learn from their relationship?
I think people do have something to learn. They were two people who formed a friendship based on a love for opera, I believe. They formed a friendship that crossed the divide of their ideological and legal differences, which are very profound. It wasn’t just that Justice Scalia is conservative, he’s an originalist, meaning just trying to read the Constitution as it was originally written. She’s someone who says the Constitution is alive and breathing and growing. So they have this huge difference, but they helped each other also. They would call each other to send their opinions to each other when they wrote them. They strengthened each other, and that’s a marvelous example of humanity. Especially in this period now—where, in my view, Trump is so dug in, and it’s all about loyalty to him, and God help you if you cross him.
What do you hope people will take away from this event?
We are getting the sense that it’ll be standing-room only. I’m happy for whoever comes and am hoping we have a good turnout from the campus. I hope people get a sense of awareness for the Cabrillo Festival and her book, but also hope that people will learn a lot about how we can use the law to create change and how important the issue of liberation of women is for society. That has great currency now with the debate about reproductive freedom, for example, and in addition there are interrelated issues of race and democracy more broadly. We will be talking about those issues that she worked on, in particular the Voting Rights Act.
Historically speaking, the majority of laws have been created and interpreted by white men. Do you think jurisprudence and the law are more accessible to people of color and women than they have been in the past?
I think what we have done over the years is expand what the law stands for. A very good example of that is I was very intimately involved in the Angela Davis trial back in the late ’60s and early ’70s, and we used the law. That’s the tool we had. We used it to guarantee as much of a fair trial as we possibly could. From my point of view, the law is an important avenue of struggle for social justice working in tandem with mass movements in the streets.
Anna Penrose-Levig
Associate Attorney, Penrose Chun & Gorman LLP
Anna Penrose-Levig never dreamed of being a lawyer. She says she fell into it by accident. Penrose-Levig pursued her degree at UC Hastings because of the opportunity that comes with a law degree. She currently works at her father’s firm and specializes in estate planning.
In what ways has gender factored into your career as a lawyer?
I grew up in the Central Valley and I was raised Catholic. That framed my worldview growing up, and questioning that system wasn’t encouraged, nor was it even presented as an option, really. So my world was framed from birth in terms of families being made up of a husband and a wife, and children. Husbands were the “head of the household” and women and girls were valued according to their attractiveness. The messages that I received were that attractiveness included being compliant, not making waves. One of my male teachers in high school hit on me, and commented negatively about my boyfriend and on how my clothes fit me in class in front of other students. Male students disregarded my personal space in really public and humiliating ways more than once. Those men felt empowered to do those things in that environment, and I implicitly understood that life would be easier if I never said anything to anyone about those experiences.
So I wouldn’t say that my childhood prepared me to confidently or directly address discrimination of any kind. I was pretty clueless about all forms of discrimination when I left home for higher education. I had no awareness of my own white, middle-class privilege. I didn’t understand the depth of that privilege or how much it affected my opportunity to pursue higher education. And as I approached law school, I still didn’t really have gender discrimination, or even traditional gender roles, specifically on my radar. I definitely didn’t see the subtle ways that gender discrimination can operate.
When I began to learn more about institutional bias and implicit bias, how that has come to evolve in our society, whether its gender bias or racial bias, bias and stigma related to mental health issues, or other kinds of bias, I began to look back at my childhood and understand how thoughtlessly I had made my way through the first part of my life with respect to the effects of bias on my own life, and on the lives of other people whose experiences are fundamentally different from my own.
The reason I bring this up is to lend some concreteness to my experience of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s work as being about more than gender bias. I really think that Justice Ginsburg’s work is about equality for everyone whose rights and experiences were excluded from the systems that the white, male, property-owning founders created with the imperfect goal of advancing and protecting only, or primarily, the interests of people like them.
When Justice Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court, issues of women’s rights and equal pay more specifically weren’t necessarily as well-known and contentious as they are today. With that in mind, do you think that people are more aware of gender biases today than they were 20 years ago?
I’d like to say yes, but I’m really not sure of whether people are more aware than they were 20 years ago. Maybe there’s more mainstream discussion of the issues, but I’m not sure that the discussion has penetrated practical reality for most people. I’m not sure that the discussion is reflected in our actions in a way that’s meaningful, that behaviors have actually changed. I’m disappointed that we still live in a world in which Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting opinions are required. She’s been writing dissenting opinions so much more frequently, and I feel like I’m being reminded more often lately that people still aren’t doing the right thing. It’s incredibly disappointing that a majority of our Supreme Court Justices are still so far removed from the everyday experiences of the people whom their decisions affect. It’s disappointing that Justice Ginsburg and other Supreme Court Justices still have to point out to the majority much of the time, and to our U.S. Senators and Representatives, that the law, or its application, is still biased in fundamental ways.
Justice Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., a pay discrimination case, is a good example of what I’m talking about. For 20 years, Lilly Ledbetter did the same work as men at the company, and each year the gap grew between her pay and theirs. When the case reached the Supreme Court, a majority of five male Justices ruled against Lilly Ledbetter because she had waited too long to sue. Justice Ginsburg’s dissent invited Congress to change the law, which Congress did, so that now each new paycheck affected by a discriminatory action resets the time to file a lawsuit. But for this important change to have a beneficial effect, women have to feel empowered to advocate to be paid what they are worth, and to sue when it doesn’t happen. We aren’t generally taught that its acceptable to do that. Instead, society still tells women that when we assert our needs, we are being obnoxious, and when we get angry we’re being unreasonable.
When it comes to having a career and family, did you ever feel like you had to choose?
I never felt like I had to choose, but I don’t think I was well-informed. For about the last 10 years, just balancing work and finding time for family that doesn’t involve me being an ogre, that’s been all I’ve had the capacity to handle. I have two daughters, ages 9 and 10. Before them, I didn’t know anything about children, and I was terrified when I had my first. I knew this little person was going to be totally dependent on me to survive for a period of time. I’ve been fortunate to work for flexible employers who understand that this balance is hard, but it’s still true that doing both career and family well is more difficult than I ever could have conceived of.
Like Justice Ginsburg, I’m very lucky to have a very supportive partner who shares more than the traditional responsibility for child-rearing, and who does all of the cooking. We have a pretty non-traditional relationship that I’m very proud to have worked out together with him. He is a big part of why I can take the time now to learn more about Justice Ginsburg’s very important contribution to our body of law and our society and participate in relating that information to our community.
‘My Own words: The Law and the Legacy of RBG’ will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, May 22, at DNA’s Comedy Lab, 155 S River St., Santa Cruz. bookshopsantacruz.com/RBG. Free.
