So what’s up with the $1 charge for a glass of water at Home Restaurant? A few folks brought it to my attention, and manager/co-owner Linda Ritten explained that it’s part of Home’s high-priority goal to curb water waste and showcase sustainable ingredients.
“We are adamantly against the wastefulness of importing sparkling water, or even bottled water, period,” Ritten says. “Home has a wonderful and expensive in-house water filtration system, and hence we feel it is fair to charge a mere $1.”
Ritten admits people have asked why the restaurant doesn’t just tuck the cost of its reverse-osmosis water system in somewhere else, but the restaurant has chosen to be “open and honest about what we charge,” she says.
Besides, the opportunity to discuss the $1 water charge also provides an opportunity to highlight other thoughtful measures taken by the restaurant. “We use 100% recycled, linen-like napkins that are compostable,” Ritten says. “We compost all kitchen scraps. We are no longer importing any octopus, and are committed to using sustainable Monterey Bay and West Coast seafood, buying almost all of our produce from small local farms. We are proud of what we do and serve, and our serious commitment to creating a more sustainable future for our children and their friends.”
Sounds like the charming restaurant where Brad Briske is chef has given its commitment to sustainability a lot of thought, and I was glad to have Ritten expand on the issue of water. For many of us eco-watchers, water is the final frontier. Kudos!
Home is open Tuesday-Saturday from 5-9pm at 3101 N Main St., Soquel. 431-6131, homesoquel.com.
Red Tradition
A happy band of university colleagues has enjoyed toasting out the old year at an annual Red Restaurant gathering, in which adult beverages are consumed with gusto. Perfect with the vintage vibe of this former roadhouse, Italian restaurant and, for many years now, cozy and spacious saloon. We never miss the chance to grab the best couches and inhale such specialties as brussel sprout chips with capers and smoked sea salt ($6), those addictive truffle and rosemary fries ($6) and the decadent prosciutto-wrapped asparagus ($9).
The extensive list of designer international single malts, bourbons and gins is punctuated with a few creative cocktails. Not to miss is the Prince of Darkness ($11) an update of the classic, wicked Negroni. The Prince features Tanquerey, Amaro, Campari, elderflower liqueur, lemon and simple syrup garnished with a grapefruit peel. Um yes. A few of these and you might work up some optimism for the new year.
Everybody knows that Shoppers Corner is the Fort Knox of wine treasures, offering the rare, the smart and the affordable in all shades of red, white and pink. And holidays cry out for some special ideas in wine pairing. Thanks to wine buyer/winemaker Andre Beauregard, I tasted something that you’ll want to include on your winter menu. Poggio Antico “Madre” 2014 from Montalcino, near Siena, is a gorgeous blend of equal parts Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese. At 14% alcohol, it can handle any meat you’d care to consider, but will do just beautifully with holiday pasta, brisket, smoked salmon, or turkey. With its perfect balance of tannins and fruit, this red wine is a rounded cascade of cassis, cherries, stone, and leather with a hint of kumquat on the nose. The long finish is perfumed with bay leaves. It drinks like a $50 bottle of wine, but at Shoppers, it’s yours for just under $30. Hurry and get some while it lasts.
Anti-Product of the Week
Instant Gluten-Free Oatmeal in a little 2oz microwaveable cup from Bob’s Red Mill. Seriously, we gave this stuff a fair shot. Added boiling water, stirred, waited 3 minutes, stirred again, and applied almond milk and demerara sugar. But no. It was not only unpleasant, it was beyond awful! GF oats, chia seeds, flax seed, and sea salt never tasted this bad. Truly terrible. I’ve tasted cardboard that was more delicious. Inedible for around $2.50.
Here’s a great movie pitch that takes far less than 25 words: Helen Mirren and Ian McKellan. What, you’re still sitting there? Those two names above the title alone should be enough to send any self-respecting movie fan galloping off to the box office.
Indeed, the pleasure of watching these two wily silver foxes together on-screen is the main attraction in The Good Liar, an elegant mystery of con artistry and designated victims that never quite plays out the way you expect. Sir Ian and Dame Helen do not disappoint, testing, cajoling and beguiling each other (and the audience) in every frame, oiling the gears that make the movie run so smoothly.
It’s a lovely piece of craftsmanship from director Bill Condon, who has worked with McKellan before (in the excellent Gods And Monsters, and more recently, Mr. Holmes). He has a shrewd eye for setting off his veteran players to best effect. Every detail of costuming, interiors and psychology layers on a rich impasto of character development for the actors to work with. It’s only in the last 20 minutes or so that the movie goes off the rails, as the improbable revelations mount, leading to a needlessly violent and not-quite-credible finale.
Scripted by Jeffrey Hatcher (who wrote the wonderful Stage Beauty), from a novel by Nicholas Searle, The Good Liar, as its title suggests, is a tale of deceptions. In the opening credits, we see two people filling out less-than-truthful online dating profiles. After some virtual chatting, they meet in a cafe, where both laughingly admit they used assumed names on their profiles. In real life, he is jaunty Roy (McKellan), a dapper retiree, and she is Betty (Mirren), a well-to-do widow. (She wryly calls online dating “matching the delusional to the hopeless.”)
Directly upon leaving the cafe, Roy strolls down to a strip club to join his accomplice, banker Vincent (yes, that’s Jim Carter, better known as Carson from Downton Abbey). They’re about to close a deal involving a couple of pigeons in a financial scam that will fleece their victims’ life savings. We quickly understand that Roy and Vincent have been partners in these elaborate confidence games for years. “You don’t care about the money,” Vincent tells Roy, admiringly. “You love the game.”
So we know it’s game-on for Roy and Betty. She owns a lovely suburban home on the outskirts of London, for which she paid cash, decorated in soothing, upper-class neutral hues. (“It’s like being smothered in beige,” Roy complains to Vincent.) She’s too smart and self-contained to fall for all of his soft soap, yet she finds his company “charming,” and while their relationship remains consensually platonic, she frequently invites him to stay the night in her spare room.
The only potential obstacle to Roy’s plans is Betty’s protective adult grandson, Stephen (Russell Tovey), suspicious of Roy from the start, who pops in all too often to check up on his gran. There are further complications from a disgruntled former victim out for revenge, and a handful of other rather dicey players in a concurrent scheme that may unravel at any moment. Roy’s often ruthlessly effective methods of handling these distractions ratchet up our concern for warm-hearted, increasingly compliant Betty.
This is really all that can be safely revealed about the plot (which includes an unexpected detour to WWII-era Berlin, via flashback). But even in its least persuasive moments—and there are a few—the fun of watching Mirren and McKellan prowling around the screen, leading each other a merry dance (well, not so merry in the closing moments) is mostly its own reward.
McKellan delivers another master class in facial expressiveness, pouting, pleading and wisecracking his way through the various layers of Roy’s personae. Mirren’s pragmatic Betty advocates for sunny common sense, yet lets us glimpse something enigmatic ever lurking at the outskirts of her composure. Theirs is an irresistible heavyweight matchup that the ultimately unstable plot can’t quite support.
THE GOOD LIAR
**1/2 (out of four)
With Ian McKellan, Helen Mirren and Jim Carter. Written by Jeffrey Hatcher. From the novel by Nicholas Searle. Directed by Bill Condon. A Warner Bros. release. Rated R. 109 minutes.
When local musician Jim Rosenberg asked longtime pal Paul Logan to join him in the John Prine tribute duo Diamonds In The Rough, Rosenberg was surprised to learn that Logan was completely unaware of Prine’s music, aside from “Angel From Montgomery”—and that was because Bonnie Raitt covered it.
It didn’t matter. When the two got together to work out some Prine songs—Rosenberg on guitar, Logan on bass, both on vocals—it just worked. Logan quickly came to understand why Rosenberg was so obsessed with Prine’s subtle American storytelling style.
“He’s really come to embrace him,” Rosenberg says. “And that’s the power of the songs. They’re just so good.”
Appreciation for Prine has grown. His last album, 2018’s The Tree of Forgiveness, is one of his most successful albums to date. But his public profile has never risen above cult status.
“John Prine has always been one of my favorites. I know every John Prine song there possibly is. The songs are so good that hopefully, if you reach the right people, there are enough John Prine fans out there. It’s just getting them to come out of the woodwork,” Rosenberg says. “This is not like an AC/DC tribute band or a Neil Young tribute band or a Pink Floyd tribute band. It’s definitely obscure.”
7:30pm. Wednesday, Nov. 27. Michael’s On Main, 2591 Main St., Soquel. $10. 479-9777.
The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously adopted an ordinance that will require restaurants and stores to charge a 25-cent fee on all single-use cups starting next summer. The move is aimed at reducing the estimated 50 million disposable cups used in the county each year.
The ordinance will go into effect on July 1, 2020. It’s set for final approval on Dec. 10. About 300 businesses in the county’s unincorporated area will be affected by the new cup fee, said Tim Goncharoff, the county’s integrated waste management programs coordinator.
“We will be doing extensive outreach to them between now and when the ordinance takes effect,” Goncharoff said. County officials will also conduct follow-up visits with businesses, he said.
Similar to fees on single-use bags at grocery stores, the ordinance means that anyone requesting a paper or plastic cup for their hot or cold drink will have to cough up a quarter, which will go to the businesses.
According to Goncharoff, fast-food litter tops the list of the waste found throughout the county, and king among that is cups. There is no charge under the ordinance if the customers come with a reusable cup.
“This is our effort to remind people to bring your own cup,” Goncharoff said. “It’s the easiest thing you can do to help protect our environment.”
First step
Supervisor Bruce McPherson suggested a regional ordinance through which cities could enact their own fees on single-use cups.
“I think that’s the way we can really have an impact across the whole county,” he said.
In Watsonville, businesses will charge 10 cents per cup starting next July, per a city ordinance that was passed over the summer.
Supervisor Greg Caput called the new rule “a step in the right direction,” and said that the county should take a broader look at reducing waste from fast-food restaurants.
“That’s a lot of garbage that’s going in the landfill,” he said.
The supervisors at future meetings will consider similar ordinances on other pollutants, such as balloons and disposable contact lenses, many of which are washed into Monterey Bay, Goncharoff said. They will also look at clothes made from microfiber, which result in microscopic bits of plastic washing out to sea.
“The board is not done dealing with litter and pollution,” he said. “There is so much more to do.”
The new to-go cup fee ordinance also includes fines and penalties for non-compliance, a step rarely taken, Goncharoff said.
“Our goal is really just to help everyone get compliant,” he said, “and that usually works just fine.”
Wildfires are ravaging California, incinerating homes and spurring large-scale evacuations and mass power blackouts. Then there are droughts that dry out landscapes and lead to water shortages. When the rains do come, powerful storms can cause flooding. All the while, coastal residents are left to worry about rising seas, faster erosion, and warmer, more acidic oceans.
With all these doomsday scenarios to consider, it’s worth asking: What’s climate change doing to our mental health? Enter the world of “climate grief.”
This genre of existential dread is real and growing, fueling depression, anxiety or both, according to a fast-evolving body of psychological research. A 2018 Yale survey found that 62% of Americans are at least “somewhat worried” about global warming, and 21% are “very worried.” The latter figure has almost doubled since 2015. Meanwhile, only 6% of those surveyed believe that humans can and will successfully reduce global warming.
The American Psychological Association (APA) has also recognized the rise of climate grief, and in 2017 released an extensive report on the issue. “When you think about climate change, mental health might not be the first thing that comes to mind,” the report’s authors wrote, though “The health, economic, political, and environmental implications of climate change affect all of us.”
That’s exactly why Michelle Merrill created Novasutras, a climate support group of sorts that recently expanded to Santa Cruz. Founded online in 2017, the organization now aims to establish in-person communities to bring people together and “co-create spiritual practices based in nature,” Merrill says, or more simply, “a way to connect and drop into a community where they know everyone gets it.”
“Climate grief is one of the subcategories of ecological grief,” Merrill adds. “It’s very present right now, because we’re very aware of the effects of climate change. People are realizing that it’s an existential threat, and that there’s a possibility of human extinction.”
This sobering sentiment is echoed by ongoing research right here at UCSC on accelerating climate-linked animal extinctions. From a policy perspective, the 2018 U.N. Climate Report stated that without “unprecedented” action, catastrophic conditions could materialize as soon as 2040.
A recent example that hit close to home were the large-scale power blackouts, aka “Public Safety Power Shutoffs,” by utility Pacific Gas & Electric—a precautionary move to prevent power lines from sparking wildfires in windy conditions, the company said—that left large portions of Santa Cruz County in the dark for days. The collective anxiety was omnipresent, taking on an almost apocalyptic feel. And PG&E says that blackouts like this could become the new normal in California for at least the next decade as it works to shore up outdated infrastructure.
On a global scale, Merrill is also tracking what she calls “climate apartheid,” where the poorest communities are hit first and hardest by environmental tumult.
“We’re seeing this, we know it could happen to us, and we empathize with those affected,” she says. “It’s the constant sense of things getting worse, and a lack of confidence that things will get better.”
Still, humans are resilient and adaptive. There are ways we can cope with climate grief.
“The first and most important thing to recognize is that you’re not alone,” says Merrill. It’s important to acknowledge grief about climate change with others, she explains, while realizing that there are also many reasons for gratitude and joy.
There are now groups like Novasutras, Extinction Rebellion and others not only in Santa Cruz but worldwide, and awareness of the human toll of self-inflicted climate peril is growing.
“It’s very much something we talk about now, more so than three-four years ago,” says Merrill. “Amongst people who are already climate-aware, people are talking about their grief more.”
A few people around here probably remember OnRadio, the also-ran online company I worked at in Scotts Valley that originally planned to make web pages for radio stations and syndicate content to them. Yeah, it seems like a completely ridiculous idea now, but hey, it was a different time. The people were great (fellow OnRadio vet Sue LaMothe is here at GT, too) and it’s where I met James Rocchi, the excellent film critic who would go on to be “Mr. DVD” for Netflix. Through him, I did some work for Netflix reviewing movies, back when they thought they needed professional reviewers. It was definitely a wild and woolly time among the barn-like office buildings just off Highway 17 in Scotts Valley (OnRadio’s office was just a couple blocks down from Netflix). This week, Wallace Baine takes Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph back there to discuss that era and Randolph’s new book about the company, That Will Never Work. Also in this issue, Richard von Busack reviews Netflix’s latest volley in its continuing shakeup of the movie world, the $160 million Martin Scorsese epic The Irishman.
Santa Cruz Gives is off to an incredible start—I won’t spoil it here, but I guarantee you’ll be shocked at what we’ve already raised if you check out the leaderboard at santacruzgives.org. We’re on our way toward our goal, but our nonprofits need your help to reach it. Meanwhile, three new sponsors have joined Santa Cruz Gives this year to provide matching funds to be shared among all 38 participating nonprofits: the Joe Collins Fund at the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County, Kaiser Permanente, and Barry Swenson Builders. Huge thanks to all of them.
Finally, I’ll be on the panel for the Q&A discussion after the screening of James Whale’s Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein this Thursday, Nov. 21, at DNA’s Comedy Lab. The night starts at 7pm, come on out. It’s all part of this week’s FrankenCon, and it’ll be a lot of fun!
Re: “Stories to Come” (GT, 10/30): It’s great that you are citing figures and plans as we talk about a renewed library. But the semantics you use are a bit confusing. While the new parking garage could provide some housing, a real proposal with a significant amount of housing is not on the table. What has been on the table for decades is the idea of building a huge parking garage where the Farmers Market is. In a political marriage five years ago or so, the project was made more attractive by adding a library to it and using the parking funds paying for the structure to subsidize part of the construction of the library. Of course, no one asked library users if they wanted their library in the parking garage. I don’t think they do.
With regard to the parking garage end of this artificially joined conversation, the reason many of us oppose spending $60 million to build a parking garage is that our community has a communal obligation to owning and operating a lot less cars within the next 11 years. That’s because, as Greta Thunberg and my daughter keep reminding us, we have to reduce our CO2 emissions by at least 50% in the next 11 years to prevent a runaway climate disaster. And the use of automobiles is our community’s single biggest contribution. So, we are going to succeed at not needing another large parking garage because we have to; because even if we do everything else, from electric cars to solar panels, we have to use a lot less cars in the next 11 years. Anyone who reviews the material of CO2 sources and potential for reductions will come to the same conclusion. With regard to automobile use, It is not a matter of projections anymore, it is a matter of necessity.
Our plans for our little downtown, like the plans for little downtowns everywhere, have to start with a commitment to stopping runaway climate change.
Micah Posner
Santa Cruz
Re: “Secrets and Lyme” (GT, 10/23): Thank you for taking on this divisive issue. You characterize Lyme as rare in California, but I would like to give you some information you may not be aware of.
Lyme and other TBDs are not rare, they are, instead, rarely counted. Case under-reporting is far more than a factor of 10 here, it is at least 40 according to a Quest Lab study which found a rate for their (average in U.S.) 1/3 of market that translates to ~4,000 cases per year. CDPH reports 100 per year. My county, Sonoma, counts a pre-selected number. I have Karen Holbrook (deputy Public Health Officer) recorded saying, “we plan to continue counting 8-10 cases per year.” This is evidence of blatant corruption of the entire case reporting process. CDPH is aware of this incidence and has done nothing.
We have a dozen reportable tick-borne diseases endemic to California, and those are vastly under-reported too. For example, a 1995 study found the control group – consisting of Sacramento blood bank donors—had a rate of 20% infected with Babesia duncani. The study group was similar at 18%. Yet CDPH reports minuscule numbers of this disease, which is related to malaria and is transmissible through transfusions. Blood banks still fail to test donated blood for this infection. Yes, it can be deadly.
Lyme and tick-borne diseases in California: not rare at all.
Karen Miller
Healdsburg
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GOOD IDEA
The city of Santa Cruz’s new virtual-reality exhibit on sea-level rise is now open at the downtown branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library. The exhibit includes virtual reality headsets, informational panels and fact sheets. The American Geophysicist’s Union is funding the exhibit, with support from a Coastal Commission grant. It’s part of the Resilient Coast Santa Cruz Initiative, a set of projects aimed at developing more resilient coastal management in the face of climate change.
GOOD WORK
Randy Morris, an Alameda County social services executive, will be the next human services director for Santa Cruz County. Morris has served Alameda County for nearly 25 years in a variety of roles, working on child welfare, Medi-Cal, and adult and aging services. Current Human Services Director Ellen Timberlake is retiring and will continue leading the Human Services Department through Randy’s arrival in early 2020, and will assist in the leadership transition.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Anybody that doesn’t like Netflix, that’s like saying you hate Santa Claus.”
Getting together with my Wild Wine Women group is always a fun experience. We especially enjoy going to a winery we haven’t visited before.
That was certainly the case for most of our group when we entered the impressive portals of Black Ridge Vineyards through its massive gate. What a spread! Gorgeous grounds greet the visitor, and a beautiful, well-decorated tasting room invites one to linger and enjoy the variety. This prime piece of real estate is well worth a visit—and you get to taste some good wines, too.
I sampled a few of Black Ridge’s wines but particularly gravitated toward their 2015 estate-grown Chardonnay ($40). Rich and floral, it captures the essence of a well-made Chardonnay with its dense citrus fruit flavors and enticing aromas of apple, pear, banana, and pineapple. Many of us bought wine to share over lunch at a huge table in the tasting room, and the Chardonnay was voted the best.
“Winemaker Bill Brosseau convinced us to graft over a less popular varietal in order to offer you more of our estate Chardonnay,” say the folks at Black Ridge, who also sing the praises of their vineyard foreman, Armando Perez-Martinez. Brosseau has crafted the grapes into a lustrous, food-friendly wine worthy of any dinner table.
Black Ridge Vineyards, 18570 Black Ridge Rd., Los Gatos. 408-399-6396, blackridgevineyards.com.
Persephone Hosts Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard
The delightful Persephone Restaurant in Aptos will be pouring the wonderful wines of Santa Cruz Mountain Vineyard for a winemaker’s dinner. The five-course dinner includes a main course of seared lamb loin with pomegranate-walnut sauce. Cost is $100 per person, including tax and gratuity.
Ever thought of walking down to Monterey? Well, Rachel Kippen has. Actually, Kippen has walked the bay more than a dozen times. It’s only 40 miles. Kippen is the executive director of O’Neill Sea Odyssey and will be sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm for exploring one of the longest contiguous stretches of walkable sandy shoreline on the West Coast. Our coastline offers locations to beach camp or lodge and to view seasonal wildlife, including seabirds, whales, snowy plovers, sea otters and more. Kippen will provide tips, encouragement and itinerary guidance for the treks, which can be done solo, in groups, on day trips or weekends, or a four-day jaunt.
INFO: 7pm. Thursday, Nov. 21. The Live Oak Grange Hall, 1900 17th Ave., Live Oak. Free.
Art Seen
Santa Cruz Tattoo’d
Featuring tatted locals with powerful stories about their ink, the MAH’s newest exhibit uncovers personal tattoo stories from across Santa Cruz County. Grounded in the history of tattoo legalization, this exhibition highlights the artistry and creativity of tattooing throughout the county. Stop by on opening day to dive into tattoo history and artistry found throughout the county, featuring the works of nine local tattoo shops and artists. Plus, there will be a temporary tattoo in the pop-up tattoo shop located inside the gallery. Photo: Mickey Ta.
INFO: 10am- 8pm. Exhibit runs Friday, Nov. 22-Sunday, Feb. 23, 2020. Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz. 429-1964, santacruzmah.org. $10.
Saturday 11/23
Dig Gardens 10th Annual Holiday Open House
One of Santa Cruz’s favorite boutique nurseries is turning 10 this year. Dig Gardens has always been a go-to for kitchen and home products, accessories and, of course, plants. A haven for plant parents, Dig always has some kind of new, exotic addition to any collection. In celebration of their first decade, Dig is hosting a holiday Open House and anniversary party that is a must for holiday shopping. All items in the store will be 10% off, and there will be a raffle and small bites.
INFO: 4-8 p.m. Dig Gardens, 420 Water St., Santa Cruz. 466-3444. Free.
Saturday 11/23
American Indian Art
Join the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History for an in-depth exploration of American Indian art through conversation and artifact exploration.From gift baskets to painted pottery to shell pendants and beaded clothing, American Indian art varies from region to region. During this seminar at the museum, Rebecca Hernandez will give a general overview of artistic characteristics across several regions and demonstrate how various artifacts are made. Hernandez is director of the American Indian Resource Center at UCSC, and her academic research focuses on American Indian identity constructs in America.
INFO: 1-4pm. Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. santacruzmuseum.org. $20.
Thursday 11/21
Sparkling Wine Tasting Class
Champagne may be the king of sparkling wines, but there are truly outstanding examples of sparkling wines—produced according to the same methods and techniques as Champagne—made all over the world. The class will examine the different ways to make a wine sparkle; taste various examples and styles of sparkling wine from Champagne, California and elsewhere around the globe. The class is open to everyone from sparkling wine aficionados to those unfamiliar with fizz. Class size is limited to 24 people and designed for all levels. Students must be over 21. Tickets includes a taste of eight different wines and light refreshments.
INFO: 7-9pm. Equinox and Bartolo Winery and Tasting Room, 334 Ingalls St., Santa Cruz. 471-8608. $45.
On a summer day in Santa Cruz in 1997, two guys came out of Logos Books & Records on Pacific Avenue, one of them carrying a newly purchased used CD of Patsy Cline’s greatest hits. Neither was particularly jonesing to hear Patsy’s famously plaintive contralto. In fact, any CD—Tiny Tim, Twisted Sister, whatever—would have sufficed.
Patsy did not go into a CD player that day. Instead, she was slipped into a self-addressed stamped greeting-card envelope (sans jewel case), escorted to the Santa Cruz main post office, and put into the mail.
From that otherwise banal moment on an otherwise ordinary day came a revolution that has turned the movie and television industries upside down.
That was the day Netflix was born.
The men visiting Logos were Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, who together created the company that has changed not only how millions around the world watch movies and TV, but which is also now challenging the hegemony of Hollywood in how entertainment is produced. Along with Google, Facebook and Amazon, it ranks among the most massively successful businesses of the 21st century.
But back in ’97, they were just a couple of schemers, trying to figure out a way to take advantage of this new tool called the internet. Their story is told in Randolph’s exhilarating new book That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea.
Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph’s new book is ‘That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea.’
The pair had already been kicking around the idea of an online video rental business. But the format of the times, the VHS tape, was too big and too heavy. Handling costs would have been prohibitive. They had, in fact, already scrapped the idea when the buzz began to grow about another format, the DVD, being developed in Japan.
They didn’t have a DVD—nobody outside of Japan did at that point. But they knew it would be identical to a compact disc. So they needed to see how the U.S. Postal Service would treat a vulnerable 5-inch plastic disc.
By that time, Randolph had already put in 20 years in direct marketing and sent out millions of pieces of mail.
“I had been to the San Jose central post office,” he told me in an interview in Scotts Valley, right across the street from the site of Netflix’s first office. “I’d seen those machines shoot those letters through at 16 gazillion miles an hour and bend them around corners, and all that.”
He was certain that Patsy Cline—whose biggest hit was I Fall to Pieces—would arrive to them in pieces.
The next day, Hastings and Randolph met in a parking lot in Scotts Valley, just as they did every day, for the carpool over Highway 17 to their tech jobs in Silicon Valley. Hastings nonchalantly handed Randolph the square envelope, containing the CD, in one piece. For 32 cents, the price of a stamp.
MAILING IT IN
It was not, however, the classic a-ha moment. It wasn’t like BoJack Horseman appeared to them on Highway 17 and laid out the whole glorious future ahead of them, Randolph says.
“It was more akin to finding the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle under the couch,” he says. “We had this puzzle that we couldn’t complete. So we walked away from it. Then we found the piece that finished it. If the book is about anything, it’s not an epiphany story, nor is it some brilliant visionary CEO story, either. It was just luck. Lots of luck.”
Many months later, when the Netflix idea was already well underway, Randolph learned exactly how lucky they had been. He writes in That Will Never Work that he was given a tour of the Santa Cruz post office and discovered that cross-town mail was handled in a different way—a gentler way—than out-of-town mail. If they had mailed Patsy Cline to anywhere else than Hastings’s Santa Cruz address, even to Randolph’s Scotts Valley home, the CD would probably have gotten scratched or broken. “And I wouldn’t be writing this book,” he wrote.
Netflix is not the only tech behemoth for which Santa Cruz is part of its origin story. According to Brad Stone’s 2013 book The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos visited Santa Cruz in 1994 to pitch some computer programmers on his idea for an online bookstore, and went as far as looking at office space in Santa Cruz.
But the Netflix story is more than incidentally about Santa Cruz. Randolph, 61, first came to Santa Cruz County in the late ’80s to work at the Scotts Valley-based software firm Borland International. He fell in love with the place, and part of his entrepreneurial vision before Netflix was to somehow establish Santa Cruz as a conducive place for tech.
“I did like the lifestyle aspects of Santa Cruz,” he says. “Being able to surf in the morning or go for a trail run. I really liked that the networks in Santa Cruz weren’t all Silicon Valley people. There was a diversity here—not necessarily in a racial sense, but more a diversity in viewpoint and background. I just felt that the range of people walking on Pacific Avenue was remarkable.”
Randolph was the original CEO of Netflix, but he left the company in 2002, and his new book is an often-funny, sometimes-harrowing romp through those early years of getting established in Scotts Valley. If the idea to send DVDs through the mail had been the company’s only innovation, it probably would have quickly sank in the swamp of internet get-rich schemes, particularly given the absolute dominance of Blockbuster and its competitors in establishing consumer habits when it came to watching movies at home.
The innovations had to keep coming, and Randolph and Hastings were up to the job. In the early days, when DVDs had reached the tipping point toward market dominance, Randolph remembered standing in the middle of the company’s San Jose warehouse looking at more than 100,000 DVDs. “I thought, why are we storing these here?” he says. “I wonder if there’s a way to store them at customer’s houses instead. Then Reed said, ‘Let’s let them keep the DVDs as long as they want. When they’re done with one, we’ll send them another one.’”
That was quickly followed by two other innovations that taken together spelled doom for the Blockbuster era: Charging customers a flat monthly subscription fee, rather than making them pay for each movie, and creating the famous Netflix queue in which customers could create a priority list of what they wanted to see and have it automatically delivered.
Winding Road
Early on, before Patsy Cline, Randolph and Hastings had developed a ritual. As the two took turns driving over 17, Randolph would pitch Hastings with an idea. And Hastings would, more often than not, deliver the verdict from which Randolph titled his book: “That’ll never work.”
Randolph’s pre-Netflix ideas were, in hindsight, not exactly brilliant: home-delivery shampoo, personalized dog food, custom-built baseball bats and surfboards. The Netflix idea developed in stages, after hours of research and discussion, and through a series of timely actions and lucky breaks. The Patsy Cline moment was a turning point, but there was no light bulb, no apple falling on Newton’s head, no epiphanies.
“Distrust epiphanies,” Randolph writes in That Will Never Work. “Epiphanies are rare. When they appear in origin stories, they’re often oversimplified or just plain false.”
Before he met Reed Hastings, Randolph was a veteran in marketing. He was a co-founder of MacUser magazine and started two of the first mail-order catalogues for computer products in the pre-internet days. He worked for years at Borland. Eventually, he helped found a start-up that was bought by a software development company run by Hastings, who decided to keep Randolph on after the merger.
Randolph’s tale takes on many of the roller coaster elements of start-up culture, from finding funding to recruiting talent to building an inventory to deciding on a name (among the names that lost out to Netflix were CinemaCenter, Videopix, SceneOne, E-Flix, and NowShowing. Of the final choice, now a familiar touchstone around the world, Randolph writes: “It wasn’t perfect. It sounded a little porn-y. But it was the best we could do.”)
The site launched in April 1998, and the book provides a tick-tock account of the site’s first days and weeks (Predictably, the server crashed the day of the launch). In the days before the company’s trademark red envelopes clogged mailboxes coast to coast, Netflix needed a marketing break. That came from an unlikely source: President Bill Clinton, who was at the time consumed in scandal. Randolph decided to offer Clinton’s full grand-jury testimony on the Lewinsky scandal on DVD to all customers for the price of 2 cents. That stunt got the media’s attention, and suddenly Netflix was news.
But by the next year, Hastings replaced Randolph in the CEO’s chair, Randolph took on the role of company president, and Netflix moved up Highway 17 from Scotts Valley to Los Gatos.
Netflix’s permanent residence in Santa Cruz County was not destined to be, for the most prosaic of reasons: geography and personnel.
“One of the fundamental miscalculations I made,” says Randolph, within sight of Netflix’s first office, “was that I assumed that the type of engineering talent we would need would be the ‘front-end’ talent: web design, user interface, etc. But it was really the ‘back-end’ people (servers, database administration) that we needed. And they were all clustered around Oracle in Redwood City. Try convincing someone from there to drive here, especially considering the amazing job opportunities they had closer to home.”
Even when it became inevitable that the company would have to move operations to the South Bay, Randolph wanted it in Los Gatos. “The thing I did fight for was, if we had to go over-the-hill, it had to be barely over the hill, as close as I could get. If I could have put it in [famous Highway 17 restaurant] the Cats, I would have. But we got University [Avenue], this side of Lark. That’s pretty darn good.”
Still, the company began its amazing life in Scotts Valley. It was there that they kept their first DVDs in an old bank vault, developed the business model that contributed to the company’s early success, and helped break Blockbuster’s hold on consumer home viewing habits.
Today, Randolph is unsparing on himself about moving the company out of Santa Cruz County. After leaving Netflix, he assumed a seat on the board of Looker, a data-analytics company based in Santa Cruz.
“It’s a big regret,” he says of leaving Scotts Valley. “It was a big failure on my part. But my karma has been restored with Looker. From the very beginning, we wanted this to be a Santa Cruz company and stay a Santa Cruz company. Luckily, I learned a few things about how I messed up the first time.”
Looking back at his role in the creation of one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies, Randolph says, “I’m a huge optimist. I’m not just a glass-half-full person. I’m overflowing. I’m a believer. I can believe anything can work. It’s just my nature. And it’s also a powerful viewpoint when you keep trying things that everybody else says, ‘That’ll never work.’ Still, you can be astounded when something really does work, especially Netflix, when it took so long to figure out how to get it to work.”
Comedian Richard Stockton remembers walking through the halls of the Santa Cruz Police Department several years ago, following the lead of Zach Friend, then the department’s spokesperson.
Stockton and Friend were collaborating on a humorous video for Stockton’s recurring live Planet Cruz Comedy special. As Stockton remembers it, a cop in a room behind them sneezed and blew his nose. Friend turned, pointed over his shoulder and said, “Dude! Get a better coke dealer!” Friend, who kept walking down the hall, barked it loud enough for everyone within earshot to bust up laughing, Stockton says.
“I don’t remember that, but I wouldn’t put it past me, because that’s funny shit,” says Friend, now a Santa Cruz County supervisor, who resumes his recurring role as a guest at Planet Cruz this Saturday, Nov. 23.
Stockton’s story encapsulates what’s perhaps the worst-kept secret in all of Santa Cruz County politics: Friend, who represents the county’s 2nd District and lives in Aptos, is a relentless shit-talker. “I guess all the stuff I say was going to catch up with me sooner or later,” he says.
Friend’s wit is quick enough that he often starts talking trash before the recipient even sees he’s there.
A few years ago, I was withdrawing cash from an ATM downtown when I heard a voice say loudly—again, to everyone within earshot—“Doesn’t it suck when you can only withdraw 20 bucks out of the ATM?”
Recognizing Friend’s voice, I spun around once the machine spat out my money to see him strolling down Pacific Avenue alongside his wife Tina, then Santa Cruz’s deputy city manager. I fanned out two crisp $20 bills. “Look!” I said. “There’s 40.”
“Guess they let you overdraft, then,” Friend replied with a shrug, never breaking his stride.
Friend doesn’t remember this interaction, either, but hearing the story cracks him up. He says he doesn’t think of his remarks beforehand, and that he can’t explain the ways his brain works or how he thinks of the quips that he does—let alone why he says the things he does. He nonetheless believes that the run-in on Pacific shows that he thinks I’m underpaid for the work that I do. “I also think it’s ridiculous that ATMs won’t let you withdraw tens, but that’s another issue,” Friend quickly adds, his voice trailing off.
Stockton says he sometimes wonders how Friend would fare should he continue his rise through the ranks in the world of politics. Stockton’s curious whether the supervisor’s biting sense of humor and off-the-cuff remarks might hurt him in the long run. He notes, however, that recent presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke was knownto let a few F-bombs fly and still attracted wide-ranging support before dropping out at the beginning of November.
“Maybe it’s all right. Maybe things have changed,” Stockton says.
Friend says he’s found that voters want leaders to be real. “Inauthenticity is one of the biggest turnoffs to people who are in elected office,” he says.
There’s value, Friend explains, in a politician being open about who he or she is and what their values are. He also believes that he doesn’t change much from one situation to another, whether he’s on the dais, at a private event or meeting a reporter for coffee. “It just makes the days and nights a lot easier, because you’re not trying to figure out who you are in any given context,” Friend adds.
At DNA’s Comedy Lab this Saturday night, Stockton and Friend will riff on serious topics like housing, homelessness and environmental policy, with Stockton running a loosely rehearsed Q&A segment with the supervisor. They’ll also be taking topics from the audience. Friend says the scene wouldn’t work if the bits were tightly scripted.
Stockton’s Planet Cruz Comedy special, which has been running on and off since 2007, will also feature performances from fellow comics Sven Davis, Emily Catalano, “Larry Bubbles” Brown, Diane Amos, and DNA, as well as singer Alan Heit.
Friend isn’t the only politician Stockton has brought on his show. In previous years, Stockton featured Friend’s fellow county Supervisor Ryan Coonerty, who represents the city of Santa Cruz and the North Coast. Coonerty is funny, too, Stockton adds.
Onstage, Stockton’s persona is one of a pot-smoking burnout. Most of his stand-up material focuses on trying to get at the environmentally friendly, socially conscious and stoned-out id of Santa Cruz, or at least the stereotypes that surround the liberal town.
Friend, with his nice suits and his political background, provides a contrast with that vision of Santa Cruz. Stockton says riffing with the supervisor helps him in his effort to dig into the essence of the town. “It’s a way to bring real Santa Cruz into the show,” Stockton says.
Having watched their segments a few times, I’ve seen Stockton and Friend fill familiar roles in their two-man act, with Stockton playing the part of the goofball always going for the laugh. The more buttoned-up Friend sets up the punch lines as the straight man. (“Whoa! Is that an anti-Pete Buttigieg comment?” Friend facetiously asks me over the phone.)
Friend comes off as the more serious one, so the arrangement allows for Stockton to play an exaggerated version of his hippie self.
“I’m a communist who’s learned how to live in a capitalist world,” Stockton says. “Zach is a straight arrow. That’s good for us comedically. He gives me a hard time about my pot, and I give him a hard time for not smoking pot.”
Friend says there’s an added comedic wrinkle, in that he generally comes across as more off-the-cuff and more biting than what the typical voter might expect from a county politician.
Stockton concedes that he and Friend—a longtime local Democratic leader, going back even before his days in elected office—don’t see eye-to-eye in some areas.
Friend, for instance, doesn’t have the most liberal record on cannabis issues. This past spring, the supervisor voted against a county law change that aims to allow more cannabis businesses to come into the fold legally, but it passed anyway. Friend says it’s a complicated topic, and one that involves taxes, various environmental concerns and artificial timelines mandated by the state.
Stockton does say many of his friends ask him about his support of Friend, arguing that the supervisor isn’t even all that liberal. But the comic says that he trusts Friend’s judgment.
“If he’s governor some day, when the shit really comes down, I think he’ll make the right decision,” Stockton says. “I believe it. I wouldn’t do it if I thought he was an asshole.”
Planet Cruz Comedy will be at DNA’s Comedy Lab, 155 S River St., Santa Cruz, on Saturday, Nov. 23, at 7:30pm. Tickets $25 general admission/$20 seniors/$30 door. planetcruzcomedy.com.
