In these politically correct times, is it possible for comedians to tell jokes?
Some big names, including Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher, argue that comedians are being silenced especially on college campuses by an audience that is offended by everything.
But comedians featured at a giant weeklong comedy festival in Santa Cruz from Oct 1-5 have other opinions.
Writer Sean Rusev talked to many of them for our cover story about the festival, which has attracted both big and local names. It’s interesting to see how many locals have made the big time over the years and this is your chance to catch up-and-comers and already-theres at a panoply of locations around town.
Given the tensions around the world and in this country, laughter has never been more needed. Our prescription is simple: you know the cliche that laughter is the best medicine. Well, here’s your chance for a good dose of laughter.
On the news front, students at UCSC are in for some big changes in the wake of last year’s protest. Josué Monroy will update you in his article. We also have all kinds of information in our student guide, which features cheap eats, ways to rate your professors, a hip-hop dance teacher who has worked with famous artists and a focus on online learning.
Welcome to Santa Cruz, new students.
In music we profile an African man who has developed a reputation as one of the best guitarists in Santa Cruz. We also cover an amazing 25-year-old woman who is keeping the blues alive for a new generation.
Then there’s a new release from a DIY/Punk label, Shallow Dive Records, covered by Mat Weir, which you probably won’t read about anywhere else. Mat, who is a true music maven, also covers hardcore supergroup Seized Up, which has an album release show at Moe’s Alley.
For great eats, we have a six-month-old restaurant, Obló, which serves fresh, authentic Italian meals with an interesting twist. The owner studied business so knows the ins and outs of staying in business. It’s been sad to see other great restaurants disappear.
What a great way to help local restaurants still recovering from tough times during the pandemic: go out for a great meal.
Have a great time this week.
Brad Kava | Editor
PHOTO CONTEST
EGYPT ON THE BEACH These sand pyramids are part of an art installation by Jim and Brighton Denevan at Cowell Beach and sponsored by the MAH. Photograph by Jim Sullivan.
GOOD IDEA
In an exciting show of community spirit and friendly rivalry, two city managers are taking the plunge—literally! Matt Huffaker, city manager of Santa Cruz, and Rene Mendez, former city manager of Watsonville, will jump off the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf into the Pacific Ocean Friday at 3pm to celebrate their cities’ efforts in last season’s Holiday Food & Fund Drive fundraising competition. Huffaker raised an impressive $26,264 (equivalent of 78,792 healthy meals), while Mendez brought in $14,159 (42,477 healthy meals), both supporting Second Harvest’s mission to combat hunger in Santa Cruz County. Santa Cruz County Lifeguards will be standing by to ensure a safe and splashy landing.
GOOD WORK
The California Public Utilities Commission approved the fifth round of recommended awardees for 10 last-mile broadband projects, awarding a cumulative $91 million worth of grants to projects serving predominantly disadvantaged and low-income communities.
Nearly $15 million of those funds is slated for broadband infrastructure projects designed to connect and empower underserved and unserved rural communities in Santa Cruz and San Benito counties. Surfnet Communications, of Santa Cruz, has been awarded $4,348,793 to serve an estimated 410 unserved locations in the communities of Hutchinson and Radonich and along Mt. Bache Road.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.” —George Bernard Shaw
If you are getting power through Monterey Bay Community Power be aware that some of your power will soon come from a very destructive project in the Mojave Desert. Aratina Solar Center is in the process of removing thousands of Joshua trees from an intact desert ecosystem. The panels will cover 2,300 acres. Whatever you think of green energy, this is the most destructive type of land use. In my opinion, solar should be decentralized to minimize loss of habitats and farmlands.
Sandra Baron | Watsonville
CAPITOLA CROSSWALK
It’s very telling that all the people complaining are those complaining about what it’s like TO BE IN A CAR. And many of them are complaining about congestion, aka how fast they can LEAVE the area. They offer no perspective or have no time to care about what it’s like to be someone OUTSIDE of a car. Someone who just wants to use their legs to cross a street. Or bicycle. Or maybe have the audacity to push a stroller.
The values they hold dear are clear, if only implied: You have no right to feel safe walking in this community. Safety is for people in cars. Spend thousands and thousands of dollars on vehicles, insurance, and fuel. And any time you want to go somewhere, even if it’s just to pick up a pack of butter from the store, be prepared to take two tons of metal and plastic with you.
Enough already. Enough of the danger, enough of the car bullying. Walking and biking should be safe and healthy options in our community.
DC
SAVING OUR SHORES
Save Our Shores (SOS) announced the results of the 2024 Annual Coastal Cleanup Day for Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. With the help of 1,540 volunteers, Save Our Shores tackled 56 cleanup sites from Año Nuevo State Beach in the north to Andrew Molera State Park in the south.
Volunteers successfully removed over 6,945 pounds of trash and 612 pounds of recyclables in just three hours. Some of the top numbers of the day include 1,345 pounds of debris removed on Zmudowski State Beach, and an impressive 103 volunteers at Del Monte Beach.
Save Our Shores Executive Director Katie Thompson thanked site captains as they returned cleanup supplies to the Save Our Shores office Saturday afternoon.
“Today’s efforts prove that community action is powerful. By joining forces and getting our hands dirty, we’re not just cleaning up—we’re creating a legacy of environmental stewardship. We deeply appreciate the support from local nonprofits, businesses, and community members who share our vision for a cleaner, healthier bay,” she said.
The Hoodoo Gurus have long been one of the best bands that seemingly only the cognoscenti know about. Staking out a spot at the tuneful and hooky end of the ’80s rock vanguard, Sydney, Australia’s Hoodoo Gurus roared out of the gate with a searing debut, 1984’s Stoneage Romeos. Enjoying college chart successes and cult status in North America, they’re heroes in Australia, where every single one of their albums has charted. Their most recent album, 2022’s Chariot of the Gods, displays the same winning garage-rock-influenced richness that has long defined the band. BILL KOPP
Thoughtful and smooth, Honey Run brings their fiddle and mandolin to the Ugly Mug. Since 2020, Honey Run has been playing covers and original bluegrass music. Their music creates a perfect toe-tapping time with sweet melodies and stellar picking. Even with just the two members, their music remains deep, complex and bright, much like a fresh cup of coffee on a cool day. Despite only being around for a few years, they are seasoned musicians who put on tight performances. Their synergy on stage is undeniable; any audience will be quickly captivated by them and their music. ISABELLA MARIE SANGALINE
The Calico Discos label founders took the time post-pandemic to create a stunning, reverb-laden, progressive rock album with Zuma 85. And it is exactly what the world needs right now. Allah-Las’ latest project, written and recorded in California, embraces the surf but welcomes sounds and textures from the desert. Japanese pop, hazy synths and prog appear on this refreshing new record. Highlights include the feel-good bop “Jelly,” the rebellious “Right On Time” and the meditative cut “Hadal Zone.” The five-piece band has come a long way since first bonding over surf rock vinyl at Amoeba Music over a decade ago. MELISA YURIAR
INFO: 8pm, Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $38. 423-8209.
SATURDAY
METAL
UNDEATH
Just in time for Devil’s Night, New York’s Undeath is prepped to drop their third full-length album, More Insane, on Oct. 4. Since 2018, the horror/gore death metal quartet has delivered the brutalist of brutal gore metal this side of the aughts. Their second album, It’s Time … To Rise From the Grave, caught the attention of fans and critics alike, earning it Best New Music from Pitchfork and number one on Decibel magazine’s Top 40 Albums of 2022. It’s the Rochester band’s first full US headlining tour, so they’re bringing along Kruelty, Gates to Hell and Tribal Gaze to celebrate all that is metal. MAT WEIR
INFO: 6pm, Vets Hall, 846 Front St., Santa Cruz. $20/adv, $25/door. 454-0478.
FOLK
RICHARD MARCH & AMEE CHAPMAN
The cozy Lille Aeske is the perfect setting for the humbly honest music of singer/songwriters Richard March and Amee Chapman. March’s performative storytelling style has earned him opening spots for beloved musicians like the Stray Cats’ Lee Rocker and Bob Dylan’s hero, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. His latest album, Let The Winter Come, is ten songs of hope and heartache wrapped in a blanket of comfy melodies and plenty of soul. On the other hand, Chapman celebrates the 20th anniversary of her seminal album, Still Life, a snapshot of life that captures the setting sun of one chapter and the sunrise of the next. MW
Just after the late ’70s British punk explosion, the Subhumans entered the fray with their first demo making waves in 1980. They were part of the hardcore faction taking over punk but were also open to experimenting and pushing limits (see the 17-minute “From the Cradle to the Grave”). Internal tension within the band over the direction they were to take broke them up by ’85. They’ve had several reunions since then and have been consistently touring for the last ten years, with four members along from the start. They even put out a new record in 2019, and it’s as hard and aggressive as ever. KEITH LOWELL JENSEN
Acid Mothers Temple has been making mind-melting psychedelic music for nearly three decades. The quintessential underground band from Japan is among the most prolific groups in all of music, and its free-wheeling, improvisational excursions have earned it a devoted cult following. Drawing not only from American and British styles, Acid Mothers Temple often incorporates elements of noise (from avant-garde composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen) and drone (from the repetitive and hypnotic motorik of German “krautrock”). The results are every bit as heady as a Grateful Dead “space” piece but with a Japanese quality all its own. Spirit Mother opens. BK
Sixties psychedelia meets romantic Latin shuffle in Damian Jurado’s latest singles, “I’ve Never Known Alice” and “Call Me, Madame (Non-Smoking Version).” Renowned for his folk-ballad intoning and integrating found sounds and field recordings into his art, his songs showcase Jurado’s prowess as an eloquent storyteller with a keen sense of sound, big and small. From sultry horns and saxophones to dainty triangle taps and stirring string swells, Jurado understands how to combine each element to create one hell of a perfect storm of a composition. After over 25 years as a recording artist, the singer-songwriter is only getting better. MY
INFO: 7:30pm, Kuumbwa Jazz Center, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $47. 427-2227.
PUNK
DOA
Canadian punks DOA, the band that may have given hardcore its name (their second album was titled Hardcore ’81), are still fighting the good fight against racism and globalism while championing free speech and environmental causes. Frontperson Joe Keithley has managed to keep a steady trio together for the last ten years (after a perpetually changing lineup in the first three decades), performing and recording outspoken, political, activist hardcore and living up to their “talk minus action equals zero” mantra. They’re joined by openers Single Mothers, Monk, and SAM. KLJ
INFO: 7pm, Blue Lagoon, 923 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $20/adv, $25/door. 423-7117.
“I mean, basically this is the sci-fi future,” states Clifford Dinsmore as he takes a sip of his soda water. “This is the culmination of the fictional account of what people have been warning might happen. It’s happening now.”
The singer for Santa Cruz hardcore group Seized Up is talking about the inspiration for the band’s song, “Force Fed Hate,” off their new album, Modify the Sacred, which came out Aug. 9 on Pirates Press Records. The song itself is a scathing analysis of modern America in the current election season with a chorus of “It blows my mind/when good ol’ fashioned values/strangely morph into good ol’ fascist values.”
“It used to be you’d get some screwball to form some group with a couple hundred people around the world writing stupid chain letters to each other,” Dinsmore continues. “But now with the internet you get every idiot on earth with really bad ideas to come together and spread those bad ideas.”
Despite the album’s release last month, Seized Up has been busy on their first European tour, hitting festivals like Germany’s Umsonst & Draussen and Punk Rock Holiday in Slovenia, along with opening up for the Descendents in Germany as well. Because of this they haven’t had a proper CD release party, but all that changes on Saturday, Sept. 28 as Seized Up comes home to Moe’s Alley. And this time, they’re bringing friends Slaughterhouse and local self-proclaimed “shitty music” sludge trio Barf.
“Slaughterhouse was a little bit ahead of us on tour in Europe so we kept missing them,” guitarist Danny Buzzard explains. “We really wanted to play a show with them. Plus we’re friends with the guys in Barf and they’re always really good.”
The last time we caught up with the Santa Cruz quartet was almost three years to the day, when they played another record release show at Moe’s Alley, that time for their full-length debut, Brace Yourself, which had come out during the pandemic lockdowns the year prior. The year 2021 also saw the band’s three-song EP, Marching Down the Spiral, hit online streaming and record store shelves.
Seized Up has seen their own share of setbacks over the years, first with Dinsmore’s cancer diagnosis, then drummer Andy Granelli’s severe hand injury in 2019 following a bicycle accident, to bassist Chuck Platt’s 2022 life-threatening incident when he was hit by a car while crossing Soquel Avenue in front of his restaurant, The Crepe Place.
“I got really lucky,” Granelli says.
“At the time I was still drinking a lot and as you get older you learn you have to start taking care of your body and yourself. So I quit drinking because you have to give yourself the best chance for success. You cut out the stuff you used to do as a kid that doesn’t serve you as an old man. I’m happy to be here and happy to be happy.”
HOMETOWN SHOW Seized Up celebrates the release of ‘Modify the Sacred’ with a Sept. 28 show at Moe’s Alley. Photo: Keith Meek
For Modify the Sacred the guys take the scorched earth philosophy they adopted for Marching and pour kerosene on it. The album opens with “Deathweb”—Granelli’s favorite song—which begins with a quote by political scientist and linguist Noam Chomsky: “Of utmost importance, beyond the capacity of words to express what we all know, ‘It’s now or never. Now or never.’”
The album continues on a smoldering path through tracks like “What You Kill,” “Turn Christian and Move Inland” and “Omen of Despair.”
“That’s my favorite,” states Platt about “Omen of Despair.”
“That’s Seized Up for me. I love that driving bass–Jesus Lizard style–with Clifford talking over it and building that tension. Then there’s the heaviness of an early Helmet song with fast parts like Bad Brains and old punk.”
Modify the Sacred also sees the band diving back into some familiar territory with a re-recorded version of “Forum of Decay,” which originally appeared on Marching Down the Spiral.
“Personally I love when bands do that,” Granelli says. “That way you can have your favorite version of a song.”
Adding to the sacred is a playlist they put out before the album dropped. Requested by Pirates Press Records, the Seized Up compiled a 20-track, 62-minute playlist on Spotify called “Sacred Songs,” featuring a who’s-who of bands that inspired the sound of Modify. Everything from Black Sabbath and Slayer to the Exploited, Subhumans, Karp and even the Wipers grace the “Sacred Songs” slots.
“The Wipers have a huge influence [on Seized Up],” Buzzard says. “You can hear the Wipers in our music for sure.”
The album’s name is also a throwback of sorts, taking “modify the sacred” from lyrics off Brace Yourself. But like all good art, the meaning is interpreted by the listener.
For Dinsmore it has a much more physical, visceral meaning.
“Within the context of the song [“Human Locust” off Brace Yourself], it’s humans not acknowledging the fact that the Earth is the life source,” he says. “Humans worship god but destroy the Earth. Ultimately god is what provides for you, and for me that’s the Earth. But with all the genetic engineering we do, people are tampering around with the natural sacred thing.”
Buzzard—on the other hand—sees the album’s title to mean something a lot more idealistic and even esoteric.
“To me the ‘sacred’ is the punk rock ideal, this concept of what the scene is and how the music should be,” he says. “And I think Seized Up has tried to do away with cookie cutter punk rock. We try to do different things and modify this sacred cow.”
Regardless of how they interpret it, it’s clear Seized Up isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The album is gaining traction with the underground punk media and made the Weekly Top 20 best seller list at Cortex Records (their European distributor). The band was also recently featured on the cover of the New Punk Now playlist on Pandora and “Forum of Decay” was highlighted on Sirius XM’s Faction Punk show.
But even more importantly for any band, all the members are close friends and even live within cycling distance of each other in the same Midtown/Live Oak neighborhood. It’s their own way of continuing to modify their own sacredness with every new thing life throws at them.
“We do this because we all love to play and we’re friends—those go hand-in-hand,” Granelli says. “I grew up as a 14-year-old kid having band practice one to four times a week. Practice is how you get good, but when bands get bigger they replace practice with playing shows. Now that my other bands aren’t touring as much, I’ve missed that regiment of practice and with Seized Up we have that. It’s a break in the week for all of us to get together and play.”
Local comedy promoter DNA pens the comedians and their set times on a paper napkin. He hands it to Paulie Escobedo, the sound guy. Everyone gets a tight five minutes save the co-headliners.
Tonight there is a heckler so vocal she creates an anti-gravitational pull on her side of the room.
“You’re a lesbian!” she exclaims to one performer.
Without malice or judgment. Like an entomologist in a field realizing what kind of butterfly they’re studying, then blurting it out to that butterfly.
Welcome to Tuesday night free comedy at the Blue Lagoon.
Michael Booth, slacker beard and hair raked back into a ponytail, jukes the heckler’s drunken jabs. Comedy relies on rhythm, so imagine dropping in off-time syncopation into everyone’s jazz sets.
“My son loves Star Wars!” she says, apropos of nothing.
Booth answers her, fittingly, with a song, belting out a blue cover of the Star Wars theme that the House of Mouse certainly wouldn’t clear, applying perverse lyrics to say explicitly what he’d do to her son in a lightsaber fight.
The rest try to engage her with the classic pretend patience of seasoned comedians, where you smile and dole out enough rope, then BOOM—surprise! The rope was a cobra all along.
But she’s just too gregarious and having too good a time, and every diss just makes her chime back or boil over with laughter. I keep wondering why DNA doesn’t 86 her with extreme prejudice.
No one in the crowd shushes her, but incredulous heads turn. Groups shift to the opposite side of the room.
By the time she and her enabling boyfriend leave midway through the final headliner, a baker’s dozen cocktail glasses in their wake, I understand DNA’s hesitation: what was her side of the room is now a laughter-free zone.
As she leaves, she throws out a surprising zinger: she tells our host that was the best comedy show she’s ever seen.
DNA knows exactly what he’s doing. The 11th annual Santa Cruz Comedy Festival, which runs Oct. 1–5, could not be in better hands.
ALTERNATIVE TENTACLES
Spread across over 15 venues, with local, regional and national comics participating, the Santa Cruz Comedy Festival could be the premier comedy festival experience on the West Coast. Besides the traditional one-person plus one mic, there will be live podcasting, a game show, even an AI vs comics showdown. On closing night, Saturday, Oct. 5, comedians will do four shows in one night. DNA, who ran his self-named Comedy Lab in the old Riverfront Theater, rattles off from memory in his Brick City (New Jersey, to West Coasters) accent the venues they could ricochet between.
“Streetlight [Records], Get Faded Barbershop, Abbott Square, The Abbey, The Church, Woodhouse Blending & Brewing, Rosie McCann’s, Bruno’s in Scotts Valley.”
This year, performers will be chauffeured between shows via bicycle pedicab. He gamed out this potential admin headache by creating a diorama of downtown Santa Cruz using Futurama figurines, timing transit from one venue to the next by riding the route on a non-miniature bicycle himself.
He tried debuting pedicabs last year, but didn’t factor in whom the cab company would assign to the pedals.
“It was a 75-year-old lady.” DNA laughs. “She moved a lot slower than I did.”
Shadowing DNA is like chasing a tornado. Monday he performs in Abbott Square, then Rosie McCann’s, Tuesday he hosts the Blue Lagoon show. We finally slow down in the sunny comfort of his backyard, and he recounts a recent afternoon show he pulled off guerrilla style.
“Would you put any other art form in the back of a beer line with no PA and no stage and no advertising and be like, ‘Do your art’?” he asks.
He has a point. What other artists routinely face such humiliation, either in execution or by design? To err is human, to bomb, divine.
Comedy is chock full of violent slang for bloodless happenings. “Bombing” refers to a doldrums point in a comic’s set when the audience’s laughter ceases or never commences. Barometric pressure falls. Comedians see bombing as a necessary evil on the road to, forget stardom, development. Learning why that joke sparkled in the notebook or Notes app but is loudly “dying” [read: garnering no laughs] in the room. Honing that joke till it “kills” [read: garners all the laughs] both in Poughkeepsie and Portland.
BETH MEDICINE Beth Stelling has performed in the Netflix series The Standups and served as a writer for HBO’s series Crashing. Photo: Mindy Tucker
Headliner Beth Stelling, whose current special If You Didn’t Want Me Then was directed by her “Sweethearts” co-podcaster, Mo Welch, says even Portland 7:30 vs Portland 9:30 can differ radically.
“What kills with one crowd may not hit at all the second show,” she says. “It’s a reminder that this job is never steady and ever-changing.”
The comic has choices when momentum stalls: ignore it and trudge on, or steer into the skid, and comment on the audience’s nonparticipation. “That’s too bad, I thought you guys were cool,” one comic responded to the silence during his Abbott Square set.
There is no fourth wall in comedy, maybe no walls at all.
“Comedians are truth-tellers,” DNA says. “They have a long history. The Chinese had jesters. The Romans. The Aztecs. This person in your society who is allowed to tell truth to power. Who is that in 2024? Comedians.”
He thinks in modern times it goes further than mere permission.
“That’s our job.”
Ok Boomer
The job has changed a lot, especially this past decade. The news is filled with older comedians sourly mouthing off that comedy is in a time of intellectual famine. Seinfeld. Chappelle. PC has gone woke, they grouch.
Evaluating cancel culture is a vital topic worth a nuanced discussion. Complaining about it in comedy, though, is pure hack [read: uninspired].
“Is there like a script that these guys get sent and read from?” asks LA-based comedian Amy Miller, the Andy Cohen to Ozzy and the Osbournes on their “Basement Tapes” reunion reality show. Her eyes roll beneath her sunglasses on our long drive to the beach.
The whole thing tires and baffles her. She was starstruck by Martin Lawrence when they shared a bill at The Comedy Store in L.A., but his heroic glow dimmed as soon as he riffed on cancel culture.
“As a comedian, wouldn’t you go, ‘Everyone in my age group is talking about this same tired thing, so I’m not going to say it because I’m a more creative comedian than that’?”
She educates me about the insularity of comedy, how it’s a small community, and a rarefied circle within that where the comedy one percenters live.
“Because they only spend time with other rich, famous comedians, that’s where [they] hear comedy news from. No one has been stopped from saying the things they want to say.”
Jalisa Robinson, who recently performed at “Netflix is a Joke Fest” and is playing the Festival, knows about real censorship.
“I went by Jay for 10 years because, you know, Jalisa was too Black of a name to get jobs in Missouri.”
She agrees with Miller the onus is on the old to adapt, rather than on the young to make accommodations for what the old are accustomed to.
“Be funnier,” she says. “Write better jokes. Do you need to say those words to have good jokes? That’s what I hear: ‘I’m only funny when I’m being offensive.’ I’m like, Well then, you’re not that funny. Sorry. Maybe you got by on that. Maybe you built a whole career on that.”
She winces, utters a sound between ooh and ugh. “That’s done.”
The olds are right that comedy is changing, just not the way they think.
“Comedians mutated,” says DNA, king mutant.
History
DNA began building the skills needed to put on this kind of event back in Chico in the ’90s with a music festival he called Nowhere by Nowhere. Inspired by Austin’s SXSW, 150 bands would migrate from one venue to the next, amps and drums already backlined and waiting.
One major tweak to the format would simplify everything further: “Comedians are a lot easier than bands.”
Moving to Santa Cruz in 2006, he was cautious about “interloper” ambition, gathering allies gradually before launching the first festival—a beautiful disaster—in 2013.
“It was straight out of, like, an [imaginary] Abbie Hoffman book: How to Pose a Major Disturbance for 50 Dollars.”
He rented Steamer Lane and invited three surfing comedians up from L.A. When he arrived to set up, a municipal vehicle was pulling away with all his parking signs. The surfers there had told the city there was no event.
“I’m sure they did, man,” DNA said to the driver.
And so he and the comedians applied their art form to the situation: they improvised.
They turned the PA speakers toward the waves and loosed a firehose of merciless heckling upon the surfers. The LA comedians had the lingo, the right putdowns to penetrate wetsuit-covered flesh. (Curious readers can check out the webseries where this is documented.)
After that stunt-like intro, DNA tried the venue-to-venue format, but with comedians hoofing it, often at their peril. Phil Griffiths, who designs most SCCF artwork, had from 8:10 to 8:30 to sprint from Callahan’s on Water Street all the way to his next venue downtown.
“I didn’t take into consideration their general health,” DNA chuckles.
CLASSIC LITERATURE Moshe Kashner, a festival headliner, wrote the book “Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16” Photo: Jim McCambridge
Griffiths is performing again this year. Several comics have performed multiple years, including Moshe Kasher, whose podcast with his wife, comedian Natasha Leggero, “Endless Honeymoon,” was started on a Santa Cruz stage.
Scotts Valley’s own Emily Catalano, putting up astonishing TikTok numbers for her comedy videos, had her first proper show at the Blue after DNA caught her open mics, then at the well-regarded Greater Purpose (RIP). She found the supportiveness of the Santa Cruz comedy scene its own challenge.
“It made you feel just a little more hopeful about your standup. Even people who aren’t doing comedy will come watch week after week. So you really have to be writing and working out new material. That’s really good for when you’re starting out.”
DNA has given many comedians their first break, as well as their first festival. The comedians I spoke to all agree the point of every festival is connection.
“It’s kind of a summer camp for adult kids talking into microphones,” says Tiff Puterbaugh, one half of the Puterbaugh Sisters, whose glitzy, tipsy Kitchen Women shorts satirize the lives of Eisenhower-era housewives, and which seem like lockdown artifacts but were shot in 2019.
DNA’s favorite SCCF iteration was in 2020. Covid was burning, and so was California. He and his crew built an outdoor stage behind the former Saturn Cafe and Laurie Kilmartin, Dave Ross, Kevin Camia and Merrill Davis performed drive-in comedy as ash sprinkled onto their audience’s windshields.
“There was a feeling of camaraderie between the comics because we hadn’t seen each other for a couple hundred days,” DNA says, “and the people in their cars even though they were a hundred feet away. It was still so good to be with other people for the sole purpose of laughing. To me, that was the pinnacle experience.”
I bring up Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, about a traveling theater troupe after a flu totals civilization, and he lights up in agreement.
“When the world ends, then what?”
Podcast High & Zoom U
Many comedians were not able to answer that question so confidently when the Ides of March 2020 came.
Some didn’t have access to drive-in comedy the 7th SCCF pulled off, or what local comic Natasha Collier started weekly on top of the Church Street parking structure. Others, like Marc Maron, whose podcast “WTF” was a pandemic life raft for most of the comedians I interviewed, didn’t want to partake. DNA sums up that considerable camp’s feelings.
“‘I’m not gonna do it. That’s not what I worked my whole life for, to be honked at by a car.’”
Kellen Erskine, veteran of multiple late night shows such as Jimmy Kimmel Live!, performed on the top floor of the disorientingly bright Irvine Spectrum Center parking garage, projected onto an 80-foot inflatable screen. He didn’t feel the scenario was insulting as much as a problem of stimuli.
“Your whole life, your brain has been wired to associate honking with something negative, so to tell a joke and just have traffic blast you with their horns?”
For many comedians, the pandemic was about rewiring, a training period for a position no one asked for, or an intense independent study that dragged on semester after semester. They learned how to podcast, film front-facing cellphone videos, how not to “bomb in front of your computer in your bedroom,” Erskine says.
“Comics say you always notice the guy in the second row with his arms folded.” Zoom comedy was that, but supercharged. “It was like having five dozen. When you play a comedy club, if the lighting is good you can’t see most of the audience. But to have people in a grid and you can see all of their faces very clearly or what they’re doing while you’re trying to perform, it’s extremely distracting.”
Robinson tells me how comics would approximate real life as best they could as a grounding technique.
“You’re missing all the environmental things that make you feel like you’re on stage. Some people would have a mic that was unplugged just to have the feel right.”
She says others embraced the medium, even its haunting lag, by discarding the premise-setup-punchline-tag structure, which thrives on interstitial laughter, choosing instead to tell stories, do PowerPoints, even gags like staging a scripted roommate “interruption.”
Stelling, who one comic I interviewed endearingly referred to as “Midwestern Too Nice,” saw nonparticipation in typical indoor comedy shows as an ethical stand, even if it affected rent. She did Matt Rife and Paul Elia’s “Lowkey Outside Comedy” in a flatbed, and a Zoom show where she broadcasted from a studio masked up. Banks, property management companies, every slumlord and robber baron who saw her financials might look at that 2020’s productivity gap when she wasn’t selling specials and ask, “Can you explain this?”
“‘Oh, the pandemic? When I couldn’t tour? I mean, I guess I could explain that: I didn’t want to be one of those comics that killed people?’”
The Puterbaugh Sisters were busy trying to not kill each other.
Chicago comics by way of Ohio, they were used to living together, but not like this.
“Phase One, we did Zoom shows in a blow-up pool in our backyard,” Danielle Puterbaugh recalls. “We were like, ‘This is fun! We’re drinking Truly’s.’ People were Venmo tipping a lot.”
Then the Truly’s went tepid.
Tiff: “We were c*ntier with each other.”
Danielle: “‘You go drink in the yard! I’m drinking in the kitchen.’”
Stelling, whose comedy special was supposed to be HBO Max’s first ever before they pushed it, admits that her streaming services at that time contained some sad data.
“The most fascinating thing is to see how far I got into a comedy special. A lot of times, it’s just this much.” She pinches her fingers together to mimic the time bar. There were exceptions: anything by Maria Bamford, Sarah Silverman.
There’s another reason besides international calamities people can’t finish one-hour comedy specials: interest fatigue.
“Everything is just a blip,” Stelling says.
Lozenges
Big Tech has been training us in divided focus—watching a movie while scrolling our phones; listening to podcasts while map assistants verbally direct us. The pandemic trained us in disengagement.
“It’s certainly no small task to keep people engaged with you for one hour at a live show,” Stelling says.
Now everything comedians make is supposed to be bite-sized, easily digestible. Little comedy lozenges to dissolve at the speed of interest.
Comedians who had created exactly that kind of content out of emotional necessity while sheltering in place, going cuckoo for cocoa puffs just like us, found themselves squeezed by the boa constriction of social media and the general industry machine. Their fans, managers, agents, kingmakers at auditions—everyone expected them to continue churning out that same product.
“It used to be you go on stage and tell your jokes,” DNA says, “but now to be a multimedia performer where you can do videos, editing, every skill you have seems to build a better portfolio, but for what job?”
DNA’s metamorphosis continues. He’s happy to hop up on a picnic table with a borrowed PA to make a venue on the spot, but prides himself on “putting these comedian artists in a space they deserve, which is a stage, with lights, with good sound.”
The question remains, how long can audiences afford to watch?
COMEDY IN HIS GENES DNA brings the laughs with the Santa Cruz Comedy Festival for 2024. PHOTO: Colleen Johns
Laughing Gas Prices
Ticket inflation is rocking the live entertainment industry.
Amy Miller, who worked for a Ticketmaster rival in the mid 2000s, remembers a legitimately competitive ecosystem. Now most of those companies have shuttered, including her former employer.
Any disrupter has to be able to cost-match the giants, and even then, failure is likely. When Louis CK did his experimental cheap tour she and her coworkers watched from the sidelines knowing he couldn’t cleanly subvert the seat-selling infrastructure.
“All-in pricing, no fees. It was a nice gesture, I guess, from a terrible man. But it didn’t work.”
Numerous parties could be guilty of greed, even if corporations might be best at it.
“Comedians and musicians a lot of the time are not engaged enough and they just collect the money at the end so they don’t always know their fans are getting [shafted],” Miller says.
The Puterbaugh Sisters see clubs operating on “old school” money-making principles, including counterproductive ones that practically time-release hecklers.
“There’s no food minimum,” Tiff says. “Why a drink minimum? If you’re a drinker, there’s no such thing as a two-drink minimum. It’s forty-two.” A pricy prospect with rising alcohol prices, but also out of step with Gen Z’s sober curious orientation.
“Will corporate comedy like Live Nation grow to such a Walmart kind of thing that destroys all the mom and pop comedy clubs in America because they don’t have a safety net?” DNA asks. “I can see that happening. In which case I think corporate comedy will set the price. Maybe now a hundred dollars will be the norm for a comedy ticket.”
For the 11th Santa Cruz Comedy Festival, the most you’ll spend is $40 for a “Gold Circle” headliner ticket; the least, free.
DNA sees every year of the festival as another beta test, and at the same time, it’s all one show, and his 17 years of comedy, one long performance.
The Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) announced today the arrest of a suspect in a double shooting on the Santa Cruz Harbor after a Crow’s Nest beach concert in August.
Moses Dollar, 27, was arrested and charged with attempted homicide after almost two months of investigation, and was captured in the Los Angeles area on Sep. 18. The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department assisted Santa Cruz authorities in the arrest and Dollar was transported to the Santa Cruz County Jail on Sep. 23.
Jakaella Porter has been identified as the female suspect in the case and she has a warrant out for conspiracy and attempted homicide.
On the night of Aug. 8, local law enforcement agencies responded to reports of a shooting at the Santa Cruz Harbor. Police scanners reported two males shot, with one suffering up to six gunshots to the chest.
Witnesses said that after a brief altercation in the Crow’s Nest parking lot, a male in his early 20s opened fire on two men and fled the scene in a black Dodge Charger. The suspect was wearing a red puffy jacket and was accompanied by a female of indeterminate age.
“I can personally say it’s really difficult to convince people to listen to marginalized music,” Rip Florence says before taking a sip of water. “But there is an opportunity in Santa Cruz for people to embrace more idiosyncratic and niche music.”
He takes another sip before handing me a record. It’s a copy of the new compilation The Friction Hug Is a Bridge, which comes out Sept. 21 on his label, Shallow Dive Records. The eight-track album is a celebration of outsider music by local artists who frequent the coffee shops, open mics and dark corners of the heart.
A limited release of only 300 copies pressed, it will be available via the label, Redwood Records and Streetlight Records. Shallow Dive will have a booth with the compilation available at the Cedar Street Fair on Sept. 22. All proceeds from the album will go to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
“The whole concept of this album is to support niche, outsider singer-songwriters,” Florence explains. “Folks who have a really compelling thing that’s totally unique and hard to commodify.”
Featured on the album are groups such as HalfCalf and Duo of Two, and Scotts Valley born and raised artist Vee Ivy.
ON THE MARGINS ‘The Friction Hug Is a Bridge’ showcases niche, outsider singer-songwriters. PHOTO: Shallow Dive Records
“Because it’s all local artists, I feel like the songs go together,” Ivy says. “Even though we didn’t directly communicate, there’s a cohesiveness about it.”
Ivy and Florence first met at an open mic at Soquel’s Ugly Mug in April 2022.
“They are one of my favorite local artists,” Florence says, turning to Ivy. “Your style of guitar playing is so intense and so recognizably ‘you.’ It’s a very punk and angular way of doing standard open chords.”
Florence started Shallow Dive Records in 2018 in true DIY-style when he first heard Sam Empasis at an open mic.
“There was something about him that was really compelling and I knew I just really wanted to listen to his music,” he says. “But there wouldn’t be an opportunity unless someone recorded him, so I decided to do that.”
Florence decided to call his label Shallow Dive Records, taking the name from his job at the time as a lifeguard. Since then he says the meaning has changed for him and his ethos.
“I want to encourage people to be passionate learners and embrace their developmental phases,” he states. “To take the risk to start [a project] and embrace the experience.”
Or in other words, “Have the courage to take a shallow dive.”
For The Friction Hug Is a Bridge, Florence focused on one very specific, universal concept.
“We all went through the pandemic and experienced difficulties being social and finding genuine friendship, love and community,” he says. “So the realization for this album was there is beauty on the other side and that friction and difficulty can be a bridge.”
LOCAL SOUNDS Scotts Valley musician Vee Ivy is featured on the new compilation. PHOTO: Shallow Dive Records
The album flows through a river of emotions with themes of isolation, love, community and cultivating real experiences in a time when the human experience is becoming more digital every passing second. It opens with “Birdbath,” a love song wrapped in a boozy, lo-fi sound by Livia Charman, who also did the art for The Friction.
Ivy’s “Carousel” takes the listener on a ride through the repetition of life by delivering energetic melodies before a chorus of angelic voices springs forth, only held back from the ether by Ivy’s baritone singing.
“I explored themes of anxiety,” they say. “I started playing music seriously during Covid so my song is about how every year since that has felt like we’re on a time loop.”
Anyone can throw random songs on a playlist and call it a comp. But like John Cusack’s character, Rob, from the movie High Fidelity says, “the making of a good compilation tape is a subtle art.” Thankfully, Florence understood the assignment and not only places the songs in an order that makes sense but also ties them together with ambient interludes (or as the album credits it, “Connective Debris”) by Ben Kraser, who creates music as Leshy.
It’s community music made for and funded by the community through a grant from the Joshua, Marcia and Theodore Alper Scholarship Fund through UC Santa Cruz.
Established in 2015, the fund was originally named after Josh Alper, a UCSC alumnus, local musician, artist and beloved community member. In 2013 Alper was struck by a car and killed while riding his bicycle along Highway 1. After the death of his parents, Marcia and Theodore—who founded the scholarship—the family changed the name to reflect all of them. Since its founding the fund has been awarded to more than 40 individuals.
“When I think of Josh, what comes to mind is his kind and gentle way of being in the world. It just felt good to be around him,” texts Dan Beckman-Moon from Village of Spaces, who closes out The Friction with their track, “Portent.”
Florence hopes to keep the spirit of Alper alive through this compilation and his continued work highlighting local music.
“Hearing sentiments like that and engaging in this work, he definitely is someone I want to aspire to be like,” he says. “I hope to continually try to cultivate that ethos.”
Woodhouse Blending and Brewing is going before the Santa Cruz City Planning Commission today (Sept. 19) at 7pm, in anticipation of having their outdoor entertainment permit restored.
Owned by a group of four, the two vocal owners, Tug Newett and Will Moxham, began brewing in the space in 2015. They spent five years working with the city to open as a brewery that has food and live entertainment and into a public space. After the remodel and ADA upgrades and fulfilling all compliances, Woodhouse Blending and Brewing opened to the public in 2020. Several months later they were forced to close due to COVID, but stayed afloat by delivering beer to customers homes.
Last October, Woodhouse Blending & Brewing was served with a notice to stop outdoor events due to a noise complaint. This meeting, on Sept. 19, will determine if Woodhouse Blending & Brewing can continue hosting live cultural events.
Co-owner Newett says, “Officer Lieutenant Carter Jones has really helped us over the last year of not being able to do outdoor events. Whatever he told us to do, we have. We feel hopeful that the city council will see the meeting as the last step to reinstating our permit.”
Newett also has a broader view of the situation. “We want to represent to the council that there is a deep community of people that are passionate about the arts, connecting with others, and small business. This isn’t just about us. If you believe in community, it’s about you also.”
I meet Santa Cruzans who were born here and stayed, but most of us chose to migrate to Santa Cruz. Or did it choose us? Every year 3 million tourists come to our coast for the climate, the protected environment and peaceful vibe of our town. Next month marks the yearly arrival of another visitor: the delicate and stunning monarch butterflies.
Starting in early October at the Monarch Trail behind Natural Bridges State Park, hikers will be able to walk among their spellbinding magic. If you dress right (got tie-dye?) and stay still, you might even be able to get a monarch to land on you. (Thoughtco.com)
Ballerina, you must’ve seen her Dancing in the sand And now she’s in me, always with me Tiny dancer in my hand —Elton John and Bernie Taupin
Walk or wheel over the wooden monarch walkway this October through December and you will experience one of the uniquely Santa Cruz wonders of the natural world. Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein calls monarchs “self-propelled flowers.”
I drive the morning Watsonville-to-Santa Cruz rush hour, a period where no one rushes anywhere. Crawling north on Highway 1 from Freedom to Natural Bridges takes close to an hour.
Getting out of my Prius feels like a bone extraction. I thought of the old hippie proverb, “Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape.” I park on Swanton Boulevard and walk behind Natural Bridges to the wooden planks of the monarch loop.
They’re coming soon. The migration of the monarch may be the most stunning example of the notion that the trail is the thing, not the end of the trail. For us it is step by step, for the monarch it’s wing flap by wing flap.
The monarch butterfly exhibits the most highly evolved migration pattern of any known species of butterfly or moth and perhaps any known insect (thoughtco.com). From October to January, you will be able to witness clusters of them in the shade, hundreds hanging in dense clusters, intertwining their feet along the eucalyptus tree branches.
At first you may mistake them for dead leaves. Just stand still until the sun falls upon them. One will take flight and then they will all rise into the air like a fluttering orange cloud.
Welcome Back Monarchs Day Festival
The boardwalk hike winds through a canyon filled with eucalyptus trees, where thousands of monarch butterflies spend the winter each year. The wooden walkway through the Monarch Grove Trail is wheelchair friendly. If you have a buddy who rocks and rolls in a wheelchair, this would be a sensational hike for you two.
On Oct. 13, from 11am to 4pm, there will be docents aplenty on the Monarch Grove Trail, when the first of the migration returns from the north. Natural Bridges State Beach has the only State Monarch Preserve in California.
“The caterpillar does all the work, but the butterfly gets all the publicity.” —George Carlin
In the case of monarchs, the butterfly itself must work very hard to survive, and migrating thousands of miles to Natural Bridges is critical to their survival. Each migration is a multi-generational effort. They are tropical butterflies and at no point in their short life cycle can they freeze—be it as an egg, caterpillar, chrysalis or butterfly. So they move with the warm weather, here on the coast from Southern California to Canada. Adults live for two to six weeks, spending their time gathering nectar from flowers, mating, and laying eggs. Four to five generations repeat this cycle throughout the spring and summer.
One way to get to the monarch trail is to start at Natural Bridges Beach and walk straight in on the sand toward the eucalyptus grove.
“When a caterpillar bursts from its cocoon and discovers it has wings, it does not sit idly, hoping that one day it will turn back. It flies.” —Kelseyleigh Reber
They choose the same eucalyptus grove at Natural Bridges as their temporary home because it’s located in a canyon which provides shelter from the wind, the trees filter in sunlight to keep monarch bodies warm, and eucalyptus trees flower in the winter, giving the butterflies food. (castateparks.gov)
Xerces.org says 6,500 monarchs come to Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz County. They found 6,547 at the Pacific Grove Monarch Sanctuary in Monterey County, 15,206 across the Ellwood Mesa complex (multiple sites) in Santa Barbara County and 319 at Camino Real Park in Ventura County. Lighthouse Field on West Cliff Drive is also a monarch destination.
Climate Change Is Suspect
As I walked the wooden path, I met a birder named Janice who wanted to know, “Why haven’t I seen any monarch butterflies this year?” For one, they haven’t arrived from Canada yet. But not seeing them all year? The number of butterflies dropped by more than half from Xerces’ November 2022 count to their January 2023 count. The 58% drop was the greatest of the count’s 27-year record due to the seemingly relentless parade of atmospheric river-fueled storms. The November western monarch butterfly count across California totaled 30% fewer butterflies than last year and just 5% of the population numbers from the 1980s. (foxweather.com)
Milkweed is crucial to monarch survival, as it is the only plant on which the female monarch will lay her eggs and the monarch larvae will eat. Milkweed also contains toxins that help protect the monarch caterpillar from predators.
But according to Natural Bridges naturalists and the Xerces Society, we should not plant milkweed too close to the coast. For our area on the Central Coast area, it is best to plant the milkweed 5 or more miles from the coastline. For more information on how you can help the monarchs in their recovery, check Xerces.com.
Trail Info
The Natural Bridges Monarch Trail is located at 2531 W Cliff Dr, Santa Cruz. It’s open from 8am to sunset. Parking is $10. Volunteers are likely to be able to help you finding amazing clusters of monarch butterflies. There are public restrooms. Dogs are allowed only in the parking lots and picnic areas, but not on the beach and trails (except for ADA service animals). Phone: 831-423-6409.
Last November, the Scotts Valley Fire Protection District asked Scotts Valley voters to approve a bond to build a new fire southside station and provide a better defense against wildfires. The measure lost by just 12 votes, leaving the district to continue struggling with an outdated Erba Lane station.
This year, fire officials are trying again, asking district voters to approve a $24.5 million bond to replace the Erba Lane station and improve their ability to respond to wildfires and all emergencies.
Californians used to recognize fire season as starting in late summer/early fall, after the sun had baked the earth, and fuels—once lush and green—had been dried to a crisp. Now, fire season has become a nearly year-round event, with flames racing up and down nearly every county in the state beginning in the spring.
In response, local fire departments are adjusting their preparedness strategies so they have the equipment necessary to defend communities against the dangers of firestorms like the one that roared through the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2020.
The Scotts Valley Fire Protection District Board of Directors on July 10 unanimously approved Resolution 2024-8, which will place a “fire and life safety investment” ballot measure on the Nov. 5 ballot.
The cost of the new fire station and support building—on La Madrona Drive, near the Hilton Hotel—is estimated to be $26.3 million, an increase of 9% from 2023. The sale of the Erba Lane site and a contribution from the district’s reserves will offset the difference.
“The 60-year-old fire station at Erba Lane does not meet essential services needs or building and safety standards, putting the community of Scotts Valley at risk in the event of a disaster,” the district said in a press release. “The ballot measure’s purpose is raising money to improve 911 response times, maintain lifesaving emergency medical services, strengthen wildfire protection and prevention, by constructing a strategically located fire station and administrative support building to ensure operations during a disaster.”
SVFPD Chief Mark Correira said the proposed fire station will replace the aging Erba Lane facility, allowing for greater capacity to respond to calls within the community.
While Correira understands the financial impacts of increased property taxes, he said the department is running out of time to address the issue of an unsafe firehouse for its team.
“If the bond were to fail, firefighters would continue working in an unsafe fire station and responding from a less advantageous location until we can at least remedy the situation,” Correira explained.
“We looked at temporary fixes and moving staff around to put them in a safer part of the building, but the cost to make tenant improvements was very expensive. Because of this, we have hit pause on any improvements until the outcome of the election. In addition, the Board would need to discuss next steps, including investing larger amounts of money into Erba Lane to make it seismically safe.”
The bond measure will ask voters to fund $24.5 million in bonds and will have an average tax rate of $17 per $100,000 of the taxable assessed valuation—costing the average district property owner about $109 per year.
In addition to construction of the new station and support building, the measure will include the newest Fire District residents from the Branciforte Community, who will also benefit from the relocation of the Erba Lane Station.
Continuing to punt on this bond issue will not only drive up costs for new construction of the station, as it has since 2023, but it will also keep district personnel in a less-than-optimal location until the bond is approved.
“The most important feature is it will be a seismically safe building that won’t collapse on the firefighter and apparatus in an earthquake,” Correira said. “The facility will also have drive-through bays that reduce backing up (and risk for accidents), separate storage areas for firefighting gear and for cleaning and disinfecting equipment, and dedicated space for physical fitness.”
He said the new Administrative Support Building will have space to host training and meetings, and dedicated office space for staff. “Currently some of our staff share offices, or are in an open area. The training/meeting room could also be used to support the community in a disaster,” Correira said. The station will be better positioned to serve the entire district, from the Santa Cruz border, north on Highway 17 (past Glenwood), and closer to Glen Canyon to access the south side of the Branciforte area.
As for what would happen to the existing Erba Lane station, Correira said, “We are having the building appraised and we plan to use the proceeds from the sale to either lower the amount needed to borrow/bond, or to address any unforeseen overages. It’s likely the site would be used for residential (multifamily). If the ballot measure passes, we would explore potential buyers.”
Although the 2023 measure was overwhelmingly popular, Correira said the district is looking to increase awareness of the upcoming bond to ensure its approval, and is partnering with the community to spread the word of the district’s needs.
“We are reaching out to all of our elected officials asking for their support and endorsement. Everyone has been very supportive of the measure and understands the challenges and needs,” Correira said.
Last year, the first district sought approval of $22.24 million in bonds, which was endorsed by 66.42% of voters, just 12 votes short of the 66.67% required for approval.
More information about the ballot measure and proposed facilities can be found at scottsvalleyfire.com/scottsvalleyfirebond2024.
Not all who wander are lost.—J.R.R. Tolkien
I meet Santa Cruzans who were born here and stayed, but most of us chose to migrate to Santa Cruz. Or did it choose us? Every year 3 million tourists come to our coast for the climate, the protected environment and peaceful vibe of our town. Next month marks the yearly arrival of...
