Jacob Martin studied acting in school, and lived for a while in Los Angeles, where he gave his dream of being a professional a shot. He did get some work, but something unexpected happened that was much more magical: he discovered his passion for music.
“I always enjoyed writing little ditties,” Martin says. “I felt a lack of creativity. Songwriting came in and filled that void. Songwriting was a way for me to stay connected to myself.”
He ended up in Loma Mar, outside of Pescadero, where he worked as a naturalist. While rehearsing for an open mic up there, friend/co-worker Joshua “Bobcat” Stacy overheard him and offered to play with him. Quickly, other friends in the area like Maranda Duval (vocals, percussion) and Emilie Lygren (piano) joined the ensemble.
“The songs became something I never expected. They felt a lot more artsy,” Martin says. “Before, it felt kind of country, like straight-up folksy. Now it feels like something pretty unique and special.”
Now a resident of Bonny Doon, Martin is drawing from personal experience as well as memories of his childhood home in West Virginia in his songwriting—and his acting experience, too.
“Acting is all about storytelling. I use songwriting as another way to explore that,” Martin says.
The most delirious scriptwriter could never invent a character like Tommy Wiseau. With his eccentric speech and long, dyed-black hair; of indeterminate age, means or national origin; and pretty much devoid of any actual talent, he became one of the most renowned filmmakers of the new millennium in 2003, as writer, producer, director, and star of The Room, considered by many to be the worst movie ever made. Move over, Ed Wood.
With that single act of abomination against the annals of cinema history, Wiseau has become the international poster boy for pursuing one’s artistic vision—however crackpot it may be—in the face of all obstacles. Since The Room became an instant midnight movie favorite, Wiseau is now such a legendary cult figure that a movie has been made about him: The Disaster Artist, a giddy, lightly fictionalized adaptation of a nonfiction book about the making of The Room.
The book was co-written by Greg Sestero, Wiseau’s friend and real-life co-star of The Room, who was there every step of the way. The Disaster Artist is directed by James Franco, who also stars as Wiseau in a performance of fascinating weirdness. If the real Wiseau wasn’t up there in the spotlight for all to see, Franco might be accused of excessive eccentricity, swanning around with a lazy, affected drawl of some sort, looking like a cross between Tiny Tim and Vlad the Impaler. But Franco also manages to expose the occasional raw nerve of a lost soul yearning to fit in.
In a San Francisco acting class, 1998, the teacher urges shy young student Greg Sesteros (nicely played by the director’s brother, Dave Franco) to put more emotion in his readings. Next up, fellow student Tommy Wiseau does the “Stella!” scene from A Streetcar Named Desire—shrieking, rolling around on the floor, and literally climbing the walls. The rest of the class is stunned into horrified silence, but Greg has found a mentor.
Tommy is older (he won’t say by how much) and coy about his personal history, and he embarrasses Greg, making him act out a dramatic scene in the middle of a coffee shop. But Greg is mesmerized by Tommy’s chutzpah. When Tommy suggests they move together to L. A. to break into Hollywood, Greg is thrilled.
They get headshots made and go to auditions. But while Greg picks up an agent (a funny cameo by Sharon Stone)—whom he rarely hears from again—they get no work. Tommy is criticized for his “malevolent presence,” and is told by a producer he interrupts at dinner that “Just because you want it doesn’t mean it’s going to happen for you.” So they decide to make their own movie instead, Tommy hammering out a bunch of loosely connected melodramatic crescendos disguised as a script.
Foreknowledge of The Room is not essential, but viewers interested in backstage Hollywood will get the most out of this one. Not everything makes sense (like why, exactly, no water is available for the crew on set), but things build to a nifty conclusion: at the premiere, when the audience goes berserk with laughter, Greg pep-talks the crestfallen Tommy into accepting credit for the way he has entertained them—credit the real-life Wiseau has been embracing ever since.
Over the closing credits, when we long to see a couple of clips of the real Wiseau in action, director Franco instead plays snippets from the original movie in split-screen with the same scenes he’s recreated; with actors speaking the same lines at the same time, it’s garbled and confusing. But otherwise, this is an affectionate look at outsiders amok in the Hollywood dream factory.
THE DISASTER ARTIST
*** (out of four)
With James Franco, Dave Franco, and Seth Rogen. Written byScott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. From the book by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell. Directed by James Franco. An A24 release. Rated R. 103 minutes.
Sitting at the bar at Mozaic, I was a bit alarmed when I didn’t see the warm pesto that I’d heard so much about on the list of starters. But when I asked the bartender, he nonchalantly replied that the reason I didn’t see it on the menu is that it comes complimentary with every meal. Well, OK then!
Returning to the starters, I thought the grilled octopus might make a nice complement to the pesto—and I can never resist ordering it when I see it. A meatier cousin to calamari, it’s a common ingredient in other parts of the world, but isn’t often seen on American menus. Octopus can stand up to assertive flavors, and when prepared correctly, the extremely lean meat is both tender and slightly rubbery—in a good way.
My grilled octopus arrived sizzling and scorched from the grill, swimming in a generous amount of briny capers, the tips of the wine-colored tentacles curled and black. The aroma of oregano, olive oil and lemon filled my nose with each crispy, tender bite. It was delicious, although the subtle flavor of the octopus was slightly overshadowed by a few too many capers.
Comparatively, the small, shallow dish of pesto that arrived with a side of bread was fairly unassuming, until I took a bite. The clean, summer-y flavor and fragrance of basil was buoyed by peppery arugula and plenty of garlic. I alternatively dragged pieces of bread through the bright green sauce and the tangy olive oil from the octopus, enjoying the distinct Mediterranean flavors.
Two of Mozaic’s pastas are also pesto-centric, but since I didn’t want to be loaded down with a big meal, this small serving was just right for me (in fact, I could’ve eaten it with a spoon, and would’ve loved it on a mezze platter. Heck, it would’ve been delicious on the octopus!).
What started as an exploratory mission evolved into a very pleasant solo date, aided by a totally decent $4 glass of house Merlot on happy hour special, the pesto that lived up to the hype, and the exciting flavors and textures of the octopus. I need to take myself out more often.
My husband and I were going through a wine flight at Silver Mountain’s tasting room a couple of weeks ago, and came across Oscar’s Blend—a hearty red wine with an abundance of intriguing flavors and aromas. It was the label that first caught my eye, with its delightful illustration (by Kathleen Bertrand) of a sweet-looking dog named Oscar—long gone but still remembered. Winemaker Jerold O’Brien, it turns out, adopted Oscar at age 3 and had him for 10 years. When someone names a wine after his dog, you know that canine was like a family member.
A Bordeaux-style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot, the Wild Red has distinct aromas and flavors of black currant, coffee, spice, tobacco, herbs, and red fruits—a mouthwatering mélange that will pair well with many meals, including your Christmas turkey.
Oscar’s Wild Red ($28) is a good choice for your festive table, and we can thank O’Brien’s expertise for that. He’s been making wine for 30 years, and his wealth of experience shows in every bottle.
Silver Mountain has two tasting rooms—a double opportunity to try another Bordeaux blend called Alloy, as well as other wines such as Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Syrah, and a delightful pale pink Rose of Pinot Noir. Check out the winery’s special offers and online sales, too. The Los Gatos tasting room sits high on a hill in a bucolic spot off San Jose-Soquel Road. The views are amazing.
Silver Mountain Vineyards, 42 Ingalls St., Santa Cruz, 408-353-2278. silvermtn.com.
Wine for Christmas
When it’s time for last-minute holiday shopping, don’t forget that wine makes a great gift. Supporting our local wineries will make you feel good, too. Many tasting rooms also have a plethora of wine-related gifts. Bargetto Winery in Soquel has cheese boards and cheese knives; corkscrews; gift packs of wine already tied up with red bows; wonderful fruit wines such as blackberry and pomegranate; Black Muscat dessert wine, and much more. And if you want to do something fun with the family over the holidays, take them on a tour of Bargetto’s historic wine cellars—daily at 2 p.m. Visit bargetto.com for more info.
“I’m an athlete,” says Diane Cunningham, 32, of San Jose, before going on to recite a list of activities that would make most of us tired just hearing it: swimming, basketball, soccer, floor hockey, powerlifting, snowshoeing, softball, and bowling.
She’s competed in the Special Olympics World Games. To relax, she rides horses, visits the climbing gym, or goes out on the Monterey Bay in an outrigger canoe—sometimes with her service dog, a miniature Australian shepherd.
All this, despite having lifelong challenges with a learning disorder, ADD and severe asthma.
Cunningham credits Shared Adventures—a nonprofit that creates recreation and social activities for people with disabilities—with helping her to reach many of these achievements. Since 1992, the organization has provided wings to hundreds of people in Santa Cruz County. It’s even taken people like Cunningham for flights on small planes out of Moffett Field.
Shared Adventures was started by Foster Andersen, 56, who broke his back in a motorcycle accident when he was 17. Soon after, he was introduced to “sit-skiing” in the mountains of his native New York. “There were all these people with special needs going up in the chair and coming back down,” he says. “Seeing that made a world of difference in my life. It was an adrenaline rush. People were doing something I never thought was possible, using adaptive equipment—people with open hearts and open minds making a difference in someone’s life, like mine.”
Soon Andersen had a thought: “If they can make that kind of difference in my life—how can I bring that same experience to others?”
After moving to Santa Cruz, Andersen took up surfing with the help of adaptive equipment that involved him sitting in a special chair on his board. Then, on July 17—the anniversary of his accident—he threw a beach party, like any self-respecting Santa Cruz resident would.
“I got a bunch of pallets and built a platform near the Dream Inn so people could access the sand in beach wheelchairs,” he recalls. “We had music, surfing, and kayaking, and watched the sun go down. It was a blast.” Shared Adventures was born. And the annual party, known as Day On the Beach, has now celebrated its 25th year.
Anderson says he found in Santa Cruz an environment and a culture ideally suited to his purpose of creating recreational opportunities for everyone. “Because it’s such diverse terrain and topography—from the redwoods to the ocean—we do a little of everything,” says Andersen. This includes camping, rock climbing at Pacific Edge, swimming, “adaptive yoga,” and camping.
But Shared Adventures isn’t just for shredders and athletes. Participants also get together for gardening, playing bingo, even just attending movie nights. The group hosts activities almost every day of the week, year-round, benefiting hundreds of people.
Building for Generations, the other organization in this category for the 2017 Santa Cruz Gives drive, creates a similar sense of liberation in people with special needs. Since 2005, the nonprofit has provided musical experiences to local children with physical challenges, in a group setting. Its “Big Jam” is a monthly percussion circle open to teens and adults with developmental disabilities or brain injuries.
“Music is a whole brain activity,” says Cory Ybarra, a lifetime Santa Cruz resident who founded the organization with Lizz Hodgin. Both have children with Down Syndrome. “Primarily, we work with percussion, clapping or using a shaker or conga to keep the rhythm,” says Ybarra. A trained music teacher goes to six-eight classrooms per week.
Every nonprofit participating in this year’s Santa Cruz Gives has specified a project for which it’s raising money, and Building for Generations’ will fund its monthly percussion jam.
Ybarra says she sees the healing power of music every day. “One special education teacher had a child that couldn’t spell his name because it had too many letters to remember,” Ybarra says. “She put the letters to music, and sang the name, and he could remember it. We’ve had children who are non-verbal who start to make pre-speech during the singing portion of our program.”
She recently heard from another teacher about a severely disabled student who only smiles one day a week, and that’s when he has a shaker into his hands during music class.
Ybarra says that donations will help serve more special needs children in the county. She also wants to broaden the program to reach adults, and has conducted several such classes with Raul Rikow Jr., the son of the late, famed drummer for the band Santana.
“Operating funds are a big deal for us,” says Ybarra. “I’m 65, and I’ve put a lot into it. I want to be sure it keeps going!”
To donate to any of the 33 nonprofits participating in Santa Cruz Gives, visitsantacruzgives.org through Sunday, Dec. 31.
Live music highlights for the week of December 13, 2017.
WEDNESDAY 12/13
BLUEGRASS
MARK O’CONNOR’S APPALACHIAN CHRISTMAS
Violinist Mark O’Connor has collaborated with acclaimed classical cellist YoYo Ma, French jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, folk fiddler Benny Thomasson, guitar master Chet Atkins, newgrass mandolinist Chris Thile, and many more. He’s a creative and technical virtuoso on a level where genre gives way to musical mastery. On Wednesday, O’Connor brings his Christmas show to Santa Cruz with his Grammy-winning O’Connor Band, featuring family members Maggie O’Connor on fiddle, Forrest O’Connor on mandolin and vocals, Kate Lee on fiddle and vocals, national flatpick champion Joe Smart on guitar, and Geoff Saunders on bass and banjo. CJ
INFO: 7 & 9 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $30/adv, $35/door. 427-2227.
WEDNESDAY 12/13
ROCK
GARY HOEY
Santa’s not the only one putting the “Ho Ho Ho” in the holidays. For two decades, guitar virtuoso Gary Hoey has been recording rock renditions of everyone’s favorite holiday classics for his popular Ho Ho Hoey Complete Collection album. This year, Hoey counts down the 12 days of Christmas at the beach with a special performance at Moe’s Alley. Shred the halls, rock with Rudolph and scream with the herald angels as Hoey vamps up Santa’s sleigh with ripping solos and his too-cool-for-school rock ’n’ roll rebel style. You might even recognize a couple renditions from the not one but two songs picked up by Hallmark for their musical holiday cards. MAT WEIR
With mountain style and a flair for tradition, Caitlin Jemma brings a breath of fresh air to the roots scene. Raised in the high desert of Northern Nevada, Jemma has a timelessness to her sound that brings to mind Gillian Welch and Dolly Parton’s bluegrass albums. A sensational singer-songwriter, Jemma has an authenticity that makes her immediately credible, a talent that holds up to repeat listens, and a playfulness that disarms even the most cynical of roots purists. Keep your eyes on this rising star. CJ
Haven’t you heard? Alt-marching bands are totally a thing now. Portland’s MarchForth isn’t a marching band in the sense that you probably won’t see the members in formation as halftime performance at the next football game. But the who-knows-how-many-member ensemble does use a lot of marching band instruments. Rather than cheerleaders and color guard, they have circus performers riling up the crowd. We’re talking acrobats, people on stilts, the whole works. AC
Will there ever be a fourth wave of ska? People have been asking this question since 1999. But do we need another wave of ska bands when the English Beat is on a never-ending tour, hitting Santa Cruz several times a year? The group was not a pure ska band, and most people are more familiar with the group’s New Wave pop material, but the band was part of the influential 2Tone ska movement that swept England in the early ’80s and had a huge ripple effect on the USA’s delayed ska craze. AC
The Bay Area knows hip-hop. For decades we have been purveyors of hip-hop culture, and the innovation continues with Richmond rapper IAMSU. Along with fellow HBK Gang (Heartbreak Gang) members Sage the Gemini, P-Lo and others, IAMSU has been leading the way in a new wave of Bay Area hip hop and was named the “Hottest MC in the Game” by Spin in 2013. Last year he dropped his second solo album, Kilt II, with its single “Up All Night.” This weekend, IAMSU returns to the Catalyst for a night that might just put you on Santa’s naughty list, but will totally be worth it. MW
British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson’s career parallels the evolution of folk-rock music over the last 50-plus years. A world-renowned guitarist, Thompson got his musical start while still in his teens with Fairport Convention, one of the seminal folk-rock bands of the 1960s. He then collaborated with his then-wife Linda Thompson on several albums, including I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, which is widely regarded as a musical masterpiece. For the next several decades, Thompson released a stream of critically acclaimed albums and collaborations, raking in awards in both the States and the U.K. His latest record, 2015’s Still, was produced by Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and recorded in Tweedy’s Loft Studio. On Saturday, the legendary artist hits the Rio. CJ
INFO: 8 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $29/gen, $45/gold. 423-8209.
SATURDAY 12/16
ROCK
SUN KINGS
The Beatles stopped touring long before they broke up, and they never did a reunion tour. So even though they were the biggest band of all time, not a lot of people alive today got a chance to see them perform. Don’t worry, that’s what tribute bands are for! The Sun Kings are one of the best Beatles tribute bands on the circuit; they’ve got 150 songs by the mop top committed to memory and ready to go. The tunes run the gamut from the wholesome “Love Me Do” days to the acid-fueled “I Am The Walrus” years right up to the “We’re a crazy studio band that hates each other and is about to break up” era. Fun times! AC
[Editor’s note: This is part one of a three-part series on the changes coming to the cannabis market on Jan. 1. Part two runs in our December 20, 2017 issue.]
Tim Blake, founder of the Emerald Cup, was an 18-year-old Soquel High student when he started dealing bud, just as the industry began to bloom in California. During the last bloody years of the Vietnam War, large quantities of hash from Asia, and pot via Oaxaca and South America, started pouring into cities along the West Coast. By the mid-’70s it was an organized marketplace, he says, with 100,000-pound loads arriving 10 to 15 times a year on freighters from as far as Thailand.
Then the ’80s came, bringing with them Ronald Reagan, cheap cocaine, DEA crackdowns and high mandatory prison minimums for the possession and sale of a plant whose persecution began in the ’30s, and whose use can be traced back to the early hominids.
After a grand finale of 100,000-pound busts wiped out the once-abundant pot market, crack was brought in at $10/gram to cauterize the wound, and the $1-trillion War on Drugs was born. Blake spent a couple of years running loads of cannabis out of Arizona, before quitting that gauntlet in the mid-’80s and moving to Mendocino to live the lonely, isolated life of the first large-scale greenhouse growers in the so-called Emerald Triangle.
“During those dark days of CAMP [1983’s Campaign Against Marijuana Planting], when the cowboys started suiting and booting and jumping out of helicopters up north, a lot of people were raided, and the genetic stock was burned in piles by the DEA,” says Christopher Carr, host of KSCO’s The Cannabis Connection in a phone call last week. “But—this is crazy—the true Jedis took their seeds and put them in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and they were kept alive during that dark period. The building blocks of every cup winner anywhere internationally has some ties to a Santa Cruz farmer.”
In Sonoma last weekend, the Emerald Cup drew thousands—from octogenarians to aunts fighting cancer, to lawyers, doctors and investors, all wanting to learn more about the plant at the center of California’s imminent $8 billion industry. Blake, who began the Cup—which is now the world’s largest networking event in the industry—17 years ago as a small, underground gathering for organic, sun-grown cannabis, told producers and manufacturers that in the next five years, “some of you guys are going to be national brands like Nabisco.”
Santa Cruz is home to some of the best cannabis breeders in the world, and grows around 10 percent of the state’s supply. But it is also a historical ground zero for advocating medical patients’ rights to access the body’s natural healing system—the endocannabinoid system—with a plant. Two decades after the Compassionate Use Act (1996’s Prop. 215) laid down the first stepping stone in the road to legalization, the next generation’s Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA, Prop. 64) extends access to all paying members of society. But for the first state to steward medical marijuana into the light, Jan. 1 is also the day it relinquishes its grasp on a hard-won legacy.
OPEN SEASON
Come 2018, California adults 21 and over can legally grow up to six plants per residence, and carry up to one ounce of cannabis flower or eight grams of concentrates. With the second highest density of dispensaries per capita in the state, Santa Cruz County has been working on regulations for cannabis retail since 2010, and for cannabis cultivation since 2013. The city of Santa Cruz is among a sparse handful of California cities—Berkeley, San Jose, San Diego, and Humboldt—ready to take the first swan dive into recreational sales on Jan. 1. The new recreational market is projected to generate about $1 billion annually in tax revenue, and balloon California’s existing $2.7 billion medical marijuana market to an estimated $6.5 billion by 2020. Just to put the size of this new market into perspective: Colorado’s legalized market breached $1 billion last year, which is about the size of the current medical marijuana market in L.A. County.
As of print time, the city’s three existing dispensaries—KindPeoples Collective, CannaCruz and WAMM (Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana)—say they should be licensed for recreational sales by Jan. 1, while a majority of the county’s 12 dispensaries that could be reached reported the same. Visits to KindPeoples and WAMM in recent weeks confirmed that they are indeed flying while the state builds the airplane.
TESTING GROUNDS
In the middle of an afternoon rain storm in mid-November, I drip dry in the entryway of KindPeoples Collective’s Dubois Street location. Though they are smiling, director Khalil Moutawakkil and public relations specialist Elise McDonough are also clearly still digesting the first, long-awaited 115-page tome of compliance regulations released by the state an hour before.
News to Moutawakkil is that dispensaries will have to choose between an “A” Licence, for adult use, or an “M” license, for medical use—or opt for both, which, after a temporary licensing schedule during the first few months of the year, will each cost $50,000 to $120,000.
“And that’s going to be really interesting, because right now, no one has had to make that decision,” says Moutawakkil. “It’s all just cannabis, which is greatly where I stand, and I wish they were all combined to just be that way, but it’s not what we have.”
KIND PEOPLE Khalil Moutawakkil, owner and director of KindPeoples Collective, and Elise McDonough, public relations specialist, at their Soquel Avenue location. PHOTO: KEANA PARKER
Come 2018, the state’s Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation, established by the Medical Cannabis Safety and Regulation Act (MCSRA), requires that licensed businesses on every step of the ladder only work with other licensed businesses—from growers to manufacturers to dispensaries—and all transactions in between be done by a licensed distributor.
“Some of these local businesses that we’ve been working with for years, we might have to tell them, sorry, we can’t work with you because you don’t have your license, come back when you do,” says Moutawakkil, gesturing toward the brightly lit retail space’s colorful lineup of tinctures, topicals, vaporizer pens and oils (a leading product in today’s market, as it’s easier on the lungs and easier to titrate the dose), cold-water hash (made in-house, and one of KindPeoples’ specialties), jars of cannabis flowers, and edibles of all shapes, sizes and iterations.
Grant Palmer, who co-owns CannaCruz with his brother, Brad, echoes a similar sentiment in an email, saying, “The high cost of permits, licensing, and taxes is pushing producers to the black market. We may simply run out of product to sell due to lack of legal market options.”
It’s largely a misnomer that mom-and-pop cannabis manufacturers are rolling in dough, says McDonough, who served as the Edibles Editor at High Times magazine for 15 years and wrote The Official High Times Cannabis Cookbook. Those in the industry who can’t afford the fees of licensure and compliance may not have the means—or see a point—to come into the light of the legalized market.
“Santa Cruz has been quite progressive, but at the same time, for all of the hundreds of brands that we carry, they might be in for a rude awakening,” says Moutawakkil.
Indeed, try as it may, local government has only an approximate grasp on what cannabis attorney Ben Rice says has been the number one ag crop in the county for years. The county’s environmental impact report (EIR) estimates—though “estimates vary widely and the total may be higher”—the total value of cannabis production and manufacturing in the county to be $250 to $300 million annually. For comparison purposes, the county’s most valuable traditional crop, strawberries, was estimated at $219 million in 2015.
According to a staff report, Santa Cruz County could grow an estimated 13 percent, or 1,743,000 pounds, of California’s cannabis after legalization, based on its strong response to its cultivation registry. But the county has also seen attrition to neighboring counties, like Monterey, which offers more regulatory certainty, competitive tax rates and more manufacturing space—a telling shift for a county that, according to Rice, was notorious for sending growers to prison up until just a few years ago.
While California’s population consumes around 2.5 million pounds of cannabis a year, industry experts believe it produces five to eight times that amount—suggesting that the amount of locally grown herb that can be sold on the legal, regulated market could see a significant reduction, not an increase, from current levels.
But some manufacturers, like David Brissenden of Cosmo D’s Outrageous Edibles, have been preparing for the shift all along. After just one year in business, the former chef of 25 years has been producing around 1,000 units a week out of his shared commercial kitchen in Live Oak, and hopes to expand from 52 California stores to 100 in a few months.
“With the new distribution laws that are going to be in effect, I’m hoping to expand a lot faster,” says Brissenden, who sees the 15-30 percent distribution fees as a positive trade-off for the time he’s spent driving around the state himself.
For Moutawakkil, the new mandatory distributor, and bond required to hold it, is troublesome.
“This is exactly what happened in the wine industry; over time, year over year, they keep jacking up that bond until it becomes unobtainable for small businesses, and the larger alcohol distribution companies just keep buying up the smaller alcohol businesses,” he says. “So when you look at California, there’s a very small handful of distribution licenses because it’s some ridiculous amount of money.”
But even against this sea of unknowns, the pressing reality is that on Jan. 1 the race to keep up begins. Deep-blue paint is drying on the walls of KindPeoples’ new genetics room, which will house an extensive library of seeds and cannabis clones, and in a massive move to vertically integrate, two long-house-sized rooms in the back, recently acquired and empty but for ventilation pipes, will soon be filled with the city’s first dispensary-owned onsite cultivation. It will run on LED lights—a risk in terms of new technology, says Moutawakkil, but one that will slash energy consumption by half.
Microdose
Proportionally, KindPeoples already serves a higher number of women than the state’s market average, says Moutawakkil. It’s a demographic that’s been showing interest in edibles and vaporizer pens, as well as part of a growing number of people gravitating toward cannabis in place of antianxiety medication, says McDonough. But as stigma fades around cannabis after legalization, they’re also preparing for an all-new demographic that includes “parents, women, older people, and baby boomers who are returning to it after perhaps a long period of abstaining,” says McDonough. Which is why she’s working on a “Go Low and Slow with Cannabis Edibles” PSA, which educates new consumers about best practices around edibles, including keeping dosage low to begin with, waiting at least an hour for the effects, using a lock box to keep it away from children, and ideally, not mixing them with alcohol.
“While cannabis is relatively safe, when you concentrate it, and when you ingest it, it becomes about five times more powerful as it goes through your liver. And, in order for it to have that medicinal power, it has to be a powerful substance, and that it is,” says Moutawakkil.
To meet the needs of a green recreational market, especially with the edibles, McDonough emphasizes the importance of low-dose products that are easy for new users to enjoy.
For the recreational market, the new regulations require edibles to be sold in clearly marked 10mg doses in all-new childproof packages that total no more than 100mg—an overall limit that medical patients with high tolerances for THC balk at.
Sticker Shock
A state excise tax of 15 percent and a cultivation tax of $9.25 per ounce of dried flowers will be added to all cannabis sales, with local municipalities and counties setting their own tax rates. All dispensary sales are also subject to a cannabis business tax (CBT); which is 7 percent in the county, and 8 percent in the city—recently raised by one percent to fund youth programs.
CLONE TROOPERS Racks of clones at KindPeoples’ new genetics room at their Dubois Street location. PHOTO: KEANA PARKER
Add the manufacturing, cultivation and sales taxes, plus distribution costs and price markups along the way to cover costs, and the customer gets dinged with at least a 50 percent price increase, says Moutawakkil.
Oregon, Washington and Colorado all lowered their initial tax rates after legalization to mitigate a price advantage on the black market.
Since its inception in late 2014, CBT has contributed more than $6.7 million into the county’s general fund, and $934,008 into the city’s.
“At this last [City] Council meeting, they discussed having different tax rates for medical and for adult use, and I think it would be a tremendous advantage for the city of Santa Cruz to set precedent and reduce the tax on medical, and attract medical patients into the city’s registry,” says Moutawakkil.
It’s something that the county has not discussed as an option, says District 1 County Supervisor John Leopold in an email.
Santa Cruz Mayor David Terrazas says that the Council values the medical marijuana organizations in the city, and that the tax rates will be revisited by city staff in the first quarter of 2018.
The city is allowing for two more dispensaries, with applications due on Thursday, Dec. 14.
“When Council took action in November we were concerned about the early medical marijuana leaders, like WAMM, being crowded out. So in the application process for the two new dispensaries, we made it a priority as a Council to consider applicants who were aligned and experienced with medical marijuana to protect this critical service moving forward,” says Terrazas.
On Nov. 7, a motion to lower the county’s CBT from 7 to 4 percent was denied in a split vote of 3-2. Leopold, who noted a leveling off in revenue over the last quarter, is in favor of lowering the tax.
“Here in Santa Cruz County, the cannabis retailers have generally been more accurate in predicting what would happen with sales, because they have a better handle on it than the county does,” says Leopold. “When the tax rate was originally set, the county administrative officer had told us that she expected that it would generate $900,000. The cannabis retailers told us that we would earn a lot more than that, given what they understood about sales, and sure enough, last year we took in $2.5 million. So when they came to us and said if you reduce the tax you would still be taking in a similar amount, or more, I thought that was reasonable information that we should listen to.”
District 2 County Supervisor Zach Friend, who voted against the reduction, says it’s a break that hasn’t been granted to any other industry in the county, and that the tax is what the voters overwhelmingly asked for. Friend adds that the state’s 15 percent excise tax is unreasonable, and the conversation should be at the state level instead.
“At the local level, we’re bearing all the responsibility—not just providing services, but any externalities that the industry creates,” he says. “Because, not everybody’s a good actor that comes into the industry—we’re talking massive grading of hillsides, diversions of streams, on the cultivation side, and as they have mentioned, they would like stronger enforcement against some of the bad actors that have come in.”
The county’s cultivation ordinance could be in place as soon as March, 2018, says Leopold.
Cost of Compliance
While most of the industry conversation around high taxes circles around black-market speculation and revenue loss, high price tags are already creating problems for the future of medical marijuana.
“[The taxes] are crippling to the compassion population, because there is no insurance support, there’s no formal authority that’s going to help them purchase this medicine,” says Carr, who ran KindPeoples’ compassion program, which offered free and discounted medicine to 75-100 medical patients, many of whom are living with terminal illnesses. But as of Dec. 1, Carr—an employee with KindPeoples since 2013, when it set up in a former Ducati repair shop in Live Oak—was laid off, and the compassion program suspended.
In an official emailed statement on Dec. 5, KindPeoples says, “New state regulations for manufacturing and licensing effective Jan. 1 prevents the KindPeoples Compassion Program from legally operating in its current form. We deeply regret these changes to such a core aspect of our organization. We are actively seeking a path to relaunch a new version of the program as we continue to understand how to be compliant with state regulations.”
But Carr sees this tightening of the belt as an indicator of a larger corporate momentum that leaves behind the portion of the population that needs cannabis the most.
“I think that compassion piece is just going away. It’s not a suspension I think it’s a termination,” says Carr. “We do have an underground, diehard community that is committed to people over profit, because that’s what we’ve always done. And then there’s these people that have no ties to the movement, no ties to the community, and no ties to the patient, and they’re just seeing profit. So it’s a very clear two directions,” says Carr, pointing out that Prop 64 was written and backed by billionaires like Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, who donated more than $8.8 million to the campaign. “And it could just be a sign of the times. It could just be that they’re following suit, where I was hoping that we could rise above. I was hoping Santa Cruz would rise above.”
While a clause in the state regs does allow for donations from distributors for compassion programs, McDonough, in a follow-up email, cited a limited supply of available licensed distributors, making it impossible to guarantee a distributor donation infrastructure.
CannaCruz also cited obstacles to its existing compassion program, saying, “With all the new regulations, taxes, and fees we will likely be operating at a loss in 2018, so it will be difficult. But we will have to find a way to continue to be there for our patients, as this is our core mission.”
Jason Sweatt, founder and director of SC Veterans Alliance, a dispensary that provides 100-200 veterans with free medicine at its monthly meetings, as it has since 2011, says that they will also be taking a loss.
“Not just giving away the medicine, but now we have to pay a tax on it,” says Sweatt, a U.S. veteran who found that cannabis helped his post-war issues in 2009, and now has Watsonville’s first licensed cultivation. “All of these new regs and not a mechanism for a compassion program—this has always been our top concern, that we won’t be able to continue our mission. Veterans are a big portion of the population that is underserved. But we will continue our mission.”
The shame of having no safety net for low-income patients, says WAMM director Valerie Corral, lies on the government. “In the laws, it hasn’t been written in to inspire people to do good. Tax breaks. Tax credits inspire people, help people do good, so that they can benefit and pass the savings onto others,” says Corral. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It should have been written into law.”
But MAUCRSA and AUMA were influenced by similar interests, says Corral.
People Over Profit
WAMM will continue, at least for the time being—though the only way to sustain, especially in the face of a potential influx of medical patients cut off from other compassion programs, and a waiting list for its own at-capacity compassion program, is to join the recreational market. They’ll be working with Strong Agronomy and Jade Farm to produce both indoor and outdoor medicine.
Corral, who coauthored Prop 215 and has run the collective for 25 years, thinks it’s profoundly important to push back against genetic modification—an element she says was intentionally ignored by MAUCRSA and AUMA. “It’s dangerous to give the freedom of access to plants away,” she says. Corral also thinks a coalition of small business people may be the best way to resist being swallowed up by the large corporations.
Carr’s Cannabis Connection radio show, originally funded in full by KindPeoples when it began in 2015, will continue, even as Carr’s been paying a large piece of the monthly costs out-of-pocket for the past couple of years. “It’s the voice for the greater community,” says Carr, and a beacon of light for those who want to “preserve the values of cannabis culture in the face of this tsunami of corporate greed, by connecting the dots between different tribes across the state.”
You could say that Corral saw it all coming for years. Settled into her warmly lit office at WAMM’s Westside headquarters, I ask her how long she thinks it will take before medical marijuana as we know it ceases to exist.
“I don’t think it’s far away, I think it’s four or five years,” she says, without skipping a beat. “Anything worth this much money is not going to be left in the hands of the people.”
Updated 12/14/17 12:43 p.m.: The City of Santa Cruz is among a sparse handful of California cities projected to be ready for recreational cannabis sales on Jan. 1, along with Berkeley, San Jose, San Diego, and Humboldt. The previous version of the story used the word counties, not cities, and the author regrets this error.
Updated 12/15/17 4:20 p.m. Medical Cannabis Safety and Regulation Act (MCSRA) was renamed Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Reculation and Safety Act (MAUCRSA) between April and August 2017.
Three weeks ago, Josh Schwochert and Cameron Pye were working on their startup out of garages and coffee shops.
The two recent chemistry graduates from UCSC’s doctoral program were living the startup life—rubbing elbows at mixers in search of connections, pitching potential investors and working wherever Wifi was available. At coffee shops, Schwochert would answer his cell phone and say he was in his office, eliciting laughter from the baristas.
Now, they’ve moved into a cubicle at Startup Sandbox, an incubator space on Santa Cruz’s Westside. Less than a year old, Sandbox is a nonprofit funded by the university, geared toward recruiting biotech companies in Santa Cruz and across the greater Monterey Bay region.
Incubators and accelerators like this one aren’t a new concept. Silicon Valley is full of programs geared toward helping startups create business plans, develop products and pitch to investors.
This incubator is a $700,000 initiative funded via UCSC, through a new state law. California lawmakers passed the bill AB 2664 in the fall of 2016, injecting $22 million into the 10 University of California campuses, in the hopes of spurring innovation and entrepreneurship. Each campus received $2.2 million to use at their discretion. UCSC opted to spread the funds across several areas through a program called SPLICE—Support Program for Long-term Innovation, Commercialization & Entrepreneurship.
The SPLICE plan includes seven components, including an entrepreneurial student program, grants to commercialize products and the Sandbox incubator. UCSC administrators have aimed the approach at complementing research already underway at the university—dating back to a foundation that UCSC researcher David Haussler and his team first laid when they published the first-ever map of the human genome sequence in 2000.
The Sandbox rents out space to potential companies, while providing them the infrastructure to do their research and expand.
The 13,500-square-foot two-story building off Natural Bridges Drives is still, for the most part, empty. The space will feature a testing “wet lab” (where chemicals and other volatile liquids can be handled) that’s expected to be finished by the spring. A temporary lab space on the second floor, meanwhile, is already fully occupied. Cubicles are built along many walls to make mini-offices. Some are adorned with placards of the companies already in the space.
Schwochert and Pye both say Sandbox’s presence helped motivate them to launch their company, Unnatural Products, a biopharmaceutical company and one of six startups growing out of the incubator program.
“It’s really great that there’s something in Santa Cruz and it’s kind of getting a reputation,” Pye says. “It helps us kind of defend our choice to stay in Santa Cruz because there is this growing biotech scene.”
Lou Pambianco and Judy Owen at the incubator both say the Sandbox will grow as word gets out. Pambianco, president of the company’s board, and Owen, its chair, are regular faces at the program, as they help lead it.
Between the two of them are decades of experience working for, building and managing Silicon Valley companies and startups. Owen is an electrical engineer who started at Intel in the 1970s. Pambianco has a background in consulting with tech companies on bringing products to market. They admit they don’t have biotech backgrounds, but say they don’t necessarily need it to make the Sandbox successful.
“We analyze the market and figure out how to attack it,” Owen says.
Owen, Pambianco and experts from the university all share a vision—one of biotech students graduating out of the school to work for startups under the Sandbox’s roof. Better yet, they want the students to come ready to start their companies, eventually creating a boom in the region. “I do think this has the potential, in a couple of years, to create several companies that employ hundreds of people,” Owen says.
He isn’t the only one seeing that potential. The space has begun impressing university faculty and local biotech executives.
Richard Green is a UCSC professor of bioengineering and founder of Dovetail Genomics on the Westside of Santa Cruz. When Dovetail started, it was based out of the university, but Green says they had to pester the university for incubator space. The university granted him space on campus, but Green wasn’t happy with the price or set up, saying the company moved off campus as quickly as possible.
With the Sandbox in place, untried companies get a space to experiment and potentially grow.
“It’s an absolutely beautiful lifeline that they’re throwing down to people who are trying to make this very hard decision,” he says. “It lowers the barrier of entry, which is a great thing.”
The idea of a startup often elicits images of programmers and entrepreneurs clicking away on keyboards in their living rooms.
But the biotech startup sphere’s barrier to entry is much higher than other industries, like designing websites or building apps. Fledgling companies would typically need a zoned lab space to do work, industrial refrigerators to store samples and access to expensive equipment.
That space isn’t hard to come by over the hill, but the cost is prohibitive, says Nader Pourmand, an associate professor of biomolecular engineering at UCSC who cofounded the startup Pinpoint Science out of San Francisco.
“The problem for startups in general at the size of my company is that most places, you have to sign a long-term lease. Looking at financials, startups don’t have that many assets. So, it’s really hard to get into any good space,” Pourmand says.
On a recent Thursday, UCSC’s Office of Research—the department tasked with overseeing SPLICE initiatives—held an open house. The normally quiet office building buzzed with conversation, as board members from companies mingled with faculty from the university, exchanging business cards.
Sandbox leaders were eager to show the space to faculty members and potential tenants, letting them know that the space is available.
Andrea Pesce from the Office of Research broke down the university’s investment into the Sandbox along with six other entrepreneurial initiatives.
“The university recognizes that innovation and entrepreneurship are important,” Pesce says. “The SPLICE program really demonstrates their commitment to that.”
No matter how many versions of A Christmas Carol you’ve seen—and I’ve seen plenty—the new Jewel Theatre Company production Scrooge: The Haunting of Ebenezer will be something completely different.
It’s adapted and performed as a one-man show by Jeff Garrett, in which the dauntless Garrett enacts 31 characters out of the beloved Charles Dickens classic. Garrett delivers a Herculean solo performance playing all the parts—from Scrooge to Marley’s Ghost to Mrs. Fezziwig to Tiny Tim—in a show that’s as much a celebration of the acting craft as it is about the Yuletide season.
This is also the first ever holiday show to be mounted by JTC, now in its 13th season, and embarking on its third year in the Colligan Theater at the Tannery. With only nine scheduled performances over a seven-day period, it’s a brisk injection of holiday spirit right when we need it the most.
In addition to playing all the characters, Garrett also takes the role of narrator, telling us Dickens’ famous Christmas Eve tale in the author’s own words. Well, not all of them; Garrett cherry-picks his scenes, characters, and incidents, streamlining and condensing the material into a fleet 80 minutes. But this isn’t Dickens Lite; the emotional heart of the story is laser-focused throughout.
The bare set, constructed by scenic designer Steve Gerlach, contains a high stool, a chair, and a crate in front of a black curtain. A few boxes of musty, unidentifiable objects—signifying age and neglect—and a few discreet chains dangle from above. That’s it. The rest of this most colorful and atmospheric story plays out in your imagination, prompted by Garrett’s vivid, con brio performance. From the moment he first comes onstage, roaring like a banshee in keeping with the spirit of the ghost story to come, his energy and enthusiasm never flag.
Dickens’ own narrative voice, delivered by Garrett with quiet authority, dominates the early scenes, proclaiming Scrooge a “greedy, covetous old sinner,” and describing the poignant image of clerk Bob Cratchit trying to warm himself by his single candle flame. Garrett plays Scrooge himself close to the chest — literally. Hunched protectively over his accounting book, applying his laborious scrawl, he can barely be bothered to raise his head and spit out a crotchety “Humbug!”
It’s not until buoyant nephew Fred appears, determined to wish his sour uncle a “Merry Christmas,” whether he likes it or not, that Garrett starts to work his real magic. As uncle and nephew debate the merits of the season, Garrett glides so deftly back and forth between the two opposing viewpoints and temperaments that viewers might, in retrospect, convince themselves they’d been watching two separate actors.
This sets the tone for all of Scrooge’s encounters, as he grows more towering in his meanness and disdain, then gradually more remorseful as the incidents of his misspent life come back to haunt him. Garrett makes a particularly spooky Marley’s Ghost, Scrooge’s former business partner, and the first of his otherworldly visitors, wailing his dire warning about the consequences of Scrooge’s miserly ways.
As the Spirits of Christmases Past, Present and Future take Scrooge on a tour of his life, it’s fun to watch Garrett play all the characters—from shy little Tiny Tim singing a folk ballad, to the entire guest list at the Fezziwigs’ ball, complete with dancing! (I also liked that Garrett plays the jolly Christmas Present as a sort of slightly soused Falstaff.) And the ending, where Scrooge rediscovers his humanity, along with his own Christmas spirit, is played with merry gusto.
In such a minimalist, bare-bones production, stage effects are extra important. Mark Hopkins’ lighting design is subtle and sparing, but wielded with precision for maximum impact. The string of tiny, ice-blue lights that (barely) illuminates Scrooge’s cold counting-house transforms into garlands of festive red and green for the Fezziwigs’ ball, or the Cratchits’ boisterous Christmas Day.
Spotlights of various colors and temperatures isolate Garrett on stage in key dramatic moments, like when he gazes up in awe at the warm, rosy glow beaming down from Christmas Present. Audio is also used to tremendous effect in Gerlach’s sound design—especially the nerve-jangling doorbells and clanking chains when Marley’s Ghost appears, and the deep, clamorous church bells that announce the arrival of each successive Spirit.
What I love about the novel is the economy of its storytelling, well-served in this unadorned, yet effective production. It only plays through next Sunday, so catch it quick, before it disappears like the foam off a glass of Smoking Bishop.
The Jewel Theatre Company production of ‘Scrooge’ plays through Dec. 17 at the Colligan Theater at the Tannery. 425-7506, jeweltheatre.net.
“The Future Is Now” is the best song on the New Up’s most recent record, and a crowd favorite. The song, a fusion of electronic music, rock and goth sensibilities, has a strong pop accessibility, but yet almost didn’t make it on the San Francisco band’s album Tiny Mirrors.
Last year, a friend of a friend asked the band if they’d write a jingle for an environmentally conscious laundry detergent. Noah Reid, one half of the group, says “The Future Is Now” just poured out of him.
“It was talking about the future and the destruction of the planet,” Reid says, describing what may very well be the strangest lyrics ever for a jingle. The product ended up not launching, and Reid decided to use the song for the New Up.
At that point, with last year’s crazy election campaign in full force, Reid re-evaluated the lyrics of the song. (“Careful what you wish for/Once you open the door/There’s no turning back/Pack your bags/It’s time to go.”)
“I didn’t even know what I meant,” Reid says. “I thought I was talking about dictators and autocrats and horrible leaders of other countries. Then I realized, ‘oh my God, I’m talking about us.’”
ES Pitcher, the other half of the group, says that the album was scheduled for release the weekend after the election. With everyone in such despair about the unexpected results of Trump’s victory, they delayed the release for early 2018.
As they processed what had happened, they looked at the concept album that they’d written, and realized it was speaking to the Trump era we were now living in.
“We were like, ‘this album is so absolutely significant. This wouldn’t be nearly as significant if Hillary won the election,’” Pitcher says. “That was our only silver lining.”
The album, like “The Future is Now” finds that delicate line between heavy rock and electronic music. The analog and digital elements are tossed together like a dinner salad, and have an overall dark ambience. It’s also a layered record, with multiple soundscapes giving the songs various dimensions.
The arc of the record begins with different stories of people feeling lost and disconnected, and acting out in self-destructive ways. As it progresses, these extreme behaviors became normalized by society, and are reflected most heinously in the leaders.
“The real challenge for us is always to love ourselves and to try and come at things through love and not fear,” Reid says. “The emotional tone of the music is not anything about a specific person, but the power structure that’s in place in our society, which is based on people wanting power, not on us progressing as a species.”
Not only were the members not aware of the timely significance of the music they were writing as they wrote it, but they didn’t even realize it was going to be a concept album. That came near the end of the process, when they were selecting songs and putting them in order.
“Concept albums have totally changed my life. They tell a story. They take you on a journey. There’s a point of reflection,” Pitcher says. “Because certain concept albums had such an impact on my life, I wanted to do the same, even though it’s not the thing to do in the music industry right now.”
But the record, their second, has done well. It even sparked interest from Rough Trade Records, who liked the tracks that the group’s manager sent them. A few months ago, the New Up signed a publishing deal with Rough Trade.
Going forward, the group hopes to blur the line between instruments and computers further, and to continue to write deep, impactful music. In the meantime, they are continuing to promote Tiny Mirrors, as well as to further discover it’s meaning. As dark as the album’s concept might seem, they insist that it’s very much an optimistic album.
“We all have work to do in order to be able to help other people,” Pitcher says. “It’s kind of like the idea of putting the oxygen mask on yourself before you put it on someone else when you’re in the airplane. It does sort of evolve where it’s like, now I feel a little bit more awake and able to stand up and connect on a greater level.”
The New Up play at 9 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 16 at the Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $10. 429-6994.
