Dave King is a standout jazz drummer who brings what’s been dubbed a “propulsive” style to bands like the Bad Plus, Alaska and Happy Apple. With the Dave King Trucking Company, King brings his appreciation of the group dynamic to new levels with a current lineup comprising Minneapolis-born, Brooklyn-based Chris Morrissey on bass, Brooklynite Chris Speed on saxophone and clarinet, and Minnesotans Brandon Wozniak on saxophone and Erik Fratzke on guitar.
INFO: 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 14. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $25/adv, $30/door. 427-2227. WANT TO GO? Go to santacruz.com/giveaways before 11 a.m. on Friday, Sept. 8 to find out how you could win a pair of tickets to the show.
Steel Pulse, Rolling Stones, Dick Dale, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. These aren’t artists that normally get mentioned in the same sentence. Yet local band Room 9 will likely play songs by all of these bands this week, within the same set. It’s harder really to pin down something they won’t play.
“All the players play professionally in local bands. It really is a big mix, like we go from upbeat big band swing stuff—like Brian Setzer stuff—and then we’ll drop right into an outlaw country tune that’s also upbeat, so people are still dancing,” says bassist Slade McCombs. “If you like any kind of music, typically you’re going to enjoy coming to the show.”
The group has been at it for a while—12 years maybe, they can’t exactly remember. But the players have been actively playing music since the ’90s. McCombs and guitarist/vocalist Ryan Inlow used to have a band called the Zealots back in 1999, which dissolved in 2004 when McCombs left for L.A. to take a stab at a music career.
The Zealots was an instrumental funk/jam band, but when McCombs returned and reformed it with Inlow, Inlow took it upon himself to learn how to sing. Now Inlow is the frontman of Room 9.
With all of their experience, the group is able to play just about any kind of style authentically. Currently they have roughly 150 songs in their repertoire. The biggest aspect above all else is the fun vibe of the shows.
“We’ve done it so long that we pretty much know how to keep the dance floor completely full at this point,” McCombs says. “Nobody’s chasing the dream of anything bigger. Just show up and put on as good of a show as we can.”
INFO: 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 31. Crow’s Nest, 2218 E Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz. $5. 476-4560.
Last summer, Hulk Hogan sat in a Florida courtroom, wearing a black bandanna of mourning, chewing on his biker mustache as he tried to rehabilitate his reputation in court.
The trouble began in 2012, when the celebrity gossip website Gawker published a cuck-video of Hogan having sex with his BFF’s wife, Ms. Heather Clem. The BFF—Todd Clem, a.k.a. shock-radio personality Bubba The Love Sponge—covertly ran the camera.
When the famous lawsuit’s smoke cleared, Gawker and its subsidiaries were left to face the bad end of a remarkably generous judgment of $140.1 million aggregate. The website and its subsidiaries went bankrupt almost immediately, and Univision scooped up the remaining assets for $135 million.
It seems strangely coincidental that the downfall of everyone’s favorite (and, at times, most hated) online tabloid coincided with the rise of a different tangerine-colored figment of 1980s wrestling, Donald Trump. Beyond journalists, few seemed to realize Gawker’s death was a harbinger of a greater war against the media, financed by wealthy individuals.
It was later discovered that Hogan had a secret partner funding his lawsuit. The money paid for the sordid case was, in fact, payback against Gawker by Hulk Hogan’s secret donor Peter Thiel, the prominent Silicon Valley tech financier who the website had outed as gay. Thiel now serves as an adviser to the president, who continues to call the media an enemy of the state.
The trial is the focus of a new Netflix documentary, Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, and it’s bizarre how little talk went on in Silicon Valley about a titan of tech’s actions in putting a media outlet to death.
Brian Knappenberger, director of Nobody Speak, says he encountered trouble conveying the importance of what happened in court. He’s met people who thought it couldn’t have happened to a nicer website, and that Gawker had it coming.
“I don’t think they understand that this kind of lawsuit can be used against any outlet, even in a country that prides itself on freedom of expression,” Knappenberger says. “We’re living in a time when the rich are so much richer than they’ve ever been, and because of the vanishing of classified ad revenue, journalism is more vulnerable than ever.”
Hogan’s point during the Florida trial was that the leaked tape hurt him as a man. Hulk Hogan was simply a character, created by one Terry Gene Bollea. His lawyers argued that when Hulk later went on Howard Stern to joke about the tape—to boast of both his marital and his martial prowess—that he was doing so in character. The real Bollea was not actually rocking a 10-inch schwanzstucker, as he had told Stern on the air. Instead, he was a quiet and humble guy. Bollea, not “the larger than life, All-American professional wrestler” as Hogan testified, ached for very expensive closure.
When Hogan’s lawyers, in a calculated move, dropped the “infliction of emotional distress” claim, Gawker Media’s insurer was no longer on the hook for damages. The protracted legal battle between Hogan and Gawker lasted several years, but it was only in May 2016 that first Forbes, and then the New York Times revealed Thiel, an early investor in Facebook and a founder of PayPal, had been paying for the wrestler’s expensive litigators.
Owen Thomas, the then-editor of Gawker’s tech blog, had outed Thiel as gay. Thomas, gay himself, concluded the exposure with, “More power to him.”
One could argue that this outing was a way of embarrassing Thiel. One could also point out that in a culture where the bro-ethos rules supreme, identifying Thiel as gay was a way of reminding the lords of the valley that gay people are everywhere. One could compare and contrast the way the first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO, Tim Cook of Apple, handled a similar situation: After being accidentally outed by CNBC, Cook publicly discussed his sexual orientation in an editorial in 2014.
Gawker had a self-declared mandate to publish stories other outlets were scared to touch—for reasons of what’s left of good taste in our society, of lack of the usual vetting, or of just plain ridiculousness.
The site did, however, do useful and funny work: Caity Weaver documenting the Paula Deen damage-control cruise, Tom Scocca’s essay bringing light to rape allegations against Bill Cosby, and a series of stories on leaked Sony documents that revealed in-house racism at the studio.
Thiel has contradicted himself over the years. He’s donated to the nonprofit Freedom of the Press Foundation, which has since denounced Thiel’s big-payback donation to Hogan’s lawyers. The foundation’s spokesman, Trevor Timm wrote, “Do you think that because Gawker’s demise is something you agree with that the same thing won’t happen to newspapers you like in the future?”
Personally, director Knappenberger says he wouldn’t have run the column outing Thiel if he’d been Gawker’s editor. “That doesn’t mean anything, though,” he says. “The legal boundaries aren’t crossed when that happens.”
Knappenberger says numerous examples of what’s chronicled in Nobody Speak have occurred since his film debuted at Sundance.
“John Oliver and Time Warner got sued by John Murray, a coal billionaire,” Knappenberger says. “Then there’s Sarah Palin’s New York Times suit, alleging that she’d been defamed by connection to the Gabby Giffords shooting.”
It’s been a good strategy for political billionaires to tie up periodicals in court and bleed them with the cost of lawyers, in hopes that their secrets will stay that way.
So what should journalists be doing?
“They should be rethinking libel insurance and they should be looking into ways of protecting themselves,” Knappenberger says. “In the meantime, they might want to end the practice of writing softball stories with the powerful in exchange for access. A rethinking of that kind of approach could help, and it proves it’s a good idea for journalists to ignore useless press conferences.”
O’Mei, Santa Cruz’s Chinese restaurant on Mission Street, hadn’t gotten a review on yelp.com in a month and a half as of Saturday, Aug. 19.
That’s usually a sign that a restaurant is the kind of place where customers get what they’re expecting, with few surprises. You know, all around non-controversial.
But in the days after Thursday, Aug. 20—whennews broke on Indybay.org that owner Roger Grigsby had financially supported white supremacist David Duke’s run for office—O’Mei received at least 35 one-star reviews denouncing it. Some were more creative than others;Santa Cruz’s Ian B. offered, “The swat-stickers were all right.”
Another three customers commented casually on the food, but also implored fellow reviewers to leave politics out of the discussion or suggested that maybe we don’t know the whole story.
Then suddenly this past weekend, the restaurant was closed—a sign hungon the door criticizing “rumors” on the internet. Right, because everyone knows you can’t believe what you read online. I mean, unless, of course, there’s some kind of proof.
According tofederal election records, Grigsby, of Santa Cruz, donated $500 to Duke—former imperial wizard for the Ku Klux Klan and loudmouthed Holocaust denier—in Duke’s recent campaign for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana a year ago. Grigsby did not return phone calls seeking comment, although GT did play a brief game of phone tag with an O’Mei employee on Friday. [Update 1 p.m. 8/30/17: After we went to print, Grigsby emailed KPIX, the CBS News Bay Area affiliate, to say that his $500 campaign contribution was “to one of the men supporting European American civil rights.” He cited the new backlash against him as part of a “war on whites.”]
But that was before the restaurant’s “closed” sign went up, and no one has answered our calls, or returned them, in the days since. So it’s anyone’s guess, at this point, whether or not they’ll reopen.
Donald Wittman, an economics professor at UCSC, says he likes O’Mei’s food, and he would prefer to give Grigsby the benefit of the doubt, at least until he hears the owner’s side of the story. But even still, Wittman can’t imagine what kind of explanation could convince him to ever eat there again—assuming O’Mei ever reopens its doors anyway.
Wittman says he already had known Grigsby to have conservative leanings. And that much, he felt he could stomach.
“I wouldn’t’ stop eating somewhere because of those reasons, but racism goes a step beyond what is accepted,” he says. “That crosses a line. Sometimes racism is hidden. You can say you don’t like certain kinds of polices the way they’re written. But here, it’s very clear: David Duke is racist.”
The $500 amount for the Duke donation is honestly puzzling—not enough to make a difference in a primary effort where Duke garnered just 3 percent of the vote, but obviously more than enough to piss off loyal Santa Cruz customers and incur the wrath of social media. In a city full of politically conscious people frustrated as hell that they have been largely forced to the geographical sidelines of the fight against white supremacists (who proved that the most vile, David-Duke-fueled strains of American racism are alive and well by beating African Americans and murdering a counter-protester in Charlottesville), Indybay’s revelation provided an outlet. It was something tangible and local on which to unload weeks worth of righteous anger.
Yelp has begun taking down new comments, and the site has posted a pop-up notification on the page acknowledging that the business has recently made the news (which, of course, is the understatement of the week). Current events are prompting what Yelp calls an “active cleanup alert,” according to the note, because “While we don’t take a stand one way or the other when it comes to these news events, we do work to remove both positive and negative posts that appear to be motivated more by the news coverage that the reviewer’s personal consumer experience with the business.”
Hmm, well, at least Yelp—unlike Grigsby—is willing to own up to its actions and offer an explanation.
Update 1 p.m. 8/30/17: After we went to print, Grigsby emailed KPIX, the CBS News Bay Area affiliate, to say that his $500 campaign contribution was “to one of the men supporting European American civil rights.” He cited the new backlash against him as part of a “war on whites.”
The Only Living Boy In New York is quite a surprise. Everything about the ad campaign and the preview trailers for this movie seem to be selling it as a sort of Millennial version of The Graduate—a young man at loose ends, on the threshold of his life, enters into a messy relationship with a seductive older woman connected to the family through his father. The chief difference being (as clearly laid out in the trailer) that the woman here is his father’s mistress, not the wife of a business partner.
The song that gives this movie its title, vintage Simon and Garfunkel, also references the ambience of the classic Mike Nichols movie. But it turns out there’s a perfectly valid reason for using this song, beyond a random attempt to create a link to its famous predecessor. This smart, engaging film, written by Allan Loeb and skillfully directed by Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer), tells its own story, from a completely fresh perspective. The story intrigues and surprises, and there’s a lot of satisfaction in the way everything eventually falls into place. Best of all is a big, plummy role for Jeff Bridges, as sort of an irascible old Yoda, mentoring the boy in the school of life.
Callum Turner has a wry, slightly gauche appeal as Thomas Webb, a twentysomething a couple of years out of college who doesn’t know what to do with his life. His father, Ethan (Pierce Brosnan), who once had literary aspirations, is the big cheese at a literary publishing house in New York City. Thomas’ “fragile” mom, Judith (Cynthia Nixon), hosts lavish dinner parties for writers, artists, and other glitterati. Thomas loves his parents, but he’s moved to a cheap, walk-up apartment on the Lower East Side to nurture his own fledgling writing ambitions in secret.
Stopping in the lobby one afternoon, Thomas meets new tenant W. F. (Bridges). Slightly cantankerous, and a bit of a lush, W. F. is easy to talk to; with his poet’s soul and an acerbic viewpoint, he’s a willing sounding-board to whom Thomas is soon telling all his problems. Most of these involve a girl named Mimi (vivacious Kiersey Clemons), who works in Thomas’ favorite bookstore. They spent one night together, but now they’re just friends; she has a boyfriend and is about to leave for Croatia.
At a restaurant one night, Thomas and Mimi spy Ethan tucked away in a private booth, canoodling with a glamorous stranger, Johanna (Kate Beckinsale). After witnessing a couple of more encounters, and finding himself unable to confront his father, Thomas instead starts stalking Johanna. She knows exactly who he is (his father keeps Thomas’ photo on his desk), and Thomas’ initial desire to protect his mother’s feelings—and Johanna’s instinct to dismiss his innocent unworldliness, soon escalate into something more.
Bridges’ voice narrates much of this story. It’s a little jarring at first that this character, observing the action from the outside, presumes to tell us what Thomas and other characters are thinking and feeling. But there’s a turning point later on when it all suddenly makes sense. Needless to say, this does not turn out to be a story about Thomas and Johanna, but as the narrative keeps expanding, what seems like a simple coming-of-age tale evolves into something much more cleverly put together and compelling.
You may guess part of the mysterious history linking these characters before all is revealed, but that shouldn’t interfere with the pleasure of watching it play out. Sure, there are some iffy motivations along the way, viewed in retrospect. But the sympathy extended to each character (even the initially off-putting Ethan) helps keep us invested, and Bridges is in fine form, both impish and heartfelt. And the percolating rhythms of city life provide an expressive counterpoint to this very human tale.
THE ONLY LIVING BOY IN NEW YORK
***1/2 (out of four)
With Callum Turner, Jeff Bridges, Kate Beckinsale, and Pierce Brosnan. A Roadside Attractions release. Written by Allan Loeb. Directed by Marc Webb. Rated R. 88 minutes.
Grabbing a bag of chips to pair with my sandwich the other day, I couldn’t help but notice the calorie count printed on the package. Being somewhat of a nutrition nerd already, I was used to reading food labels, but this felt different. Instead of me looking for the nutrition facts, it seemed the nutrition facts were actually looking for me.
It turns out that I’m not going crazy (about this, anyway), as the FDA recently changed the standard layout of the nutrition facts food label for the first time in more than 20 years. Given the constantly evolving nature of nutrition recommendations, that food labels haven’t changed in more than two decades is kind of shocking in itself. But in May of last year, the FDA announced the new label, and currently all food manufacturers with annual sales over $10 million must have them on their packaged food by July, 2018. Many food companies have already made the switch, and the new labels are becoming more and more ubiquitous.
Although the changes aren’t drastic—most obviously, the bolding and increase in font size of the calorie count—there are nonetheless some significant differences that reflect scientific findings and highlight new guidelines. And I won’t be the only one noticing them: a 2014 FDA survey found that 77 percent of adults reported using the nutrition facts labels always, most of the time, or sometimes when buying a food product. But if information isn’t clearly listed, or is confusing or misleading, the average consumer has no shot at being adequately informed.
In addition to the emphasized calorie count, serving sizes—which were previously often arbitrary and unrealistic—have also changed.
“By law, serving sizes must be based on amounts of food and beverages that people are actually eating, not what they should be eating,” says the FDA on its website. They hope the new label closes this loophole, and products that are typically consumed in one sitting must also provide nutrition information about the entire container.
Total fat, saturated fat, and trans fat are all still required on the new label, but interestingly, the “calories from fat” information is being removed. Why? “Because research shows the type of fat is more important than the amount,” says the FDA’s website. This isn’t exactly revelatory, but the FDA acknowledging that not all calories are created equal pokes a major hole in the already besieged and increasingly archaic “a calorie is a calorie is a calorie” school of thought.
One addition to the new label that is probably not going down well with many food manufacturers is that the total “added sugars” must now be listed. The amount of hidden sugar in many foods is much higher than consumers might often suspect, so the new label seeks to pull this curtain back.
And when it comes to vitamins and minerals, it’s clear that scientific data points to many Americans being deficient in vitamin D, calcium, iron, and potassium. The amounts and “percent daily value” of these micronutrients are now required to be listed. And speaking of percent daily value, the footnote at the bottom of the label will now better explain the concept.
But even with new and more informative food labels, it is still important to read the ingredients list, too, because it’s crucial to know what is actually in your food. One good thing to know when reading those ingredients is that they are listed in descending order by weight, so the first ingredient will be the one that weighs the most, and so on. This helps consumers avoid unhealthy ingredients that appear early on the list. Some nutritional landmines to watch out for include sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, non-whole grain flour, and unhealthy fats like margarine or any type of hydrogenated oil. The process of hydrogenation is what produces artificial trans fat, which is extremely unhealthy and tends to lower good cholesterol, increase bad cholesterol, and contribute significantly to the development of coronary heart disease. For this reason, the FDA is seeking to completely eliminate it from processed foods by banning the ingredient starting in 2018. But for now, it’s still around, and it’s also important to know that if a food has less than 0.5g of trans fat per serving, then the food can be labeled as “trans fat-free” even though it has partially hydrogenated oils.
There are many reasons to become vegan, including health and environmental concerns. For father and son Akindele and Akindeji Bankole—two of the five owners of Veg on the Edge, those are both important, but the most important reason, as they see it, is to encourage compassion. For vegans in Santa Cruz, the new Abbott Square spot brings more than just meat-free dishes—the food is eclectic and totally unique. Many of the dishes are inspired by West African recipes (Akindele is from Nigeria). We talked to Akindeji to learn a bit more about why vegans and non-vegans alike should swing by Veg on the Edge.
Are you guys 100 percent vegan?
AKINDEJI BANKOLE: Yes. We’re 100 percent vegan, 100 percent gluten-free and kosher. I became vegan, personally, about a month and a half ago. And my dad, he’s been vegetarian for 15-plus years. He became a vegan more strictly a couple years ago. For us, it’s just about the compassion element of it: compassion for animals, compassion for people. Having compassion in all aspects. We want to give people an option, some really good-tasting food that you know is safe.
Would you call your dishes strictly West African, or fusion?
It’s West African-influenced, not all dishes are West African. The thing is we want to toe the line of the American taste buds. My dad’s Nigerian. There are things that they eat over there in Nigeria that are not really going to go over well for most Americans, like okra with pounded yams. Some of the things we’re doing are staples for West African dishes. Like our Jollof rice is a thing that people eat all the time. Plantain Logs. We’re doing them a little differently. We’re making them almost into French fries. In Nigeria, they’d cut them into fourths and fry them. So we’re putting our own spin on all these dishes. Something that a lot of people like is our Moin Moin. It’s sort of like a tamale, but made with black eyed peas. We create a mushroom sauce we put over it. It’s really good, the combination. That’s a dish that’s usually wrapped in a banana leaf in Nigeria. It’s one of our top sellers.
What are potato balls?
That’s not a West African dish at all. Those are eaten in a lot of other places. In Europe. In South America, they have their own versions of potato balls. That’s just something that Americans don’t have. What we do is we sautée red onions, mustard seed, and we mix that together with red potatoes and a little bit of chickpea flour, roll them into balls and deep-fry those. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but those things are really good. People love those. They come back for them. That’s just something that’s fun that is easy to eat. It’s potatoes. That’s something that a lot of people enjoy.
This citrusy 2015 Sauvignon Blanc is a delightful summer wine, with its bright green apple and light grassy straw on the nose. Winery owners Dan and Thérèse Martin say this wine is “kissed with a hint of Semillon—transitioning to the mid-palate with subtle apricot.” Semillon is a low-acidity, packed-with-flavor white wine that is often a key ingredient added to sweet wine such as Sauterne.
After one of the weekly wine tastings (for only $3) at Deer Park Wine & Spirits in Aptos, I found this Central Coast Sauvignon Blanc—from the J.D. Hurley label of Martin Ranch—for a mere $11.99. I often root around this liquor store to check on their good deals.
Family from my hometown of Sheffield, England (my cousin, her husband and three teenagers), were traveling in California and stopped by for dinner—and I opened this sassy and refreshing Central Coast wine to enjoy with a few appetizers. Too young to consume alcohol, the teenagers were allotted juice and water. (The legal drinking age in Great Britain is 18.)
We all loved the Sauvignon Blanc, which won a silver medal at the 2017 California State Fair and comes with an easy-to-open screw cap.
Martin Ranch Winery, 6675 Redwood Retreat Road, Gilroy, 408-842-9197. martinranchwinery.com.
Buzen Foods—Japanese Cuisine Takeout
Buzen Foods, which used to have a take-out facility in Capitola, has now moved into Seascape Foods in Aptos—a market that specializes in catering, fresh foods and local goods. Buzen is owned by Japan native Yuriko Yamaguchi, who is all about living a healthy life, and loves to create gourmet cuisine for today’s fast-paced lifestyle. All the food Yamaguchi makes is available at Seascape Foods, and her motto is “fast, fresh and healthy.” Everything is very affordable (most dishes are around $8, including the bento box) and made fresh daily with no added preservatives or MSG. Buzen has catered for Santa Cruz Shakespeare, the Oakland Athletics, New York Yankees and many others—and would be happy to cater your event also. Contact Ms. Yamaguchi at Seascape Foods, 16 Seascape Village, Aptos, 359-7005. bu********@gm***.com. View the menu at mkt.com/buzenfoods.
Over the course of one week this summer, I counted a staggering 61 local job openings posted on Craigslist under “Food/Beverage/Hospitality.” Line cooks, bartenders, sandwich makers, hostesses, servers, prep cooks, baristas, sushi chefs, dishwashers and cashiers were all needed across Santa Cruz County, from Scotts Valley to Watsonville.
The long list of available jobs confirmed what I had been hearing from people in the restaurant industry for more than a year. One sous chef and kitchen manager I know, for example, has been pulling doubles and working six days in a row—or more—for months, unable to find suitable line cooks to share the load while commuting from Brookdale. I admire her steely reserve, but I wonder how long anyone can work under those circumstances.
Earlier this summer, I ran into Andy Guy, the hiring manager at 515 Kitchen & Cocktails, at the downtown farmers market. Usually upbeat, he looked pained when I asked him how he was doing.
“Not good,” he said.
Over the previous two months, he had found himself in the position of needing to hire 10 people, with no candidates walking through the door. Exhausted and incredulous, he ended up calling people who had worked at 515 years before to see if they needed any extra cash.
Earlier this year, I wrote a column in defense of the Santa Cruz food scene and it stirred up a conversation about some of our restaurant scene’s shortcomings. Many readers said they were discouraged from going out to eat locally after experiencing chronically poor service. It was a criticism that I couldn’t argue with, and I began looking into what many see as a sharp decline in local restaurant service over the last couple of years.
The biggest reason, it turns out, is simple: Santa Cruz County’s restaurant industry is facing a serious labor shortage.
But how could a town with so many young people and college students be facing a labor shortage, especially in an industry where even the most ambitious creative types have traditionally had to start at the bottom and work their way up? Do aspiring chefs find the notoriously ruthless industry less attractive now that they can find better 9-to-5 work in catering kitchens at high-end grocery stores and tech campuses? Is it fallout from the rise of the Food Network, which has led foodies to flood culinary programs over the last decade?
Perhaps, but many local managers and restaurant owners say there’s a far more dire reason employers are having a hard time finding and keeping staff: high rents in Santa Cruz County make it difficult, if not impossible, for someone working in service to make ends meet.
“Now more than any time in the past, hiring has been more difficult, mostly due to the lack of people being able to afford to live here,” says Guy, who has worked in the local service industry for six years and managed three other bars where he hired and fired staff. He says he’s never had so much difficulty finding eligible employees.
Guy says that some of the employees who left Santa Cruz didn’t necessarily move anywhere with less expensive rents—two went to New York City, one went to Colorado, and two went to the San Francisco area—but they left under the assumption that they would be able to make more money at larger, more high-end establishments in metropolitan areas with the skills they’d earned.
“Santa Cruz isn’t a big city, and the opportunities to make the amount of money with the time and money that you’re putting in is better elsewhere,” he says.
Even after filling positions, hiring so many people at one time puts considerable stress on the business and existing staff. “If you’ve been working at a place for four years and everyone around you is new, you have the same job title, but you have to work twice as hard,” Guy says. “People aren’t trained up, everyone’s learning, so it puts a considerable amount of stress on the people that decided to stay. That makes it even harder for the people who have stayed to stay longer, because their jobs are getting harder and harder.”
As a result, Guy admits that he’s occasionally kept workers he’d like to let go on for longer than he’d like, just to have enough people on hand. And if he does let someone go, it’s easy for that person to find work at another establishment. “I’ve had to let some people go for very justifiable reasons, but people don’t call for references anymore. Managers hire and say, “Oh thank God—a body! And then I’ll walk into a business and see that that person is there. People are just scrambling to find people.”
Guy believes that the only way the industry will stabilize locally is if housing costs become more manageable—either from an increase in the amount of affordable housing, or a decrease in rents. “The whole town runs on students and tourism,” says Guy. “It’s hard to have a community when no one in the service industry can make ends meet and you’re stacking 25-year-olds two to a bedroom in houses that are falling apart.”
NARROW MARGINS
Accommodation and Food Service is the fourth largest industry in Santa Cruz, employing 3,920 people at 297 establishments, according to the City of Santa Cruz Economic Development Office. Economic Development Manager J. Guevara points out that the high cost of living here is not just housing costs per se, but a combination of expensive housing, food, transportation and health care.
The median household income in the city of Santa Cruz is $70,297, and the median household expenditures on shelter, transportation, food and beverages, healthcare and utilities is $66,349. “This leaves only $3,948 per year in the median household income left to address any debt, savings, or pursuing further education or opening a business—that’s just over 5 percent of annual earnings left over,” says Guevara.
Many employees in the service sector, then, exist within a very precarious financial situation—an increase to any portion of the cost of living can overwhelm an already extremely thin margin.
The lion’s share of costs may be devoted to housing, but transportation can also be a significant factor, as many people who make up the service sector workforce may need to live farther away, and then pay more to fuel their commute.
Despite working at two high-volume restaurants in Santa Cruz, Alex Sainez realized it was simply too expensive to live in the area as a cook, and decided to live out of his car. That was two years ago.
“I ended up spending most of my wages on basic needs, and my bills for my truck,” says Sainez, “and I quickly realized that I was putting in all my time at work, and barely spent time in my room because of it. It made renting a room kinda pointless. I would stress all pay period about my bills and still struggle at the end of the month to get groceries. It wasn’t fun.”
He’s confident that he’ll find housing again—just not in the Bay Area. Temporarily, he believes the sacrifice is worth the culinary education he’s receiving in Santa Cruz. “It’s one of the best areas to learn to cook in the nation because of all the produce that can be found and utilized by various chefs that have raised restaurants here. I stay here and struggle like this simply to learn and improve my resume in hopes that I’ll find better employment with more survivable wages in an area that has a more affordable housing situation,” he says. “Passion over pain.”
BOTTOM LINES
As a result of legislation in the state of California that went into effect on Jan. 1 of this year, the minimum wage, which most restaurant workers earn, will increase every year until the end of 2022—from the current $10 per hour to $15 per hour. While supporters of the increase argue that it will create a more livable wage for millions of workers and increase their ability to buy goods and services, critics say the financial strain on some business owners will be too severe.
Alec Stefansky, owner of Oasis, says it’s hard to keep wages on pace with Santa Cruz’s ever-increasing cost of living. PHOTO: KEANA PARKER
The wage increase, and his ability as a business owner to provide a living wage for his employees, has been at the forefront of Alec Stefansky’s mind since he opened Oasis, Uncommon Brewers’s tasting room and Matambre restaurant, with business partner Chris LaVeque earlier this year.
“It’s one of the things I’m looking at,” says Stefansky. “Just being able to offer regular raises and cost-of-living adjustments, given how quickly rents are rising, is going to be really difficult to do. I can see a future in a couple years where people who are working normal jobs are going to be priced out.”
With the knowledge of the competitive service industry market and in anticipation of the increase, he says Oasis is offering wages above the minimum in the kitchen in order to try and maintain the existing staff and keep them motivated.
“Kitchen work is hard work with long hours. It’s meticulous and hard to do. It’s one of those jobs where there’s a lot of demand in the county, so if it doesn’t work out one place, people can hop around fairly often. It’s one of our concerns right now that they keep the core group.”
While the wage increase may strain his business down the line, Stefansky says the alternative is not an option, at least not in Santa Cruz. “How do you expect to pay rent on minimum wage? It’s not going to happen.”
He points out that rising living costs, accelerated by rapidly increasing rents, are going to lead to a larger problem in this community—less expendable income means that fewer people will dine out.
“If people are spending all their money on housing, then they’re not spending their money going out to a nice dinner and then having a beer,” he says.
Despite his best intentions to provide a sustainable work environment for his employees, Stefansky feels there’s little he as a small business owner can do to fix larger political issues. “The pathway to the middle class is getting narrower in this country, and that’s something as a small business owner that I don’t have the power to change. Hopefully we’ll be able to vote for someone who can do something about it.”
BREAKING POINTS
Nikki Howe, co-owner of Cafe Cruz, believes that there may be other factors in addition to rising rents contributing to the shrinking service labor market. She points out that the construction industry is booming again, and the sectors draw from the same hiring pool. At the same time, increasing political pressures on immigrants may be contributing to fewer being able to secure work permits. She says that several potential hires have fallen through when the restaurant has asked for work authorization.
“Maybe it has something to do with rent increases, but looking down the line, it’s hard to know because I think all these factors contribute,” says Howe.
Because Cafe Cruz offers benefits, health insurance, vacation and sick days and 401Ks to all full-time employees working more than 30 hours, Howe says that while finding labor is a concern, they have not felt it as acutely as other local restaurants. She says they are currently hiring for one line cook position, but otherwise are fully staffed.
However, Howe explains that when employees have left the community, housing concerns generally play a part: “Maybe it’s not rent increases, but they’re looking down the line, and realizing they could have more in a more affordable community.”
With housing in Santa Cruz at a premium, it’s unlikely rents will decrease anytime soon. According to Zillow, the leading online real estate and rental marketplace, the average rent in Santa Cruz Metro area for July 2017 was $2,978, about $2.30 per square foot, an increase of 0.6 percent from June 2017 and an increase of 2.8 percent from last year. Watsonville is experiencing the most rapidly increasing property value, at 0.9 percent per month.
Perhaps Cafe Cruz’s model is the solution restaurants will have to face, offering restaurant workers more attractive benefits in order to see the industry return to the competitive job market.
This may seem dramatic for an industry that traditionally pays minimum wage by the hour and often doesn’t provide paid leave or healthcare, but as the lack of skilled service workers becomes more severe, financial losses resulting from low and unskilled staff may outweigh the costs.
BIG SHIFTS
Sue Slater, chair of Cabrillo’s Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Program, says she receives calls and emails about five times a week from restaurants desperate for employees. “They’ll call and say, ‘Please, I just had two line cooks leave.’ Or they have no one to work for Mother’s Day. Everyone’s desperate for bodies.”
Unfortunately, she’s often unable to help them. “We’ve seen a tremendous drop in students. Each semester, the numbers chip away,” she says. “For instance, we were turning away students from the program two years ago. Now we’re struggling to keep labs open. It’s a big topic of conversation—why is this happening?”
She admits that they typically see lower enrollment when the economy is good, as it is now, because people are more likely to return to school to pursue new careers when jobs are scarce. But she also sees many workers driven into other more profitable industries. Those that remain, especially line cooks, are in high demand.
“Employers are basically hiring people off the street,” says Slater. They then incur the timely and expensive task of training those employees from scratch, keenly aware that customers may not return to their establishment if they have a poor service experience in the interim.
Clearly, this labor shortage is not unique to Santa Cruz County. Cooks are fleeing expensive cities like San Francisco in favor of more affordable locales. In an attempt to address this, California is implementing the Strong Workforce Program, which will create more job skills training courses at community colleges in the state. As part of this program, Cabrillo will offer two non-credit entry level classes in knife skills, and sanitation and cooking techniques for restaurant workers.
Slater hopes that these one-day classes will be a short-term band-aid for problems that face the workforce, but doesn’t expect them to be available before fall of 2018. “We’re here to serve the community, and we see that this is something the community needs right now. Employers are already trying to pre-book, and some have said they’ll offer raises to employees who take them.”
But in order to keep skilled workers, especially cooks, she believes employers will need to consider how they can make these jobs more attractive. One example of how this might be done was implemented by Danny Meyer, CEO of the Union Square Hospitality Group, at his high-end restaurants in New York City including Gramercy Tavern and The Modern. In an attempt to compensate his whole team fairly, in 2015 Meyer eliminated tips in lieu of a service charge included in the price of the meal, a program he calls “hospitality included.” The price on the menu is the price the customers pay and profits are equitably distributed among all staff. Skeptics decried the controversial experiment, but eighteen months later Meyer reported in an interview with NPR that his staff were very happy with the change, and to his knowledge he hadn’t lost any customers to sticker shock—in fact, he said, the practice was very well-received. Slater believes this may be the path forward for restaurants. “While it’s scary and risky,” she says, “the industry has to change.”
Update 08/31/17 3:55PM: Misspelling of Alec Stefansky’s name and Uncommon Brewers corrected.
Two billion people will be over the age of 60 by 2050. That will be 22 percent of the world’s population—and far more than the current senior care system is prepared to accommodate. With over 10,000 baby boomers reaching retirement age every day, Mary Howe says there is an urgent need for more attention to senior issues.
“The thing I have become the most interested in is aging, and we don’t do it very well in the United States,” says Howe, a former instrumentation technician at UCSC and wife of former Santa Cruz Mayor Don Lane. “I set out to learn whatever I could about aging.”
That’s when Howe started taking online courses on the psychology and sociology of aging, and pursuing certification as a caregiver and activity coordinator. In her studies, she learned that aging well, as desirable and simple as it may sound, is much bigger than any singular medical task. Prolonged health means a complex network of needs and good circumstances, combined with a bit of luck.
She also learned how severely underprepared the county is to support its aging communities.
After watching her father’s health deteriorate and seeing her elderly neighbor struggle with medical issues, Howe realized she had to do something to expand elder care in Santa Cruz and make it more accessible. Since retiring three years ago, she’s started Village Santa Cruz, a local chapter of the Village to Village Network, a nationwide nonprofit providing “a strong community that offers members new opportunities to age successfully,” according to its website.
The backbone of Village Santa Cruz is a younger generation of people like Howe, who’s 62, volunteering to help elders do things like pick up groceries and do computer work. The idea is that when the current group of volunteers is older, they will have a support system to lean on, as a new generation steps up. The model functions on a membership base, and the local chapter, sometimes called Village SC for short, charges dues of about $300 annually.
Howe also volunteers for the federal long-term-care Ombudsman program, which advocates for residents of skilled nursing and assisted-living facilities. “What I see is a lot of very lonely people, in spite of the fact that they are surrounded by people,” Howe says.
The baby boomer generation will be the largest group of seniors ever, which is why their aging is sometimes called the “silver tsunami.”
“Everybody knows it’s coming, but some communities are better than others at getting at the front end, and Santa Cruz has not been very good at it,” Howe says, adding that many senior programs in town are severely underfunded. “With the [federal] government talking about cuts—frankly, in Santa Cruz County, seniors have not been a big issue.”
Now at 48 members, ranging from early fifties to their eighties, Howe’s nonprofit branch aims to support the elderly in a more effective and empowering way than a retirement home. Her husband Don Lane is among the members who volunteer their time. Howe hopes that eventually younger people will volunteer, creating a connection between generations that she thinks is typically lacking.
“People don’t see you when you get older,” she says.
Howe says these “villages” around the country aim to build a sense of community and avoid duplicating services by pinpointing what is lacking in the community and helping to provide services that currently don’t exist. She, along with 12 other locals, opened Village Santa Cruz in February.
“There are a lot of people like me who are retired now but still have a lot of energy to volunteer,” Howe says. “There are a lot of seniors that have said they want to keep the intergenerational connection, and find a way so that we aren’t just in a bubble of seniors.”
The first village system began in Boston in the early 2000s, before growing to more than 400 locations around the globe—including 60 in California, from Eureka to San Diego. Sponsored by the Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz County, Village SC is concluding phase one of their three-phase timeline, starting with a basic membership and background checks for volunteers. The next phase will include a premium membership that offers more direct aid, as well as membership scholarships and non-member volunteers, followed by the third phase, which, Howe says, will expand across the county and create community circles—subsets of the village that cater to the needs of individual locations.
“The village isn’t the whole answer to how to deal with the growing senior populations. It’s just a piece of it,” Howe says. “If we had 10 percent of the Santa Cruz county seniors, that would be fantastic. When I look at long term goals, that’s it.”
Ten percent of the current senior population in Santa Cruz is about 6,300 people—a number that’s expected to increase to about 8,800 by 2030. Howe hopes to have 100 members by the end of the year, while also diversifying the organization by reaching out to South County residents and identity organizations within Santa Cruz.
“Nobody is completely independent,” Howe says. “Sometimes in our lives we help a lot and we don’t need a lot in return. Other times we need a lot, and it’s okay to ask.”
To learn more about Village Santa Cruz or find out how to get involved, visit villagesantacruz.org.
