It was a lunch review that was not to be. No place to park! We drove a circle ’round it thrice (apologies to Coleridge)—the downtown of Santa Cruz that is—but between the endless orange cones of city work crews and my hobbled post-surgery right foot, found no parking spots within walking distance, and decided to cut our losses and head back toward home. The Westside New Leaf was on our radar for some emergency lunch supplies. And when we got back home we laid out an intriguing array of found foods, starting with a custom green smoothie called Green Gardens. From two containers of Shakti Indian entrees ($7.99 each)—liberated from New Leaf’s very well-stocked deli shelves—we piled our plates with saffron rice, intense spinachy palak paneer, a thick dahl, and a lentil coconut curry studded with spiced carrots, cauliflower and peas. We applied a bit of microwave heat, a dash of Patak’s Hot Mango Chutney and a splash of Sriracha. Don’t be afraid to customize whatever you grab from the brimming deli section—make it your own! Jack added a side helping of his favorite Epicurean Solutions curried tofu with cashews and currants ($4.50)
Fresh organic cherries, at their absolute dark crimson peak, created our dessert. And the emerald green health drink, loaded with celery, ginger, lemon, kale and cucumber, was a serious thirst-quencher ($7). Our super veggie lunch items made an outstanding alternative to the sandwich. But I’m still hoping to get to my downtown destination sometime in the next few weeks. I might need to re-think transportation options into the very heart of Santa Cruz. Parking is a major challenge just now. (I will not be using one of those red motorized bikes!) Stay tuned!
Tidbits
Happy second anniversary to Paul Figliomeni’s Pour Taproom, made even better these days thanks to the inventive in-house Surf City Kitchen pub menu created by chef Anthony Kresge (whose talent has fueled Shadowbrook’s kitchen and, more recently, started up Sotola Grill & Bar in Capitola.) Figliomeni opened Soquel’s Surf City Sandwich in 2015, and has now stepped in to collaborate with the downtown home of countless beers on tap. 110 Cooper St., Santa Cruz. Food and beer daily from 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Monday-Saturday, and until 9 p.m. Sunday.
Tiki Correction
Hula’s Island Grill serves lunch daily except for Monday. It opens at 4:30 p.m. on Mondays, just in time for those tempting Happy Hour drinks and pupus of Mahalo Monday.
Product of the Week
Glutino brand makes some tasty gluten-free products. And our new favorite is a surprisingly delicious English muffin with luscious mouthfeel. The multi-grain is the best, but even the plain vanilla version (that’s a metaphor: it’s actually a blend of tapioca and rice flours) is excellent too. Of course the whole point of the English muffin is its texture, and that’s where gluten-free breads and pastries are often most challenged. Glutino’s muffins offer an appealing texture, slightly chewy, tender, and in the case of the multi-grain variety, loaded with something close to crunch, thanks to flax seed, sunflowers seeds, brown rice, and millet flour. No one would ever mistake these for the real deal, but they make a very nice platform for lots of butter and jam over a cup of serious Italian roast coffee. Not exactly cheap—roughly $1 per muffin, i.e., $6 per six-pack. But if you are avoiding gluten, these babies are like a hit of pure oxygen, a jolt of actual flavor and texture. In other words, they are worth every penny. We keep some in our freezer 24/7. Available everywhere.
I’ve long thought that what happened to the 1946 film adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep is great illustration of two distinct ways of looking at the noir genre. The Howard Hawks-directed movie was originally completed in 1945 with a tight, clever narrative (adapted primarily by William Faulkner) that fully explained the case that Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe had gotten himself wrapped up in.
But as the pairing of Bogart with Lauren Bacall was becoming a national phenomenon, producer Jack Warner was convinced to add new scenes with the couple. The film that was finally released was only two minutes longer, but it had more than 20 minutes of different footage. It also made no sense, because what was cut out to allow for the new scenes was the explanation of what was actually going on. Most people didn’t care too much, because the Bogie and Bacall scenes feature some of the best onscreen chemistry in the history of film, and the released version’s quintessential noir attitude and atmosphere helped make it a huge hit. Only in 1997 did the public get to see the complete original version, sparking a debate about what is more important to successful noir: a great story, or incredible style?
I put this question to Susie Bright and Willow Pennell, the editor and associate editor of the new Santa Cruz Noir anthology, and they came back with a split decision on The Big Sleep. Bright prefers the story-first approach of the original, untinkered-with film, while Pennell felt the added scenes between the co-stars are why we consider it one of the best noir films of all time today. I just like that this team of noir editors had a representative from both camps; it certainly helps explain why the resulting book is full of both tightly wound narratives and endless hardboiled atmosphere. In my cover story this week, they explain what it took to pull together this short-fiction walk through Santa Cruz County’s dark side. It’s a thrilling, whip-smart book that will dazzle local lovers of crime fiction, and I hope you enjoy this look at how it was made.
Thank you for your article on Michael Pollan and his mind-altering experimentation (GT, 5/30).
This is not new to Santa Cruz, however. Santa Cruz has been fertile ground for experimentation from the early 1960s to present day. Please reference the work Ralph Abraham and others have done in this regard at HipSantaCruz.org.
In 1977, Linkage, a small group of futuristic visionaries, brought Dr. Albert Hofmann, the person who inadvertently discovered LSD, to UCSC for his first visit to the United States for a conference entitled “LSD – A Generation Later.” This was a time when many of the second generation of mind explorers laid the groundwork for what was erroneously mislabeled as the “New Age.”
The process for mind exploration was laid by many professional people from all walks of life with much emphasis on the pioneering work of Ralph Metzner, Richard Alpert (Ram Dass,) and Timothy Leary. (In spite of the controversial media coverage in those days precipitated by President Richard Nixon, who thought Leary was “The Most Dangerous Man in America.” He was arrested and imprisoned as a “political prisoner” for a half a joint found in his car!)
There was a second conference at UCSC in 1981 that paved the way for the integration of the experimental and spiritual work that laid the foundation for Pollan’s recent successful explorations. This foundation was laid by many people in the Bay Area who maintained the unwavering belief that there is a different lifestyle that can bring love, peace, and nutriment to our planet and its peoples. It continues to this day. Thank you, Michael, for being a current champion and taking us another step forward toward the fifth generation.
Lynda Francis | Santa Cruz
Guilt Tripping
The city of Santa Cruz is currently considering where to put the next homeless camp, after River Street. At the Council meeting last Tuesday, after the public expressed passionate opposition to each of the sites under consideration, Councilwoman Cynthia Chase said that there would be opposition to any site. In other words, a camp is going somewhere—public be damned.
I am part of the opposition to the Soquel Park and Ride site. Why would I not want a homeless camp near my house? Surely you have heard the arguments already. So where should a homeless camp go? For me to propose another site would be to accept the city’s premise that there must be a homeless camp, and to say that someone else’s neighborhood is less worthy of protection than my own. Instead, I invite every resident to fearlessly and enthusiastically stand up for their own neighborhood. If you don’t, then who will? It is time that we all stand up to the guilt-tripping and intimidation from local government on the homeless issue. Enough is enough.
Geoffrey Ellis | Santa Cruz
Ecological Sense
Santa Cruz is committed to fight climate change. Half of our carbon emissions come from cars. We need public transit that truly serves our needs. We need safe and simple bike infrastructure that gets people out of their cars. End of story. So let’s do this!
The Rail and Trail leaves our options open for electric light-rail or battery-electric rail if and when the investment makes economic sense (I would argue that it makes ecological sense today, but we’ll fight that battle later.) It would be incredibly short sighted to remove that possibility, especially when there is plenty of room along the corridor for the trail. The corridor was built for massive freight trains—it can fit a small, quiet light rail (or buses, or any number of other possibilities).
Dan Dion
Santa Cruz
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
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GOOD IDEA
FLOWER POWER
“Enchanting Gardens in the Mountains” will allow visitors to tour through seven magical gardens in Bonny Doon on Sunday, June 10. Tickets are $20, available for purchase at Valley Churches United, Scarborough Gardens, San Lorenzo Garden Center, the Garden Company, and Mountain Feed and Farm Supply. Proceeds will go to Valley Churches United to provide services to those in need. Gourmet lunches are available for $12. To reserve a lunch in advance call 831-336-8098. For more information, visit vcum.org.
GOOD WORK
SHINING A LIGHT
Paul Eastman, owner of the Skylight Place in Capitola, has been recognized as one of the most promising remodeling professionals in the nation. Every year, through its “Forty Under 40 Awards Program,” the editorial staff of Pro Remodeler magazine recognizes young and promising industry professionals. The magazine honored Eastman for embracing the next generation of more efficient technology. Paul is the second-generation owner of the Skylight Place, which specializes in building and replacing windows and doors.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
The streets were dark with something more than night.
“Homemade breakfast, journaling, taking in the ocean, time with friends and family, something creative like music, meditation and yoga. ”
Aaron Clegg
Santa Cruz
Teacher
“Connect with my children, find a good recipe, and then share it with somebody I haven’t met before.”
Frank Cohen
Campbell
Software Developer
“Drive up Highway 1 with friends and a tent and different CDs, having fun and getting to know each other, and at the end of the night camp and enjoy the sunset.”
Kathia Damian
Santa Cruz
Barista
“Enjoying something outside, and doing something active where your adrenaline is pumping, and then finishing off the day with something relaxing like reading a book or going to the movies and a glass of wine.”
Emma McLaren
Santa Cruz
Sustainable Seafood Consultant
“I’d like to do something with friends and then have a family activity. Maybe travel somewhere foreign. Then I’d wrap it up with some chocolate and dancing.”
Now that the forces (Restoration, Enlightenment, Reconstruction) invoked during the Three Spring Festival (Aries, Taurus, Gemini) have precipitated into the Earth, the New Group of World Servers (NGWS) is being asked by the Hierarchy to make plans for their distribution in order that humanity is aided and uplifted. We remind ourselves that Restoration, Enlightenment and Reconstruction must begin within and wherever we find ourselves.
While under the influence of Gemini, mutable (fluid) air (intelligence) sign, humanity encounters much talk, reason, new ideas, revelatory and illuminating. Under Gemini and Mercury, we are asked to choose how we will speak with each other. Our communications can create separations among and with each other, continuing a grave polarity in our country. Or our communications can create harmony in thought, words and speech which uplift the vital fluids, allowing for drops of blessings to stream forth upon everyone. These are Jupiter’s blessings (Ray 2 of Love/Wisdom and Gemini’s Ray).
Under Gemini, Mercury and Venus, with harmony of communication, we help “uplift the Earth to the Kingdoms of Beauty.” Gemini asks us this question: “Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a diminished role in our private and public discourses?”
ARIES: How is your communication network at home and with neighbors? Do you need a new phone (with no static?), computer upgrade, more reliable technology and sources of information? Mercury, the messenger, sitting in your living room, is looking around and assessing just how good your ability is to reach out, have Right Human Relations and make contact. Mercury reminds us that contact releases love.
TAURUS: You will be communicating on a higher more spiritual level. It’s already begun and if you observe yourself each day, notice you’re reading, speaking, teaching, thinking, planning, focusing your ideals and opinions, and sending out important messages in all directions. Though it’s unusual for this to occur, it’s greatly needed for the elimination of all illusions and distortions concerning the truth (which isn’t relative at all).
GEMINI: The themes to ponder are values, resources and money … themes, yes, that have been mentioned before. And with the retro next they’ll continue and deepen. It’s good to answer the following questions; 1) How are your finances? 2) What are your resources? 3) What’s of value to you? 4) Are you of value? 5) How and why? Write by hand the answers in your esoteric journal.
CANCER: It’s a good idea, a healthy one, to begin a consistent exercise program carried out each day at the same hour. You might find yourself more excitable and nervous than usual. Exercise calms and diminishes these difficulties, focusing your mental abilities through daily planning. When asked “What is mine to do this day?” Your answer is “exercise.” Keep moving.
LEO: Many internal realities are occurring in the form of thoughts, ideas, revelations, aspirations and plans. In several months some of them will enter form and matter. Is the past presently taking up much of your thinking? Are you missing someone or thinking of people no longer in your life? Speaking with them is still possible. Visualize a line of light from your Soul to theirs. Meet them at the center of Light. Both hearts then open.
VIRGO: It’s good to ponder upon what your ideals, expectations and goals in life are. Are these ideals and goals from your heart or the heart and mind of another? It’s good also to consider what your ethics and principles are, and what integrity means to you? In terms of principles, in the Aquarian Age there are three principles we are to abide by. Do you know what they are?
LIBRA: Have your worldly plans worked out as expected? Has your daily life improved? For career advancement it’s good to gain a greater mastery in something you’re interested in. What would that be? All communications at work assume vital importance now. Careful not to make anything too complicated—from foods to exercise to expectations of others’ behaviors. Expectations create disappointments.
SCORPIO: You seek the mysteries of life, the larger view of life and to know the puzzle of how all the complicated various parts fit together. Culture, art, religions (especially), the law, geography, journeys, pilgrimages, the plains, horses, and various philosophies call to you. The question always is what to choose? Do travel here and there, out and about. You need new exposure, new vistas to explore.
SAGITTARIUS: Enter deeply into conversations beyond the self. Allow communication to deepen, so you can think and feel and be serious with someone. Allow it to be intellectual, philosophical and psychological (but not political). Allow the encounter (you and the other) to change your ways of thinking. You could discuss the interesting subject of death. What are your thoughts on death? Do you know what the Bardos are?
CAPRICORN: Always come from the heart with those close to you. When speaking with family ask them to listen and not respond. Unless you want responses. Later, ask questions and allow dialogue to flow, back and forth, among everyone. It’s good to have others’ perspectives. At this time you also need beauty around you. Stand in a field of flowers. Stay within the nature, the most balanced kingdom. It teaches us harmony.
AQUARIUS: Wherever you are, seek fun and friendship. Don’t have an attitude of competitiveness or expectations that you will be first. The planets are pulling you back and inward these days. The energies allowed are those of rest, relaxation, laughter, ease, all things comfortable and uncomplicated. If the experiences don’t support this, step back into the shadows and observe. Love holds you.
PISCES: Express your deepest thoughts and feelings. Write them down. When possible, communicate to others your wants and needs. If no one’s listening, enter the information into your esoteric journal. Draw what you want and need. This is a very creative time. The arts—seeing them, reading about them, visiting museums, ballets, symphonies, botanical gardens, etc.—will strengthen your heart, which at times seems sad these days. Maintain prayer and visualizations.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): According to my analysis of the astrological omens, you would be wise to ruffle and revise your relationship with time. It would be healthy for you to gain more freedom from its relentless demands; to declare at least some independence from its oppressive hold on you; to elude its push to impinge on every move you make. Here’s a ritual you could do to spur your imagination: Smash a timepiece. I mean that literally. Go to the store and invest $20 in a hammer and alarm clock. Take them home and vociferously apply the hammer to the clock in a holy gesture of pure, righteous chastisement. Who knows? This bold protest might trigger some novel ideas about how to slip free from the imperatives of time for a few stolen hours each week.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Promise me that you won’t disrespect, demean, or neglect your precious body in the coming weeks. Promise me that you will treat it with tender compassion and thoughtful nurturing. Give it deep breaths, pure water, healthy and delicious food, sweet sleep, enjoyable exercise, and reverential sex. Such veneration is always recommended, of course—but it’s especially crucial for you to attend to this noble work during the next four weeks. It’s time to renew and revitalize your commitment to your soft warm animal self.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Between 1967 and 1973, NASA used a series of Saturn V rockets to deliver six groups of American astronauts to the moon. Each massive vehicle weighed about 6.5 million pounds. The initial thrust required to launch it was tremendous. Gas mileage was seven inches per gallon. Only later, after the rocket flew farther from the grip of Earth’s gravity, did the fuel economy improve. I’m guessing that in your own life, you may be experiencing something like that seven-inches-per-gallon feeling right now. But I guarantee you won’t have to push this hard for long.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Mars, the planet that rules animal vitality and instinctual enthusiasm, will cruise through your astrological House of Synergy for much of the next five months. That’s why I’ve concluded that between now and mid-November, your experience of togetherness can and should reach peak expression. Do you want intimacy to be robust and intense, sometimes bordering on rambunctious? It will be if you want it to be. Adventures in collaboration will invite you to wander out to the frontiers of your understanding about how relationships work best.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Which astrological sign laughs hardest and longest and most frequently? I’m inclined to speculate that Sagittarius deserves the crown, with Leo and Gemini fighting it out for second place. But having said that, I suspect that in the coming weeks you Leos could rocket to the top of the chart, vaulting past Sagittarians. Not only are you likely to find everything funnier than usual; I bet you will also encounter more than the usual number of authentically humorous and amusing experiences. (P.S.: I hope you won’t cling too fiercely to your dignity, because that would interfere with your full enjoyment of the cathartic cosmic gift.)
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): According to my analysis of the astrological omens, a little extra egotism might be healthy for you right now. A surge of super-confidence would boost your competence; it would also fine-tune your physical well-being and attract an opportunity that might not otherwise find its way to you. So, for example, consider the possibility of renting a billboard on which you put a giant photo of yourself with a tally of your accomplishments and a list of your demands. The cosmos and I won’t have any problem with you bragging more than usual or asking for more goodies than you’re usually content with.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The coming weeks will be a favorable time for happy endings to sad stories, and for the emergence of efficient solutions to convoluted riddles. I bet it will also be a phase when you can perform some seemingly clumsy magic that dispatches a batch of awkward karma. Hooray! Hallelujah! Praise Goo! But now listen to my admonition, Libra: The coming weeks won’t be a good time to toss and turn in your bed all night long thinking about what you might have done differently in the month of May. Honor the past by letting it go.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Dear Dr. Astrology: In the past four weeks, I have washed all 18 of my underpants four times. Without exception, every single time, each item has been inside-out at the end of the wash cycle. This is despite the fact that most of them were not inside-out when I threw them in the machine. Does this weird anomaly have some astrological explanation? – Upside-Down Scorpio.” Dear Scorpio: Yes. Lately your planetary omens have been rife with reversals, inversions, flip-flops, and switchovers. Your underpants situation is a symptom of the bigger forces at work. Don’t worry about those bigger forces, though. Ultimately, I think you’ll be glad for the renewal that will emerge from the various turnabouts.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): As I sat down to meditate on your horoscope, a hummingbird flew in my open window. Scrambling to herd it safely back outside, I knocked my iPad on the floor, which somehow caused it to open a link to a Youtube video of an episode of the TV game show Wheel of Fortune where the hostess Vanna White, garbed in a long red gown, revealed that the word puzzle solution was USE IT OR LOSE IT. So what does this omen mean? Maybe this: You’ll be surprised by a more-or-less delightful interruption that compels you to realize that you had better start taking greater advantage of a gift or blessing that you’ve been lazy or slow to capitalize on.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): You’re in a phase when you’ll be smart to bring more light and liveliness into the work you do. To spur your efforts, I offer the following provocations. 1. “When I work, I relax. Doing nothing makes me tired.” – Pablo Picasso. 2. “Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.” – Ann Landers. 3. “Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.” – Aristotle. 4. “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams. 5. “Working hard and working smart can sometimes be two different things.” – Byron Dorgan. 6. “Don’t stay in bed unless you can make money in bed.” – George Burns. 7. “Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.” – Mark Twain.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “There isn’t enough of anything as long as we live,” said poet and short-story writer Raymond Carver. “But at intervals a sweetness appears and, given a chance, prevails.” My reading of the astrological omens suggests that the current phase of your cycle is one of those intervals, Aquarius. In light of this grace period, I have some advice for you, courtesy of author Anne Lamott: “You weren’t born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then.” Surrender to the sweetness, dear Aquarius.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Between you and your potential new power spot is an imaginary ten-foot-high, electrified fence. It’s composed of your least charitable thoughts about yourself and your rigid beliefs about what’s impossible for you to accomplish. Is there anything you can do to deal with this inconvenient illusion? I recommend that you call on Mickey Rat, the cartoon superhero in your dreams who knows the difference between destructive destruction and creative destruction. Maybe as he demonstrates how enjoyable it could be to tear down the fence, you’ll be inspired to join in the fun.
Homework: Confess your deepest secrets to yourself. Say them out loud when no one but you is listening. Testify at Freewillastrology.com.
June 8 is World Oceans Day—a time to recognize the dire impact of climate change on our seas. In celebration of the big blue, Save Our Shores is co-hosting a screening of the Sea of Life documentary, which focuses on the perils faced by the marine ecosystem, and the positive things that we can do to help. Following the documentary, there will be a discussion panel of local ocean experts. Proceeds benefit Save Our Shores.
INFO: 6 p.m. Wednesday, June 6. Rio Theatre. 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. 423-8209. riotheatre.com. $15.
After a successful 2017 debut, the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History’s summer art series is back for round two. This year’s series will feature one local artist per month, starting off with Tannery artist and Cabrillo College teacher Margaret Niven in June, then naturalist painter Diana Walsworth in July, and photographer Linda Cover in August. The show’s diverse content is inspired by nature and the great outdoors. Museum admission and artist receptions free on First Fridays.
INFO: Show runs through August. First Friday receptions 5-7 p.m. on July 6 and Aug. 3. Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. 1305 E Cliff Drive, Santa Cruz. 420-6115. santacruzmuseum.org. $4 general admission, $2 students/seniors, free children under 18. Image: Margaret Niven: “Olives”
Maintaining a small business is no easy feat, and one of Santa Cruz’s most beloved home goods stores, Home/Work, knows it. The shop is celebrating three years in the community, and in an effort to celebrate and uplift other local artists and businesses, they asked over 15 locals to create work that represents what Santa Cruz means to them. The final works will be on display at the store’s third-anniversary party. There will also be cocktails and trunk shows from Blackbird Dagger jewelry, and local chocolatier Tiny House Chocolate.
INFO: 2-6 p.m. Home/Work. 1100 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. 316-5215. shophomework.com. Free. Image: Miranda Powell.
Last year’s Japanese Cultural Fair (JCF) was almost their last. Because JCF didn’t get a number of anticipated grants this year, they faced a budget shortfall of $6,000. But this year’s fair will still happen, thanks to donations and sponsor support. In fact, the lineup is one of the best yet. Taiko, martial arts demonstrations, folk dancing, tea ceremonies, and kimono workshops are just a few of the live events and workshops on the list.
INFO: 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mission Plaza Park. 103 Emmet St., Santa Cruz. jcfsantacruz.org. Free.
At the UCSC Student Print Sale, print media students get to sell their original artwork and the community gets to support budding artists while collecting beautiful one-of-a-kind art. Hundreds of original etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, digital prints, handmade books, and more will be on display and available for purchase (cash or check only). This is a unique opportunity to see and purchase high-quality handmade artwork, meet the artists and tour the UCSC arts facilities. The event is free and open to the public—all profits directly benefit the student artists and UCSC printmaking program.
INFO: 10 a.m.-6 p.m. UCSC Elena Baskin Visual Arts Printmaking Studio, Room G-101. 1156 High St., Santa Cruz. 459-3686. artsites.ucsc.edu/printsale. Free.
Live music highlights for the week of June 6, 2018.
THURSDAY 6/7
POST-PUNK
ICEAGE
Danish post-punkers Iceage got their start a decade ago when the members were still in high school. In the past decade, the group has managed to insert something subtle into their mix of Birthday Party-meets-Bauhaus punk: gentleness. It sounds counter-intuitive, but the Danish rockers pound out guitar-driven songs with the delicacy of a flower falling slowly onto a bed of leaves. Without all of the aggression that normally comes from all-male bands baring their soul, the music catches you off guard in a spectacular way. AC
L.A.’s Yeek has a video for his tune “I’m Not Ready” that’s jam-packed with a lot of culturally potent imagery—everything from aged video footage of kids skateboarding inside of an empty pool to him on stage flying solo with just a mic and working the crowd into a frenzy.You also see shots of him rocking a guitar punk-rock style. What the hell is this Yeek guy even doing? Let’s just say this video actually downplays the scatterbrain mass-attack of conflicting influences that is in his music. It’s lo-fi indie-pop, kind of rap, sort of R&B, a little bit of punk. Whatever he’s doing, it’s catchy, and is catching on. AC
Willy Tea Taylor comes through Santa Cruz a lot. He’s not exactly local, but comes from semi-nearby Oakdale—and Santa Cruz loves the kind of Americana-roots-heart-on-the-sleeve music he makes. Two things he’s known for are his epic beard, and his work as the frontman of Good Luck Thrift Store Outfit, which also rolls through town quite a bit. But to catch Willy Tea Taylor as a solo act is to see the singer in a much more intimate setting, and to get a more personal expression via his tender acoustic side. There are some intensely emotional songs here that will move you to tears if you happen to be a human with a heartbeat. AC
For years, singer-songwriter Nicki Bluhm and her husband Tim Bluhm were partners in music and in life. In 2015, however, the couple split up. The pain, loneliness and grief of that experience are all over Bluhm’s new album, To Rise You Gotta Fall. Bluhm turned to music to get through her own hard times, and, in turn, she shares her experiences on the album, which was recorded at the legendary Sam Phillips Recording Studio in Memphis. As she says in a trailer video for the record, “I’ve captured all those really intense emotions and put them into songs. If I can help someone else get through their pain, that’s my goal … Music makes you feel less alone.” CJ
Born and raised in Harlem, Smoke DZA is a product of ’80s and ’90s hip-hop living in the time of mumble rappers, and still delivering the solid beats and rhymes we deserve. Staying true to the classics of hip-hop that created the genre, he expands on new lyrical horizons and artists—collaborating with the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Schoolboy Q and Joey Bada$$ to create a sound that pushes towards the future while solidifying his roots in what made the music great. MAT WEIR
Petunia and the Vipers are no strangers to poetic description. The five-piece outfit has been dubbed “creative generators and innovators … defining the cutting edge,” “a total one-off,” “left-field genius,” and, my personal favorite from the Blasters’ Phil Alvin, “Petunia and the mutherfucking Vipers!” Rooted in American roots traditions, the band branches out into avant-garde, steampunk, jazz and rock to reimagine the boundaries of Americana and breathe new life into styles popularized by American music icons like the Carter Family, Hank Williams and Blind Lemon Jefferson. Also on the bill: local outlaw country favorite Miss Lonely Hearts. CJ
In 2018, musicians are back to releasing singles online just as previous generations did through seven-inch vinyl records. But to truly grasp what it was like during the fledgling days of rock ’n’ roll, look no further than Cash and King. For one exclusive night, Steven Kent and his band will rage through hit singles from two kings of pop music, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley. For those of us who couldn’t be there from the beginning, this is an affordable time machine to capture the moments we wish we had witnessed. MW
INFO: 8 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $28/gen, $40/gold. 423-8209.
MONDAY 6/11
JAZZ
BRIAN BLADE
When Brian Blade released his first album with the Fellowship Band in 1998, the protean drummer occupied a singular space in American music—a swirling, grooving vortex that inexorably attracted artists like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell as well as powerhouse jazz improvisers like Joshua Redman, Kenny Garrett and Mark Turner. But it was joining saxophone legend Wayne Shorter’s all-star quartet in 2000 that lifted Blade into the jazz pantheon as one of the era’s definitive drummers. All the while he’s kept his love of folk and gospel music as the guiding force in the Fellowship, a passionately lyrical ensemble that released its fifth album last year, Body and Shadow (Blue Note). Blade performs the album’s cast, featuring newcomer Dave Devine on guitar, and founding members Jon Cowherd (piano and harmonium), Chris Thomas (bass), Myron Waldon (alto sax and clarinet) and Melvin Butler (tenor sax). ANDREW GILBERT
INFO: 7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $31.50/adv, $36.75/door. 427-2227.
TUESDAY 6/12
ROOTS
DEEP DARK WOODS
An alt-country outfit from Saskatoon, the largest city in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Deep Dark Woods is one of the best kept secrets in roots music. Led by frontman Ryan Boldt, the band gracefully merges gothic folk, Appalachian music traditions and rock. The resulting songs are spooky, sad and lovely tales of plagues, murder, prison, loss, death—you know, all the stuff that makes good roots music so compelling. Bridging traditional sounds from across North America with a style that appeals to contemporary music lovers, Deep Dark Woods is an under-appreciated gem of the roots scene. CJ
INFO: 8 p.m. Michael’s on Main, 2591 Main St., Soquel. $15. 479-9777.
IN THE QUEUE
MONSIEUR PERINE
Latin Grammy winning gypsy jazz outfit. Thursday at Kuumbwa
CHRIS TRAPPER
Singer-songwriter out of Boston. Friday at Flynn’s Cabaret
KEZNAMDI
Rising star of reggae. Friday at Moe’s Alley
LAURENCE JUBER
World-renowned guitarist. Sunday at Michael’s on Main
ULI JON ROTH
Metal pioneer and former Scorpions lead guitarist. Tuesday at Catalyst
In the 1970s, as rocksteady music made way for reggae, a music subgenre known as lovers rock was born. Popularized by artists like Ken Boothe, Johnny Nash and John Holt, lovers rock combined Chicago and Philly soul with the bass grooves of reggae. In the mid-’70s, Jamaican-born Beres Hammond emerged as one of the rising stars of the genre, a soulful artist who captured international attention. Peaking in the 1990s, Hammond became one of the genre-defining voices of lovers rock, and remains a giant of Jamaican music.
INFO: 9 p.m. Sunday, June 24. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $25/adv, $30/door. 423-1338. WANT TO GO? Go to santacruz.com/giveaways before 11 a.m. on Friday, June 15 to find out how you could win a pair of tickets to the show.
“Did you ever watch Petticoat Junction?” Shady Rest lead singer Cheryl Rebottaro asks me. Anyone remotely familiar with the show will recognize the band’s name as a reference (as in, the Shady Rest Hotel), and they chose it because of the two founding members’ names.
The band originally started with Rebottaro and guitarist Joe Bac. The duo would play covers of the Tedeschi Trucks Band. Originally, they combined their first names, calling themselves “Cheryl Joe.” As new band members got enlisted, they gave them a “Joe” last name (Cheryl Joe, Pat Joe, Mary Joe), like on the show.
“I don’t know how I got on this Petticoat Junction kick,” Bac says. “It was Cheryl Joe and the Shady Rest, then we felt bad that the rest of the people were the Shady Rest. So we dropped it. It’s just the Shady Rest.”
As more members joined, and the kinds of gigs they were offered changed, so did the song selection. Initially, leaning toward more obscure songs, they started to sprinkle in more hits so that more people would get up and dance. In many of the cases, they chose songs by female singers like Bonnie Raitt, Aretha Franklin and Sheryl Crow, who have a timbre similar to Rebottaro’s.
Currently the lineup includes Rebottaro on vocals, Bac on guitar and vocals, Par Greene on drums, Mary Rose Mackenzie on cello, Ariana Ebrahimian on violin, Max Ebrahimian on congas and Mike Westendorp on bass.
“We had to bring in more recognizable things. Now we’re mixing it up,” Rebottaro says. I think we’re unique because we bring different sounds to the music. It’s the same classic stuff that people are hearing, but we spin it a little.”
INFO: 5 p.m. Friday, June 8. Michael’s on Main, 2591 S Main St., Soquel. Free. 479-9777.
The manuscript arrived at Susie Bright’s house in Santa Cruz looking like any other package. The edges of the thick manila envelope in which it came seemed far more dirty and beat up than they should have been after a couple of days of travelling up the postal route from Malibu. Maybe it had slid around the floor of the filthiest mail truck in California, or maybe it had been re-used by the sender after having been stacked in a dusty, damp corner of the garage for a long time. An eternity.
Susie was used to getting some very strange mail. After all, it was her sex advice column in On Our Backs—the first women-run erotica magazine, which she helped to found back in the ’80s—that had debuted her alter ego as “Susie Sexpert,” under the banner of which she would go on to become one of the world’s most progressive, provocative and controversial thinkers on sexuality in books like Susie Sexpert’s Sexual State of the Union, Susie Sexpert’s Lesbian Sex World and Big Sex, Little Death: A Memoir. As the editor of more than 30 anthologies, including the popular Herotica series, she had received hundreds of manuscripts just like this one.
But maybe not entirely like this one. As she pulled out the typewritten pages and started to read through them, something about it felt different. Darker. And too close to home.
Susie finished reading. “Oh my god,” she thought. “What a psycho.”
And then she smiled, rubbing her forefinger absent-mindedly over her lips.
“It’s perfect.”
WICKED CITY Susie Bright is the mastermind behind ‘Santa Cruz’ noir. Photo shoot thanks to Brielle Machado at Faust Salon and Spa for hair; the Hat Company of Santa Cruz for Bright’s fedora; and Carlos de la Cruz of Kiss the Past Antiques for jewelry. PHOTO: KEANA PARKER
Into the Black
OK, maybe it didn’t unfold with quite so much pulp-fiction melodrama, but that is exactly what Bright remembers thinking the first time she read “Buck Low,” the short story by Tommy Moore that opens Bright’s new fiction anthology Santa Cruz Noir, the latest in a long line of city-specific noir collections from Akashic Books. Though longtime locals will recognize the names of many of the authors who penned the 20 original stories in it—from Lee Quarnstrom to Peggy Townsend to Elizabeth McKenzie to GT’s own Wallace Baine—Moore is one of four writers in the book who had never been published before, and his debut effort about a murderous druggie lowlife on Santa Cruz’s North Coast blew Bright away.
“That was a gift,” says Bright. “In sails almost exactly what you see here. The first draft is so close to this.”
Bright’s associate editor Willow Pennell, who grew up in Santa Cruz, couldn’t believe how creepily realistic the story’s narrator seemed. “That was one of the first stories to come in. And I was like, ‘I know that guy. I went to high school with that guy.’ Not because he was a jerk, but just the way he talks about the town. It’s local. He’s from here. Like force-feeding crabs into anemones [a habit the narrator discusses in the story]—that’s a kid that grew up with tide pools.”
Santa Cruz Noir is teeming with other local details that will make readers do similar double takes. It’s divided into three sections, the first of which is called “Murder Capital of the World,” as if to put any question of when Santa Cruz’s notorious serial killer lore is going to come up immediately to rest.
Each story is set in a different neighborhood in Santa Cruz County—and not just the more obvious settings like Seabright, Mission Street, UCSC, Pacific Avenue, Aptos and Watsonville, but also Bear Creek Road, Grant Park, Soquel Hills, the Circles, Seacliff and Mount Hermon, among others.
“I knew what would be more intriguing would be getting neighborhoods that not everybody knows about,” says Bright. “I explained to the publisher that this is not going to be Santa Cruz city limits, this is going to be countywide. The fact that the book begins in Davenport and works all the way down to San Juan Road on the borderline is extremely pleasing to me.”
She also found endless amusement in the way these dark and twisted crime stories subvert the shiny, happy conventional narrative of Santa Cruz.
“I probably laughed a little bit too much,” she admits. “Partly it’s because it’s tweaking the tourist information brochure. It’s not like, ‘Vacation in Santa Cruz!’ So I have to have my evil laughter. But also it’s just that these characters are real. We’ve met them; we know them. They’re our families, they’re our friends and neighbors. And one way this is an interesting looking glass is that I think Santa Cruz is so often portrayed as a quirky utopia. Who’s seen beyond that? I’m just trying to think of who’s written about Santa Cruz in more sensitive or vulnerable or exposing ways. You don’t see it.”
Bright credits Ariel Gore—who wrote the book’s second story, “Whatever Happened to Skinny Jane?”—with giving her the best summary definition of noir as a genre: “Often the narrator has her own agenda. The darker twist. Moral ambiguity. More cynicism. More fatalism. And the femme fatale, even if she’s Mother Nature herself.”
At the narrative core of Gore’s story is the most widely known element of Santa Cruz’s dark side, possibly the very person who first made people realize Santa Cruz had a dark side at all: “Co-Ed Killer” Edmund Kemper. For a figure so famous, Gore wanted to find a new and different approach.
“My mom worked on Death Row in San Quentin,” says Gore, “so she was haunted by serial killers. I wanted to look at it that way—how people were haunted by [what Kemper did]—rather than tell his story.”
The short story focuses on a modern-day couple who become obsessed with Kemper, and takes some crazy twists and turns. Gore wasn’t similarly obsessed with his legend, but she was affected by Santa Cruz’s reputation as a magnet for serial killers—although maybe not as affected as she should have been.
“In the ’80s when I lived in Santa Cruz, we still hitchhiked, even though those guys had ruined it. We were stupid teenagers,” she says.
Gore hadn’t written anything in a noir style until she contributed a piece to the Portland Noir collection. But she admits she’s gotten hooked on it, and is now editing a Santa Fe Noir book. For Santa Cruz Noir, she told Bright she only had one stipulation.
“I told her, ‘I’ve got dibs on the Jury Room,’ she says, referring to Kemper’s famous hangout spot of choice. “That was my only thing.”
Secret Histories
The Jury Room does play a pivotal role in Gore’s story, and she also drops references to Food Not Bombs serving meals downtown and Halloween at the Catalyst, among other things. Santa Cruz Noir features a lot of local touchstones like these—every dot from Santa Cruz’s designation as a “nuclear-free zone” to sign dancers on Mission Street gets connected over the course of the collection.
Some bits of local history that come up are downright startling. How many people know, for instance, that Santa Cruz County was the center of cockfighting culture in the 1950s? That fact is a central point in Lou Mathews’ “Crab Dinners,” one of the anthology’s short stories that most closely echoes the classic noir fiction of authors like Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain. In Mathews’ story, a mysterious woman walks into a detective agency in Seascape looking for help locating her father, a popular Chinese chef named Leonard Wong who spends most of his time outside the kitchen gambling on cockfights.
Mathews—who teaches fiction writing and lit for the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program and is the author of the acclaimed novel L.A. Breakdown, about SoCal street racing in the ’60s—graduated from UCSC in 1973. He lived in Santa Cruz for more than a decade, and wrote for papers here like Sundaze and Good Times (which is referenced in “Crab Dinners”). He says the Chef Wong character is based on a real Santa Cruz County celebrity chef, Francis Tong.
“He introduced Szechwan cuisine to Santa Cruz County,” says Mathews from his home in Los Angeles. “He was a talented guy, but he was also an inveterate gambler.”
The closing story of the collection, “It Follows Until It Leads” by Dillon Kaiser, tells the story of a Mexican immigrant who got caught up in the drug trade in his native country, and—like so many a noir protagonist—foolishly thinks he can leave his violent history behind him. He builds a new life in Watsonville, but when he discovers that his son is keeping a gun to style himself as a tough guy at Watsonville High, things begin to unravel.
The story culminates in a gut-wrenching conclusion, but besides its power as a piece of hardboiled crime fiction, it also sheds some light on how the influence of the drug cartels reaches into field work and other corners of the immigrant Mexican community in South County.
“It’s something that’s huge in Watsonville,” says Kaiser, who grew up there, and graduated from Watsonville High. “But the majority of Santa Cruz County doesn’t see it.”
CRIMINAL MINDS Three ‘Santa Cruz Noir’ authors, clockwise from top left: Tommy Moore, Ariel Gore and Dillon Kaiser.
First Blood
Kaiser is another one of Santa Cruz Noir’s first-time authors. At the time that Bright was accepting submissions, he was working at Bookshop Santa Cruz, and was encouraged by his fellow staffers and writers Richard M. Lange and Aric Sleeper to enter his story. He says working with Bright as an editor was a revelation; though she worked with him on many changes, she had a way of understanding his vision and never compromising it.
“I never felt like anything was being taken away from the essence of what I wanted it to be,” he says.
For the fiction veterans, Bright simply drew on her long lists of contacts.
“She knows everybody,” says Pennell. “She knows people with lots of other contacts. She just put out the Bat Signal.”
She connected with Mathews, for instance, through their mutual friend Carter Wilson, author of the 1960s novel-slash-anthropology-class phenomenon Crazy February. Mathews, in turn, introduced her to Moore, a Santa Cruz expat now doing film and video production out of Malibu who had literally no footprint in the lit world.
“They said, ‘We really like your story, but we can’t find anything about you online,’” remembers Moore. “And that’s because there isn’t anything.”
Still, Bright found him, and as he worked with her on “Buck Low,” he was impressed by the fact that whenever he would want to take something out, thinking it might be too extreme, she would be the one who’d want to keep it in.
In general, Bright says, one of the hardest things about working with authors was getting them to go as dark as the genre required.
“They’re all people who have read a lot and watched a lot of black-and-white noir movies. So it wasn’t like I had to say ‘this is n-o-i-r,’ it wasn’t that basic. But thinking about existential loss, a lack of neat conclusions, the fear and mistrust, the femme fatale, it ain’t gonna end cute. That kind of thing,” she says. “There were a couple of times when we got a manuscript and I said, ‘Oh you’re so sweet, it ends happily! No. Go back and break my heart.’ And they were like, ‘OK.’ Then they’d come back and we’d be like, ‘Whoa.’ I mean, it was there all along.”
“I think Jill Wolfson’s a good example,” Pennell says. “Because she writes teen books, and she just wasn’t ready for anybody to die. Somebody had to die. And she sure ran with that.”
Other established authors were happy to oblige, like Vinnie Hanson, a celebrated author in the “cozy mystery” genre known for its gentle and lighthearted approach to crime. “I was saying to Vinnie, ‘Are you ready for everything to go very bad, and for your protagonist to have no moral compass?’” remembers Bright. “And she was like ‘Oh, yes.’”
A Time for Noir
“Many people have asked me: do you think noir fits a certain moment that we’re in?’” says Bright. “And I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve never been in a moment where it didn’t feel right.”
Certainly, though, there is plenty of relevance in this time of fake-news hysteria and reactionary backlash for a genre that features criminal antiheroes and no end of moral ambiguity. Bright sees something deeper, too, at a local level.
“The famous noir films like The Big Sleep came post-World War II, but the literature came out of the Depression, and out of the sense of ‘nobody gives a damn about you, and nobody is coming to rescue you,’” she says. “The class conflict in Santa Cruz County today, which explodes into ethnic and community identities and localism identities of all kinds, is as strong today as it ever was, and so is that sense of ‘does anybody give a damn about these people?’ The working class voice of Santa Cruz in our book is something that is undeniable.”
All of the heavy themes aside, though, the book is escapist crime fiction at heart, and a lot of fun for fans of the genre. It’s clear that the people behind it enjoyed making it that way—especially Bright, who has a charming and hilarious enthusiasm for even the most obscure elements of putting together this collection.
“I love chapter ordering. It’s like, ‘now let the melody unfold.’ I feel like you want to be bookended by two killer stories, pardon the pun, and in between you want these different emotional peaks, humor, being knocked sideways. The only part that was hard was the suspense of whether we’d get all our neighborhoods covered, and then having too many good stories, and the pain of telling somebody who’s just fabulous ‘we couldn’t include you this time.’ I’ll never get over that,” she says.
The stories she wanted to publish but didn’t have room for could fill an entire second volume, says Bright. “I anticipate that in a small town like this, people who don’t see their story in here will be like, ‘Did you have to fuck Susie Bright to be in here?’ No … unfortunately! There were no sexual favors exchanged,” she says. “Maybe I’ll do a book like that in the future.”
Box: ‘Santa Cruz Noir’ Events
There will be a number of events over the next few months around Santa Cruz Noir.
The book’s launch, featuring authors, performance and signing, will be Tuesday, June 19, at 7 p.m. at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz.
The first library author talk for Santa Cruz Noir will be at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 30, at the Santa Cruz Public Library – Scotts Valley Branch, 251 Kings Valley Road, Scotts Valley. The second is 6 p.m. on Thursday, July 12, at the Santa Cruz Public Library – Aptos Branch, 7695 Soquel Drive, Aptos.
There will be a “Latinx Santa Cruz Noir” writing workshop at noon on Saturday, Oct. 13, at the Museum of Art and History, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz.
First Friday on Oct. 5 will feature Noir Shadow Puppets for all ages at 5 p.m. at MAH.
A Santa Cruz Noir “Murder in the Stacks” Clue game for all ages will be held at 11 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 21, at MAH.
Event highlights for the week of June 6, 2018.
Green Fix
World Oceans Day with Save Our Shores
June 8 is World Oceans Day—a time to recognize the dire impact of climate change on our seas. In celebration of the big blue, Save Our Shores is co-hosting a screening of the Sea of Life documentary, which focuses on the perils faced...
