What local intersection needs a roundabout?

Columns

Matthew Cole Scott

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August 2, 2017

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What local intersection needs a roundabout?

“I find the intersection at Seabright and Murray incredibly annoying. ”

Kathy Fieberling

Retired

Santa Cruz

“Portola at 41st. There is a lot of traffic there every day, all the time. ”

Gerard Picard

Personal Trainer

Ben Lomond

“The intersection at Bay and Porter.”

Nichole Robbins

Cook

Santa Cruz

“Where Soquel Drive meets Wharf Road. It’s a nightmare leading into Soquel Village.”

Jeff Hotchkiss

Author

Santa Cruz

“None! I hate that European baloney. Should we start driving on the other side of the road, too?”

Matt O’Brien

Owner of Cookie Cruz

Santa Cruz

Music Picks August 2 – 8

GT Staff

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August 2, 2017

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Live music highlights for the week of August 2, 2017

WEDNESDAY 8/2

REGGAE

KABAKA PYRAMID

Although his debut EP, Rebel Music, hit the scene in 2011, Kabaka Pyramid has deep roots in music, freestyling and writing new lyrics to popular songs for his mother and friends. While “Kabaka” is Ugandan for “king,” the reggae artist grew up in Kingston, Jamaica, moving on from already popular beats to stylizing his music in the roots of Peter Tosh and Sizzla. Since his last EP, 2013’s Lead The Way, Kabaka Pyramid has focused on his collaborations with producers like Damian Marley and dropped a slew of singles this year, including “Friends Like These” and “Can’t Breathe.” Moe’s Alley delivers another praise-worthy night of reggae as Kabaka Pyramid will be joined with the Bebble Rockers, One-A-Chord and DJ Spleece. MAT WEIR

INFO: 9 p.m. Moe’s Alley, 1535 Commercial Way, Santa Cruz. $15/adv, $20/door. 479-1854.

THURSDAY 8/3

HIP-HOP

KAP G

By the time of his Catalyst show, Kap G will have freshly turned 23, and already lived a life fuller than most. Even before the release of his 2012 debut single, “Tatted Like Amigos,” Kap G had recorded with rap kings like Chief Keef, Wiz Khalifa, and T.I. Hailing from Atlanta, Georgia, Kap G has continued to fine-tune his skills and has carved out a place of his own in the hip-hop world. In April, he dropped his highly anticipated debut album, SupaJefe, featuring artists like Pharell Williams and Dae Dae. MW

INFO: 9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $10/adv, $12/door. 429-4135.

FRIDAY 8/4

REGGAE

HOLDUP

When San Jose reggae band the Holdup comes through Santa Cruz, they play the Catalyst’s big room—and they pack it. Relying on word of mouth and internet marketing, the band has quietly become a huge name in the regional reggae scene. Formed in 2006, the group has released several albums, a bunch of singles, and tapped directly into a loyal audience. The Holdup nails the reggae groove, but doesn’t opt for any retro sounds. There’s a neo-R&B and hip-hop vibe in the music that should appeal to fans of modern-day pop radio, perhaps more than deadlock-donning rasta lovers. AARON CARNES

INFO: 9 p.m. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $17/adv, $20/door. 429-4135.

FRIDAY 8/4

ALT-COUNTRY

BEACHWOOD SPARKS

L.A.’s Beachwood Sparks wasn’t the first band to bend the line between country and indie-rock, but it sure feels like their self-titled debut back in 2000 was a significant step. Released on Sub Pop, the music seemed uncomfortable in either category. The closest comparison was a cross between Neil Young’s ’70s roots records and the psych-pop sounds of early Of Montreal. Like the laid-back grooves of the eclectic music they make, Beachwood Sparks has had an easygoing career. They’ve released three albums, with 11 years between number two and three. And there’s no real talk of a fourth. Hey, who needs to sweat about new records when there’s already three solid ones? AC

INFO: 9 p.m. Don Quixote’s, 6275 Hwy. 9, Felton. $15. 335-2800.

SATURDAY 8/5

SOUL-POP/TRIBUTE

WHEN DOVES CRY

Will music fans ever get over the loss of Prince? The game-changing artist, songwriter, philanthropist, fashion icon and all-around amazing human made an impact on pop culture like few others have done. His loss left a huge hole in the pop-music world, but the music he left us lives on in a big way. On Saturday, When Doves Cry, an eight-piece Prince tribute band featuring Santa Cruz’s own Lisa Taylor, pays tribute to Prince and gives fans a way to celebrate, pay their respects and get down to the irresistible Prince sound. CJ

INFO: 8 p.m. Don Quixote’s, 6275 Hwy. 9, Felton. $10. 335-2800.

SATURDAY 8/5

GARAGE

SURF CURSE

The name Surf Curse sounds like something a Scooby Doo villain would cast on Shaggy, forcing him to live out his days wobbling on a surfboard out in the sea while ghost sharks nip at his bony knees. But in reality, Surf Curse is a two-piece garage-pop band from Reno, Nevada (Hey, there’s no surfing in Reno!) that somehow weaves supremely minimalistic drum beats and jangly guitar parts into pop gold. Seriously, this is the band equivalent of a busted two-string guitar that some masterful musician friend of yours uses to magically strum a top-40-worthy hit with to everyone’s shock and amazement. AC

INFO: 9 p.m. Crepe Place, 1134 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $10/adv, $12/door. 429-6994.

SUNDAY 8/6

ROCK/FUNK

EXTRA LARGE

A longtime favorite of GT readers, party band Extra Large has taken home Best Local Band honors more than 14 times. The six-piece blends Latin, reggae, California rock and funk into a joyful, swirling musical concoction that fills dancefloors and packs festival lawns. Led by frontman Russ Leal, who has performed more than 35 original songs with the band over the last two decades. Extra Large brings the Santa Cruz positive vibe to audiences around the county and beyond. On Sunday, the band introduces its fourth CD, Just Smile, with a release party that includes an acoustic set as well as the rocking sound fans love. Ticket price includes a copy of the CD. CJ

INFO: 7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $20/adv, $25/door. 427-2227.

MONDAY 8/7

JAZZ

BRIA SKONBERG

When it comes to choosing influences, it’s hard to beat Louis Armstrong and Anita O’Day. For British Columbia-raised trumpeter/vocalist Bria Skonberg, these two jazz masters provide a sturdy foundation for her potent and populist approach to mainstream jazz. An accomplished entertainer with a deep love for pre-bop jazz styles, she won a Juno, Canada’s equivalent of a Grammy Award, for her 2016 album, Bria, and recently released an impressive follow-up, With a Twist (both on Sony Masterworks). ANDREW GILBERT

INFO: 7 p.m. Kuumbwa Jazz, 320-2 Cedar St., Santa Cruz. $25/adv, $30/door. 427-2227.

TUESDAY 8/8

INTERNATIONAL

YOUSSOU N’DOUR

Mbalax is a popular style of music in Senegal and the Gambia that fuses Western jazz, soul, Latin, rock and traditional drumming and dance music. Senegalese singer-songwriter Youssou N’Dour, who Rolling Stone called “perhaps the most famous singer alive,” is a widely recognized artist who brought Mbalax into the international spotlight. N’Dour worked with Peter Gabriel on So, and Paul Simon on Graceland, and is a longtime human rights advocate. On Tuesday, the Grammy-winning artist brings his show to the Rio Theatre. CJ

INFO: 7:30 p.m. Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. $40/gen, $65/gold. 423-8209.

IN THE QUEUE

10,000 MANIACS

Renowned folk-tinged rock outfit. Wednesday at Rio Theatre

WICKED MAN

Indie-soul-pop out of Oakland. Friday at Crepe Place

AMADOU & MARIAM

Outstanding Malian music duo. Saturday at Catalyst

LYDIA PENSE & COLD BLOOD

Horn-driven funk and R&B. Saturday at Moe’s Alley

Giveaway: Atmosphere

A&E
Music

Cat Johnson

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August 2, 2017

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In 1997, hip-hop duo Atmosphere dropped Overcast, its first official album. The record included the song “Scapegoat,” which would become a college radio hit, and launched the Minneapolis-based group into what would become a 20-year run that’s still going. Comprising rapper Slug (Sean Daley) and DJ/producer Ant (Anthony Davis), Atmosphere helped put DIY hip-hop on the map and grew a rabid fanbase to, well, atmospheric levels. The duo’s latest offering, 2016’s Fishing Blues, features heavy-hitters the Grouch, Aesop Rock, DOOM and Kool Keith.

INFO: 9 p.m. Friday, August 11. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. 423-1338. WANT TO GO? Go to santacruz.com/giveaways before 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 8 to find out how you could win a pair of tickets to the show.

City Bringing Back Retail Guru Robert Gibbs

Local News

Jacob Pierce

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August 2, 2017

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City Bringing Back Retail Guru Robert Gibbs

Retail expert Robert Gibbs painted a bleak picture of downtown Santa Cruz when he visited in the fall of 2011, as California was slowly recovering from the Great Recession. There wasn’t enough parking, he warned, and Pacific Avenue needed to be a two-way street the entire way. He applauded the city’s efforts to create a “Wayfinding” program, because he said the city’s signage was a mess.

His findings were a lot to take in at the time. For instance, he found that 85 percent of the town’s retail dollars were leaking out of the community, with shoppers heading elsewhere in droves.

Five and a half years later, downtown has about the same number of parking spots. Wayfinding still isn’t finished, and efforts to rearrange the traffic on Pacific have stalled out at least four times—first because of concerns from the fire department, then over backlash from the proposed loss of parking, next over a lack of momentum, and finally over grave concerns from Walnut Avenue business owners, who felt a switcheroo might deal them a serious blow.

By this point, we figured, Santa Cruz had either failed miserably at taking good advice, or Gibbs was somehow off—and that, either way, his 100-page report had run its course. But we were wrong! Santa Cruz should be getting more of Gibbs’ tips soon, according to Bonnie Lipscomb, the town’s director of economic development.

Lipscomb tells GT, via email, that she called Gibbs, and he’s coming back, under a new contract this month to “update the study and work with us and downtown merchants on the changing face of retail and how to best sustain a thriving downtown retail environment.” We’ll find out soon enough what the renowned retail guru thinks about our current situation, as well as how he surmises the changing economy will affect Santa Cruz.

Will Gibbs revisit his recommendations, with additional clarity or fresh insights?

Will he tell us it’s time to get our butts in gear and stop ignoring his sage advice?

Please, oh, please, will Gibbs tell us he loves us Santa Cruzans just the way we are, and then hand out tie-dye kits for everyone?

Time will tell what Gibbs’ findings are, how he sells them and whether or not people end up buying in.

Love Your Local Band: Vultures at Arms Reach

A&E
Music

Mat Weir

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August 2, 2017

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Love Your Local Band: Vultures at Arms Reach

“The Darkness is the crust of this band, because there’s nothing but laughter inside of it,” says Vultures at Arms Reach (VAAR) guitarist Travis Howe as he cracks a smile and lights a cigarette. “At the end of the world, we’ll be sitting on the porch, cracking beers and watching it all go down.”

Given that statement, perhaps it’s no surprise that after three years of waiting, fans of the Santa Cruz sludge metal trio finally received a new album—on April Fool’s Day. However, there were no pranks on Wake, just 40 minutes of stripped-to-the-bone, brutal heavy metal, unforgiving in its apocalyptic imagery.

“The joke’s on all of us,” Howe grins.

Recorded by local music engineering wizard Max Zigman, Howe, drummer Brian Rucker and bassist Nate Kotila included elements they’ve used in previous recordings, like ambient static and movie quotes sewn throughout the album. However, unlike their debut full length, 2014’s Colossus, Wake is colder, more abrasive and heavier, especially with the drums.

“[Max] kept having me re-tune the snare drum, because he’s such a stickler for sound,” Rucker remembers. “So it has the same tone throughout the record.”

Wake is a concept album, even if it wasn’t meant to be. The six-song anthology of doom opens with “The Culling,” a track that starts with the sounds of fire scorching the Earth—an ominous warning of what’s to come for the rest of the album. The chorus begins by telling the listener, “You’ll beg to get away,” but switches by the end of the song to “we’re begging you to stay.” Much like the Cenobites in the Hellraiser film series, VAAR has such sights to show you. The album continues down its dark descent with songs like “Cross to Bear” and “Warmonger,” stripping the listener of all hope and warmth.

“This record is a fucking existential nightmare,” Howe says.

“Well, it’s our first recording without a laugh track,” says Rucker.

INFO: vulturesatarmsreach.bandcamp.com.

DTA to Show of ‘Citizen Jane’ for Housing Discussion

Local News

Jacob Pierce

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August 2, 2017

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DTA to Show of ‘Citizen Jane’ for Housing Discussion

Chip, executive director of the Downtown Association of Santa Cruz, does not argue when he hears people talk about the “housing crisis.” He knows all about rising rents and people getting squeezed out of town. Still, he wonders what impact the word “crisis” has on the decisions people make.

“When you’re in crisis mode, priorities change,” says Chip, as he sips on a Kona Longboard Lager at NextSpace, while the coworking space’s weekly Friday happy hour dies down. “So how do we maintain priorities and say, ‘Yes, let’s build housing that’s gonna be sustainable, neighborhoods that are sustainable—economically, socially, culturally—that are integrated, that are safe and that are practical?’”

To get the discussion moving, Chip has organized a movie screening and discussion at the Santa Cruz Food Lounge about sociologist Jane Jacobs, who authored one of his favorite books, The Life and Death of Great American Cities. Jacobs famously—and successfully—fought with New York City urban planner Robert Moses on his plans to overhaul her Greenwich Village neighborhood with sterile housing projects in the 1960s before becoming an inspiration to future generations of urban planning.

Chip knows the Aug. 16 showing of Citizen Jane could be interpreted as a message to planners and developers to slow any efforts to bring in more housing. Indeed, at planning commission meetings, some neighborhood activists have invoked the film in that way. But that’s not how he sees it. Not unlike religious texts, he says people can interpret Jacobs’ teachings in a number of ways.

He realizes the details of rezoning for higher density—either along the corridors or certain downtown blocks—is a controversial notion to some locals, but he doesn’t think Santa Cruz can fix its issues without building something somewhere.

“I believe we need to accept that we need to build more housing. If you’re not on board with that, you’re either being selfish or you’re naïve,” he says. “And then the question is what and where and what kind of housing.”

Advocates of building more housing say there is a common theme of construction shortages plaguing cities around the nation.

In many cities, population, rents, and employment are all going up, while construction projects have stagnated. A recent report by Apartment List found that only 40 of the 50 biggest metropolitan regions aren’t creating enough housing to keep up with job growth. And Andrew Woo, data scientist for the site, says Santa Cruz isn’t doing that either.

There is a local effort to change that. The Santa Cruz Area Chamber of Commerce has made it a priority, having brought State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) to talk about this issue. Former Mayor Don Lane and former County Treasurer Fred Keeley are exploring a possible ballot measure to fund and build more affordable housing.

Chip says he wants to have a discussion about how certain housing projects can support vibrant neighborhoods, as well as how neighborhoods can support housing. He wants to make sure there’s a variety of incomes, uses and even types of buildings.

“There’s something really important about a mix of new and old buildings, for the character of a place, but also for the economic viability of a place,” he says. “Paying rent in a new building is going to be higher than in an older building. So you need an economic mix.”

He believes strongly in a diversity of uses, because that provides more customers for local restaurants and shops, with people around both day and night. It also keeps neighborhoods safer, he says, for the same reason.

Diversity also means a mix of affordable, market and luxury housing units.

“If you have all your affordable housing in one place, it’s just not going to work,” he says. “If you have only luxury, you have challenges. Anywhere we have economic growth, you have more economic disparity. So we as a community need to figure out how to address the economic growth and address the social equity because if we don’t, that’s not sustainable. Not to mention, there’s the lives you’re affecting. As the rents go up, we need to figure out how to keep housing for everybody, not just the people who are benefitting from an economic boom.”

Drinks with Jane, a showing of ‘Citizen Jane’ will be at the Santa Cruz Food Lounge on Wednesday, Aug. 16 at the Santa Cruz Food Lounge. Admission is $5.

Update 2:54PM 8/4/17: In the original version of this story, we gave twseparatete dates for the event. It has been updated with the correct day.

Psychologist Steve Whittaker on Taming Digital Chaos

Anne-Marie Harrison

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August 2, 2017

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Psychologist Steve Whittaker on Taming Digital Chaos

We’ve all been there: in between deadlines, late for a meeting, over-fed and underslept, looking for that one email that Diane in corporate sent a couple of weeks ago—which folder is it in again? The inundation of digital information that we receive on a daily basis is virtually impossible for us to fully categorize, says psychologist Steve Whittaker.

“The average person has 6,000 work email messages with half of those read in their inbox, 600 unread and tens of thousands of pictures on their desktop,” says Whittaker, a professor at UCSC. “You’re never, ever going to have the time to organize those things.”

Whittaker’s recent book The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff, coauthored with Ofer Bergman, analyzes the way we organize our digital information and presents ways that we can attempt to do so in a more efficient, stress-free way.

“People feel really inherently dissatisfied with the way they manage their digital information,” he says.

There are studies showing that people get really stressed by using inefficient methods to process email, says Whittaker—like checking them as soon as they come in, which is counterproductive for other work and adds anxiety because it reminds the reader that there is always more stuff to be done.

And even if checking email or looking for digital files on your desktop might seem like a small part of the work day, the tension it causes can build up.

Headaches, muscle tension, chest pain, fatigue, stomach upset, sleep problems—these are just some of the common effects of stress on the body, experts say, and they can develop into depression, social withdrawal and more.

Conjure up the image files you have on your desktop or cloud server: are they organized by date? By person? By event name? How did you come up with that label in the first place?

That’s the problem, says Whittaker; our methods make sense to us, but might not be the most logical method to someone else. That’s why tech companies haven’t been able to successfully provide an organizing mechanism usable on a large scale, he says.

“You’re in your mother or sister’s kitchen, and you say ‘Where’s the ladle?’ They point somewhere completely arbitrary, and that’s not where you would’ve put it, and they give you a reason of why it’s there,” says Whittaker.

He began his research 20 years ago when he was working at Lotus 123, the first spreadsheet program designer.

“I noticed people were building up these enormous repositories of email that they were keeping because they thought they might be useful, but presented the problem for them in terms of organization. Then they were also experiencing a lot of stress because they had overly full inboxes,” says Whittaker. “The situation today is no different.”

Filing emails in designated folders doesn’t actually create a more efficient system for finding emails either, Whittaker’s research shows. Relegating messages to different folders has more to do with emotional comfort (who likes the site of a cluttered inbox?!) rather than expediency when going through the gruelling task of excavating an old message.

“We did some brain imaging studies that showed when people are navigating [folders] on their machines, they use an evolutionarily older, simpler part of their brain—which can be found in pigeons, monkeys and rats—that we use for locating and finding,” says Whittaker.

It feels comfortable to go through the folders we’ve created because it’s like we left ourselves breadcrumbs straight back to that email or folder. Except we often just end up getting lost in the digital forest of files.

Creating a search for the search bar requires complex verbal processing—”How was I thinking or feeling about this email three weeks ago?”—so in the moment it feels way more anxiety-inducing. That’s why it’s difficult to get people to change their behavior, says Whittaker, because you’re asking them to choose a temporarily more stressful situation over the comfortable way of doing things. In the long-term, though, he says, it just works.

For the day-to-day, readers of The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff can learn tactics to get more organized, says Whittaker—although it’s not a self-help book, he says.

“This isn’t rocket science, but if you introduce simple ideas based on what’s important to you, we can help you to decide what’s important and see things that are more significant to you.”

Whittaker says he’s incorporated some of the methods in the book, like using the search bar to find emails, and it really does help.

Even with the most rational system, though, mistakes are bound to happen, says Whittaker,.

“I think it’s impossible to have a foolproof system, which is why I’ve been working on this for 20 years—it’s trying to build techniques that work with the way individuals think and then you are likely to have fewer instances of lost things. But I think there’s something intrinsically problematic with our relationship to information,” says Whittaker. “I don’t know if it’s a great recommendation to say you should be more Zen about this, I’m a tech person so that’s a weird recommendation to make, but you are going to make mistakes.”

Film Review: ‘A Ghost Story’

A&E
Film

Lisa Jensen

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August 2, 2017

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I try not to read movie reviews if I can help it—certainly not before I see a movie, and usually not before I write my own review. But left perplexed after seeing A Ghost Story, I consulted Rotten Tomatoes for a sampling of pullquotes from other critics, just to get a sense of what other people were thinking. To my astonishment, I found a majority of quotes citing (in so many words) a haunting meditation on love, memory, and grief.

If only.

Writer-director David Lowery is a longtime art house movie editor and filmmaker trying to carve out a reputation as a visual stylist. His spiritual godfather is Terrence Malick, as evidenced in Lowery’s last personal film, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, an atmospheric tale of a bank robber and his girlfriend drenched in backwoods Southern ambience. If it was never clear what all that atmosphere was evoking, the film still had an intermittent sense of visual splendor.

On the other hand, A Ghost Story seems to pride itself on its low-budget, DIY look. The central image in the movie and the poster is a bedsheet with eyeholes cut out of it, like a kid’s Halloween costume. Onscreen, the image is often boxed into a square, framed by wide black bands on the sides, as if the movie were shot on somebody’s phone. You don’t need a big budget, Lowery seems to be suggesting, to tell a good story.

But it’s the storytelling aspect of the movie that fails to materialize. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara (who also starred in Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) play an unnamed young couple about to move out of a plain, ranch-style rented house in a semi-rural neighborhood. Strange, unexplained noises and eerie lights sometimes startle them awake at night. But a sudden, not extremely credible twist of fate alters their plans, and their lives.

It’s not giving away any more of the plot, as fragile as it is, to reveal that a ghostly presence in that bedsheet is soon lurking about the premises. Other renters come and go, none of whom can see it. When a woman moves in with her kids, our sheeted entity, and in a fit of pique starts futzing with the lights and throwing dishes around, becomes that family’s poltergeist.

This is sort of an interesting idea, that we might be watching a haunted-house movie told from the viewpoint of the ghost. So is the moment when the sheeted one spies another bedsheet in the window of the house next door. (They communicate, via subtitles, with a kind of special Sheety-Sense.) Later, it was momentarily intriguing to think that each “ghost” represents the accumulated memories of all the previous occupants of its house—which may (or may not) tie into the movie’s bizarre side-trips into the neon future and pioneer past of the house itself.

But while watching the movie, I had no such epiphany. Individual plot points don’t add up. Shots are held way, way too long, as if length would invest them with the weight of meaning. (We spend five minutes watching Mara eat a pie.) And there’s almost no dialogue to give us narrative clues—except for one guy (Will Oldham) who won’t shut up, blathering on about how life and art are pointless, despite the human urge to create something to “make sure you’re still around after you’re gone.”

If this is a hint at the ghost-sheet’s existential despair, shouldn’t it all feel more, you know, profound? If a movie refuses to make linear sense, we expect to be affected on some deeper level that makes it all worthwhile. But Lowery’s narrative obscurity fails to make you feel anything.

Of course, art is subjective: what you get out of it depends on what you bring to it. Message and meaning can be teased out of almost anything, if you’re willing to invest enough time and persistence, searching for that “Aha!” moment. But if a movie obstinately refuses to convey meaning during the experience of watching it—without prompts—then it’s not doing its job.

A GHOST STORY

(**)

With Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara. Written and directed by David Lowery. An A24 release. Rated R. 87 minutes.

Efi’s Brings Dutch-Indonesian Cuisine to Santa Cruz

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August 2, 2017

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Efi’s Brings Dutch-Indonesian Cuisine to Santa Cruz

Last summer, Michelle McKay started doing pop-ups in Santa Cruz County. Her food, Dutch-Indonesian, is truly unique, and unlike anything else in the county.

She started off doing pop-ups on an occasional basis, but more recently has been ramping up, and now generally produces one a week. This week, she’ll be at PopUp at Assembly on Friday, Aug. 4 from 5:30-9 p.m., and at the Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music’s Church Street Fair in front of the Civic Auditorium on Aug 5-6 from 11 a.m.-8 p.m. What kind of food does she serve, exactly? We’ll let McKay explain.

What is Dutch-Indonesian food?

MICHELLE MCKAY: What happened in the 16th century is the Dutch colonized Indonesia for the spice trade. Before the Dutch came back from Indonesia, Dutch food was mostly meat and potatoes. More vegetables, little meat. When the Dutch colonists returned to the Netherlands, they brought back all these different spices from Indonesia. Indonesian dishes became more popular in Holland in the 20th century.

The pop-up is named after your mother?

Yes, but my dad did most of the cooking in my household. I think he would be happy that I named it after my mother. Both my parents were Dutch-Indonesian and lived in Indonesia until the end of World War II. They left as refugees with three kids to Holland, where they lived for many years, having three more kids. They landed in Ellis Island on Aug. 10, 1962, where they made America their new permanent home. Having two more kids, I was the baby of eight. Being so young when my dad got sick and retired is why I learned to cook the way I do. I remember sitting with him and watching him cook.

Where is a good place for the uninitiated to start with your menu?

The one thing that I definitely always serve is the satay, because it’s an Indonesian-style satay, which is a lot different than Thai satay. It contains sweet soy sauce, rather than being curry- or coconut-based. But it is served with peanut butter sauce the same way, and rice and a cucumber salad usually. Another dish that is very popular is the bami goreng. When I do these things, when you order it, I make it on the fly. The smells of the spices emanate everywhere. Rissoles are another big one. The rissoles are ground beef and green onions, rolled in a homemade crepe rather than deep fried. That’s a really popular one. Those are my three biggest sellers. At the same time, I’m doing things like the Dutch stamppot, which is potatoes and sausage mixed with vegetables. It’s kind of like a little of both. I’m also doing fusion, because something I’ve noticed is some people come to my booth and they’re like, “I don’t know what that is.”

heypopup.com/events/efis-dutch-indo.

A Classic Zinfandel From Sones

Josie Cowden

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August 2, 2017

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What goes well with meat and zesty barbecue? The answer is Zinfandel. This spicy, jammy wine is a fine match with just about anything barbecued or grilled—and it’s also fabulous with pizza.

Thanks to the expertise of winemaker Michael Sones, it’s a sure thing that the full-throttle flavor of a good Zin will be captured in every bottle. Sones’ 2013 Zinfandel ($26) certainly garnered a lot of attention at the Dare to Pair Food & Wine Competition in April. It was voted best wine by the public and judges alike. And as one of the judges that day, I ranked this wine highly out of the bevy of excellent varietals we tasted. Students of the Cabrillo College culinary program go to great lengths to prepare dishes to pair with each wine in the competition, resulting in a fun and flavorful day at every participating winery in the Swift Street Courtyard complex.

Sones and his wife Lois Sones say that this classic Zinfandel is made from some of their favorite grapes—sourced from Central California—and resulting in briary cherry aromas and flavors, along with warm spices. All I can add is that this well-balanced and approachable Zin is the perfect libation to go with a plateful of good barbecue.

Sones Cellars, 334-B Ingalls St., Santa Cruz, 420-1552. sonescellars.com.

Art for Africa

Where would we be without the generosity of wineries, breweries and restaurants donating their wares to help people in need? Kobler Estate Winery in Healdsburg has donated much of the wine for an event to be held in Aptos on Saturday, Aug. 12 to raise funds for a research project to help women in Mansa, Africa get access to the health care that they need. Zameen Mediterranean Cuisine in Aptos (and now with a new location on 41st Avenue in Santa Cruz) has donated most of the food. Funds will be raised through a raffle of art from local artists, as well as health and wellness gift certificates. Local artist Sally Bookman will be painting a unique piece of art at the event, which will be the grand prize for a lucky winner. Visit AFnet.org/donations and go to Mansa Health Assessment, or for more info go to amyhanley.blogspot.com.

Good TimesGood Times

Good TimesGood Times

Kathy Fieberling

Retired

Santa Cruz

Gerard Picard

Personal Trainer

Ben Lomond

Nichole Robbins

Cook

Santa Cruz

Jeff Hotchkiss

Author

Santa Cruz

Matt O’Brien

Owner of Cookie Cruz

Santa Cruz

KABAKA PYRAMID

KAP G

HOLDUP

BEACHWOOD SPARKS

WHEN DOVES CRY

SURF CURSE

BRIA SKONBERG

YOUSSOU N’DOUR

IN THE QUEUE

Art for Africa