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File Under: Stop
There are a number of ways to get the word out about an important issue.
Someone might, for instance, call up their local newspaper with a story idea, or write a mass email. Or, to reach a wide audience, one might try advertising, like with a paid insert in a weekly paper—that is, unless that someone does not have the funds to do so.
The hunger to share something with the world probably explains why every once in a while, someone resorts to covertly sneaking their own insert into copies of Good Times. One such incident happened a couple of weeks ago, when some anti-vaccination propaganda was slipped into some of our papers on the stand at Santa Cruz Community Credit Union.
GT publisher Jeanne Howard says she does occasionally hear from a reader who found a flier promoting an extremist point of view. She has never heard from more than one reader per incident, presumably because it’s a tedious task to hand-insert fliers into newspapers just to tell people that you’re pretty sure 9/11 was an inside job.
“Still, it speaks to the power of print,” Howard says, stressing that these rabble-rousers are in no way associated with the newspaper.
More recently, a flier was put into GT stacks for an anti-vaxxer event at the Live Oak Grange. The ironic part is that the flier specifies that the forum may not represent the views of the grange, with no similar disclaimer about the newspaper the event organizers have hijacked—and then inexplicably makes a point of thanking Good Times.
We’ve tried calling the phone number on the flier, but we’ve yet to hear back.
Film, Times & Events: Week of February 19
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King Speech
“Heeeeyyy,” Alicia Garza says in a drawl, as she steps into the green room of the Civic Auditorium in downtown Santa Cruz to meet with a gaggle of reporters.
It’s the same disarmingly informal greeting she’ll use an hour and a half later when she steps to the podium to address a crowd of hundreds.
Inspiring to some, controversial to others, Garza is the creator of the Black Lives Matter hashtag, and one of the principal organizers of the group with the same name that now boasts 30 chapters around the world.
“You can’t tweet your way to freedom,” she told the Civic audience, to thunderous applause, before going on to explain why she wrote a letter on July 13, 2013—the day Trayvon Martin’s killer was set free—that contained the phrase “Our lives matter.”
“It was a love letter to black people,” she said. “Our lives matter. Our children matter. We are human, and we deserve dignity and respect exactly as we are. I also wrote that letter because too many people who are sworn to serve and protect us are getting away with murder.”
Garza also said that Black Lives Matter is not a new movement, but just a different moment in the same movement that was formerly championed by Rosa Parks, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Garza read King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” in which King decries white moderates who acknowledge injustice but allow it to continue. This is the radical side of King that Garza wanted to illuminate during the 32nd Annual Martin Luther King Memorial Convocation.
While the Blacks Lives Matter group has gained a certain amount of visibility in popular culture, she said she thinks Santa Cruz has been slow to recognize it.
“My impression of Santa Cruz is that it can be a little isolated from what’s going on north of it, south of it, east of it,” she told GT. “In some ways it makes it charming, right? But it in other ways, it makes it curious.”
Cuts Loom for METRO
Drastic reductions are coming to Santa Cruz County’s public bus system this fall, and transit authorities are seeking public input on which routes should be spared.
Since the 2008 recession, Santa Cruz METRO’s expenses have exceeded revenues, forcing the bus system to dip into its reserves. Rising operating costs, stagnant funding, flat ticket sales, and a growing backlog of repairs and capital needs have pushed the transit system against the wall.
In March, METRO officials will present an initial plan to cut its bus system costs by $6.5 million—the system’s largest cutback to date, says Barrow Emerson, the transit system’s new planning and development manager.
The way he explains it, METRO has three choices, in order of least to most painful: cut the bus routes’ frequency, cut the hours and days that buses operate, or cut routes entirely.
“In the third and most painful tier, the route is completely eliminated and someone in that vicinity can no longer walk to a bus,” Emerson says. “We are trying to accomplish the impact in the first two (tiers), but the scale of our problem will include the elimination of routes.”
Which Routes Will Go?
After the initial plan of cuts is presented to the METRO board in March, a 30-day public comment period follows in April and May. The board votes on the amended plan in June and cuts take effect in September.
Emerson said his team has not yet decided which routes will be targeted. Some routes draw more income, such as the Highway 17 Express, which shuttles riders to San Jose. But that’s not the only factor—planners must take the entire system into account, he says.
“In a bus network of 35 routes, if we just cut X number of the poor-performing routes, we would no longer have a network where people could get from point A to point B,” he says.
Plus, federal regulations require that low-income and minority neighborhoods are not disproportionately affected by cuts, Emerson says.
“We can’t cut Watsonville 50 percent and cut Santa Cruz 10 percent. The law doesn’t let us do that,” Emerson says.
During the school year, around half of riders are UC Santa Cruz students, who pay for bus passes with their tuition and fees.
By far, the most popular bus routes (with the highest annual number of riders) are No. 16, UCSC via Laurel East, serving the campus and the Westside, and No. 71, serving Cabrillo College and Watsonville. Both routes serve around 900,000 riders each year.
By the same measure, the five least popular bus routes are: No. 34 (South Felton), No. 8 (Emeline in Santa Cruz), No. 33 (Lompico in Felton), No. 54 (Capitola, Aptos and La Selva) and No. 42 (Davenport and Bonny Doon), according to 2013 data.
But those least-popular routes are not necessarily at risk, since they only have a few trips each day compared to dozens each day for the popular routes, says Emerson.
“This is a very complicated, nuanced thing,” he says.
ParaCruz, METRO’s door-to-door service for people with disabilities, is not a direct target of cuts, but will likely see reductions. Federal regulations only obligate METRO to provide paratransit service within three-quarter miles of its system, and only during the system’s hours of operation. So if the bus system’s boundaries or hours shrink, then so will ParaCruz’s, says Emerson.
What Causes a Deficit?
Since the 2008 recession, METRO’s county sales tax income stopped growing like it had previously, resulting in $26 million less income than forecasted from 2008 to 2014. The sales tax is the system’s largest source of income, accounting for 39 percent.
Passenger fares account for 20 percent of income, and state and federal funding account for 22 percent. Those income sources have also stayed flat since 2008.
“No public bus company makes a profit,” says Emerson, who notes that even popular routes with full busloads still need a subsidy to operate.
Meanwhile, the operating budget has continued to grow, from $40 million in 2012 to $50.7 million in 2016. METRO has been able to balance its operating budget only by dipping into its reserves (taking around $22 million since 2008) and state and federal funds intended for capital improvements (around $14 million since 2011).
Around $200 million in capital needs are expected over the next 20 years, says Emerson. For example, METRO has delayed replacing its aging bus fleet, which is about 12 years old and at the end of its life span.
In September, METRO increased fares for the Highway 17 Express route and ParaCruz, but the effects of those rate increases remain to be seen, says Alex Clifford, METRO’s CEO. The Highway 17 route has since had a minor drop in the number of riders, but that may be due to low gas prices and increased traffic, he says.
Further rate increases are not part of the immediate plan, Clifford says.
“We really would like to have the public stay engaged and aware of this process that we’re going through,” says Clifford. “We would like for them to understand the challenge that we’re faced with, and that is [that] we’re delivering more service today than we can afford to pay for. We have to balance our budget.”
To provide input and get updates on the transit cuts, visit scmetroforward.com.
New Foundation
Everyone’s heard stories of people getting priced out of Santa Cruz. County Supervisor Zach Friend recently warned that if the current trajectory of increasing housing costs continues, the community could turn into an exclusive “Carmel-ized” version of its former self.
The board of supervisors adopted a state-required Housing Element to its General Plan this month by a unanimous vote, following more than a year of community workshops, public hearings, several revisions, and overall support from many local groups, like Affordable Housing Now!
The Housing Element calls for 1,314 new housing units, almost 40 percent of which are planned to be affordable for low-income households, in the unincorporated areas of Santa Cruz County by 2023. That’s almost 200 housing units a year, for seven years. Friend says where and in what form this housing gets built will be an “ongoing exercise in accommodating change” and garnering community support, as well.
Friend knows something about the need for community support. The supervisor has endured several months of public criticism—culminating in the threat of a recall from a handful of activists—for his support of the large, mixed-use Aptos Village project in his district, in which 10 of the 69 new homes will be affordable. At a board of supervisors meeting last month, Friend spoke passionately about the need for “shared sacrifice” if any progress is to be made making new housing more affordable.
“If you come before the board and say you are for more affordable housing, you actually have to be willing to let things get built, even in your neighborhood. That’s the challenge—affordable housing is a collective shared sacrifice,” he said. “You can’t say you are in favor of it as long as it is somewhere else.”
That “somewhere else” is getting increasingly scarce.
The Housing Element focuses on the need to re-zone for increased density along transportation corridors such as Soquel Drive, as well as relatively dense, multifamily infill projects to meet the demand. Both the county and city of Santa Cruz are moving toward plans to re-zone along corridors to encourage sustainable growth, and transit-dependent and walkable neighborhoods with higher densities of smaller housing units. The county’s program is called Sustainable Santa Cruz County.
The Housing Element is a policy document required by the state every five to seven years demonstrating how the county will accommodate its “fair share” of projected growth. State law does not require that the housing actually get built—only that planning policies are in place to house the expected population growth for all income levels. State funding to help finance affordable housing has not been backfilled since Sacramento dissolved local redevelopment agencies as part of budget reforms in 2011. That puts increased pressure on local governments to secure grants to fund these projects.
Wouldn’t it be great if more housing meant more ‘affordable’ housing? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
All five supervisors pledged to support affordable housing across the county, although that support was not without nuance or caveats. District 4 Supervisor Greg Caput said South County has in past years shouldered an unfair burden of new affordable housing, and that the burden needs to shared more evenly. District 5 Supervisor Bruce McPherson said the San Lorenzo Valley does not have much room or infrastructure to grow. Many of the locations identified in the Housing Element for possible development are in the Live Oak area, Supervisor John Leopold’s district. Still, they stressed they want to fight this on a united front.
The constant pressure on the housing market from high-income generator Silicon Valley renders affordability a perennial problem. Add to that a growing UCSC population, and a tradition of neighborhood activism that ensures slow—if any—growth, and Santa Cruz County seems caught in the perfect storm of full-blown affordability crises.
According to the UCSC Office of Community Rentals, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment now exceeds $2,000 per month, compared to $1,650 in 2010—a 21 percent increase.
The percentage of homes a median income household in Santa Cruz County can afford to buy dropped from a high of 54 percent of homes in 2012, when median sales prices were about $365,000, to only 22 percent in January 2015, when median sales prices were topping $625,000. By June 2015, the median sales price jumped to $725,000. When median incomes are compared to the price of housing, Santa Cruz-Watsonville often gets rated the least affordable small metro area in the entire nation by the National Association of Home Builders.
People agree there’s a problem, but not everyone agrees on how to fix it.
One of the guiding arguments from “slow-growthers,” as they’re sometimes called, has been that Santa Cruz cannot build its way out of its affordability problem because increasing housing supply enough to make a dent in housing prices would require a level of sprawl and density that is simply unacceptable to the community.
Gary Patton, former Santa Cruz County Supervisor from the 1970s, was one of the key architects of “Measure J,” which established the urban limit lines protecting the coast, open space and agricultural areas around the county, as well as several key slow-growth policies. To this day, he’s skeptical that increased densities could ever offer a solution to housing affordability.
“Wouldn’t it be great if more housing meant more ‘affordable’ housing? Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way,” Patton writes in an email to GT. “More ‘density’ certainly means more impacts on traffic, parks, parking, water, and other city services, but more growth emphatically does not mean more ‘affordable’ housing.”
Patton says that the only way to make housing more affordable would be for the county to require each new unit be sold or rented with permanent price restrictions.
But those projects proposed with rent restrictions for low-income households usually require relatively high densities to be financially feasible, and are routinely opposed by neighborhood quality-of-life activists, like ones who have opposed Aptos Village and a host of other projects, despite the great demand.
“Between the high cost of land and community members who oppose any kind of increased density, it is nearly impossible to find a site to develop the housing that is desperately needed in our region,” says Betsy Wilson, director of Housing Development for the nonprofit MidPen Housing Corp, which developed the affordable Aptos Blue project two years ago.
Caught between limited affordable housing and competing with the high incomes from Silicon Valley, local workers are getting stretched to the breaking point, and poverty rates are rising. The conclusion of the Housing Element attempts to go to the heart of the matter: “Increasingly, the discussion is: What kind of community are we, do we want to be, and who can or should be able to live here?”
Anatomy of a Marriage
Less is definitely more in the haunting marital drama 45 Years. Small in size, subtle in effects, and short on action, Andrew Haigh’s quietly realized tale nevertheless broadens in scope, frame by frame, as its story of a married couple on the eve of their 45th wedding anniversary plays out. The film covers less than one week in its characters’ lives, yet it’s so infused with feeling that it manages to convey a lifetime of unspoken longing, mystery, compromise, and regret.
Writer-director Haigh adapted the material from a short story by David Constantine, and the film retains the sense of spareness and close observation of that fiction format. At its center are Kate and Geoff, a somewhat tweedy English couple living in quiet retirement in the Norfolk countryside. Kate (Charlotte Rampling) is a retired schoolteacher. Geoff (Tom Courtenay) was a foreman at a factory in a nearby town.
Theirs is a comfortable life, puttering around their home and grounds out in the country, walking the dog, and shopping or meeting their friends down in the village. They are tidying up the last few details for their 45th anniversary party, to be held in town on the upcoming Saturday, when Geoff receives a mysterious letter. It pertains to an accident that befell a woman Geoff was traveling with in Europe 50 years earlier, as a very young man, long before his marriage to Kate.
This is not a murder mystery, nor a hothouse melodrama in which a lifetime of deception eats away at the characters’ lives. No physical ghosts from the past pop up on their doorstep. Kate knows about the accident in a general way, and the circumstances under which it occurred, although she’s never pursued the details. But as she tunes in to subtle shifts in her husband’s demeanor over the next couple of days, it becomes clear that while Geoff has never told outright lies about this seminal relationship in his early life, he’s been guilty of a sin of emotional omission in never facing his deeper feelings, or sharing them with his wife.
Ever composed and capable, Kate does not push; she simply observes. And so do we. The couple seems in all ways compatible; Geoff has survived bypass surgery, but he’s still capable of dancing Kate around the parlor to (surprisingly) “Stagger Lee,” which is not exactly a waltz. It gradually becomes evident that they have no children—and that this is probably not by choice. Whatever adjustments they may have made over time are revealed in small, sure strokes.
As things play out, this becomes very much a story about the effects of age and time. Geoff mourns his distant youth, when he was “brave.” At a reunion with his former colleagues, he’s appalled that they, like him, have become fusty elders—even a onetime firebrand he calls “Red Lenny,” who’s now an old man “with a banker for a grandson!” The spot-on music used throughout locates their youth in the 1960s, ands it’s a shock to realize that properly middle-class Kate and Geoff are products of that radical era.
Rampling is masterful as Kate, always wry and good-humored, yet conveying moments of utter devastation with barely a flicker in her expression. A moment alone at the piano, playing Bach, that evolves over a couple of minutes into a powerful expression of her pain and anger is all the more potent when one learns that the actress improvised the moment and music on the spot. Courtenay is also excellent as Geoff, whose cantankerous persona masks the sadness inside.
It’s not fair or correct to say their marriage unravels as the anniversary day approaches, but Kate begins to view their near half-century together in a different light. The effect on Geoff is more opaque, although his anniversary speech to Kate suggests he perceives that something needs to be put right between them. The vintage music in the party scene—“Happy Together,” “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes,” “Go Now”—leaves it up to the viewer to decide what happens next in this engrossing, shrewdly constructed film.
45 YEARS
*** (out of four)
With Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay. Written and directed by Andrew Haigh. From a short story by David Constantine. A Sundance Selects release. Rated R. 95 minutes.
Alberti Vineyard
Situated in the Santa Cruz Mountains in what is known as the Vine Hill district, Alberti Vineyard is in a “sweet spot” for growing premium Pinot Noir grapes. “The slope of the vineyard is quite critical,” says owner and winemaker Jim Alberti, adding that their vineyard’s gentle incline allows air to move through it, minimizing frost early in the spring when buds and tender shoot tissues are vulnerable. “The slope also allows the heat of the midsummer day to rise, causing a cooling air flow within the vineyard,” says Alberti. The Alberti Vineyard continues in the tradition of producing an estate-grown and limited estate-bottled Pinot from a spot in the Santa Cruz Mountains only 500 meters from the first-established vineyard in California, says Alberti.
Jim, along with his wife Peggy, is making some outstanding Pinot Noir (around $32)—the only varietal they produce right now—and it’s all handmade and aged in French oak barrels. We had houseguests for 10 days last month—friends who live in the south of Spain and swear by Spanish wines. But I opened up the Alberti Santa Cruz Mountains Pinot 2013 to enjoy with a pot of black beans and ham, served with crusty bread and a green salad, and they loved it. Tending toward the lighter side with an aroma of berries and cherries, it’s an easy-drinking Pinot with a medium mouthfeel that paired well with this simple food. It’s also very flexible and gentle on the palate, so would pair well with everything from a ham sandwich to a hearty steak.
The Albertis don’t have a tasting room, although they do have a wine club, but the good news is that their wine is available at Cantine Winepub, Deluxe Foods of Aptos, Shopper’s Corner, Deer Park Wine & Spirits, and most recently in New Leaf on the Westside and in Capitola. Visit albertivineyard.com for more info.
Motiv Move
LionFish SupperClub will soon have its very own space in which to continue its popular dinner events. Owners Zachary Mazi and Tighe Melville will be cooking at Motiv’s upstairs bar/kitchen on Center Street and operate a Wednesday-Saturday dinner service from 4-10 p.m. There will be a grand opening on Friday, March 4, but in the meantime you can check them out in their new space on Feb. 19 and Feb. 26. Mazi and Melville want to focus on “breathing new life” into the epic Pacific Avenue locale. Visit lionfishsc.com for more info.
An Epicurious Lifestyle
An Epicurious Lifestyle. It’s a pretty big mouthful. But before you whip out your smartphones and start googling, we already asked owners Marci Prolo and Adrienne Megoran what it means.
More importantly, we asked them about the actual company, which hosts private and public food events. Some folks might already know Prolo for her brand of homemade toffee, Goose’s Goodies, and Megoran for her catering company Food, Family & Vino. Together, they host public dinners at their kitchen twice a month.
GT: What is ‘An Epicurious Lifestyle?’
MARCI PROLO: Epicurious means ‘enjoy today for tomorrow we might not be here.’ We chose that because we have the one table that invites you to have family-style dinners, so really it’s just enjoy the food, enjoy the time you have together because tomorrow we won’t know what will be brought forth.
What do you guys do?
MARCI PROLO: We do private events here. Some organizations have their meetings in our kitchen during lunch or dinner. We’ve had book clubs in here. We also have a themed dinner. One of them is always the last weekend of the month. We have a beautiful table that was built by Adrienne’s husband. It can fit 20-22 people. We have a four-course meal. You come in and you can mix and mingle. What really is behind it is to meet new people and enjoy breaking bread together. What we like to say is you come in as friends and you leave as family.
What kind of food do you prepare?
ADRIENNE MEGORAN: We basically work off of the seasons, and what is sustainable. I would use more root vegetables or heartier meats in the winter time. And in the summertime get back to fresh vegetables, fruit and seafood. We do four courses. People sign up through our website. It’s kind of like a pop-up. On Feb. 27, we are doing a cozy dinner—I’m doing braised beef short ribs with citrus gremolata, and salmon with Meyer lemon vinaigrette. It’s a little bit of a heartier meal because it is winter time. It’s going to keep within the seasonal theme for the appetizers and desserts.
Why only 20 people?
MEGORAN: If it was more than that, I would need to hire a sous chef or somebody to help me prep. Twenty people is perfect for me to handle myself. The table has benches, and we have two bistro chairs on each end. It’s a nice number where people can still interact and talk to one another. Then we have a chalkboard where we write the menu on there and whatever events are coming up. 104 Bronson St., Ste.13, Santa Cruz. 471-8524, anepicuriouslifestyle.com.
Be Our Guest: Black Tiger Sex Machine
Black Tiger Sex Machine is a trio of Montreal-based electronic music producers that creates a hybrid of produced tracks, loops, synthesizer, samples, live drums, and more. And, they do it all while wearing lighted black tiger masks that add significantly to the already trip-enhancing visuals and extraordinary stage show. With a heavy and aggressive sound, and what’s been described as “post-apocalyptic visuals,” the trio is a favorite on the underground electronic dance music scene.
INFO: 9 p.m. Friday, March 4. Catalyst, 1011 Pacific Ave., Santa Cruz. $14/adv, $17/door. 423-1338. WANT TO GO? Go to santacruz.com/giveaways before 11 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 19 to find out how you could win a pair of tickets to the show.
From The Editor
Plus Letters To the Editor How much do you think you know about the lives of professional surfers? We’ve all read superficial profiles about surfing stars, but there’s something deeper about Kara Guzman’s profile of Nat Young in this, our second annual Surfing Issue. It’s something that goes beyond just the analysis of his impact on...
Film, Times & Events: Week of February 19
Films this WeekCheck out the movies playing locallyReviews Movie Times Santa Cruz area movie theaters > New This Week LADY IN THE VAN Maggie Smith plays an unflappable transient woman living in her car who, despite being quite the vitriolic grouch, manages to form an unlikely bond with the man whose...
Be Our Guest: Black Tiger Sex Machine
Win tickets to see BLACK TIGER SEX MACHINE at The Catalyst on SantaCruz.com