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Be Our Guest: Gardens & Villa
Love Your Local Band: DJ Bjorn Berg
Santa Cruz isn’t exactly known for its hopping electronic scene, but that’s something that local DJ Bjorn Berg hopes to change. Before coming back to Santa Cruz recently, Berg was honing his DJ skills all over the world, spinning mostly underground house electronic tracks.
“I’ve been doing this ever since I started college, about five years ago now. I went to Spain and I worked for a boat party company. I also studied abroad in Australia. I did some block parties out there,” Berg says. “When I started, I was playing more mainstream stuff, now I’m falling more into the deep future kind of stuff. As a DJ, what really separates you is the songs you play in-between those big hits—the deep cuts that people don’t necessarily know.”
This coming show at Don Quixote’s isn’t just his first show back in his hometown, it’s also a window into new things to come. Berg booked the entire show, which features headliner Chris Martin from the innovative San Francisco Dirtybird label, with Grensta as the main support act.
“When promoting events, there’s no better feeling than to provide a good time for everyone and look out at the crowd and see the smiles on their faces and just know that you made this happen,” Berg says.
Berg plans to put on more shows in Santa Cruz and San Jose in the future with his new company Vibe Productions, hoping to fill in the gaps to the area’s much-needed electronic scene.
“We’re looking at bringing in some big international DJs to Santa Cruz and the Bay Area. Right now we’re doing our first show,” Berg says.
INFO: 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 7. Don Quixote’s, 6275 Hwy 9, Felton. $15. 335-2800
How do you think most people outside of the U.S. perceive Americans?
I think if the world were to take a general consensus on Americans, they would say that we were wasteful.
Noelle Antolin, Santa Cruz, Small-Business Owner
Here and Don
Donald Trump’s campaign has so far been a general exercise in name-calling, immigrant-bashing and snippy tweets directed at out-of-favor reporters.
He’s running on the power of his celebrity and channeling Ted Nugent while saving the gory policy details for later—except as they relate to immigration. That one’s a no-brainer: Everyone must go!
It’s a drama driven to heights of nativism, and thanks to the pugilism of Trump and his extreme views on immigration, we’re looking at the most hateful electoral throw-down in memory. At the first GOP debate, he laid claim to the immigration mantle and said nobody would be talking about it were it not for him.
None of the other candidates disagreed, even as Trump has driven the other top-tier candidates to the right on immigration and pushed the GOP establishment into frenzied distraction in the process. Trump’s willingness to spill buckets of blood goes beyond his support for those two thugs who beat up a Mexican in his name in August (“The people that are following me are very passionate,” was his heinous defense, before he thought better of it).
Trump has already dropped a Willie Horton ad on Jeb “Third Time’s a Charm” Bush for daring to utter the word “love” in connection with a fair enough question about why Mexicans come here to work and then send money back to their families.
Trump’s ad juxtaposed Bush’s “love” comment with the Mexican rapists he plans to exploit all the way to the White House. The ad is priceless in its irresponsibility and rhetorical violence, and his poll numbers are holding steady. That Trump. He just says what’s on his mind. Mexicans have meanwhile responded with Trump piñatas—Watsonville’s Marquez Bros. Piñatas made the news last year when “the Donald” became their most popular model.
With the caucuses in Iowa and New Hampshire fast approaching, Trump still leads every major national poll for the GOP primary race. A Monmouth University poll from the middle of December put him at 41 percent—a 28 percent lead over second-place Ted Cruz—while others show the race at least somewhat tighter. According to CNN Poll of Polls averages, Trump enjoys the support of more than twice as many New Hampshire GOP voters than the next closest candidate; he’s polling at 26 percent, versus Marco Rubio’s 12 percent, with every other candidate registering single digits. In Iowa, CNN has Trump two points behind Cruz, with the rest of the pack again at less than 10 percent.
On Monday, Trump released his first campaign ad, which rather than shying away from his roundly criticized proposal to ban all Muslim immigrants, instead doubles down, actually opening with the promise of this “temporary” (whatever that is supposed to mean) ban. A radical immigration policy, it is now abundantly clear, is the backbone of his campaign.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released Dec. 14 reported that six in 10 Republican voters back Trump’s proposed ban.
STATE BREAKAWAY
Even as the national Republican Party has pivoted hard right, the California state Republican Party has started to lay off the immigrant-bashing rhetoric.
In advance of its convention in September, the state party defanged some of its immigration plank—in apparent recognition of the fact that Trump is a looming demographic disaster of the highest order.
For his contribution to a necessary national conversation around immigration, Trump has pledged to forcibly remove 11 million undocumented immigrants now living here. There’s somewhere around 1.5 million in this state alone, many in the agricultural sector, working in the proverbial shadows.
Along the way, Trump promises he’ll force all those Syrian refugees back to their home country, too, or whatever’s left of it. It seems like a lot of what Trump stands for has to do with forcibly removing people. According to his immigration plan, he would also force American employers to hire American workers if elected president.
Progressive author and former congressional candidate Norman Solomon says nobody with a clue about American history should be surprised at the xenophobia driving the Trump phenomenon. Solomon says it can be seen through the lens of a country that’s experienced tough financial times and is now angling for scapegoats. Trump has stepped into a breach where a silent minority no longer remains silent, and will say and do the darnedest things in the service of Trump America. Much of that battle has played out in the anonymously enraged avenues of the Internet and right-wing radio. The image of a thoroughly progressive Bay Area is undercut, and sharply, through just a cursory spin through a couple of weeks’ worth of local rants and raves on Craigslist.
Indeed, last summer’s killing of Kathryn Steinle by an undocumented alien along San Francisco’s Embarcadero put that city’s “sanctuary” status in the national crosshairs—and sanctuary cities across the country right along with it.
David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist, says immigration and the sanctuary issue will likely find its way onto ballot measures in around half the states in 2016—a great issue for “tilting at windmills,” he says.
“Trump has unleashed but really just revisited the issue,” McCuan says about immigration, an issue that will serve to stimulate Republican turnout in 2016.
McCuan sees a future California GOP as one that focuses its efforts on hyperlocal races—school boards, planning commissions—and uses the ballot process to fan the flames of anti-immigrant sentiment. The most extreme end of the state party is the California Republican Assembly, he says, and that organization is hell-bent on rebuilding the farm team via local elections, regardless of what the state party does or doesn’t do when it comes to immigrants.
OUT OF CALIFORNIA’S PAST
So there’s a disconnect on undocumented immigration between the national party and the California GOP—and within the state party itself—but at least they agree on one thing: Benghazi. That story has trickled all the way down to local Republican committees, like so much supply-side manna from Libya.
This fall, NorCal county GOP committees flocked to see serviceman Kris Tanto Paronto, who was in Libya when four Americans were killed. His appearance was in advance of the release this month of the Michael-Bay-produced film 13 Hours, based on the book Paronto co-authored, 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi. Partisans are promoting the film as the bombshell that will prove once and for all that Barack Obama let Americans die while Hillary Clinton stood there and did nothing. Meanwhile, Trump issued a very screwy video that accuses politicians of “having fun” during the catastrophe.
Benghazi is a great way to get the base worked up, but shouldn’t California Republicans be a little more concerned about Trump and his immigration plan?
A request for comment made to the chairman of the Santa Cruz Republican Party was not returned by press time. Edelweiss “Eddie” Geary, chair of the Sonoma County Republican Party, believes that maybe Trump was on to something when he said that Mexico wasn’t necessarily sending its best across the border.
“Well, Mr. Trump said they send us their criminals,” Geary says. “I don’t know if Mexico is concerned about saying goodbye to those people.”
Geary says she supports legal immigration and says the GOP is “branded unfairly as being against immigration.”
A common theme in stories about California is how the state has led the proverbial way. It led the way in gay marriage, curbing emissions and medical cannabis.
“Every Republican I know is kind of embarrassed at this point,” says second-term U.S. Rep Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael. “Most of the time they will tell you that they’ve voted for Democrats for years. Most will tell you that the party has left them.”
Huffman sees in the Trump anti-immigrant gambit a corollary from California’s not-distant past. Voters here passed the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in 1994, which turned out to be a disaster for the state party that pushed it.
“At the national level, the GOP led by Trump and Cruz and others—it’s exactly what happened to the California GOP in 1994 with Wilson,” Huffman says, referring to former governor Pete Wilson, Republican. “He played to an ugly type of populism to win an election, and it’s cost them elections ever since. The same thing is now going on at the national level.”
Opinion
EDITOR’S NOTE
It may be only the first week of January, but take note: balloting for our annual Best of Santa Cruz County awards is now officially open. (Check out page 27 for the details.) Seem early? Well, last year some readers said they’d like to have more time to vote, so we’re adding an extra week. The polls close on Feb. 3, and the winners will be announced in our Best of Santa Cruz County issue on March 23.
Though we tend to go almost exclusively for news and issues in Santa Cruz, we also understand that readers expect us to be in touch with the bigger picture of how our community is affected by issues at a state and national level. This week’s cover story, which examines how Donald Trump’s immigration rhetoric may or may not line up with the views and political platforms of Californians in his own party, is an example of that. Enjoy!
STEVE PALOPOLI | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Read the latest letters to the editor here.
Lost Souls
Another morning, waking up still bummed about the mass shootings. Exhausted by all of the articles … all of the heated blogs and angry posts … and new details … so, so heavy.
I cried for the San Bernardino social workers having a party, I cried for the baby left with grandma, I cried about Sandy Hook … again … and Columbine, etc … ugh!!!
I actually do lose sleep over this, because it is really, really disturbing.
I have the same questions as everyone else: Why is this happening? What did they all have in common? What is the solution?
There are lots of ideas on both sides of the gun argument, which I won’t go into, but one thing that concerns me is that nobody is talking about the root of it all: Unhappy people with deep emotional and mental trauma (most are diagnosed for years before they “snap”). They all lost hope a long, long time ago. Why? Because nobody is there to notice and show compassion and intercept. So they gravitate toward extremist thinking and extremist solutions. It is clearly about much more than just the guns … it is us, we the people, ignoring our own kind and their mental health needs. It is like any other sickness that has gone ignored and untreated … eventually, it kills.
The shooters, these “lost souls” have all slipped through the social cracks. Clearly, there is inadequate mental health help for those who really need it … from a society that has less and less compassion for those in need. “Do it yourself,” “no free handouts,” “your problems are yours, not mine!” is the mantra in 2015, so adult therapy, school therapists, counselors and social services for too long have been way underfunded. And all of the teens with mental health issues have gone unnoticed and untreated.
I believe the Internet is perhaps the most powerful weapon we have today (education and communication are foundational ingredients of evolving to our next higher form as “civilized” humans). It can awaken, enlighten and unify people across the globe in a matter of hours.
So, my digital community: Communicate! Educate! And share and discuss. We are the future, and we can figure this out … or at least vent a little. Thanks for listening to my letter.
Chris Manning
Petaluma
Online Comments
Re: “Pressing Rewind”
MAH’s history gallery represents nothing more than the personal pet projects of its curators—not balanced at all. This is the history of the “put-upon” classes—the downtrodden, the weak, the victims. Enough with victim history. And, those represented now own most of the town. Who are we kidding with this shamefully biased interpretation. Disgusted!
Sybil Thorndike
Re: “Rail of a Trail”
Wrong. This trail cost is $10 million – built 100 percent next year over removed and salvaged tracks. People are waking up to the “Rail +Trail” boondoggle, and the Land Trust will go away ashamed for deceptively misleading and wasting the public’s money on this inferior, parallel, new and separate road, mowed over open space, totally unnecessary, ineffective train + land-use plan. The right of way is not wide enough, and there is no room for 16 new bridges. The tax measure that the RTC created will lose in a landslide with this “Rail + Trail” nonsense. We want the Trail Now, and please all, including GT, misinforming the public, please get educated by going to trailnow.org.
— Bill Smallman
Re: “Mercury Rising”
Ode to the Fog: Once you were a sign of nurturance, of beloved redwoods in winter cloak, billows of fog cascading over mountains, snaking up the great San Lorenzo. Oh, mystical mist, you are now toxic. I grieve the innocent days of yore when we danced on mountain tops above the peaceful valley below. I grieve your subjugation to the altered symbiotic relationship heralded by modern life, for once you were a cherished friend of coastal living—now you’re reduced to a poisoned, sorrowful sign of the times.
— Kathy Bidwell
I would be very interested in the sampling techniques, how the sample was stabilized, the timeline from collection to testing and the specific method used to test. What form of mercury was tested for and found? How long had the cat been dead and were comparable levels found in hair and tissue samples? Were these grab or from composite samples? Were standards used to eliminate false positives? So many questions, so little information …
— Arlos Anderson
All this is so horrifying! I’d like to know the original source of the mercury. Is it in our oceans? Is it wind-borne from smoke-polluted areas? Is it from ships evacuating their “bilge water”?
— Virginia Bennett
This gives us yet another indication of the need to phase out all coal use.
— Nora Davidson
PHOTO CONTEST WINNER
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GOOD IDEA
SHOT IN THE ARM
Even people who don’t think vaccinating their kids is necessary might want to start doing it now—because it’s the law. Inspired by a measles outbreak last year, the law went into effect Jan. 1 and eliminates exceptions based on religious and personal beliefs. Assemblymember Mark Stone (D-Scotts Valley) coauthored the bill, and Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) supported it.
GOOD WORK
BIRD’S THE WORD
Volunteer naturalists at Elkhorn Slough help monitor wildlife, restore sensitive habitat and maintain essential facilities at the largest tidal salt marsh in California south of San Francisco Bay. The slough’s research reserve is holding an introductory training class from 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m., Saturday, Jan. 30, as well as a three-part series in February. Visit elkhornslough.org for more information.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“Conservatives forget that citizenship is more than a thing to withhold from immigrants. Progressives forget it’s more than a set of rights.â€
-Eric Liu
Preview: Surfer Blood at the Catalyst
Surfer Blood recovers from a gnarly year, comes West
After an awkward encounter with a dolphin and “a really, really big wave,” Surfer Blood frontman John Paul Pitts gave up shredding the gnar.
“The last time I went out surfing was in Orange County,” says Pitts. “I almost collided with a dolphin and haven’t been out since … I myself am terrible, but our new guitarist Mikey is really good, probably one of the best surfers I know.”
The addition of some extra cred to back up their badass name was a bright spot in a year that started out bleakly. Shortly after being dropped by their label, Warner Brothers, at the end of 2014, their guitarist was diagnosed with cancer and their original bassist abruptly retired.
The Florida natives were down but not out, coming together to write their latest record, 1,000 Palms.
“We had a New Year’s Eve show scheduled in Portland, and we decided we were just gonna stay there and write,” says Pitts. “We rented a house from our friends who live there, and we just basically got together in the basement every day, worked on new material and then went back to Florida and recorded it there.”
Surfer Blood, who plays the Catalyst atrium on Wednesday, Jan. 13, are known for postpunk beach-rock melodies and scuzzy guitar riffs, with influences ranging from Yo La Tengo to the Beach Boys to Fugazi to the Smiths. But 1,000 Palms diverges from their previous material in sound and scope. According to Pitts, this has everything to do with the circumstances surrounding the writing process.
“It was a big change from our last record because it was just the four of us working on all the songs and making our own decisions. We had just found out that we were dropped from Warner Brothers. [On] the last record there had been a lot of people involved in the process, a lot of personalities involved,” Pitts says. “It was refreshing after that experience to just have the four of us focusing on it.”
Given their name and sound, it’s no surprise that the members of Surfer Blood are right at home in California, and have played Santa Cruz twice before. This time their supporting act is Santa Monica’s Cayucas. Appropriately, their coastal tour will stop in Morro Bay, just a few miles from the ever-so-slightly differently spelled town of Cayucos.
“I always love touring in California. In my opinion, it’s the most beautiful state,” says Pitts. “I think we’re gonna take the coastal highway from L.A. up through Big Sur, because our new bassist Lindsey hasn’t taken the scenic route before.”
Other Surfer Blood adventures have taken them to places like Barcelona, where they performed at the same festival as Pavement, one of Pitt’s favorite bands. They also befriended the Pixies during a four-hour layover at a tiny airport in New Zealand, which eventually led to a joint tour through the U.S.
Before playing alongside their favorite musicians, though, Surfer Blood paid their dues in the typical fashion, touring dingy bars and restaurants. One of Pitt’s least favorite moments unfolded at a pizzeria in St. Louis. “The restaurant wanted us to sound check while families were still eating dinner,” he says. “And we were loud back then, like really, really loud. People were covering their ears, covering their children’s ears, it was like we were hurting these people while we were sound checking … I don’t know why they couldn’t have waited and had us sound check later.”
Despite the ups and downs, Pitts says he wouldn’t give up the rockin’ lifestyle for anything.
“Life as a band is never easy—touring six months out of the year, trying to make rent and stuff like that. But at the end of the day it’s really fun,” he says. “Playing music for your fans every night is one of the greatest feelings there is. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”
Surfer Blood plays the Catalyst at 8:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 13. Tickets are $15/adv, $18/door.
OUT FOR BLOOD Surfer Blood plays the Catalyst on Wednesday, Jan. 13.
A Sustainable Cabernet from Kathryn Kennedy Winery
Although Kathryn Kennedy died in August 2009 at the age of 82, her winemaking legacy lives on. Marty Mathis, Kennedy’s son, has been the winemaker at Kathryn Kennedy Winery since 1981, and now runs the business, carrying on a tradition of superb wine-making at the estate winery in Saratoga, and a commitment to “growing and making world-class sustainable wines.”
The Kennedy estate does not have a tasting room—but worry not, their wines are well stocked in local shops and restaurants. A good place to start is with a glass of the Cabernet Sauvignon 2012 at Back Nine Grill & Bar, in the Inn at Pasatiempo on Hwy. 17. When my husband and I had dinner there recently we were impressed with the transformation of the bar area—formerly Peachwood’s Steakhouse and now re-named Back Nine Grill. Imaginatively upgraded and remodeled, Back Nine has a much more modern atmosphere for casual dining than its former iteration, with a new menu by Chef Ben Kralj. Michele Costa, who oversees daily operations, says customers love the welcoming ambiance, either for a quick pop-in for a pint or for a relaxed sit-down meal. Across the main lobby is another completely remodeled space—formerly Peachwood’s main dining area—available for banquets and private parties.
Seeing a Kathryn Kennedy Small Lot Cab on Back Nine’s wine list ($48 bottle, $12.50 glass), I ignored the white-wine-with-fish rule (as I often do) and ordered a glass of the cab to go with the restaurant’s delicious grilled salmon. Distinctive black currant, tobacco, coffee, and vanilla notes give abundant flavor to this elegant wine—with an added dose of terroir and dusty red fruit. My husband opted for a beer with his hefty stack of pork ribs. He really missed out.
Back Nine Grill & Bar, 555 Hwy. 17, Santa Cruz, 423-5000. backninegrill.com, kathrynkennedywinery.com.
Buttercup Cakes on the Move
Our go-to cupcake store for celebrating birthdays at Good Times is Buttercup Cakes & Farm House Frosting. The delicious bakery is expanding, moving from their small shop on Locust Street into the much bigger space where Noah’s Bagels (1411 Pacific Ave., downtown) was for many years. The grand opening is planned for early January. Until then, get your cupcakes at 109 Locust St., in downtown Santa Cruz. Visit farmhousefrosting.com for more info.
FAMILY LEGACY Marty Mathis, winemaker and owner at Kathryn Kennedy Winery in Saratoga.
Afternoon Delights at Oswald
Weekend lunches at Oswald, and other essentials
Yes! Another expanded option in the new year—weekend lunches at Oswald. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday, you can grab a table at the corner of Soquel and Front streets and consider a tantalizing menu that includes fried chicken and waffles, marinated portobello mushroom sandwiches, pan-fried flank steak, burgers, and choice salads. Rita and I checked it out last week and pampered ourselves with two of the daily specials. No way could we resist ordering a glorified, grown-up, enlightened quattro formaggi version of mac n’ cheese, which arrived—served by chef Damani Thomas himself—with a lavish green salad of mixed market greens ($12). The piping-hot melted cheese tossed with pasta (or is it vice versa?) was rich and comforting. Crunchy on top, thanks to a toasted gratinée of cheese and bread crumbs. Our other lunch special involved crisp grilled shrimp piled onto an aioli-slathered brioche bun and topped with pickled beets and arugula ($10). A pile of sensuous french fries came with the plump, delicious sandwich, french fries that make you happy you have taste buds—and a gym membership.
Even after a satisfying lunch we couldn’t resist a sophisticated version of chocolate pot de crème for dessert ($8). Here was a creamy concoction of dark chocolate, barely sweet, dense, and filled with the primal mystery of chocolate. We ignored the rounded plume of unsweetened whipped cream on top, but we both coveted the extra chocolate enchantment of an accompanying chocolate cookie studded with chocolate chips. This single, irresistible dessert makes Oswald a Fort Knox of chocolate in my book. And at lunchtime, no less? It felt like some forbidden intimacy in broad daylight. An idea whose time has come. Have some to celebrate the New Year! Oswald, 121 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz. Open for lunch Fri-Sun, 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m., dinner Tues-Sun from 5:30 p.m.. oswaldrestaurant.com.
Things I Can’t Live Without
Here are the must-have items in my kitchen, ones that will transition with confidence directly from 2015 into 2016. Hot mango chutney—for chicken and pork. Organic chicken broth—for braising, splashing into pasta sauce, and forming the base of wintery lentil stews. Tamarind paste—a crucial secret ingredient in stews, soups, black beans, and vinaigrette. Worcestershire sauce—another key element that adds depth and body to sauces and stews. Capers—for salads, eggs and chicken. White balsamic vinegar—our go-to vinegar for almost all salads. I once told my environmental ethics students that an environmental crisis at my house was running out of white balsamic vinegar. Only some of them were amused. Fernet-Branca—my preferred after-dinner liquor. Nothing compares with the haunting bitter orange and herbal mystery of this prized Italian bitters. Biscotti for a little touch of sweet after dinner. I loved the fat almond and apricot biscotti from Companion, and also the finger-sized almond and orange ones from Iveta. Nettle tea—our bedtime beverage. If it was good enough for Buddhist sage and holy man Milarepa, it’s good enough for us.
Entree of the Week
Seared sea scallops with parsnip purée and a dazzling slaw of Brussels sprouts, studded with thin slices of grapefruit and tangerine. Curls of flash-fried parsnip topped this beautiful dish ($30), which was also surrounded with a reduction vinaigrette—sensational flavors, from Mark Denham and company at Soif. Seriously, these were huge, tumescent scallops served golden crisp, with intelligent and extraterrestrially wonderful accompanying flavors. And if you simply want a glass of the gossamer Verus Furmint white wine from Slovenia ($9) then don’t forget those addictive ham and fontina inflected arancini balls ($8).
LET’S DO LUNCH Chef Damani Thomas of Oswald with a tantalizing plate of his chicken and waffles. PHOTO: CHIP SCHEUER
Certain Storm
We were promised Godzilla, and Godzilla we just might get. The potential “Godzilla El Niño,” as it’s been called, which Californians have awaited for months with a mix of excitement and dread, is just now arriving. This week’s rains showering Santa Cruz are El Niño-related, according to the National Weather Service—and it shows no signs of slowing. Locals, who after years of drought had all but forgotten what rainy days are like, are now dusting off their raincoats and stomping through puddles.
The Sierra Snowpack is now listed at 36 percent higher than average, according to the state’s Department of Water Resources, although it’s too early to say whether or not the drought will actually end this year.
A news release from NASA on Dec. 29 shows a striking resemblance between satellite images of this growing El Niño and a similar El Niño system from December 1997—an El Niño that rocked the globe and is considered the worst on record. In between severe droughts in Southeast Asia and flooding, it resulted in 23,000 deaths worldwide and more than $10 billion in damage in the United States alone. It also caused unprecedented damage to the world’s coral reef systems.
In a way, it feels odd that people would be so worried about rain in a town that in its long history has weathered major natural disasters like floods and earthquakes. Since Santa Cruz’s most recent substantial floods in 1983, the city initiated a Levee Improvement Project and installed new levee pumps to prevent water from spilling out of the San Lorenzo River.
Still, much of the city is in the floodplain for 100-year floods, according to FEMA’s Flood Insurance Rate Maps, which show that downtown Santa Cruz, the area around the San Lorenzo River and the beach area are all at risk. Farther south, the neighborhoods near Soquel Creek, Pajaro River, Corralitos Creek and Salsipuedes Creek are also all considered at risk.
With a serious downpour, pump stations and other facilities can flood, forcing officials to get water from the Loch Lomond Reservoir instead of local streams and rivers. Each storm provides its own set of unforeseen challenges.
One possible red flag this time around is that four years of dry weather has led to a build-up of fallen trees and debris that hasn’t washed down the San Lorenzo. In past years, heavy rains following a dry spell left a mess of branches and huge tree trunks all over the river mouth and Main Beach. “We’re hoping that doesn’t occur again,” Parks Superintendent Mauro Garcia says, adding that they have trimmed and cleaned up as many trees as they could.
Those logs can get trapped under the wharf, Garcia says. “The weight actually moves like a battering ram back and forth and has the potential to—and has in the past—removed the piles,” he says.
Divers will be standing by to remove them from under the wharf and prevent them from doing any damage.
An eight-page brochure on the city’s public works website has tips for El Niño preparation and procedures, some of them more obvious than others.
The brochure recommends that people have an evacuation plan and know a safe route to higher ground in case there’s a flood. And they should leave early enough to avoid being marooned by flooded roads, which they should try to avoid and drive around if possible. Residents should keep a disaster survival kit and have it ready to go. Household hazardous materials should be stored indoors to keep them out of the runoff water.
Sandbags can be picked up from the city’s Fire Administration Office on Walnut Avenue or from a city corporate yard office located at 1125 River St., Ste. A. Citizens can fill up their bags with free sand from Harvey West Park.
“We’ve been giving out so many sandbags,” says emergency services manager Paul Horvat. At one disaster preparedness workshop alone, Horvat says they gave out 1,500.
Santa Cruz Fire Chief Jim Frawley asked each department to appoint a contact person and a backup contact person in case of emergency this winter. Much of the work in mitigating El Niño has been preventive, like cleaning catchment basins and trimming vegetation. And at an October City Council meeting presentation, Frawley, who moved from Southern California this past April, lauded the city’s disaster preparedness.
Garcia says that the rains have left the ground moist and saturated with water—which can loosen the roots of trees and leave them susceptible to getting knocked over by large gusts of wind. Additionally, the drought has weakened many tree limbs, and they may come falling down in big storm events, something city officials are ready for—even if they don’t want to see it happen. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” Garcia says.
For more information, visit cityofsantacruz.com or santacruzcounty.us. The city of Santa Cruz will be holding an El Niño Storm Preparedness Workshop from 6-8 p.m, Thursday, Jan. 7, at the Beach Flats Community Center, 133 Leibrandt Ave., Santa Cruz.
Film Review: ‘The Big Short’
Wall St. crash predicted, ignored, in wry exposé ‘Big Short’
If you set out to make a hard-hitting documentary about the financial crash of 2008, two things would happen. The activities of bankers, hedge fund managers and other money-grubbing speculators would be way too convoluted for the average viewer to follow. And any attempts to explain what was going on in the dry, dusty language of bank speak would bore the viewer senseless.
Which is just the way the banking industry likes it, according to The Big Short, a breezy, profane, scathingly funny, lightly fictionalized feature about the crash and how it happened. Industry professionals did not intentionally crash the global economy, the film argues, but they ignored the warning signs because they were all too busy making piles of money in ways so nefarious and underhanded that they could depend on nobody being concerned or interested enough to follow their trail—until a handful of industry outsiders figured out what was going on and found a way to beat the bankers at their own crooked game.
Scripted by Charles Randolph and director Adam McKay, the film is adapted from the nonfiction book by Michael Lewis (The Blind Side; Moneyball). The story unfolds like an action movie in which the underdog misfits challenge the monster. Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale) is a barefoot Silicon Valley fund manager who takes the time to crunch some numbers and realizes the gigantic Ponzi scheme that is the mortgage industry on the verge of collapse.
Mark Baum (Steve Carell) is a crusading operative with Morgan Stanley on Wall Street. A wrong number call to his office leads to Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a slick operator with Deutsche Bank who sees that Wall Street is heading for a fall; he’s looking to cash in, while Baum and his team investigate the unscrupulous and predatory mortgage biz. Meanwhile, two wannabe players (John Magaro and Finn Wittrock) lure financial guru Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt) out of retirement in the Colorado mountains to support their “kinda brilliant” plan to profit off mortgage skullduggery.
The filmmakers understand how arcane the business of credit-swaps and C.O.D.s can be to the layperson. To help us follow along, there are many asides directly to the audience by Gosling’s Vennett, who narrates along with celebrity appearances to illustrate the finer points. Margot Robbie sips champagne in a bubble bath to explain subprime mortgages. Chef Anthony Bourdain likens bad loans to three-day-old fish cut up and bundled into a stew to be resold. Selena Gomez explains how Wall Street bets on the housing marketplace sitting at a blackjack table in Vegas, where side-bettors suppose the winning streak will never end.
The story’s protagonists forecast the coming shortfall, but their warnings are dismissed by their bosses, who insist along with Alan Greenspan and Henry Paulson that the economy is strong. So the outsiders “bet against the house” for a big payday when the market tanks. The point is not that these guys were smart enough to make a lot of money (which they did; “I’m not the hero of this movie,” says Vennett), but that the debacle could have been avoided if the market had been corrected, if the loan industry was efficiently regulated, and if lenders weren’t so greedy.
You still may not come away knowing exactly what happened when the banking bubble burst. But you’ll sympathize with Baum’s conclusion that the entire system is completely fraudulent, from Wall Street scammers and bond agencies that knowingly inflate the ratings on bad loans, to the law, the government and the media, who refuse to interfere.
And when things blow up, it’s not the banks that suffer—their firms are bailed out; their CEOs still get their extravagant bonuses. It’s working families, stiffed with bad loans they could never possibly pay off in real life, who lose their homes and their savings. (When Baum’s team asks a couple of suburban bankers if anybody ever fails to qualify for a loan, the bankers just laugh.)
In the film’s epilogue, the bankers go to jail, and the industry is regulated—followed by a sardonic “Just kidding!” Of all of the film’s dark comedy moments, this is the hardest one to laugh at.
THE BIG SHORT
*** (out of four)
With Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt.
Written by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay. Directed By Adam McKay. A Paramount release. Rated R. 130 minutes.
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