Because it’s so damn beautiful. Jeffrey Beasley, Santa Cruz, Retired             It’s a little bit twisted, but there are a lot of good people and interesting characters. Heather Lane, Santa Cruz, Health Care             I have friends and family here, I love the beach. It’s a...

If you love dessert wine, then you will go nuts over Beauregard Vineyards Late Harvest Riesling, 2011. For a mere $20, you can have yourself a bottle of mouthwatering nectar—perfectly produced by experienced winemaker Ryan Beauregard. Made with fruit harvested from the Dunnigan Hills AVA in Yolo County in November 2011, the grapes were infected with...

Win tickets to DNA's Pop-Up Comedy Club on SantaCruz.com This month, Santa Cruz has its own pop-up comedy club at the Center Street Theatre. Hosted by longtime Santa Cruz comic and MC, DNA, the comedy mini-season features dozens of comics and improv standouts from around the Bay Area over a two-week period. On Saturday, July 18,...

Jim Lewin’s latest band, Edge of the West, is an eclectic group. Their influences include Americana, bluegrass, jazz, reggae, and the psychedelic folk-rock sound from ’60s Haight-Ashbury. At the center of it all is country music, but not the kind of country music most people think of. “It’s not really a cowboy band at all. It...

Sightings of great whites in Aptos aren’t killing tourism—they’re doing wonders for it In the movie Jaws, a great white shark terrorized a New England tourist town on a Fourth of July weekend and scared people off the beaches. But this past Independence Day weekend in Aptos, 15 great whites drew hundreds of tourists to the...

Santa Cruz Skateboards’ parent company NHS is part of a growing solar trend Is solar getting cooler? Dan Sullivan, who leads business development at Santa Cruz-based company Sandbar Solar certainly thinks so, as he sees more and more youth-driven businesses adopt it. In this area, in particular, he says, a new generation of companies is going...

Bill would give new rights to California midwives and the families they serve The Affordable Care Act has opened up health care to millions of new patients, but it has also made it more difficult to find doctors, particularly those specializing in delivering babies. Because of high insurance rates and inconvenient hours, nine California counties don’t...

Bantam captures summer with lemon zest, plus local organic strawberries now ready to eat There’s no doubt about it. Bantam is the hot Westside destination for those who like to sample the best in seasonally inflected cuisine: a robust, mixed-demographic of couples, students, families, inquiring visitors and retired academics. Chef and owner Ben Sims has nurtured...

Santa Cruz Shakespeare’s three-play festival opens with innovative casting twists The spectacle of Shakespeare’s most tartly devised couple reluctantly falling in love has charmed audiences for five centuries. And, with provocative casting of central characters, the new Santa Cruz Shakespeare production of Much Ado About Nothing offers its own summer festival charm. Shakespeare wrote this play...