Welcome to the last Lookout PM of 2025.

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This week in Santa Cruz County business: Looking back at the businesses that opened in 2025

By Jessica M. Pasko

While 2025 saw many beloved businesses shutter, the year also welcomed many new ones, from retailers to restaurants, entertainment to fitness, all helping shape that uniqueness that is the Santa […]

Credit: Los Lobos

Best 9: Top New Year’s Eve events in Santa Cruz County arts & entertainment

By Wallace Baine

Check out Wallace Baine’s Best 9 recommendations for things to do around Santa Cruz County on New Year’s Eve (literally and spiritually) via Lookout’s BOLO events calendar.

Watsonville resident who received liver transplant to participate in Rose Parade

By Tania Ortiz

A Watsonville teen will be one of seven organ transplant recipients to be honored in the Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Year’s Day by an organ procurement nonprofit, Donor […]

Newsmakers 2025: Those we lost

By Wallace Baine

Santa Cruz County lost a number of prominent people in 2025, including activists, journalists, artists and academics.

Credit: Pixabay

Big Tech got regulated, but just barely: 2025 in review

By CalMatters

California showed it was serious about regulating Big Tech in 2025 — and Big Tech showed it was serious about coming to the statehouse and fighting back. The upshot was […]

Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

More rain for New Year’s — also, did winds really clock 90 mph on Christmas Eve at the Harbor?

By Max Chun

Meteorologists weigh in on the extreme winds that whipped through the county last week. They can’t say if winds topping 90 miles per hour winds measured at the small craft […]

an "open" sign hanging from a chain inside a glass door to a business

Santa Cruz County business filings: Week of Dec. 30

By Lookout Santa Cruz

Businesses operating in Santa Cruz County must register with the county clerk. Lookout Santa Cruz reviews the public filings from local businesses to report on new businesses starting in the […]

Credit: Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz

Newsmakers 2025: A year of grassroots protest at Indivisible

By Wallace Baine

Margaret and Roya Ghodsi, a mother-daughter duo from Capitola, are emblematic of a growing number of local residents not active in politics before 2025 who began to participate in protests […]

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Ashley Harmon (Holmes) (she/her) leads Lookout’s product and audience growth for Santa Cruz and soon-to-come, Eugene-Springfield. Ashley started at Lookout as director of advertising and marketing....