Hi friends,
Part of my job as a culture writer is to remind you (and myself) just how supremely lucky we all are to live among the beaches, forests and rich agricultural bounty of the Monterey Bay. In that spirit, I’m replacing my weekly local trivia question with a new feature called Three Things, in which I’ll share three super specific things to love about Santa Cruz County. I figure I’ll probably run out of things to list somewhere in the fall of 2039.
Now, on with the show.
This Just In!
The dude is the Michael Jordan of the ukulele, which means that Hawaiian-born uke master Jake Shimabukuro is as simpatico with Santa Cruz audiences as a musician can be. He returns to town with a gig at the Rio on June 30. Writers Angie Sijun Lou and Karen Tei Yamashita explore Santa Cruz’s history with the release of their new anthology, “Dark Soil.” They’ll be at Bookshop Santa Cruz on May 7. The great roots reggae group Israel Vibration comes to Moe’s Alley on April 19. Local mystery novelist Leslie Karst releases her latest book “Molten Death” with a Bookshop reading May 9.
Be sure to check out Lookout’s carefully curated and constantly updated planning guide, Down the Line, for the staggering riches and amazing choices awaiting Santa Cruz audiences. It’s our look ahead at the best shows, concerts and events through the rest of the year at clubs, stages and venues all over the county.
Here they are, nine necessary know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the everything-is-unique B9:
Remembering Cymbaline
Many old-line Santa Cruz folks, particularly those who love music, will go all soft and fuzzy at the mention of the word “Cymbaline.” For the rest of you, that was the name of one of Santa Cruz’s most beloved old record stores. Last week, Jeffrey Werner, one of the partners who started Cymbaline Records, reminded me that this month marks the 50th anniversary of the opening of Cymbaline at the corner of Cathcart and Cedar streets, where Lupulo is now (Cymbaline shortly thereafter moved up Cedar Street to Locust and, years later, it relocated again, to the corner of Cathcart and Front Street, where Sesame Korean Grill is today).
When it opened in 1974, Cymbaline was part of the gradual transformation of Santa Cruz into a counterculture mecca, along with such groovy downtown touchstones as Logos, the old Catalyst and Caffe Pergolesi. In its later years, Cymbaline (which closed in 1997) was a more-or-less mainstream record store, but in its early years, it catered to a narrower range of musical interests.
“It was like blues and jazz and roots music,” said Werner. “We had new-age records and women’s music, too. The big pop records, yeah, we sold those, but they weren’t our focus. We kinda didn’t run it so much as a business. We ran it more like a club.”
The record store’s name was inspired by two things, said Werner, that nicely captured what he and his partners were going for: “Cymbaline” referred to both one of Shakespeare’s minor plays and a 1969 Pink Floyd song.
“Yeah, it was arty, kind of consistent with that snooty atmosphere that record-store people had in those days,” said Werner. “If you’ve seen [the movie] ‘High Fidelity,’ we were like that. We were absolute snobs. It was like, ‘How could you possibly listen to a Rush album? Are you an idiot?’”
Those were the days. Happy 50th to Cymbaline.
Movie notes
If you’re free tonight (Thursday), come on down to the Santa Cruz Cinema downtown for a special one-time screening of a bracing documentary called “God & Country.” The doc, directed by Santa Cruz’s Dan Partland, examines the rise of Christian nationalism in the U.S. with a special emphasis on how this right-wing, largely white grievance movement is a distortion of both traditional values of Christianity and the U.S. Constitution. Partland will be on hand after the screening, and I’ll get to have a conversation with him on the new film, which was also produced by director Rob Reiner.
Then, on Friday and Saturday — on the opposite end of the fun spectrum — the grand old Del Mar, also on Pacific Avenue, will host consecutive midnight screenings of the one and only “Rocky Horror Picture Show,” which by the way is one year from turning 50 years old.
A poetry paragon passes
I’d like to acknowledge the recent death of Santa Cruz’s Len Anderson, whom poetry fans might remember as a driving force behind the local poetry scene in town. Len was one of the co-founders of the organization Poetry Santa Cruz which kept the flame alive in town for many years.
Len had a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in particle physics, and worked in Silicon Valley for years. But he was also a poet himself, publishing in journals widely as well as two collections of his own poems. He was a curious and always interesting guy, and Santa Cruz’s poetry scene owes him a big debt of gratitude for his work in keeping poetry a vibrant part of the local culture. Rest in power, friend.
Earworm of the Week
As a child of the ’70s, obsessed with pop music at the time, there are a handful of grooves from the “Soul Train” era that are forever burned into my brain. Maybe the most deeply rooted (and funkiest) comes from the 1978 hit “Ffun” by the Bay Area-based group Con Funk Shun (shout out to Vallejo!). To this day, I can’t quite understand how any human body with functioning ears could possibly resist an involuntary dance twitch or two upon hearing the first 10 seconds of “Ffun.” Is it one of the towering musical achievements of the 20th century? Of course not, but it finds a glorious sweet spot somewhere between Bootsy Collins and Earth, Wind & Fire, and is capable of giving any party a jolt of adrenaline (though — trigger warning — someone is inevitably going to attempt The Robot). It’s one of those songs that could have existed only in the big-hair/platform-shoes ’70s; too weird and funky for the Motown era, but completely out of style once Prince changed everything in the ’80s. All I know is that long after dementia robs me of my ability to utter my own name, my body is still going to remember this groove.
Santa Cruz County Trivia
Last week: This month marks the 10th anniversary of the closing of one of Santa Cruz County’s most beloved commercial businesses, a place where locals could see and interact with such luminaries as Jane Fonda, Jerry Rice, Michael Moore, Salman Rushdie and countless others. That place was, of course, the wonderful Capitola Book Cafe, still missed dearly by Mid-County folks.
Three Things
In lieu of our weekly trivia question, we will now offer up this highly subjective, weirdly specific new feature, Three Things to Love in Santa Cruz County. And yes, we’re open to your suggestions:
- Nobody ever looks at ceilings. Next time you’re visiting Sockshop on Pacific Avenue in downtown Santa Cruz, take a moment to gaze at the “coffered” ceiling and enjoy the Neoclassical style of what was originally built as People’s Bank in 1910. One of many local fingerprints of the great architect William Weeks.
- Marianne’s Ice Cream in Santa Cruz has a new-ish flavor dedicated to the 2023 Local Creature of the Year. The flavor is called “Otter 841,” it’s cinnamon caramel with snickerdoodle dough, and you might not want to eat anything else for the rest of your life.
- There’s an old wood-paneled Chrysler permanently parked, as a kind of decorative feature, just out front of Seascape Beach Resort. If you’re a Woodies on the Wharf kind of automobile fan, you should really check it out. But only look, don’t touch.
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That’s all I got, friends. Come at me with comments, ideas, complaints, or thundering insights. Thanks to all Lookout members for your faith and support, and please, spread the word on what we’re doing.