Sunday Reads: Bad Animal’s lofty aims, fairgrounds’ cloudy future and take our latest news quiz

Surf City Lights: Bad Animal’s grand ambitions to become the world’s next great bookstore

(Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz)

Blessed by Beat poet and San Francisco bookseller Lawrence Ferlinghetti, downtown’s Bad Animal — a high-end Thai-inspired restaurant and wine bar living inside a deeply thought-out bookstore that’s the brainchild of Andrew Sivak — deserves its own attention as an emerging Santa Cruz cultural touchstone on par with Bookshop Santa Cruz and its now-defunct predecessors Logos and The Literary Guillotine. Wallace Baine turns the pages here.

➤ AMBITIOUS EATS, TOO: Hanloh’s Thai cuisine electrifies at Bad Animal

Fairgrounds’ future looks fraught — lies, deception and personal vendettas are poisoning beloved institution

(Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz)

In a Community Voices opinion piece, longtime journalist Jon Chown says he has never seen as much overt lying, deception and personal attacks as went on at the Feb. 28 meeting of the Santa Cruz County Fair board of directors. He argues that the whole house needs sweeping or the fair risks disappearing. Read the op-ed here.

➤ PREVIOUSLY: Still putting up fair holiday lights, Dave Kegebein talks about his stunning firing — and future plans

Test your newsy knowledge with this week’s Lookout news quiz

How closely do you follow news from Santa Cruz County and beyond from Lookout’s correspondents? Take our new weekly quiz from Wallace Baine and find out.

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