The Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, set to run July 29 through Aug. 13, is a fixture on Santa Cruz County’s summer calendar — and if you’ve got an in-law unit or a spare room, you can host a performer or composer in town for the occasion.
Coast Life
Posted inCity Life
The downtown Santa Cruz development debate in art
Longtime local artist Russell Brutsche has some thoughts on the build-now mentality he sees powering the wave of construction in downtown Santa Cruz, and you can see those thoughts set to canvas in a First Friday exhibition.
Posted inCity Life
‘Tis the season for free music outdoors, and Santa Cruz County is happy to oblige
From the wharf and Boardwalk in Santa Cruz to the Capitola Village beachfront — and all kinds of other spots — free concerts abound as spring turns to summer.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
The U.S. Senate should approve the U.N. high seas treaty — we need this protection for our ocean
Environmentalist Dan Haifley says the newly minted United Nations high seas treaty will protect the “wild west” of international waters, fight climate change and preserve biodiversity, and that the U.S. Senate, which failed to ratify the previous agreement on seabed mining, should approve it. The U.N. vote is scheduled for June 19.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Santa Cruz’s Soulwise reaches a career high with a spot on stage at Cali Roots
The California Roots Music & Arts Festival — known universally as Cali Roots — is the celebrated four-day music festival that has been animating the Monterey County Fairgrounds for more than a decade. This year’s Cali Roots opens Thursday, with more than 60 acts on four stages, including such headliners as Wu-Tang Clan, Rebelution, and Michael Franti & Spearhead. And for the first time, one of those acts is Soulwise, the popular Santa Cruz combo famed for their feel-good, danceable, groove-oriented West Coast reggae sound.
Posted inOpinion from Community Voices
When is it not safe to surf? My experience surfing in the world’s shark-attack capital
Nowhere in the world has been more dangerous for surfers than Reunion Island, a French department in the Indian Ocean. The isle has gained global notoriety for its disproportionate amount of shark attacks. Santa Cruz native Evan Quarnstrom, who has called the island home for the past three months, details his experience becoming part of a unique surf community that has been forever altered by sharks. “Everyone seems connected to someone who was attacked,” he writes.
Posted inHousing & Development
Nightmare or riverfront nirvana — or somewhere in between? What’s the next Santa Cruz going to feel like?
Quick, describe the vibe that characterizes what the one-of-a-kind place that is Santa Cruz is known to be. Now, as the housing construction boom begins to change the landscape of downtown, angst is growing about the displacement of the old and the coming of the new. Will downtown’s dramatic facelift obliterate that special Santa Cruz something? Or will the Santa Cruz spirit — however you might define it — in time inhabit the new city now emerging?
Posted inCity Life
Scripts in hand, 36 North playwrights let audience in on the process
The collective of local playwrights under the 36 North banner kicks off a series of staged readings of new plays Monday — a chance to interact with a live audience and get a sense of what works and what doesn’t.
Posted inLatest News
Rio Del Mural: Taylor Reinhold spearheads splashy new piece in storm-battered village
Taylor Reinhold, leader of Made Fresh Crew and the director of the landmark “Sea Walls” murals project in Santa Cruz, has added another bold piece to his public catalog, this one along the Esplanade in Rio Del Mar, an area pounded by this winter’s storms.
Posted inEnvironment
After landslide, an Orange County beach town finds itself between a bluff and a hard place
A landslide beneath the historic Casa Romantica in San Clemente underscores the threat of coastal instability exacerbated by last winter’s powerful storms.