News broke this week that the Santa Cruz Seaside Company would not renew Twisselman Enterprises’ lease for Hot Dog on a Stick or its three other food booths. The local, family-run business had been a tenant at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for 90 years. Fourth-generation Allison Twisselman says the outpouring of community support from former employees and customers is “bittersweet.”
Lookout Q&A
Posted inWatsonville / Pajaro
New CEO Gray says he plans to make Watsonville Community Hospital ‘one of the best in the country’
Watsonville Community Hospital’s new CEO, Stephen Gray, says he aims to transform the facility into one of the nation’s top health care institutions. Gray, who takes over Nov. 1, said Thursday that he plans to address the hospital’s financial struggles and prioritize the happiness of staff and patients. He believes the hospital has the potential to make a significant impact on the health outcomes of the surrounding communities, which rank among the least-healthy populations in the country.
Posted inRecreation & Sports
Legendary skater Tony Alva reflects on what Santa Cruz Skateboards has meant in his career
As NHS Inc., the parent company of Santa Cruz Skateboards, celebrates its 50th anniversary, Wallace Baine tracked down Tony Alva to get a sense of Santa Cruz Skateboards’ impact not just on Alva’s career but on the skate world at large.
Posted inBusiness & Technology
Santa Cruz Works’ Doug Erickson on how region’s affordable housing crisis affects local tech economy
The tech sector has been hit hard the past few years, and analysts anticipate that tech layoffs in 2023 will exceed the number in 2022. While recession fears continue to reverberate within the larger tech ecosystem, at the local level we’ve seen some significant growth activity. In an interview with Lookout business columnist Jessica M. Pasko, Santa Cruz Works founder Doug Erickson discusses how the region’s affordable housing woes have affected the growth of the local tech industry — and why AI is about to upend everything.
Posted inCoast Life
After a stormy offseason, Zeke Fraser is hustling to get the Santa Cruz County Fair up and running
Less than three months into his tenure as Santa Cruz County Fair CEO, the pressure is on for Zeke Fraser to pull off this year’s version, which runs Sept. 13-17. The longtime local talks about getting up to speed, what’s on tap for this year’s fair and bridging the North County-South County divide.
Posted inLatest News
UCSC science journalism lecturer Peter Aldhous on why Santa Cruzans should care about cattle, dairy pollution
For folks living in Santa Cruz County, the closest cattle and dairy farms are as much as two hours away. Still, the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced on those farms, and thousands of others across the country, contribute to climate change, which itself contributes to a higher frequency of environmental disasters across the planet, and likely in Santa Cruz County. Hillary Ojeda interviews journalist and UCSC science communication lecturer Peter Aldhous about how state and federal rules fall short when it comes to tracking methane emissions from California’s largest cattle and dairy farms.
Posted inEducation
‘My story is a Native story’: Astrophysics grad student didn’t feel ‘Native enough’ until UCSC
Growing up, Madelyn Broome believed two things: She was destined to become a scientist and her Native heritage belonged to her. But when she got to Princeton for college, she began to doubt both. She feared she wasn’t good enough at math to succeed and not “Native enough” to claim her heritage. That changed when she arrived in 2020 at UC Santa Cruz, where she is now getting a Ph.D. in astrophysics. She is also hosting astronomy events for Native youth and mentoring youth to help them see a future for themselves in STEM.
Posted inEnvironment
With bat baby season upon us, UCSC prof explains how to spot them and why they matter
Bats have come back to the Bay Area from winter migrations and are raising young all around the region. Winifred Frick, chief scientist at Bat Conservation International and an ecology and evolutionary biology research professor at UC Santa Cruz, tells Lookout how and where to find bats — and when you might catch a glimpse of a baby bat getting a flying lesson.
Posted inLatest News
Q&A: Recently discovered mastodon tooth may hold ancient secrets about evolution of Santa Cruz County
Wayne Thompson has been fascinated with ancient animals since his family owned Scotts Valley’s now-closed Lost World attraction. He’s been on the trail of Ice Age mammals in Santa Cruz County since a juvenile mastodon skull turned up in Aptos Creek in 1980, and the May find of a tooth on a Rio Del Mar beach has the Museum of Natural History paleontologist excited anew.
Posted inEducation
As the fight against RSV adds vaccines, UCSC researcher is on the cutting edge
Respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, raged last winter, contributing to a “tripledemic” where cases of flu, COVID-19 and RSV all flooded the nation’s hospitals at once. UC Santa Cruz professor Rebecca DuBois is deep into vaccine research even as a CDC committee recommended a pair of immunizations this week. DuBois works at the molecular scale, and her research is action-packed and futuristic-sounding.