Weekend Rummage Sale Benefits Abandoned Cats
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While on my way downtown this morning I saw something that caught my attention. At the vacant lot on the corner of Thurber Lane and Soquel Drive, just south of Dominican and opposite Wells Fargo Bank, a lot of trucks, boxes, people and stuff — lots of stuff — were being put out on tarps and tables that were quickly filling up the large, weedy lot.
I took some pictures and talked with Lynne Achterberg who is also project manager and a board member for an organization called Project Purr (watch the short video). I found out that it is a non-profit organization intended to care for abandoned cats and their feral offspring. Funds from events like this weekend’s go toward paying for spaying and neutering in order to keep feral populations in check and to prevent their suffering. Project Purr volunteers organize and host a rummage sale twice a year at this location.
It was still early when I left but according to Lynne, the stuff won’t stop coming until this evening when a security team will take over and she and the other volunteers can get some sleep before returning early when the gate opens sharply at 7 a.m. tomorrow. Frankly, I’ll be back, too!
Informal Group Gets New Name – Caffeine Cruizers
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It’s not unusual when I stumble across something fun going on in Santa Cruz as I go about my day. It doesn’t matter where in town I happen to be or what time it is. So, when I was leaving the 41st Ave Safeway to return to my car this morning, an unusual number of people milling in front of the Starbucks (just opposite Beverly’s Fabrics) inspired me to go take a look to see what was happening over there.
As I approached I began to notice that the people were milling around some very cool cars. I wondered if it might be some car club, but according to one of the guys in the parking lot, it just kind of evolved. Now, between about 7AM until about 9:30AM on Saturdays’ a large and friendly group of mostly men congregate with coffee’s in their hands, sipping, laughing, and talking in small groups as they check out the cars that have shown up to be admired.
“There’s no formal name but people have started to call it, The Caffeine Cruise”, said one man who comes regularly.
The photos I took represent only part of what I saw. Everyone was friendly and eager to answer any questions I had. It definitely got me off to a good start for the weekend. If you have any interest in cars or just love to see something that is both American history and American art, I’d suggest you stop by some Saturday and enjoy the Cruise…I mean Cruize!
Local Duo Launch Graphic Design Biz
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Young & Talented is a new monthly series that will spotlight some of the exciting things young entrepreneurs, artists and musicians are doing here in Santa Cruz.
SANTA CRUZ — As many people try to weather the economic storm that’s been blowing full force for months now, a young local duo are heading straight into the winds with the launch of their inaugural business. Earlier this month, Davy Reynolds, 26, and Ruby Anaya, 23, launched Parachute Creative, a graphic design firm that creates everything from band posters to candy packaging.
As Anaya puts it, “If we don’t know how to make something right off the bat, we find a way.”
And already things are moving quickly. Reynold’s eccentric band posters have become ubiquitous in store windows downtown in the last few weeks. He now does poster designs for upcoming performances at The Red and 515. Parachute Creative also designed HappySantaCruz.com, a site co-founded by city councilmember Ryan Coonerty.
In the month since they launched, Parachute Creative has done work for local bands, real estate agents, the Santa Cruz Design & Innovation Center and Ashby Confections, a local chocolatier.
Reynolds, who looks like a clean Russel Brand (he was born in England as well), brings an out-of-the-box illustration talent that always starts with a pencil and paper. Anaya, who graduated from UC Santa Cruz last spring with a degree in biology, handles the administrative side of business making appointments, talking to prospective clients and giving Reynolds her frank opinion on his work before he sends it out.
“She’s ridiculously and annoyingly intelligent,” Reynolds said. “Whenever I get really stressed, Ruby helps me figure out a solution.”
In a few short weeks, they’ve managed to build a client base that’s increasing everyday. While I was interviewing them in their office, a new client called to setup a project.
“We’re getting more and more referrals every day,” Reynolds said.
But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Before they launched, they were broke, had just left their previous job and didn’t even have a proper computer.
So armed with a $5,000 small business loan — they had hoped for $10,000 — and Anaya’s brother’s computer, they opened up shop in NextSpace, a collaborative downtown office home to freelancers and small business owners, keeping the thought of failure out of their head.
“Failure pretty much wasn’t an option,” Reynolds said. “I figured there was no way I could lose considering the amount of sweat we put into this.”
But the stakes were high. Just last week, Reynold’s credit card was declined when he tried to purchase a coffee at Lulu’s.
In light of this, things are pretty bare bones at the home office. But you can still tell there’s a designer in house. Reynold’s sits at a desk made of cinder blocks and wood. On it sits the company’s first and only major purchase — a brand new 24-inch iMac. The mainstay of the business.
Other items include skateboard decks that he designed himself and a black and white TV that plays two blurry channels throughout the workday. It serves as an good-luck omen for Parachute Creative. Reynolds found it on the side of the road while driving home from his final day at his last design firm. Anaya and he had discussed how cool it’d be to have a vintage TV that played skateboarding videos in their new office all day. A few minutes later, on his way home, he found exactly what he was looking for on the side of Seabright Avenue. A tiny 13-inch black and white TV. And it worked.
“It seemed like a real clear sign,” Reynolds said. “I knew I was ready to take the risk.”
Creative Parachute’s launch comes in the midst of a number of burgeoning campaigns like Keep Santa Cruz Weird, NextSpace and cheap housing for artists at the Tannery Arts Center to keep local talent and encourage new talent to come to Santa Cruz. It finally seems to be working.
“The economy is moving more and more towards design,” Coonerty said. “Manufacturing can be outsourced, but communities that can attract companies in need of good design and innovation or, even better, grow our own companies, will be the sustainable communities of the future.”
As for the future, Anaya and Reynolds hope to branch off and do design work in the industries that interest them. Most notably, action sports like surfing, skateboarding and snowboarding and t-shirt design.
“We’re going to start an apparel line with limited runs,” Reynolds said. “We’re going to try to get consignment in O’Neill’s, Pacific Wave and Krate.”
But really, they just want to provide quality illustrations with a personal connection and beat an economic storm that had them up to their heads just a month ago.
“For us, it’s not just another paycheck,” Reynolds said. “And I genuinely mean that. Two hundred dollars or $10,000, they’re going to get the same level of personal attention.”
Kinetic Art Cruz
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More photos from Kinetic Art Cruz on Sunday.
Kinetic Art Cruz Pedals Through Santa Cruz
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SANTA CRUZ — Apparently, a lot of things aren’t that apparent. Take for example the fact that the queen of water, oceans and rivers — did anyone even know she exists — travels in a carriage pulled by sea creatures in spandex. And steampunk, a subculture that celebrates the styles and art from the age of steam power, is alive and thriving in our own backyard.
Both were prominent contestants in Kinetic Art Cruz, an eccentric bike parade and the latest addition to the annual River Arts Festival held in San Lorenzo Park over the weekend.
This year’s festival proved bigger, better and weirder than years past with the addition of the Kinetic Art Cruz, a bike art parade where residents of all ages can showcase their eclectic and often wacky two, three or four wheelers in competition for a winning spot in one of six categories.
“It gives us another opportunity to be ourselves,” said John Carson, 46, of Santa Cruz. “These events are what make Santa Cruz unique and weird.”
Some of the standouts included the Steampunk carriage, which took over 60 hours and almost $2,000 to build according to its creators, a bike outfitted with a pedal-powered TV and a gold ox that doubled as a functional DJ booth. The ox’s driver spun records in the middle of the crowd while dancers on stilts showcased their moves.
Mayor Cynthia Matthews, one of the six local community leaders who made up the judging panel, summed it up well when she yelled “Stupendo,” when asked what she thought of the event.
The parade started on Pacific Ave. where the contestants would pass the crowd and the judges and briefly explain their creation. They then headed down Pacific Ave. often doing donuts along the way, and looped around to San Lorenzo Park. There they dumped their bikes in various places around the park and joined the festivities of the River Arts Festival while they waited for the awards ceremony at noon. That meant lots of food, local art and music and interactive activities.
Guillermo Martinez made the trip up from Orange County to give impromptu lessons on how to play his wooden flutes handmade in a style predating Columbus. The Tannery, a local housing project that provides low cost boarding for artists, hosted its first show with a myriad of artwork. A number of live bands including Sadza provided groovy background music on the main stage. There were snowcones, Indian and Mexican food and freshly brewed teas.
At noon, the contestants from the Kinetic Art Cruz gathered on the center lawn and listened as each judge read the winner of their category. These ranged from “Best Artist of the future,” which went to a 6-year-old student at Pacific Elementary School, to the “Greatest Artist in the World.” Each winner received a ceramic trophy and various other awards including cash, gift cards and even an unicycle.
Before long the award ceremony had ended, the music had started back up and the bikers had fallen back into the regular festival. Someone from the crowd asked Lynn Mia, the organizer, why a kinetic bike parade. “Because we’re cool,” she responded.
Cool indeed.
Above photo by Lindsey Foden.
A Closer Look at the Wages of City Employees, Part 1
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Santa Cruz Police Patrol Officer Jose-Luis Hernandez was paid $92,372 in 2008 in regular salary, and booked an additional $94,145 in overtime pay, to bring his total pay to $186,520.
If you think that this is too much, or that there is little justification in nearly $100,000 in overtime pay to a patrol officer when the county faces a staggering multi-million dollar deficit, you aren’t alone. City employee salary data, which was recently released on the Sentinel’s website, is causing a stir of controversy and public outcry over how much some employees of the city are making.
The data, which is made available to the public at city hall in addition to the Sentinel’s website (for all you cournalists out there), does raise some interesting questions that will be the subject of an ongoing investigation here at Santa Cruz’s citizen journal outfit.
Adam Frank, a recent graduate of the University of California Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz resident, feels that “the city is already over-policed and that we are unjustifiably spending too much on our police department.” He may have a point. Police patrol officers Guillermo Azua, Carter Jones, and Patrick Bayani were paid $51,622.55, $49,184.27, and $40,097.46 in overtime respectively. Sixty two additional Police Patrol Officers were paid a total of more than $848,139 in overtime alone. The total overtime pay to Police Patrol Officers was 1.08 million. And that’s just overtime.
When asked whether he feels investing in our law enforcement so heavily is a wise decision, Frank responded only that, “In the last year, Santa Cruz has seen record numbers of stabbings. If we’re paying them a million dollars to work overtime, you’d think they’d at least be able to stop all the stabbings going down.”
And then there are long time residents like Jason Mays who feel that we can’t spend enough on police. “We need to spend as much money on law enforcement as possible. I’ve lived in Santa Cruz for 20 years and not once have I seen it this bad. The gangs are running this town, killing each other, harassing residents, and we need all the police we can get. Have you been downtown on pacific past midnight on a friday night? It’s a nightmare and quite honestly, I’m terrified. ”
Mays also has a valid point, and the conflicting viewpoints of Frank and Mays illustrate a deeper divide running through Santa Cruz. Many residents feel that we are living in a police state, and to them a figure like $1.08 million in overtime pay to our PD will precipitate feelings of utter shock and horror.
However, on the other half of the divide are residents who see many positive benefits to a greater police presence, and these residents are likely to rest easy knowing that a cool million has been spent keeping the police on the streets as much as possible.
Perhaps the real question is whether or not our police department is understaffed. With the same million spent on overtime, 13 additional officers could be brought onto the force and get paid salaries of $75,000 per year.
This is no doubt a topic worthy of much greater exploration. Of course, questions about city employees’ pay is not limited only to the police department. For example, one data point of interest that catches the eye whilst reviewing the salary information is that Ryan Coonerty earned in 2008 $16,915.96 more than Mayor Cynthia Mathews and likewise more than his next highest paid council member, Mike Rotkin. Coonerty earned slightly over $42,000 to sit on the city council in 2008. By contrast, Ed Porter, Emily Reilly, Lynn Robinson and Tony Madrigal all were paid between $22,000 and $24,000 for their service as council members.
So this is part 1, an introduction if you will, to a multi-part series on salaries we’re paying our citie’s employees, the services being provided in exchange for said salaries, and whether you, the townspeople, think it’s responsible use of the city’s money. Please exercise your voice and have your say in the comments.
New Game Memorializes a Life Lost
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SANTA CRUZ — In a lot of ways, Sofia Wardle was like most 7-year-old kids. She loved to sing and dance to Hannah Montana, Hilary Duff and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. She dreamed of becoming a professional singer one day. She often flashed a toothy grin and showed off her big hazel-brown eyes for her parents’ camera just like her favorite artists do.
She loved the color pink. She collected pink clothes, stickers, even a pink sheepskin rug from England. Sometimes you could catch her in pink t-shirt, hat and sunglasses.
She was a typical kid who wanted a typical life.
But unlike most kids her age, Sofia battled a rare and malignant blood disease called histiocytosis that left her painfully ill and with huge blistering lesions on her hands and feet. Some mornings her parents would find her crying on the floor of her room and battling to get dressed for school but unable to because of the piercing pain.
“Even when she was feeling pretty crappy, she was determined to go to school and learn with her friends,” said Dave Wardle, her father.
Tragically the disease, which affects one in 200,000 children, took her life late last year.
But she battled until the end. Before she passed away, her father and she began work on SofiaMaze, an online game that takes players on a maze from Sofia’s home in Aptos to Lucile Packard’s Children Hospital in Palo Alto.
“It’s a fun game that we hoped would raise awareness and funds for histiocytosis research,” Wardle said.
On April 24, in honor of what would have been Sofia’s eighth birthday, her father released the game as a memorial to her life.
“Sofia never got to see it finished, so it’s turned into a celebration of her life,” Wardle said. “She wanted to do something to make sure no one else had to go through what she was going through.”
In the game, which takes about 30 minutes to finish, players are taken on detours to Sofia’s favorite places on the way to the hospital. A typical detour has you choose whether Sofia wants to take her wheelie backpack, pink backpack or bike helmet. Each one takes you down a different route, but only one ultimately leads to the hospital.
Sofia’s toothy grin leads players through the maze.
She also left her aesthetic touch on the game. All of the colors — the pinks and pale blues — fonts and many of the detours were chosen by Sofia.
Her 5-year-old brother, Quinn, also chipped in by approving all the photos of himself in the maze.
“I made sure he’s OK with all his pictures,” Wardle said with a smile.
Quinn still struggles to understand why his big sister is gone though, much like the rest of Sofia’s family, friends and community.
Sofia’s struggles actually began five years before her passing when she was diagnosed with Leukemia at age 2. It was a gut-wrenching diagnosis, but there were good treatments available locally. Beyond the odds, the family stayed optimistic.
After a few years of chemotherapy, things were looking up. Sofia was putting weight back on, and she was more energetic. Her hair grew back and she was regularly attending Rio del Mar Elementary School with her peers.
“She turned into this really bouncy kid,” Wardle said.
But then bumps began to appear on her hands and feet. Dermatologists initially dismissed them as warts, a common side effect of chemotherapy. They changed their minds when the lesions grew larger than quarters and became unbearably painful. Often times, it hurt too much to walk.
Sofia was diagnosed with histiocytosis.
A few weeks later, while he drove to work, Wardle came up with the idea to create a site of some sort.
“Initially, I thought we’d put up some pictures and talk about her disease,” he said.
It quickly became more than that. Because histiocytosis is an orphan disease, one which the government doesn’t fund research for because of its rarity, he thought it’d be great to create a site that raised money to research a cure.
That idea soon became SofiaMaze. For the next few months, father, mother, daughter and brother bounced around town taking pictures in the places that would eventually become the backbone of the game.
“I enlisted a bunch of different friends and family to chauffeur us around so I could focus on taking pictures,” he said.
Being the 7-year-old girl she was, Sofia sometimes wanted to go for ice cream or a visit to the park instead of finish the shoot, so it took longer than expected.
As they finished their shoots, Sofia’s condition dramatically worsened. By June, doctors suggested placing her in a hospice.
“It was shocking how quickly it went south,” said Rich Mundell, a close family friend and office colleague. “It seemed to be going in the right direction and then it just took a turn for the worst.”
Until the end, Sofia fought for a normal life. The weekend before her death she made a trip to Claire’s, a jewelry store popular with young girls, in the local mall with her best friend.
Her memory shines on through SofiaMaze.
In the week it’s been up, the site has already raised over $10,000. Over 50 percent of the donations have come from people Sofia never met. Her father hopes to eventually raise a $1 million to donate towards research for a cure.
“The reaction has been very positive,” Wardle said. “You’d expect family and friends to be enthusiastic, and they’ve been fantastic. But people have reached out from across the states and the globe. It’s really wonderful.”
For more information or to donate visit SophiaMaze.com or join the Facebook group.
Contact the author at daniel@cournalist.com. Photos provided by Dave Wardle.
Poetry Slam at the Crepe Place
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SANTA CRUZ — The Legendary Santa Cruz Poetry Slam has three rules.
No props. No music. No costumes.
Other than that ten randomly selected poets vying for $50 and a little street cred have free reign on the topic, the style and the delivery of their slam. Here in Santa Cruz, that makes for a wild and unpredictable poetry free for all.
“Poetry slam is all about connection,” said Richard Roberts, one of the poets. “It’s very much in the spirit of Santa Cruz.”
The Crepe Place hosted the slam last night at 8 (it didn’t kick off until closer to 9) for the third time in the last few months. After paying a $4 cover, the game was on.
The two hosts — both who teach creative writing courses at UC Santa Cruz — kicked the slam off by reading the list of poets that would read and then launching into a 10-minute skit that was part stand up routine, slam and snub on contemporary life (cell phones and green activists took the largest hit).
After huge applause, the regular slam kicked off.
Here’s how it works. As the poet reads, the audience is explicitly encouraged to vocalize how they feel about the performance. That means yelling, cheering and the occasional lampooning. But don’t let that scare you away. The grading is irrelevant and forgiving.
Five pseudo judges selected at the beginning of the slam and given the name of a pseudo country — the United Federation of Don Juanson, Norway, and the Communist Chinese to name a few — rate each poem with a completely arbitrary term that relates to a number. Think “amazingly amazing,” “hella good,” etc. This way there are no hard feelings.
The five numbers are added up and the poet is given a numerical score between 0-30. At the end, the poet with the highest score gets $50.
The slams were mostly about current events like the banking crisis, green living and hippies. At times they were funny, disappointing and awe inspiring. Some of these guys have legitimate talent with resumes that include extensive poetry tours and national competitions and some of them have never spoken to audience beyond themselves.
“There’s a girl over there who’s in high school, I’m 28 and there are people all ages in between,” said Erich McIntosh, another one of the poets. “It creates excitement for poetry for people who have never been exposed to it.”
To top the show off, Seth Walker, a Texan poet touring the west coast, demonstrated how the pros do it. He electrified the crowd with poems off of his latest spoken word album.
In the end, I give the slam a “legendary awesome.” You’ll have to see it for yourself to decipher that rating.
The Crepe Place, located at 1134 Soquel Avenue, hosts the Legendary Santa Cruz Poetry Slam irregularly. They usually have a deal on beer as well. Check their calendar for updates on the next one and other upcoming events.
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