Good Times Santa Cruz

Poetic Cellars

gtweekly@gtweekly.com (Josie Cowden) — Wed, 22 May 2013 17:23:12 +0000

Syrah 2006—A Well-versed
Wine and Poetry Lover’s Dream

Poetic Cellars makes the most romantic wines. With a verse or two of beautiful poetry on every label, mostly poems of love and romance, this is the perfect wine to open up over dinner with your sweetheart. I particularly love winemaker Katy Lovell’s Syrah ($28) with its voluptuous velvety textures and dark fruit flavors.

No Big Surprises

gtweekly@gtweekly.com (GTWebmaster) — Wed, 22 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

The highly anticipated draft Environmental Impact Report for desal is finally out. Will it change anything?

By Elizabeth Limbach When scwd2, the group pursuing the proposed joint desalination plant for the Santa Cruz Water Department and Soquel Creek Water District, set up a booth at the Santa Cruz Earth Day festival in 2012, its reception was less than warm.

Signature gathering for Measure P, the “right to vote” on desal ballot measure, was in full swing, as were tensions over the controversial project, which would produce up to 2.5 million gallons per day of desalinated water and cost an estimated $100 million. What were representatives of an energy-intensive desal plant doing among the recycling and conservation booths? That was the attitude Melanie Mow Schumacher, public outreach coordinator for scwd2 (pronounced “squid squared”), remembers sensing.

Growing Berries Without Bromide

gtweekly@gtweekly.com (Amy Coombs) — Tue, 21 May 2013 20:56:31 +0000

Researchers test a new alternative to a controversial chemical

The scarecrows perched in Santa Cruz strawberry fields do little to scare away the birds, much less the insects and fungi harbored in the soil. Everything likes to eat strawberries, which makes growing them a risky business.

This predicament led UC Santa Cruz professor Carol Shennan to take an unconventional approach to pest management. Nine years ago, the fatal plant disease Verticillium wilt was wiping out strawberry plants at the university farm. Chemicals hardly phase the pathogen, and Shennan saw little improvement with crop rotation, which is typically used to treat infested fields. A visiting plant pathologist from the Netherlands recommended a little-known organic technique called anaerobic soil disinfestation, and, with so few other options, Shennan decided to give it a try.

The Gypsy

gtweekly@gtweekly.com (GTWebmaster) — Wed, 22 May 2013 00:29:31 +0000

French-born jazz vocalist Cyrille Aimée lives for musical freedom and improvisation

Cyrille Aimée is a musical gypsy. Her sound incorporates elements of Latin American, American, Brazilian and other styles of jazz, she has recorded albums as a duet with Diego Figueiredo, she currently performs with the Surreal (same pronunciation as her first name) Band, and she is working on a new album with yet another band.

As it happens, Aimée can actually blame gypsies for her love of jazz. “I grew up in Samois-sur-Seine, which is a little town in France where Django Reinhardt used to live,” she says. “Every year they have the Django Festival in his honor, and so gypsies from all parts of Europe come and honor him and play guitar. I started hanging out with the gypsies and became obsessed with their music, their way of living, their freedom. What drew me to jazz music was the freedom of it, all the improvisation, and the fact that it’s a style of music that is constantly changing.”

Cruzin’ for Inspiration

gtweekly@gtweekly.com (April M. Short) — Tue, 21 May 2013 21:24:08 +0000

Former resident pays homage to Santa Cruz with locally shot thesis film

When he left Santa Cruz for the University of Southern California’s graduate film program in 2010, Christopher Guerrero had completed the film major at UC Santa Cruz in 2008 and worked on campus in the film and digital media department. It wasn’t until he headed south, that Guerrero began to reminisce about the coastal town.

“It was really really hard when I moved to L.A., to acclimate and find friends,” he says, adding that—counter to the philosophical, conversational culture of Santa Cruz—he found nowhere in his new town where he could simply sit and talk about life with someone. “I didn’t really realize why I love [Santa Cruz] so much until it was gone.”

Santa Cruz Calendar

gtweekly@gtweekly.com (GT_Staff) — Tue, 21 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Live Music and Events Calendar
> Music Club Grid PDF >
>>> Community Events Calendar >
>> Post Community Events free >
> Santa Cruz Visitor Guide >
> GT Active Outdoor Guide >
> Film Reviews and Times >
> Happy Hour Directory >
> Radio Station Guide >
> Dog-freindly shops, dining, lodging >
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Beck to the Future

gtweekly@gtweekly.com (Damon Orion) — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:48:40 +0000

In celebration of Beck’s solo acoustic show at The Rio, GT explores Song Reader, the alternative rock icon’s most ambitious interactive art piece yet.

Here’s an odd little paradox of the digital revolution: The more sophisticated our technology gets, the more our musical milieu begins to resemble that of a bygone era, when song ideas were passed around from musician to musician, perpetually taking on new twists. Dozens of different YouTube users might try their hand at setting somebody’s rant about cats or double rainbows to music, or you might hear the Belgian musician Gotye turning the many and varied covers of his song “Somebody That I Used to Know” into a virtual orchestra (see below).

All That Jazz Age

gtweekly@gtweekly.com (Lisa Jensen) — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:10:06 +0000

Luhrmann delivers a Deco-licious, surprisingly effective 'Great Gatsby'

With Baz Luhrmann in the driver's seat, the slick, shiny roadster that is The Great Gatsby could go either way. This meeting of the florid visual stylist (Romeo + Juliet; Moulin Rouge) and F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American novel of the Jazz Age might be a head-on collision of inappropriate style, anachronistic music, and frantic bombast over substance. Or it might just as easily be a brilliant reimagining of an American classic revitalized to resonate with a new generation.