EARLIEST PHOTO OF DOWNTOWN SANTA CRUZ. This was taken around 1859. It’s of course what we now call Pacific, Front, and Mission streets with that Jamba Juice, US Post office and stuff there now. Back then it was Willow, Front and Main Streets. photo credit: Covello & Covello Historical photo collection. Additional information always welcome: email photo@brattononline.com

ABBOTT & COSTELLO WITH ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT TYPOGRAPHY

SCRP MEETS DAVID TERRAZAS & VICE VERSA. Santa Cruzans for Responsible Planning invited David Terrazas to our April 20^th meeting. David didn’t know what SCRP stood for but we explained it to him. I personally didn’t know what Terrazas stood for and still don’t after some pointed questions. About 20 of us were there, from the Sierra Club, DeAnza Park, PDC, De-Sal groups, groups like that. David spoke out in favor of strong neighborhood infrastructure, special districts, “polish some downtown spaces”, quality of life and safe campaign-type stuff. We told him people needed to feel more listened to; we needed to see a stronger City Council that isn’t so tied to City Staff. We asked why we don’t demand more from developers and developments. It was pointed out that Safeway finally gave in to many, many neighborhood demands before ethey opened the new Mission Safeway. We pointed out how the City never asks why and demand proof that developers projects “don’t pencil out”, like La Bahia. We grieved over “spot zoning” and fighting the General Plan. We asked and griped over the Unity Hyatt Place plain ugliness and traffic problem. Terrazas said he too like Hilary Bryant, would be in favor of a public ballot measure on building that de-sal plant. So it wasn’t a complete loss, on either side.

SCRP’s next meeting. As it says in SCRP’s latest email…Juliana Rebliagati, Don Lauritson and Eric Marlatt from the Santa Cruz City Planning Department have agreed to attend the SCRP meeting on May 4. They will discuss the Hyatt project on the site of the present Unity Temple on Broadway just off Ocean and the Park Pacific project (1547-1549 Pacific Avenue to 1110 Cedar Street) at the top of the Mall next to the bank and running from Pacific through to Cedar. That will be a good one.

GARY PATTON ON DE-SAL PLANT. This was in the Sentinel last Sunday and in case you missed it. Here it is with a forward by Jean Brocklebank …..Once again, Gary Patton demonstrates his remarkable mastery of “painting the Big Picture” for our community. With laser sharp analysis and keen political sensibility, he has clearly connected all the desal plant dots. From now on, the “business- as- usual- City Council” along with the unsustainable growth promoters, will be unable to stealthily drive their expensive and risky desal steamroller over the interests of the voters and water ratepayers for generations to come.

Gary’s profound article comes at time when the highly-visible grassroots efforts of Santa Cruz Desal Alternatives to educate, challenge, mobilize, and build community are starting to shake the power structure as well as nurturing a democratic space to advance sane solutions for living within our financial and environmental limits” J.B..

GARY’S OP-ED PIECE..

“The city of Santa Cruz is facing some fundamental questions, and water supply issues are central. Because the city provides water for residents and businesses not only in the city, but also in Live Oak, Capitola, and Pasatiempo and because the city is planning to build a desalination plant with the Soquel Creek Water District, which provides water to Capitola, Soquel, Aptos, Rio Del Mar and La Selva Beach, the City Council’s decisions will affect something like 50 percent or more of the population of Santa Cruz County.

Here are three questions currently pending:

1. What sort of long-term plan for future growth and development is most appropriate? This question is posed in the city’s General Plan deliberations.
2. Should UCSC be given access to city water to accommodate a major expansion? This question is posed by the city/university applications to the Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO.
3. What sort of future water supplies should be provided? This question is posed by the proposed desalination plant, and has been linked to a proposed Habitat Conservation Plan HCP, to be approved by federal and state resource agencies. The city is acting like these are three discrete inquiries. The city’s consideration and environmental review of these three projects is taking place as three separate processes, on separate timelines, separately funded, and sequenced so that the information developed on one of the inquiries is not readily available with respect to decisions made on the related issues.

The city needs to “get it together.” The current approach is likely to cause legal problems, since the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, demands that the environmental review of related projects not be inappropriately “segmented.” Legalities aside, the city is making it almost impossible for the public to understand what choices are actually available, and what choices are actually being made.

Should the city build a desalination plant? That question is related to the question of whether the city is going to back the university’s play for significant new growth almost doubling the physical construction on campus. Should the city have a General Plan goal of being able to accommodate any amount of new growth and development that might present itself? If “yes,” then maybe building a desalination plant would be advisable. But we don’t know the “answer” to these questions, yet, and the answers should be provided in conjunction with the decision on desalination.

BURNING MARIJUANA. Cool fun…in spite of everything.

There isn’t any question that the city should reduce its diversion of water from the San Lorenzo River and North Coast streams. The city’s current operations are killing endangered species, and federal and state laws require the city to cut back its diversions. This fact, however, does not necessarily mean that a desalination plant is required. An April 5 presentation by the city water director seemed to imply that conclusion, but anyone who sat through the entirety of the council meeting, including the public testimony, knows there are non-desalination options that could deal with the fish flow issues. Desalination is the decision that backs a major expansion of UCSC. Desalination is the decision that makes it possible for the city to continue to accommodate whatever new growth may come. Going with desalination is about accommodating new growth and development, including that major expansion of UCSC. Whether or not that is the right approach will be decided in the pending General Plan and LAFCO deliberations. But shouldn’t the key future growth decisions be directly related to the decision on the desalination plant, instead of having the desalination decision tied solely to a discussion about water supplies and fish? My answer is, “yes.”

And here’s a final point. What would this proposed desalination plant actually cost, in both financial and ecological terms? Until we know that, how can we say we should be backing a doubling of the UCSC built environment, and adopting a “let growth come” approach to the city’s General Plan? Where water and growth are concerned, the city needs to “get it together.”

HISTORIC PHOTO OF GOVERNOR REAGAN. John Laird was first and Paul Hostetter was second to point out my error in saying that last week’s photo taken

May 18 1967 just before Ronnie was elected Governor should have read…quoting
Mr. Laird, “Bruce – Ronald Reagan was elected Governor in November, 1966, and would
have been Governor already for four months by the time listed with this
photo. He was on campus for the Regents meeting in the 1968-69 school
year sometime. I didn’t know he’d been there earlier, but he may well
have been. J”

BERKELEY’S CITY COUNCIL WATCH. I’ve kicked this idea around for years that it would be a good idea if we had some scorecard that told us how and who voted on issues. A simple one page sheet, none of the council people I spoke to ever followed up on it. Now Berkeley has a Council Watch. .Read up on it and read the ever lucid Berkeley Daily Planet.

FRIENDS OF WALNUT CREEK LIBRARY. Dozens, maybe hundreds of loyal locals have suggested that volunteers help out our over stressed library system. Watch this to see what the fans of the Walnut Creek Library did and do. They started a local “Amazon” type business selling used books…that would work in Santa Cruz where every household seems to have a thousand or two books lying around.

http://www.alibris.com/stores/wclf4ubs?cm_sp=browse-_-featSellers-_-rhs2

GOODBYE TO FAYE CUPP. Long time friend Faye Cupp died last Saturday. She was a positive force in many, many lives. She worked and played hard and changed lots of lives. She’ll be missed just about forever.

PATTON’S PROGRAM. Gary talks about LAFCO around the Bay. He syas there’s news about Salinas and the Board of Supervisors. Capitola is working on a General Plan. Scotts Valley is on the verge of killing their local Spineflowers and June Beetles. He ends his KUSP stuff with a thought on Law degrees and land use policy. (Gary Patton is “Of Counsel” to the Santa Cruz law firm of Wittwer & Parkin, which specializes in land use and environmental law. The opinions expressed are Mr. Patton’s. Gary has his own website, “Two Worlds / 365” – www.gapatton.net )

CAROLYN BURKE FROM PARIS.She writes,” I hope all’s well since we last had a chat. As you may know, my book launch at Bookshop SC had to be rescheduled due to a power outage that night. Could you please tell your listeners and readers that it WILL take place on Wed. My 4 at 7:30, finally. Meanwhile I’ve been on a whirlwind tour: LA (with a singer), NYC, Paris (under the stars), and London (also with a singer). Just for fun, here are the links to the two BBC interviews I did on Monday, egad! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00fz84r – bbc world service interview. This will be available to listen to from 2300 UK time and will stay online permanently.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010dhct#p00gfdl4 – BBC Radio 4 Woman’s hour.

Cheers, all best, Carolyn Burke author of “No Regrets- The Life of Edith Piaf.

PHONE CALLS AT CONCERTS.This hilarious scene should be repeated every time a cell phone goes off don’t miss it…

VINTAGE DE CINZO. DeCinzo gives surfing a shove..scroll down

EAGANS DEEP COVER. Tim gives us a lesson on abortion….scroll down.

LANDAU’S PROGRES. Saul and friend write, “Same Old Stuff from The Nuclear Gang” They start off by saying, “For 60 years the nuclear industry has promised the world cheap, safe and clean energy. As the Japanese government continues to extend its nuclear evacuation zone and with the eerie glow of the Fukishima plant as background, the pushers of nuclear power – including the President – still demand subsidies for new plants of Congress. As another Chernobyl-size disaster looms, the energy-fixated “problem solvers” continue to suffer from both temporary blindness and long-term amnesia – ignoring or down-playing the history of nuclear “mishaps.”Behind the push for this “clean” (no fossil fuel emissions) energy source, lies a deeper motive. Would you believe money? Read the rest here… Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow whose films are on DVD from roundworldproductions@gmail.com

LISA JENSEN LINKS. This week on Lisa Jensen Online Express (http://ljo-express.blogspot.com/), we celebrate the second most witching time of year (May Eve!) with one of the most bewitching movies, ever, another one of my personal favorites coming to the Aptos Weekend Classics series. Also, I preview some movies to watch for at the upcoming Santa Cruz Film Festival, offer some musings on the rock band Muse, and weigh in on Water For Elephants.

Lisa Jensen has been writing film reviews and a column for Good Times since 1975.

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. This is probably too personal but the elephant in Water for Elephants is sexier than Reese Witherspoon ever could be.The film is just a test to see how long you’re willing to wait before the elephant kills Christophe Waltz. This is nothing more than a Republic Studio (Circa 1940) bland, dull, predictable “B Movie”.

WINTER IN WARTIME.Local Holland Dutch endure Nazi occupation with the usual who’s informing, who’s loyal, who’s not telling type plots. This film has a few too many

Plot twists and coincidences but it’s thrilling and will jerk your tears…go see it.

IN A BETTER WORLD. As the press release states, “Susanne Bier’s In a Better World is a fascinating look at the difference between revenge, pacifism and forgiveness”. That means bullying at school, dealing with death, divorce, danger and even dynamite. It’s exciting, touching, believable, and certainly worth seeing.

HOSTETTER’S HOT STUFF. (remember, Paul’s stuff is about one week old).

New Music Works is doing something out of the ordinary this coming weekend. Well, that’s to be expected, but this has rather different appeal. And not so far off, a Johnny Clegg show I’ve heard very good things about in advance, and the real deal on the horizon: Shivkumar Sharma with Zakir Hussein at the Rio in Santa Cruz. Get tickets now. Check : http://www.lutherie.net/live.music.html
More in due time. ph

STEPHEN FRY TALKS ABOUT LANGUAGE

MANY FACES OF COMEDY. The Language Program and Cowell College at UCSC present the 11th season of the International Playhouse, Many Faces of Comedy. This unique program will offer short, fully-staged comic pieces in Chinese, French, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish, with English supertitles projected above the stage Works will range from an original Chinese piece, Flowers in the Fog, featuring music, dance, and martial arts, to scenes in French from Molière’s classic comedy, School for Wives, to two comic vignettes in Japanese, Keetai (Cell Phone) and Shinyuu (Friends) by Bananaman, as well as the Alphabet Song, by Kreva. Students of Spanish will present El eterno femenino (The Eternal Feminine) a play by Rosario Castellanos, while the Russian segment, a comic work by Mikhail Bulgakov, is entitled Ivan Vasilevich, and deals with an eccentric scientist of the 1930’s who creates a time machine.There’ll be just four public performances from Thursday, May 12, through Sunday, May 15. Curtain time is 8PM at the Stevenson Event Center, Stevenson College. There is no admission charge and parking is available close by for $2.00. For further information, please contact, Lisa Leslie at the Language

Program, 459-2054, or email ellisan@ucsc.edu.

THE BANANA MAN, JANGO EDWARDS AND TOM NODDY. Tom Noddy emailed to say,” Interesting to see Jango Edwards show up in a column that I consult for local comment. Jango is an American who is a living legend in European comedy. For many he first rose to attention at Amsterdam’s alternative event in the ’70s and ’80s, the Festival of Fools, an event that Jango initiated as something that he called “an annual gathering of a clown tribe”. I saw him do his one-man show in Paris in the 1980s and I have to say that I was baffled. As is the case with many performers, I was more focused on the audience reaction than with the stage performance and my experience with American audiences gave me no sense of how this was working. Americans had let their appreciation of physical comedy grow rusty. Since Jackie Gleason and Red Skelton it was more and more about stand-up comedy. While American clowns Bill Irwin, Larry Pisoni and Geoff Hoyle and Avner the Eccentric found ways to interest Americans in this “new vaudeville”, Jango and Leo Bassi were among those changing the tradition in Europe, a movement that has been referred to as Nouveau Clown. Good to see Jango in your column Bruce. Tom Noddy.

My response to Tom…Way back in 1939 Red Skelton had A. Robins on his show. Robins became Captain Kangaroo’s The Banana Man. His humor is more existential, Beckett, far out than any I’ve ever seen.

DIGITAL ARTS & NEW MEDIA HAPPENING @ UCSC. The Digital Arts and New Media MFA program at UC Santa Cruz presents an exhibition of ten graduate students whose works employ advanced technologies for creative potential and social impact.

The show reception on May 6 will be preceded by a talk by serial platform creator Steve Dietz, entitled “Between Media and Architecture”, as part of the Art Technology & Culture Colloquium at UCSC. The founder, president and artistic director of Northern Lights.mn, Dietz has organized and curated numerous contemporary and new media art exhibitions including 01SJ Biennial. He speaks and writes extensively about new media, and teaches about curating and digital art. From its home in the new, state-of-the-art Digital Arts Research Center (DARC), the Digital Arts and New Media MFA Program at UC Santa Cruz brings together the arts, engineering, humanities, and sciences to produce artistic and scholarly research in the context of a broad inquiry into digital arts and cultures.

http://danm.ucsc.edu

Digital Arts and New Media 2011 MFA Exhibition: PERMUTATIONS April 30-May 1 + May 5-8 (10am-4pm) Special Events Friday, May 6: Talk by Steve Dietz, 4pm Reception, 5:30-7:30pm. Opera premiere, 8pm http://danm.ucsc.edu/permutations

SOCIAL JUSTICE CONFERENCE @ CABRILHO COLLEGE. Cabrilho College will be holding its fifth annual Social Justice Conference this coming Friday and Saturday, April 29-30 (http://www.cabrillo.edu/~anajarro/socialjusticeconf/socialjustice.html). Secular Humanists of Santa Cruz County will have a table on the Campus Quad from 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM with the recently formed Cabrilho College Secular Student Alliance. Feel free to come by to help out if you’re interested. The Secular Student Alliance is hosting journalist Ted Cox a sponsored speaker at the conference who will give a talk on “What I Learned at Straight Camp,” at 12:15 PM on Saturday, April 30 in the 450 Forum Building on Campus. The talk is about his experiences attending the “gay deprogramming” sessions held by a Christian group trying to scare gays straight. He went undercover to expose their abusive techniques.

UNIVERSAL GRAPEVINE. Each and every Tuesday from 7:00-8:00 p.m. I host Universal Grapevine on KZSC 88.1 fm. or on your computer (live only, or sometimes old programs are on “blog”) at WWW.KZSC.ORG. Tuesday April 26 Jodi McGraw talks about the secrets of our sand hills followed by Bruce Daniels discussing the Soquel Water System. Joseph Leone talks about his new book on Depression on May 3 after that Rebecca Jackson will describe the Music In May concerts on May 20 & 21^st. Astrologer Sue Heinz will be on May 10, then Mark Kay-Gamel talks about the new Odyssey production happening on campus. Maya Barsacq talks about Cadenza on May 17 and Carolyn Swift talks about the new book on Soquel which she says is fantastic. Shira Bogin talks about student art and MAH on May 24. Frank Lima, aka The Great Morgani reveals just some secrets to his success on May 31. Santa Cruz County Supervisor Neal Coonerty helps me celebrate 5 years of Universal Grapevine on June 7.The Santa Cruz Bookshop Short Story Winners read their entries for the full hour on June 14^th. Don Young author of Battle For Snow Mountain will be on July 12.Any and all suggestions for future programs are more than welcome so tune in and keep listening.

QUOTES. “I just love Chinese food. My favorite dish is number twenty seven”, Clement Atlee. “I could never learn to like her—except on a raft at sea with no other provisions in sight”, Mark Twain. “Nouvelle Cuisine, roughly translated, means “I can’t believe I spent 96 dollars and I’m still hungry“, Mike Kalin.