The Lure of Local
Buying local means keeping bucks in your community, and building community while you spend.
Where do you shop? It sounds like an innocent question, but depending on the answer – and the asker – it’s loaded. The question can imply judgment: The person asking really doesn’t care where you ...
Buy Local Guide
The Real L Word: Spending local means more bang for the buck.
Local spas. Local salons. More local wines than you can pull a cork from, swirl around a glass and drink by this time next year. Local artists and craftspeople. Local theater tickets and museum visits, ...
Issues / 2011 / Nov 23
Wild Style
Seven things eccentric musician Baby Gramps has in common with Big Sur.
1. No one seems to know when Baby Gramps last trimmed his free-flowing, grey beard. The staggering bushel of hair runs wild and is somewhat reminiscent of the wind-kissed foliage lining the cliffs above the ...
Food for Thought
One amateur chef’s way to hone his game and feed a company, plus downtown Monterey developments.
It’s a modern day lemons-into-lemonade fable of foodieism in tough times: Life gave Daniel V. DeCamp fewer hours at his job translating for the courts, so DeCamp made meat loaf. And chicken satay. And wild-rice-mushroom ...
Letters To The Editor 11.23.11
Nature Lovers Experiments are not needed because monarch nectar plant experts like myself, Jan Southworth, David Marriott, John Dayton and others have 40-plus years of testing and observation experience along the California coast (“Nectaring experiment ...
Super Sub, Sunken Ship
Plumbing the backstory of the Monterey Bay ‘Mystery Barge’ with help from a visiting vessel.
“Life support is functional,” says pilot Tym Catterson into the hydrophone. “We are ready to dive, dive, dive. Over.” The message travels through the water as sound waves from the little yellow submarine Antipodes to ...
Brezsny's Astrology Nov 23-30, 2011
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing,” said rocket scientist Werner von Braun. I think it’s an excellent time for you to plunge ...
Mini Love
A Miniature Show at EXPOSED marks the first since Rachael Short’s accident.
A little more than a year ago Rachael Short, local photographer and co-owner of Carmel’s EXPOSED gallery, was paralyzed in a car accident in Big Sur. The diagnosis was devastating: a “C5-C6 fracture,” a vertebra ...
By The Numbers 11-23-11
By The Numbers 11-23-11
$347,000 Recent Sale 745 Trinity Ave., Seaside Built: 2000 Size: 1,280 square feet Features: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2-car garage Amenities: Fireplace, patio, skylights, automatic sprinkler system Seller: Thamia Wheatley Buyer: Ben and Helga Thurmon ...
Point Pinos Grill
Sweet as Sunset: Dory Ford’s new Point Pinos Grill deserves wider hours – and now has them (at least temporarily).
It all started with the ice water. It must have been filtered. The slice of fresh Meyer lemon was a refreshing and classy touch. Whatever the case, I can’t remember enjoying complimentary water more. This ...
Seaside Sprouting
Return of the Natives brings environmental education home.
In 1993, a group of Salinas teachers surveyed their drab campuses and decided they should really look prettier than prisons. When they teamed up with native plant experts at Elkhorn Slough, Moss Landing Marine Labs ...
Melancholia
Heavenly Bodies: A new planet crashing to earth is not the only problem facing Kirsten Dunst in the striking
It’s unfortunate that Danish filmmaker Lars von Trier’s painful comments at a Cannes Film Festival press conference this past May almost overshadowed the reception to Melancholia, his fine new film about two sisters and the ...
Arthur Christmas
Holiday Magic: Sweet without being fake, Arthur Christmas will charm the bah humbugs away.
Oh lovely movie! Oh lovable movie! Oh holiday movie that fills me with Christmas spirit even though it’s 60 degrees out and dear God can’t they just wait till December to start with the tinsel ...
Persian Power
Johnny Moezzi returns to Monterey with his star on the rise.
A couple weeks ago, Parviz Gharib-Afshar – known as the Johnny Carson of Persian television, a man who has interviewed everyone from Liz Taylor to William Holden – invited Salinas native Johnny Moezzi to be ...
Higher Bar
White Album Ensemble does a rare small venue show post-Thanksgiving at Sly McFly’s.
The White Album Ensemble began on a whim and a credit card eight years ago in Santa Cruz. Five stellar musicians – Richard Bryant (vocals, keyboards, percussion), Ken Kraft (vocals, guitars), Stephen Krilanovich (guitars, vocals, ...
Ricky’s Return
Local product/resurgent comedian Ricky Del Rosario gives the Planet the giggles.
Ricky Del Rosario has an ethnically ambiguous, almost familiar blend of physical characteristics that conjures Obama, Steadman and John Leguizamo. His father is Filipino and his mother Hungarian, German and Italian. “My dad got a ...
News Hawks
Chinatown center creates homeless newspaper, hopes city lowers vendor fees.
Clad in a Franciscan monk’s robe and sporting a large wooden cross around his neck, Brother Robert Mills could pass for patron saint of Salinas. In addition to serving the city’s neediest residents at Dorothy’s ...
Squid Speaks
FREE LUNCH… Even slippery Squid was taken by surprise to learn “invitation-only,” in developer-speak, means “crash the party and scout the opposition.” At LandWatch’s annual fundraiser, four uninvited developers joined the party. But Urban Community ...
Devoid of Dungeness
Standoff over crab price pushes holiday staple off the menu.
While the vast majority of households in the U.S. look forward to a nice turkey this Thanksgiving, many residents of the greater Bay Area anticipate dunking fresh Dungeness crab in melted butter. But this year ...
Trickle Up
Proposed water rate spike in Spreckels means newer pipes, drier lawns.
Changing foliage and red leaves scattered across green lawns makes the 500-person town of Spreckels look almost New England-like in the fall. But green lawns may go the way of Salinas Valley sugar beets if ...
County cites Henry Miller Library for a bathroom shortage.
All it took was one woman getting pissy last June about the dearth of bathrooms at Big Sur’s Henry Miller Memorial Library for the county Health Department to lay down the literal law on the ...
Thinking CAPs
AMBAG helps local cities make sense of climate action plans.
Climate change policy doesn’t move at the speed of an SUV commuting from the suburbs, or even a bulldozer at a development site. It creeps along at the pace of a buffet line at Bayonet ...
Keep your expectations for it low, based on a possible court decision.
How would you feel if the government could freely use satellite technology and computers to secretly turn your property into an invisible surveillance device and track your every public move 24/7? The Obama administration recently ...
Public Citizen 11.23.11
ONGOING SERVICE SALUTATION | VARIOUS LOCATIONS – The Red Cross is gathering hand-written cards for U.S. servicepeople for the holidays. Address cards as “Dear Service Member” and drop them off 11am-3pm Nov. 25, 26 and ...
Buying local can be a most radical act this holiday season.
Two columns for the price of one, both about shopping locavore style. One: Starting a business is an inherently brave act. Starting a business in a down economy is inherently an even braver act. Starting ...
Street Talk 09.22.11 (asked @ Monterey Harbor.)
When do you feel most out of your element?
Follow-up: What’s something you thought you lost forever, but found years later? DAN CARPENTER | Missionary | Orem, Utah A: When I wake up in the morning. I am NOT a morning person. Pianist Envy: ...
