Hunger Pains
With more than a quarter of Monterey County’s children living in poverty, accessing food takes priority.
Children ride around on tricycles in the King City Fairgrounds parking lot. They look like they’ve gathered to play on a sunny morning, under the watch of grown-ups who stand around talking, some sharing coffee ...
State of Hunger
The battle against food scarcity in California.
A decade ago, Tammy Jaime lost everything to drugs. She and her husband spent through their savings, lost their home and car, and ended up in the rural northern California mountains, begging for food for ...
Issues / 2012 / Feb 16
Donuts’ Hole
Superior Donuts entertains despite a weakness: playing surprisingly predictable stereotypes.
Playwright and actor Tracy Letts marked himself as a playwright of force with the trangressive and trashy Killer Joe in 1993, and the crazy intensity of Bug in 1996. But Letts jumped up on the ...
Brezsny's Astrology Feb 16-22, 2012
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): What do you typically do just before you fall asleep and right after you wake up? Those rituals are important for your mental health. Without exaggeration, you could say they are ...
Mushroom Remix
The Big Sur Chanterelle Cook-off ain’t dead yet – just different. Plus some lady on Craigslist wants funky meat.
The foragers are canvassing the woods as I type. Ventana Chef Truman Jones has surreal tastes plotted for his plates already. “Pickled, sauteed, in soup, crusted on fish,” he says. Hippie-chic chanterelle fashion is even ...
Big Sur Taphouse
Tapping Excitement: Big Sur Taphouse pours out great value and a surprising amount of character.
After the Big Sur Bazaar closed in 2008, the Mayer family, who owns the space as well as the adjoining Big Sur Deli next to the post office, put out a suggestion box asking what ...
While Komen’s controversial V.P. resigned, it won’t be the last we hear from her.
Karen Handel spent the week before her resignation as the vice president of public policy of the Susan G. Komen foundation at the epicenter of the controversy around Komen’s decision to withdraw support for Planned ...
Letters To The Editor 2.16.12
Wave Hello to new energy The ocean will be a key part of a “green” energy revolution, and we don’t have to drill underneath it! (“Feds look to the ocean for clean energy as scientists ...
Fort Ord Defense
Public opposition pushes supes to change course on MST/Whispering Oaks.
Valentine’s Day brought poetry to the County Board of Supervisors. The show of public passion also included entreaties to logic, emotional pleas and angry rants. After hearing from three dozen people adamantly opposed to the ...
This Means War
War Torn: Superspies vie for Reese Witherspoon’s affections, but lose their humanity, in This Means War
It’s adorable, ain’t it, how women are so easily manipulated? Show ’em some art and fake some bullshit about it, pet a rescue dog like you mean it, take her to meet your granny, and ...
Pina
Wim Wenders sets bodies to motion in celebration of famed dancer Pina Bausch.
At the time of her death in 2009, the German-born Pina Bausch was one of the most celebrated dancer/choreographers of her time – or any time. You won’t find that kind of biographical detail in ...
Pure Honey
The Turf Club Music Series starts with the perpetually evolving Persephone’s Bees.
“Sex,” one of Persephone’s Bees most recent singles, was originally intended to be a satirical look into an ageless motto: Sex sells. “I realized why advertising companies use it so much,” says singer-songwriter Angelina Moysov. ...
Getting Scrappy
There is such a thing as a professional scrapbooker – and one lives among us.
Salinas’ Melissa Coventry, owner of Legacy Paper Arts, is a working entreprenuer, which isn’t terribly surprising. It’s the work, scrapbooking, that is. Forget the construction paper and stickers of old. Coventry’s layouts take the craft ...
School of Rock
Carmel High School students get boost from Ryan Scott in pursuit of their musical dreams.
Carmel High School American history teacher Marc Stafford played in a touring band throughout college. That prepared him to recognize something when he first hit campus. “When I got to Carmel High I saw a ...
A New Acronym for Water Politics
Mayors form Monterey Peninsula Regional Water Authority to tackle supply crisis.
A silence fell over the inaugural meeting of the county’s newest water agency as Monterey Mayor Chuck Della Sala signed the joint powers agreement on Feb. 9. “It’s official,” attorney Russ McGlothlin said as the ...
Marina Coasting
The Water District left behind in the desal collapse can’t even vote on hiring a new GM.
If the defunct Regional Desalination Project hasn’t already pulled Marina Coast Water District into a messy whirlpool, its board members appear to be doing their best to drag each other down into the salty wreckage. ...
Capturing Ingenuity
Sights Unseen project gives cameras and voices to homeless women.
Homeless women, Nancy Ramirez says, “live in a reality that has been marginalized, pushed into one or maybe a few streets in Salinas. “We need to have a conversation about what it means to be ...
Squid Speaks
MITT’S A GAS… Squid fondly remembers when mom and dad called to announce a surprise visit to the lair. Squid frantically shoved old pizza boxes under the couch and scrubbed the toilet clean using a ...
Get Involved
Public Citizen 2.12.12
ONGOING LAND PLANS | COUNTYWIDE—BLM is accepting nominations to three openings on the Central California District Resource Advisory Council, which advises BLM on public lands issues with the goal of providing a balanced outlook on ...
Supes vote to send a pointless methyl iodide message.
Just when you think you know exactly what the Monterey County Board of Supervisors is going to do, they go ahead and do the exact opposite thing. And no, I’m not talking about Tuesday’s 180-degree ...
Street Talk 01.26.12 (asked @ East Village Coffee Lounge in Monterey.)
What mementos would be on the scrapbook page of your life?
Follow-up: What hobby would you make your career if you could? AARON DICKERSON | Tennis Coach | Monterey A: Little things from the places I’ve been, such as grass from Indiana, sand from Maryland, sawdust ...
Latina Dream
Lila Downs brings a cornucopia of culture, and a monster voice, to the Central Coast.
While singer-songwriter Lila Downs was working at her mother’s car parts shop in Oaxaca, Mexico, a guy came in and asked Downs to translate a death certificate he received that was in English. It turned ...
