Uncharted Country
Clay Walker has a great golf swing, platinum records and a crippling disease. What he’s doing with them would make Bing Crosby proud.
Things got real interesting – and flat-out real – for Clay Walker in 1996. He completed his fourth album. He welcomed his first child into the world. He watched his fifth single hit number one. ...
Walker This Way
A far-ranging conversation with the man behind 11 number ONE hits, including “Live Until I Die.”
Clay Walker’s supposed to be answering the questions. But he’s got one for me: “Am I a little philosophical today? I’m sorry.” Our talk travels from golf’s life lessons to tear-jerking stadium shows to the ...
Reading the Breaks
Handicapping the pros and amateurs according to the momentum they bring to Pebble Beach.
Sometimes you’re hot, sometimes you’re not. We all face it. Thankfully, and scarily, change can come quickly. Just ask Tiger Woods – and we’re not even talking about his fire hydrant accident that sent him ...
Issues / 2013 / Feb 07
Free Will Astrology
ARIES (March 21-April 19): “What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible,” said poet Theodore Roethke. For the foreseeable future, Aries, you could and should be a person like that. I’m not ...
By The Numbers 02.07.13
Real Estate
$545,000 Recent Sale 426 Bishop Ave., Pacific Grove Built: 1956 Size: 1,747 square feet Features: 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2-car garage Amenities: Wood-burning fireplace, skylights, landscaped yard, wood floors, outdoor stove Seller: Larry and Gari ...
Flat Michelin
The alleged gold standard of restaurant reviewers misses the boat on Monterey Bay.
Sorry, Michelin, but I gotta call B.S. You know how you like to say, as you do on your website, that your “obsession with quality and reliability make the Michelin Guide the best source for ...
Last Supper(s)
A tale of one food writer’s last treasured meals in Monterey County.
By the time this Weekly is in your hands I will be long gone, having exchanged Big Sur for the Big Apple, West Coast taquerías for East Coast pizzerias, the beaten Pontiac and Highway 1 ...
Letters To The Editor 02.07.13
Dream Weaver The careful reader will note that the second and third paragraphs of this story that attribute a degree program in cannabis cultivation to CSU Monterey Bay are subsumed within the first paragraph that ...
Hotel Tell-All
Jacob Tomsky hits the hotel lobby like Bourdain hit the kitchen: with sharp writing, humor and the occasional perversion.
Behind the painted smiles on the faces of hotel front desk agents lurks something powerful. Insult them, needlessly complain, or threaten the person and he or she has the power, with a few keystrokes, to ...
Amour
The Beautiful End: Oscar-contender Amour demonstrates the power of heartbreak in long-term love.
We’re all going to die, and some of us will be lucky enough to grow old gracefully. But what happens when the gracefulness wears off? That question is at the center of the deeply beating ...
Solitary Truth
Cachagua Playboys founding member Jay Burriss has the time to live art to the fullest.
Jay Burriss never expected that he’d be looking for odd jobs – this week he’ll be a shuttle driver at the AT&T Pro Am – when he turned 57 years old. “I guess I’m an ...
Side Effects
Out of Its Mind: Side Effects uses an ensemble cast to debate pharmaceutical ethics.
Sometimes life doesn’t work out the way it’s supposed to. In Side Effects, a would-be taut psychological thriller from director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), Emily (Rooney Mara), a seemingly nice girl with a history of depression, ...
Ready to Rock
Carmel’s new Rumble Seat Music is more than just another guitar store.
It’s a few days before Rumble Seat Music officially opened its doors Monday, Feb. 4. Owner Eliot Michael, business partner Mark Mancina and store manager Bijan Oskouie gawk at a pair of Gibson Les Paul ...
Holy Ship
Somewhere on the beach between Marina and Moss Landing, a long-forgotten boat lives past its purpose.
The Facebook message was cryptic but enthusiastic: “We found a shipwreck!” But the finder was keeping its spot secret, replying to a request for directions with essentially this: We’ll meet you in Marina and take ...
Zero Tolerance
Salinas police chief decries the acceptance of gun violence.
A 17-year-old shot and killed in Salinas late last month marked the city’s third gun fatality of 2013. That follows 19 gun murders in 2012 – a spike from 11 the previous year. “Aurora or ...
Completing the Test
Guv’s proposals drive funding shifts for community colleges.
There’s good news and questionable news for community colleges following California Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget proposal last month. First the good news: nearly $200 million in increased funding. But the governor’s proposal also introduces policy ...
Stop and Go
With federal funding in limbo, Monterey-Salinas Transit remaps its route into a bumpy future.
A lit-up arrow directs traffic around a trench in the concrete in front of Turtle Bay Taqueria on Seaside’s Fremont Boulevard. The construction is for Monterey-Salinas Transit’s “Jazz” line to Cannery Row, but it was ...
Google’s almost-total control over the news is a competition killer.
Imagine if a single company had the same sweeping and arbitrary power over print news distribution that Google wields over digital news distribution. Such a company would rightly be the subject of intense public and ...
Get Involved
Public Citizen 02.07.13
ONGOING STEWARDS OF THE SEA | COUNTYWIDE – Save Our Shores trains volunteers to become stewards of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. 6:30-8:30pm Thursdays Feb. 21-April 11. Apply by Feb. 7. 462-5660 x3, www.saveourshores.org/stewards. ...
Starbucks CEO forces workers to schmooze for the right.
The billionaires peddling austerity have always insisted they’re in it for the common man. A recent TV ad for Fix the Debt – the well-heeled group demanding we cut tax rates and Social Security benefits ...
61.2%: The increase in childhood poverty in Monterey County from 2008 (15.8 percent) to 2011 (25.5 percent). Senior poverty rose from 7.4 to 7.6 percent.
TIDE TURN… Squid, being an accomplished seafarer, knows a thing or two about ripple effects. You know, plop a big rock into the water and watch the waves. Turns out it doesn’t require water. Last ...
Street Talk 02.07.13 (Asked @ the Bagel Bakery in Seaside.)
When have you felt truly lost?
Follow-up: What is one thing you’re scared to lose the most? SELENA GONZALEZ | Student | Seaside A: When I was 11. I felt awkward when I was 11. I had friends who were older ...
Junk Sale
Debt buyers sue thousands of Monterey County residents over credit-card debt.
Kim McRae doesn’t remember exactly what she bought with a credit card in the early 2000s. It was probably Christmas gifts for her grandchildren, and groceries at Nob Hill and Trader Joe’s, the 78-year-old surmises. ...
Victory Dance
Eve Ensler’s latest and most ambitious campaign to end violence against women finds a groove in Monterey.
If action follows thought, then what might follow One Billion Rising, a global dance/awareness campaign to “end violence against women” begun by Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues and coming memoir In the Body ...
