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Thoughts on the Santa Cruz YIMBY Meeting
On March 28th, the Santa Cruz YIMBYs (“Yes in My Back Yard”) held a public meeting at the Dream Inn in Santa Cruz to discuss the urgent need for more affordable housing in the city and county of Santa Cruz. The meeting featured a discussion on the state of California housing by Linda Wheaton, assistant director for the California Department of Housing and Community Development. A panel discussion followed Wheaton’s presentation, moderated by Robert Singleton of the Santa Cruz County Business Council.
Jondi Gumz of the Santa Cruz Sentinel was there and she did a great write-up on the meeting, so I don’t need to go into too much detail about who said what. I did record audio of the entire proceedings, which you can listen to and download here:
As the Sentinel did such a good job going over the particulars of the meeting, I’ll just add some of my thoughts on what was discussed.
Although Linda Wheaton went through a fairly exhaustive list of recent and proposed California housing legislation, she made no mention of the most radical bill making its way through the legislature: SB-827, sponsored by Scott Weiner of San Francisco. This was touched on in the panel discussion, but it was disappointing that it was not more of a focus by Wheaton or the panelists.
The Q&A session for the panelists was moderated by Singleton of the Business Council, who asked the panelists questions from a prepared list. There was little time remaining for questions from the audience; just three audience members were called on.
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One question from the audience was especially poignant: would not more housing lead to destruction of so much of what makes Santa Cruz such a beautiful, special place to live? I think that many folks feel that way: more housing = less green and open space. After all, who hasn’t heard about all the fruit orchards and farms which used to cover the Santa Clara valley, which were covered over with concrete, asphalt, and tract homes a few short decades ago?
Panelist Sibley Simon was quick to shut that notion down, however. As he pointed out, that’s been settled a long time ago in Santa Cruz. We’re keeping our green, open spaces. More housing does not mean more sprawl, such as we see in Santa Clara county and much of southern California. More housing – and more affordable housing – means denser, infill development (such as would be required with SB-827).
Another concern people have when they hear “more housing” is “more traffic.” As Simon pointed out, the key to reducing traffic is to having housing built closer to where the jobs are. Currently, many of those jobs are in Santa Clara county, but with wise, far-sighted development it is possible to construct live/work developments which will, to a large extent, obviate the need for road-clogging long commutes to distant employers.
The truth is, unless we build denser, more-affordable housing, we are going to end up with a Santa Cruz stuffed full of older, wealthier elites and mostly-empty weekend and summer houses owned by them. There’s simply just too much money chasing too few homes in a very beautiful, coastal area with a mild climate close to the most epic wealth-generating machine (Silicon Valley) the country has ever known.
Simply put: if we want a Santa Cruz that is accessible and affordable to people with a wide variety of incomes, we must build housing for them, because it presently does not exist.
I know it’s tempting to just stick our heads in the sand and hope the problem goes away. It did abate with the housing crash of 2007-2010, when many people lost their jobs and left the area. But with a strong economy and growing employment comes more demand for housing – we can’t have it both ways. Short of a Zombie Apocalypse, the only realistic and economically sound solution for our housing woes is the creation of more dense, affordable housing.
What are we waiting for?
Update April 3, 2018: the slides from the presentation can be downloaded here. Also, a video of the presentation has been posted to YouTube by the Santa Cruz Sentinel:
4K SS Palo Alto Drone Video
For my 47th birthday, my wife gave me her blessing to get the drone of my dreams – a DJI Phantom 4 Pro. There’s all kinds of drones out there (and drone makers, too) but DJI apparently has about 85% of the consumer drone market. And the Phantom 4 Pro is, from what I can tell, the top of the heap – a “prosumer” product which is used by all kinds of people for all kinds of purposes.
I got mine because I want to use more drone video in my real estate business. I’ve hired some drone guys before – and they aren’t cheap. Typically they’ll charge $300 or so for a few minutes of video and some still photographs. That’s a lot of cheddar, but there’s no denying that the drone videos lend a lot of pizzaz to just about any real estate video.
Of course, before I take my new toy out to do video any properties, I need to make sure that I know how to work it. While the Phantom 4 Pro has a lot of really great features that make it easy to fly (collision avoidance, “tap to fly”, automatic return to “home”, etc.) there still is a considerable learning curve.
My two boys went bonkers over the thing – the morning after I got it, they came into our bedroom at 6:30 and said it was time to fly the drone! So we flew it around the back yard (and a couple hundred feet above!) for a half hour or so before school, and then later that day, around sunset, we headed down to the bluff over Seacliff Beach to let the Phantom fly.
It being only the second time I’d flown it, it felt a little freaky, sending it out hundreds of yards across the sand and surf. I could hardly see it in the sky, as it flew over the SS Palo Alto. It seemed as though it ran into some steady winds as it made its way off shore, and I was concerned that it might get blown off course or that some crazy wind would push it down into the surf below.
But the Phantom made it out to the end, and made it back just fine…just in time to meet the state park ranger who informed me that you’re not allowed to fly drones out over the beach. I didn’t see that listed in any FAA rule for drone flights, so it must be some California state park regulation. What a killjoy.
He did however direct us to the empty field there next to the parking lot and said we could fly it to our heart’s content there. So we did – the boys and I had a blast just flying it around in mad circles, tearing over the field like something out of a Star Wars movie.
I hope you enjoy this video of the SS Palo Alto! I would have liked to get closer to the deck of the ship, but the 4K video does a pretty good job of showing lots of fine details. Thanks for watching!
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New Year’s Walk at King Tide
4K Video of Low Tide Walk from New Brighton to Capitola
On January 1, 2018, Santa Cruz county rang in the new year, and Mother Nature provided an incredible way to greet it: with a King Tide. A King
Tide is simply the very highest tide, and the flip side is a very low tide. When the tide is very low, it’s possible to walk from New Brighton Beach to Capitola Beach, right along the base of the cliff, without having to get wet.
My wife and I decided to take the kids for the walk, because this kind of super-low tide doesn’t happen every day. The weather was fine, just a tad under 60 degrees, with scattered high clouds. We started off from New Brighton Beach around 1 PM, with the lowest tide to come at 4:18 PM.
It took us a little more than an hour to make the walk to Capitola Village, exploring the rocks and tide pools exposed by the receding waters. We checked out countless sea anemones and hermit crabs, but were unable to find any starfish. Some folks said they had seen a small red octopus, but it vanished into the rocks.
We made it to Capitola shortly after 2 PM, and headed down for a late lunch at Paradise Beach Grill. By 3:30 we were again on the sand, walking back. On our way home, we ran into a lot of people we knew, so it took closer to two hours for the return trip. Which was fine, because the sunlight was sublime and it was great to be able to spend so much time with Mother Nature and so many members of our community.
We are so thankful that in less than a five minute drive from our house we can get to the beach for an experience as spectacular as the one we enjoyed as a family on New Year’s Day. Before we left, our youngest boy Evan was complaining about another trip to the beach, but he was amazed by all the “discoveries” we made, frolicking in the tide pools. Another priceless family memory, courtesy of our beautiful Monterey Bay. Happy New Year everyone!
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A New Year in Aptos
Good morning, and welcome to a new year in Aptos! Many people are all too happy to bid good riddance to 2016. It was certainly a contentious year with seemingly more downs than ups. In Aptos, though, it feels easier somehow to just let it roll off you, like water off a duck’s back.
Late yesterday afternoon, my family headed down to Seacliff State Beach around 4:30 PM. It was a beautiful late afternoon winter day in Aptos. Nary a cloud in the sky, temperatures in the mid-50’s, and a calm, gentle surf breaking on the sand. There were people on the beach – but not many. It gave you a sense of community, of being with people, but with plenty of space for you to soak up the glory of it all in harmonious contemplation.
We sat there on a huge driftwood log, and just watched as the sun sank slowly into the west. We listened to the waves crash on the shore, hearing the seagulls caw as they drifted through the air. We marveled at how much the SS Palo Alto had changed in the past year from last winter’s storms. We listened to a young girl shrieking as she played in the sand nearby with her parents.
And in that moment, all was well. Perfect, actually. We live in such an amazing place. I’ve only lived here a few decades, but I’m pretty sure it was an amazing place 1,000 years ago and will probably be an amazing place 1,000 years in the future. Time marches on, and the Earth will abide. As a friend of mine is fond of saying, we’re here for a good time, not a long time.
That’s why New Year’s is my favorite holiday. A year is something real, something indisputable. You can quibble about when it begins, when it ends, what every day in between means – but in the end, it doesn’t matter. A year is the time it takes the Earth to make one revolution around the sun – and that’s something we all experience, no matter how old or young, rich or poor, black or white, American or Russian or Chinese or Syrian. We only have so many years in our lives – some will have more than others, but time waits for no man. It’s something that ultimately makes us all very equal.
I look at each new new year as a marker, a waypoint. A time to reassess, and think about what I want to do with the time I have remaining, however long that is. I am not making any new resolutions this year – rather, I am just resolved to keep doing what I’ve been doing, only better and with more focus and commitment.
Whatever the new year means to you, I want to wish you and everyone on our big blue marble a warm, prosperous, and peaceful new year. Let’s hope for the best and then all work hard to make it happen. Our children deserve nothing less.
Aptos Last Day of 2016 Sunset Video
Polo Grounds Restroom Now Open for Business!
Polo Grounds Park in Aptos is well known to many area families; many weekends of the year, the park hosts up to 2,000 people who come to play soccer, baseball, ride their BMX bikes, walk their dogs, and other sports and recreational activities. Until now, all these thousands of weekly visitors had only a few portable chemical toilets to use to satisfy the call of nature.
That’s all come to an end now, as the Santa Cruz County Parks Department officially opened the new restroom and concession building at the Park. Parks Director Jeff Gaffney got the proceedings rolling, and soon turned the microphone over to Jay Johnson, the general contractor for the project. The project had also been championed and supported by the Cabrillo Host Lions Club, and their President also spoke at the event. Supervisor Zach Friend also made extensive remarks, and then it was time to cut the ribbon and tour the new facility.
The Restrooms are open but there’s still room for improvement! Support the Cabrillo Host Lions Club in their work by buying a personalized brick which will be installed at the site. Bricks are just $100 for a 4×8 or $150 for a 12×12.
After the ceremony, Jay Johnson shared some interesting details about the facility. It is actually a pre-fabricated structure manufactured in Oregon, and was brought to the site on three flatbed trucks. It came already painted with anti-graffiti paint. The front third of the building is the concession area, with a window for service and several sinks. Most of the center of the building is a utility hallway, which makes it easy to access and maintain the mechanicals (plumbing, electricity, etc.) for the building. There’s also a cool bottle filler above the water fountains built into the rear of the building by the bathroom doors.
You can see a video below of the ceremony, and a gallery of photographs showing the inside of the building below that. In more ways than one, having this new restroom facility at the Polo Grounds will be a big relief for the Aptos community.
Polo Grounds Restroom Ribbon Cutting Video
Photos of new Polo Grounds Restroom and Concession Building
Thrive Natural Medicine
A lot of people – especially people in Aptos and the wider Santa Cruz area – are coming to realize that the current American medical system with its heavy emphasis on pharmaceutical solutions to common ailments is often not the best way to lead a genuinely healthy life. There’s a lot more to being healthy than just not being sick, and that’s what Thrive Natural Medicine is all about: working with their patients to actually thrive in life, instead of simply dealing with an ailment via prescription. For people like that, we’re lucking in Aptos to have Thrive Natural Medicine.
Thrive Natural Medicine is a medical center that provides the best in naturopathic and holistic health care to all kinds of people. They have a wide gamut of professionals working there, including four medical doctors. The staff specialize in naturopathic medicine, nutrition, B12 shots, nutritional IV therapy, rolfing (R), acupuncture, holistic skin care, light therapy, cold laser and physical therapy, many mind/body therapies, and a variety of options for bodywork.
They’re a popular spot for discounted B12 injections – come check out their walk-in clinic on B12 Fridays, with $15 B12 shots between 3 and 6 PM.
All of the practitioners at Thrive offer a complimentary 15 minute consultation prior to the new patient intake and treatment – so drop on by during regular office hours, Monday through Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM to check them out, get a free consultation, and be on your way to optimum health.
See also: Thrive Natural Medicine web site, Thrive Natural Medicine Facebook Page
Thrive Natural Medicine Video
Adora Deva, Transformational Coach at Thrive
Thrive Natural Medicine Photo Gallery
Time Lapse Video shows Hihn Apple Barn Moving
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’re probably aware that the construction work for the new Aptos Village began several months back. For months, passers by have seen the Hihn Apple Barn up on jacks, as it was being prepared to move to its new site. Last month, on September 22, the move began. The folks at Barry Swenson Builder have now released a cool time-lapse video showing the Hihn Apple Barn moving slowly on its way to its new permanent location within Aptos Village.
Time Lapse Video
The L-shaped building is 181 feet long and 100 feet wide, and has been divided into two sections. The division was made at the location where the first addition was made to the barn about 100 years ago.
So far, one section of the barn has been moved nearly 200 feet across the property and has been rotated 160 degrees. The move is being done on rollers, a laborious and slow process. When the first section of barn is in place, Kelly Brothers House Movers will begin work to move the second section.
The pad where the barn will be placed has been trenched for a foundation, and that work has been inspected and certified. The aim is to have both sections of the barn situated on the pad before the rainy season.
Relocating and rehabilitating the barn is a key element of the Aptos Village Project. Although the exact date the Hihn Apple Barn was constructed is not known, the barn is historically significant. Part of the building appears to have been constructed c.1891-1899, with substantial additions in 1915 and c.1920, with the last bay (88 feet long by 36 feet wide) c.1929-1930. The barn will become a New Leaf Community Market and open into the Village Green common area, a new civic heart for Aptos.
Local Aptos historian Kevin Newhouse was interviewed by Phil Gomez with KSBS Action News 8, and that video can be seen here:
KSBW Interviews Kevin Newhouse
Mar Vista Harvest Festival set for October 30
One of the most enjoyable events of the fall season is set to happen again. The Mar Vista Harvest Festival will be back again this year, taking place on October 30th from 12 to 4 PM. This was an amazing event last year, and hundreds of people in our Aptos community showed up to enjoy the festivities.
This is an event for everyone in community, not just families of Mar Vista students. There will be live music performed by El Cuarto Verde, as well as dance performances by students from the Pacific Arts Complex and Kristy’s School of Dance. The event will also feature the famous Surfing Magician who will appear to wow the crowds. Check out the demonstrations from the Sheriff’s SWAT Team, the Aptos/La Selva Fire Department – and kids won’t want to miss the bounce houses, face painting, crafts, a pumpkin carving contest, a costume parade and much more.
Last year, the Harvest Festival hosted had a number of food trucks from a variety of local companies and it was a runaway hit, providing a smorgasbord of mouth watering foods not often seen in a school yard! This year the food trucks will be back including Pono, Ate31, Zameen, Carmona’s, and Lucy’s Hot Dogs will be there too!
Put this event down on your calendar – it’s one for sure you won’t want to miss.
Video from 2015 Harvest Festival
Learning to Surf
Ahh, summertime! Last year I wrote about how we registered our son for Capitola Junior Guards. That was the last year, it seems, when folks had to get up at o’dark:30 to wait in line to make sure they got the session they wanted (now it’s all done online, boo hoo!).
He is now in his second year of Guards, and so he’s spending hours every day at the beach. We got him one of those $100 foam surfboards from Amazon for his birthday, and now, he’s learning how to surf with it! Check out this video:
This is Our Community
I don’t know how to surf – I tried it once, decades ago, and it seemed too much like work. But I’m proud of my boy, and it brings me incredible joy to watch him learn, and see how much fun he’s having.
What’s also cool to me is that when I tell people, “Hey, my kid just stood up on a surf board for the first time the other day!” I get really warm congratulations from them. Around here, it’s like a rite of passage, and folks are genuinely stoked to hear that Aiden is on his way becoming a surfer.
Of course, it takes a village. Since I myself don’t know how to surf, we asked the son of a friend of ours – who I met, years ago, when I helped them buy a house in La Selva Beach – if he could given Aiden a few lessons.
Their son is himself a Junior Guard, and an amazing kid and incredible role model for our boy. Thank you guys so much for being part of our lives! We are all very grateful for your support. 🙂
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