The Weekly Dump – 5.17.24

Watsonville Car Thieves Crash and Burn on Highway 17

Early Wednesday morning, CHP Santa Cruz was notified about a group of possible car thieves breaking into vehicles in Watsonville. CHP Officers were in the area of Highway 1 near Freedom Boulevard when they noticed a vehicle matching the description of the thieves car. After they tried to initiate a traffic stop on the stolen Infiniti, the vehicle failed to yield so a pursuit began. CHP positioned themselves on Northbound Highway 17 near Mount Hermon Road and deployed a spike strip, which successfully flattened a tire causing the car to crash into the center median and catch on fire. They were able to get the three people out of the car, and all three people were arrested and booked on multiple felony charges.

Porsche Driver Wrecks Car After Huffing Air

Last Sunday, Santa Cruz CHP received reports about a silver Porsche driving in an erratic manner before being  involved in a couple of different crashes on Highway 1 near Aptos. When they arrived, they found the driver and his wrecked Porsche on the right shoulder of north Highway 1 near Park Avenue. He was found to be under the influence and was arrested for DUI. Apparently, this dipshit’s “influence” of choice while driving is compressed air. CHP found a bag of compressed air “dusters”, the cans of stuff you might use to blow out the dust on your computer keyboard. I guess huffing cans of compressed air is a thing? How does this kind of stupid shit? And why are they driving a Porsche?

UCSC Students Get Swatted on Mother’s Day

Last Sunday morning around 10:30AM, Santa Cruz Police responded to a residence on the 700 block of Escalona Drive after getting a call about a possible homicide. The caller told a police dispatcher that he had killed his girlfriend four hours earlier and he wanted to turn himself in, before giving them the address and hanging up. The residence is a home rented to numerous UCSC students, which caused Santa Cruz police to seek backup from the nearby UC Santa Cruz Police Department, in addition to Santa Cruz Fire and paramedics. Residents at home when police arrived told them nobody by the name the caller had given to dispatchers lived there. My guess? Either some asshole neighbor who didn’t like some party noise or disgruntled friend of the kids that lived there. Don’t waste valuable public safety resources like this. It’s just dangerous and stupid. Somebody could have gotten shot here. 

A Different Kind of Bakery

At Tuesday’s Santa Cruz city council meeting, a cannabis dispensary proposed for the former Emily’s Bakery on Mission Street was approved by the Santa Cruz City Council. Local school principals and administrators argued that the location was too close to Santa Cruz high school and a middle school. Despite their objections, the council voted 6-1 to approve an administrative use permit for The Hook Santa Cruz, soon to open at the corner of Mission and Laurel streets. Santa Cruz Vice Mayor Renee Golder was the lone dissenting vote. I get it. She’s an elementary school Principal. It would have been a bad look for her to support it. 

After Emily’s Bakery closed last year, the co-founder of The Hook outlets in Watsonville and Capitola, as well as the Treehouse Dispensary in Soquel, applied for an administrative use permit to open a cannabis retail store at the Mission Street site. The Mission Street site met the zoning requirements to be more than 600 feet from all schools, parks, day cares, youth centers and other cannabis retail outlets. Santa Cruz police expressed no concerns about the location, according to a city staff report. The location attracted criticism for being four blocks from Santa Cruz High School and about a quarter mile from Mission Hill Middle School. In a 5-2 vote in March, the Santa Cruz Planning Commission approved The Hook’s application, prompting an appeal from a group of parents and other NIMBY critics which sent the matter to the city council. Supporters of the proposed dispensary far outnumbered opponents at Tuesday’s city council hearing, 

Humble Sea Takes on San Francisco’s Tourists

Santa Cruz’s own Humble Sea Brewing Company announced this week they are set to open a new taproom at Pier 39 sometime in July. There is no exact opening date yet as construction of the taproom is still underway. It will be located at Pier 39, Space N-111-1A. This is their first foray into San Francisco. They also have taprooms in Santa Cruz, Pacifica, and Alameda. The new 80-seat taproom will also feature food. Well I guess that’s one way to take your brand national. Pier 39 is packed with tourists from outside California. I like their beer. I’m not sure if it’s still there but I know last year or so they had a cool little spot on the wharf too. 

Saturday Fireworks at the Boardwalk

This Saturday, the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Giant Dipper with fireworks off Main Beach around 9PM. Fireworks in Santa Cruz?! The legal kind?! Yes. And the Big Dipper, arguably one the finest wooden roller coasters still in existence. I’ve ridden it many, many times, usually no hands. And I like both the front and back cars for different reasons. If you’ve never ridden it, you gotta give it a ride. It’s a bucket list ride. And Wednesdays this summer, you can ride it for a buck!

Santa Cruz County History Fair at Mission Santa Cruz This Saturday

The annual Santa Cruz County History Fair will be hosted by the Santa Cruz Mission State Historic Park on Saturday May 18th from 12-4pm. We will be joined by organizations, individuals, and museums from around the county to bring local history to our community. Sponsored by State Parks, Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks, & the Capitola Historical Museum. Free admission for all. 

Trash Talking With Ron

Well, here we go. That bridge I was talking about on April 24, turned into a crazy haul for over 2500 lbs of trash, and refuse, even furniture that was stuffed underneath it! We probably had one of our best weeks, hauling everything out from under that bridge, and ravine. I want to give a big shout out to our Clean Team, and also County Roads, who underwrote a good part of this effort. We tied off, at the top of the bridge, which sits on a ravine, and rappelled down to the bottom. Paint, broken cans of drain cleaners, and household batteries were pulled out. Even the guy living down there pitched in, after leaving him fresh bags, he filled 20 of em ! I am always on the lookout for neglected sites, especially those far away sites that you and I do not see every day for cleanups. If we can catch these things while they are small, we are doing our waterways, and marine life a huge service. We will be catching the debris and waste before they can hit either a creek or stream, and prior to entering the ocean.

On another note, Congressman Panetta is helping set aside $40 million, maybe more for ongoing efforts into studying, and hopefully removing the DDT that was dumped in barrels off the California coast in the 1940s. I spoke with his representative, who called me back from his Washington DC office, and she assured me things were moving forward to address those important clean up issues. It would be a monumental task to remove hundreds, if not thousands of potentially leaking barrels of that material, but a worthy necessary effort nonetheless. Please contact his office, 831.429.1976, or 202.225.2861 to express your concern, and support for their ongoing efforts, and those of Scripps Oceanic down in SO Cal. They are all doing important, critical work.

Once again, If you see a site that needs cleaning, I will do my very best to get it addressed, and cleaned up. Rodeo Creek keeps popping up in my head, well, I digress. Please feel free to support my efforts on the Go Fund Me, just look for Ron helps to keep Santa Cruz Clean, however, as I have said before, it’s not about me, it’s about our community that supports these important critical efforts. Every dollar goes to clean ups that are currently not funded, anywhere else, or not being done at all. That’s absolutely not acceptable. Thank you very much for your support ! Ron

UCSC Students Still Desperately Looking For Attention

Sorry but they aren’t getting any more than this from me. 

The Community Speaks!

Question of the Week: What do you think of the new “Clocktower Center” being proposed for downtown Santa Cruz?

“I’m not against growth, but I’m sure $$$ is a motivating factor. Is it really providing housing for locals or is going to be 2nd or 3rd housing for vacations, renting out to students, ABnB. Parking and traffic congestion seems like it has not been considered. I’m not sure having no parking is going to inspire more bikes.”
– Esther

“I’ve heard it’s a red herring. The developers expect everyone to wear themselves out griping about the proposed height. Later they will graciously modify it to what they actually wanted and will be lauded for being sensitive to the community’s concerns.”
– Sean

“A monument to our inability to preserve one of the few remaining traditional coastal cities. May it provide comfort to the recent transplants who fled what they are promoting here.”
– Graydon

“I struggle to understand why grown adults are afraid of buildings more than a few stories tall.”
– Dave

“And where will the service workers that will need to provide all the services for that many people live. We already have a dearth of housing for the people that do the day-to-day work around here. Contractors laborers restaurant workers store workers all of the people that do service work for this community can’t afford to live here and they sure as hell won’t be able to afford to live in that building!”
– Damon

“When this info first came out, I drove over there to imagine it (I’m a visual person for sure). Sixteen stories seems wild. This rendering is accurate! I could see 8 stories working with the adjacent building being 4, it would be of similar height to the hill up to the mission. To be twice as tall as that hill seems like they’re not taking the setting, even the future of the setting, into account at all.”
– Tracie

“It will dwarf the town clock. The clock will be lost. No thank you.”
– Debbie

“Go for it. The city and residents need to get their heads out of the 70’s and build modern”
– Aaron

“I think the parking situation is asscheeks”
– Savannah

“The parking situation is probably more offensive to me then the building height, but the height is out of line with our community as well.”
– Nicole

You read all the responses here!

The Weekly Seen

(thanks to Joe)

The Weekly Stroll

This week’s stroll is a quiet and peaceful jaunt along the San Lorenzo Riverwalk. 

A walk along the San Lorenzo Riverwalk

In My Ear

Marble Party is Marin County’s best local band. Give them a listen! They don’t play a lot of shows outside Marin County, but I know they’d love to maybe play in Santa Cruz sometime (and I wish they would), so if there are any club booker types out there who might be interested, message me and I’ll put you in touch. 

Marble Party – Shotgun Superman

New Santa Mierda YouTube Channel!

I started a new YouTube channel for the Weekly Dump. It will host all my videos going forward. I’ll also put the podcast over there too if I can ever get that going. Go check out some videos if you haven’t seen them yet, and thank you to all the subscribers! (you can subscribe over there)

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