“Picturesque Flora Wallaceana: Botanical Ambulations In Greater Wallaceana, 1854–1857” — Watsonville artist Scott Serrano cultivates a swath of the surreal within a botanical artscape, comprised of travel journals, photographs, fabricated specimens and drawings, as inspired by the book “The Malay Archipelago” by Alfred Russell Wallace. Think Darwin circa his science travel writing debut, getting all starry-eyed in the Galapagos and returning to England, brimming with inspiration and drawings of winged wonders. Serrano’s work approaches the edge of the believable with the revival and invention of artifacts and fictional flora, all the while his critical eye on scientific observation refuses to blink.

Exhibit runs until March 15, Mon.–Fri. 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Mon.–Tues. 7 to 9 p.m., the Cabrillo Gallery

Entertainment:

Ladysmith Black Mambazo — Paul Simon’s favorite Zulu “a capella” troubadours take their mobile academy around the world again, educating eager audiences in the tradition of South African culture and peace, love and harmony. Their latest release, “Songs From A Zulu Farm” (2011), received some of the best critical acclaim frontman Joseph Shabalala and his octet family have ever garnered.

Ladysmith Black Mambazo prevails in balancing Zulu composition with melodic Christian gospel sensibilities, touting the group’s trademark nonverbal percussive effects. $30 for general admission.

March 6, doors at 6:30 p.m., show at 7:30 p.m., the Rio Theatre

Events:

Comedy Joust — The jesters from the tiltyard pull their newest comedic trick from the great helm, and this time it’s here for extended play — between 20 and 40 minutes long, to be exact. Enter CRAM, the Comedy Joust Long Form Division, where the satirical spears have been sharpened for full tilt. Get your chain mail adjusted and prepare to do battle, because Comedy Joust conjures up laughs that will leave you keeling over in delight. Admission is free.

March 1,  show at 7 p.m., UCSC Jack Baskin Auditorium 101

Illustration by Maren Slobody

Barrios Unidos, a local anti-street violence organization, hosted a community education night on Sept. 25. A crowd of Santa Cruz and Watsonville residents packed the small room to listen to guest speakers Raquel Mariscal and Tracy Benson.

Mariscal is a senior consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation and co-manager of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative (JDAI), and Benson is a staff member for the Community Justice Network for Youth.

The topic of the evening was a history and critique of reform in youth justice. The presentations emphasized the contrast between the conventional use of detention — a costly and arguably ineffective method of curtailing juvenile delinquency — and the more recent efforts to initiate closer collaboration between community, law enforcement and judicial administrators to provide a more adequate support network for youth at risk.

For Mariscal, a UCSC alumnus and long-time Watsonville resident, addressing the flaws of the youth justice system starts with a projector and scores of infograph slides.

“One of our core strategies is data,” Mariscal said. “Not based on myth or reaction to what’s happening, or media reports.”

The Annie E. Casey Foundation focused on collecting more effective data over the years to identify the main weakness of the judicial processing system: the unnecessary detention of low-risk juvenile offenders.

“In the early 1990s, a federal court of appeals judge called it the ‘hidden closet’ of the juvenile and criminal justice system,” Mariscal said. “Which really attested to the fact that there was not much light shed on this system, despite the fact that there were half a million kids being detained on a yearly basis.”

Mariscal noted that one consequence of access to more comprehensive data was the discovery that increasing funding to improve youth detention facilities almost always led to probation departments installing more beds, which created little incentive for finding alternatives to detention.

JDAI also extends grants to 100 jurisdictions, including Santa Cruz, to pay for staff training, technical support and peer critique from other administrators. Mariscal said by focusing resources on processing instead of detention, these model sites reduced the population in their detention facilities by 41 percent.

But even in Santa Cruz, which Mariscal said has experienced a 60 percent decrease in the average day population of its juvenile hall, this progress is still criticized for not correcting the disproportionate number of Latinos and blacks in detention, which is regarded by judicial activists like Mariscal and Benson as one of the most fundamental flaws in the administration of youth justice.

“One might think we’ve done a pretty good job because there’s one, ten or fourteen kids in detention,” Benson said. “But if you actually peek in the doors and look at the halls, it’s mostly, if not all, Latino youth.”

To address this problem, Mariscal and Benson encouraged regular members of the community to actively work for better justice in their neighborhoods.

Attendees nodded their heads as Mariscal reminded them that until recent years, the Watsonville courthouse was located up in the forested hills of the northern part of the county, only accessible to many citizens by long bus rides that ate away at their workdays.

“The new court and library in Watsonville required years and years of negotiating to acquire,” Mariscal said.

Benson also stressed the importance of getting law enforcement agencies to cooperate with community leaders and activists, especially when it comes to acquiring the data needed to determine the course of judicial reform.

“Without a collaborative table, it’s very difficult to find out what’s happening inside the system to our kids,” Benson said. “If one of the stakeholders is not coming to the table with humility, and sharing power and transparency of data to show what’s happening, there’s really no way of determining where the problems are happening.”

Local and national activists have pushed for a more open dialogue between community leaders and justice officials, but a history of going it alone leaves some activists skeptical that collaboration will ever be achieved.

“Nobody’s coming to our community to save us,” said Executive Director of Barrios Unidos Daniel “Nane” Alejandrez, who has spent 35 years working to stop street violence in Santa Cruz County.

But for younger activists like Benson who have seen their reform efforts blossom and start to bear fruit, the secret to reform is patience.

“We call it a marathon instead of a sprint,” Benson said.

Illustration by Leigh Douglas

The group behind it is the Central Coast Broadband Consortium (CCBC), which aims to bridge the “digital divide” in Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey counties.

“The digital divide means those who are not connected,” said Gladys Palpallatoc, associate vice president of the California Emerging Technologies Fund (CETF), “those who aren’t seeing the benefits of technology as it advances, much less being online.”

The percentage of Californians with an Internet connection in their home increased from 55 percent in 2008 to 72 percent in 2011, according to a survey taken by the CETF. The 2011 survey also found that this number is significantly lower among underrepresented groups and those who are disabled, with only 55 percent of Latinos and 49 percent of disabled people in California having Internet access in their homes.

“Although we know that the pace of technology is quick and most folks will adapt,” said Gladys Palpallatoc, associate vice president of the CETF, “there are some folks who are already at a disadvantage, and those communities will only become more deeply disadvantaged without help.”

The CETF was born in 2005 from the dual mergers of AT&T with SBC and Verizon with MCI. As a condition of those mergers, the California Public Utilities Commission required that Verizon and AT&T pay $60 million toward creating the CETF, a California nonprofit that works to ensure that rural, poor and otherwise disadvantaged communities are not left behind by the progress of broadband technologies.

A central component of its strategy is to organize and formalize regional groups throughout California already involved in broadband development, so that they might take note of the digital divide and attempt to address it.

“[The CCBC] was fairly loose-knit until the CETF provided some organizational structure in 2006, and then the stimulus of 2009 came along and that provided a real impetus to actually do something,” said Steve Blum, president of Tellus Venture, a private consulting firm specializing in community broadband development and a member group of the CCBC. “So that’s when the CCBC became an operating organization, as opposed to just a talking organization.”

The CCBC includes representatives from the cities of Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Monterey; CSU Monterey Bay; UCSC; local internet provider Cruzio and many other private companies, as well as nonprofits. Together they have recently unveiled two new projects designed to further “the mission of the CCBC, [which] is to plan for, build and connect the region’s disparate telecommunications networks and fill critical gaps,” according to the website of CSUMB’s Center for Wireless Education and Technology (WeTEC), a member of the CCBC.

The first of these was made possible by a $4.9 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which will go toward establishing a series of Public Computing Centers (PCCs) throughout the Central Coast.

Spearheaded by Arlene Krebs, professor of communications at CSUMB and the founding director of WeTEC, the project has established over 30 PCCs throughout Monterey County so far and has plans to extend the program to Santa Cruz County.

The CCBC brings in computing equipment and broadband access to provide those who might not have access to the Internet with a place they can go to plug in and connect. The centers are housed in areas that already serve the community, such as Boys and Girls Clubs, libraries, the National Steinbeck Center, and Krebs’ personal project, the upgrading of a pre-existing CSUMB satellite campus into a PCC.

“The federal government says that we are the most diverse partnership in the U.S. that came together to do this sort of thing,” Krebs said.

The six-month-old PCC at the CSUMB satellite campus is in Salinas’ Chinatown, an area with a large proportion of the city’s homeless population who are the main beneficiaries of this center.

“The homeless people in that area have now connected with family,” Krebs said. “When you ask what the impact is, they now have email accounts, they now are on Facebook, they’re finding their friends, they’re finding their family, they’re learning new skills, they’re also enjoying entertainment once in a while — things that most of us just take for granted.”

This project’s second component is a 65-foot flatbed truck outfitted with 21 computing stations, which will serve Monterey’s agricultural workers by pulling up next to the fields and allowing them to use the Internet.

Other groups within the CCBC are in the midst of implementing a three-year-long planning and organizational strategy, aimed at creating a database of the Central Coast’s current broadband access and identifying key areas that can benefit from improvement. The project is funded by a $450,000 grant from the California Advanced Services Fund. Work began on it in January.

As the CCBC’s initiatives take their course, Krebs and the other members are hopeful that they will achieve a lasting impact on the Central Coast’s residents and businesses. Still, money is tight, and the funding that created the PCCs is set to run out in six months.

Krebs is in the process of finding private donors who will keep the project going. She said as long as the CCBC continues to work hard, the Central Coast will see its digital divide become smaller year by year.

“You have to keep your eye on the prize. You have to be vigilant,” Krebs said. “Because I’ve been working on this pup since 2002, and I’m not stopping now.”

A film still from the class documentary “Exit 426: Watsonville.” The film will premiere as a featured local documentary at the 2012 Santa Cruz Film Festival Sunday at the Nickelodeon Theatre. Photo courtesy of Lusztig’s Intermediate Documentary course.

We’ve all driven through it at one point. Still, some of us know next to nothing about our neighbor to the southeast.

Last winter quarter, assistant professor Irene Lusztig’s Intermediate Documentary Production course spent three months getting to know Watsonville through the creation of their documentary, “Exit 426: Watsonville.”

The film will premiere as a featured local documentary at the 2012 Santa Cruz Film Festival Sunday at the Nickelodeon Theatre.

Filmed in a slow-paced, meditative and observational style, the documentary follows the lives of local residents. From a farm harvesting its winter crops to local government officials discussing issues of housing, the film pieces together an inside view of everyday life for many in Watsonville.

Lusztig, who came up with the idea for the film, said she wanted students to get off campus and into the community.

“I’m thinking about how to encourage students to explore communities they aren’t familiar with, meet people they wouldn’t normally meet, go somewhere they wouldn’t usually go,” Lusztig said. “Watsonville is great for that — it’s nearby but demographically very different. A surprising number of my students have never been there.”

The class of 20 students worked in pairs to explore different aspects of Watsonville culture. From agriculture to city government, the main focus of the film is to have a real understanding of the community.

Timothy Irvine, a fourth-year film major and class member, said while half the class was initially put off by the idea of a professor assigning a collaborative project, he was excited.

“I think that’s how film classes should be taught, because that’s how film production works in the real world,” Irvine said. “In most film classes, every student does their own individual project.”

With only 10 weeks in the quarter, it was a struggle to create a feature-length film rather than the five- to 10-minute documentary that film students are used to creating. The entire class worked together, brainstorming, decision making, producing and editing.

“In most of our classes, students do their own film, and you have students making three or four projects a quarter,” Lusztig said. “It’s a really quick turnaround, and there are certain things I never get to teach in that situation — and certain things students never learn.”

Irvine, who enjoyed the teamwork on the film, said it could be thought of as a cinema mosaic.

“Confusion was sort of unavoidable because, with a collective thing, there will always be different styles between the people shooting it,” Irvine said. “It’s really important to learn about the complexities of a feature length co-operative filmmaking experience, instead of just doing individual projects.”

Ana Perez Lopez, a journalism and humanities major studying abroad from a university in Spain, said she has been working on films in groups throughout her college experience.

“I feel like teamwork is always better and it’s more realistic,” Lopez said.

Lopez, who has lived in Santa Cruz for a year now, didn’t know Watsonville existed until she took the film class.

“It’s just a place where we get things like produce from but we don’t really know the social dynamic of the town,” Lopez said. “The film really opens your eyes to what life’s like for some people in Watsonville.”

Through filming some of the day laborers in Watsonville, Lopez said she learned about the struggles undocumented workers experience on a daily basis.

In addition to supporting local cinema and local documentaries, Irvine said it’s important for people to see documentaries about things they might not otherwise pay attention to.

“The film wasn’t in Santa Cruz. It was a commute. It was getting off a campus away from pine trees and pot and student problems and the beach, and it was going to look at some place that, in my opinion, is pretty negatively represented in the media,” Irvine said. “Going there, talking to people and seeing so much of it, totally made me change my opinion on Watsonville.”

The march against foreclosure occupies the streets of Santa Cruz. Photos by Auralee Walmer.

Around 200 students, activists, concerned homeowners and members of the Occupy movement gathered March 11 to take part in a march protesting foreclosure fraud in Santa Cruz. Starting at the county courthouse and ending at the post office, the marchers stopped at Bank of America, Chase and Wells Fargo to listen to the stories of homeowners who had been foreclosed on by those banks, and to demand an end to the lending practices that led to the foreclosures.

Of the many issues discussed, difficulties in getting loan modifications and the allegedly illegal transferring of titles between banks were the main two topics addressed by the speakers at the banks.

“Out of the many people who were supposed to be helped by these [loan modification programs], only a small percentage have been — maybe one out of five,” said Mark Reed, who is currently facing foreclosure on his Watsonville home by Bank of America, as he addressed the crowd outside of that same bank. “Still, I love the property I live on and it doesn’t bother me a bit if I’m underwater. It’s my home and I want to keep it.”

Another speaker from Watsonville described the delays he experienced in trying to work out a deal with Chase on his mortgage and, speaking through a translator, gave his opinion of the situation.

“As two or three people become richer, the rest of us suffer,” he said.

After listening to the speakers, the marchers placed “notices of foreclosure” on banks, as well as large “For Sale” signs on their lawns. They also circulated a petition asking Santa Cruz County Sheriff Phil Wowak to postpone evictions until the county has determined whether or not a given foreclosure is fraudulent, and called for the county’s aid in actively fighting fraudulent foreclosure.

With some dressed as Robin Hood and the Monopoly Man, and others singing and carrying signs with slogans such as “War Mongers and Fat Cats Are Stealing Our Future” and “Another World is Possible,” the march was hard to miss as it passed through downtown. The Occupy Santa Cruz Foreclosures Working Group (FWG) planned the march, and many other groups ended up participating, including Occupy Monterey, the Watsonville Brown Berets, and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.

Although the marchers did briefly block traffic as they crossed streets along their route, most of the drivers honking were also flashing peace signs and giving them the thumbs-up.

The FWG had planned the march as a way to raise awareness of foreclosure issues, and as a way to recapture the community support that they felt had been at a low ebb since the occupation and subsequent arrests that occurred at an empty bank on River and Water Street in November. UC Santa Cruz student Jacqueline Seydel thought that occupation, which was the action of an autonomous group, gave some people the wrong impression of Occupy Santa Cruz.

“After the River Street action, we were like, ‘What is the hard-hitting one-liner that can encompass most of the community? What do we all have? What hits us all?’” Seydel said. “Housing. Mortgages. And there was a group of about four of us who were like, ‘Hey, we need to do something really positive to get this support back in the community and to get people talking.’”

Those who took part in the march all had slightly different reasons for being there, but most had experienced foreclosure firsthand or knew others who had.

“There are way too many guys out there that have been in the mud and shared blood, that are homeless now, that have nothing left, and it’s just so horrible, its bad,” said Anthony Messer, a former U.S. Army sergeant who was stationed in Baghdad and Kabul during the five years he spent in the military from 2004-09. Messer is now an avid activist and Occupier, so when he heard about the march, he thought it only natural he should attend.

“For me, a few years ago my family lost their home in foreclosure and we still believe it was done crooked the by U.S. bank,” said Christopher Seerden, also an ardent Occupier and a participant in the March 5 rally in Sacramento, as well as the Occupy the Senate event in October. “So coming out here and learning what I can from everyone else, and sharing what my family went through, and being able to help others in that situation — that’s awesome.”

Spirits among the protesters were high after the march as they gathered for a general assembly on the steps of the post office, and most thought that they had accomplished what they had set out to do.

“The purpose of this march was really to make a peaceful, nondestructive, nonviolent demonstration, and we successfully did that,” Seydel said. “So, yeah, I’m very pleased with how it all turned out, and we’re only bound to grow from here.”

As one of the state’s top strawberry research facilities, the field station is supported by the UC Agriculture and Natural Resources Department. It is a haven to agricultural researchers and farm advisors who help to maintain Watsonville’s fresh-market strawberry industry, a market that reached another record-high production last year, with a revenue valued at $756 million.

“Strawberries are a full-blown economic driver for Watsonville,” said farm advisor Mark Bolda, a strawberry and caneberry specialist at the Watsonville Strawberry Field Station. “Acreage is at its largest ever. The industry is sustainable.”

This summer’s peak harvests will stem from the Watsonville-Salinas district’s 14,528 acres, comprising a tri-county strawberry patch spanning from Santa Cruz’s north coast down to the Monterey Peninsula. It is the world’s largest region of strawberry production, accounting for nearly half of California’s total, according to the California Strawberry Commission (CSC), the single state-chartered agency representing the strawberry industry.

Sustaining Economic Efficiency

Post-harvest months are in August and September and many of Watsonville’s 600-plus growers will produce strawberries back-to-back, conventionally, in soil typically treated with the potent soil fumigant mixture of methyl bromide and chloropicrin (MBCP). The treatment reduces the incidence of soil-borne pathogens like Verticillium dahliae, a fungus that leaves the plant wilted and entire fields at risk of quarantine.

“MBCP has been the pesticide standard for years,” said UC Davis plant science professor Douglas Shaw, a principal investigator at the field station.

Shaw presented his latest soil fumigation trials at the field station’s annual Strawberry Pomology Field Day in early May.

In front of three rows in the experimental plot, with a portable amplifier and microphone in hand, stands the veteran strawberry pomologist of 21 years in farmer’s garb and a baseball cap.

A crowd of nearly 100 growers, farm advisors, corporate representatives and agricultural commissioners observe the trials.

The left row is labeled “MBCP,” the right “non-fumigated,” and the middle row is the inner buffer zone, fumigated twice with MBCP.

Shaw mentions that the slope of the field and angle of the sun might create an optical illusion, making it difficult to see a difference in plant size.

“If I had it my way, and if it were economically possible, I wouldn’t fumigate with methyl bromide and chloropicrin,” he says. He pauses as observers kneel down to row height. “I would fumigate with methyl bromide and chloropicrin twice.”

The difference between strawberries in non-fumigated soil and those in MBCP-treated soil was visible at any angle — fumigation works. Shaw calls the result, nearly a 40 percent higher yield, “somewhat of a miracle.”

No more weed problems, no more nematodes that damage the strawberry plant’s sensitive roots — there’s no more anything that was once alive in the soil.

“You don’t need fumigation to grow strawberries,” Shaw says. “You just need fumigation to grow strawberries economically.”

A Safer Alternative?

To agriculturalists, methyl bromide heralds efficiency in disease control, yet it has equally deleterious effects on our atmosphere’s protective ozone layer.

Normalcy among those closest to the multi-million dollar berry industry has upended with the international ban on ozone depleting substances — known as the Montreal Protocol — which intends to phase out methyl bromide by 2015.

In response to the ban, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registered methyl iodide, a highly neurotoxic and carcinogenic soil fumigant, in 2007.

Shaw’s fumigation trials showed that when using methyl iodide and chloropicrin (MC), there was only a 4 percent less yield than MBCP.

“It’s the only real alternative presented in the last three years,” he said.

While it may be statistically considered methyl bromide’s best drop-in replacement, it is also called “one of the most toxic chemicals on earth” by UCLA public health professor John Froines, an eminent toxicologist.

The EPA’s own evaluation reports symptoms of methyl iodide exposure, including “increased cancer incidence, thyroid toxicity, permanent neurological damage, and fetal loss.”

UC Berkeley professor Robert G. Bergman and Cornell University’s Roald Hoffmann, with full support of the national scientific community, addressed the EPA administration in 2007. They said methyl iodide’s high volatility and water solubility made its agricultural use a “guarantee” of emissions and human exposure.

They were “skeptical,” they said, of the risk assessment processes of methyl iodide, and asked the administration to “delay the decision and assemble a blue-ribbon panel of independent (conflict-free) scientists.”

Then-EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson didn’t respond to Bergman and Hoffmann’s request to re-evaluate methyl iodide.

“You simply cannot separate the political profile from this chemical,” said farm advisor Bolda, who was involved with 1998 in-field residue studies of methyl iodide for the California Department of Pesticide Regulations.

A Turn in Conventional Production

With all the controversy surrounding soil fumigants — more specifically, the recently approved methyl iodide — there is little discussion of whether a strawberry industry without them could even exist.

Farm advisor Bolda maintains that with the loss of methyl bromide, strawberry production will decrease by only 10 to 15 percent. Due to the drop in production, he said, we will see a rise in the price of berries to buffer any loss.

“The doom-and-bloom scenarios that we hear are completely wrong,” he said. “There will still be Watsonville strawberries in New Jersey in the winter.”

As the go-to guy for berry growers in the Central Coast, Bolda sees the advent of blogging and global informatics as an occupational standard, and this could now be utilized for an entire industry: an upgrade, per se.

His blog, Strawberries and Caneberries, reaches a widespread audience. On his Blackberry, he posts recent findings in the field identifying the latest soil-borne pathogens and nasty pests along with their seasonal life cycles and methods of control.

“Look at nuclear weapons — they’re outdated,” Bolda said. “Understanding how the soil works, the pests you are trying to control — that is the smart bomb. It’s a lot less messy.”

His new take on pest management includes use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to accurately track soil-borne infestations. Bolda believes the toxic soil fumigants could be used in less amounts, but far more effectively.

“Let’s say in a field there are three places that have pathogens, and you need to fumigate,” he said. “If you have the technology to pinpoint the locations of the pathogen, you can do this without the extraneous effects that fumigants have … Methyl iodide is too blunt a tool, and I think we could do better.”

Bolda advocates for more control with soil fumigants and Shaw believes there is no substitute to MBCP. Meanwhile, others have a different notion of the post-methyl bromide era in agriculture, including Joe Schirmer, owner of Santa Cruz organic farming business Dirty Girl Produce. A leader in the Central Coast region, he sits on the board of directors for the Center for Urban Education on Sustainable Agriculture in San Francisco and is president of the Santa Cruz Community Farmers’ Markets.

“The strawberry industry isn’t sustainable because of the soil fumigants. Fumigant technicians walk around in HazMat suits handling that material, and it’s still considered safe,” Schirmer said. “In reality, methyl bromide and methyl iodide are a big joke and will eventually be phased out.”

Organic production trends are growing in the Watsonville-Salinas district. CSC reports an 8 percent increase in organic acreage since last year, accounting for three-quarters of the state’s organic production. Large-scale commercial growers are going organic, and the number of small-scale growers is rising.

“The answer lies in crop rotation,” Schirmer said, offering his own solution to the pending dilemma. “Growers who produce just strawberries can’t do back-to-back production and not expect diseases. They don’t care what their strawberries taste like, they just care about yield.”

Schirmer’s Dirty Girl has expanded from 3 acres in 1997 to 40 acres just recently, making up four different plots on which the farm owner cultivates.  He distributes produce throughout the Bay Area.

Another realm of research that could reduce the reliance on fumigants is developing strawberry varieties, or cultivars, that are more resistant to the same opponents that methyl bromide and methyl iodide try to kill.

Strawberry cultivar development by traditional crossbreeding has become somewhat of an art for Shaw and fellow UC Davis strawberry pomologist Kirk Larson.  UC cultivars account for 85 percent of the state’s fruit.

Shaw and Larson conduct much of their breeding research at the field station’s UC Strawberry Breeding and Licensing Program.

Cultivars bred at the field station are produced exclusively in California, with few exceptions. Each is tested for superior characteristics, often with the help of MBCP. Now there is a higher incentive for strawberry growers and CSC to breed cultivars for disease resistance.

“A cultivar that can produce more and earn more because of less disease would translate into a lower rate for crop insurance and a higher guarantee for producers,” said Sandy Sanchez, a specialist and outreach coordinator for Risk Management Association at UC Davis.

Along with the fumigation trials, Shaw and Larson presented some of their latest cultivar studies in early May at the Pomology Field Day.

Ten cardboard cartons sit on the deck overlooking the experimental plot. Larson picks up a dark crimson giant from the carton labeled 6.137-2, bred for very high yields and great appearance —  its taste, however, needs more work. 6.137-2 is one of many experimental cultivars yet to be certified by the licensing program.

In his other hand, Larson picked up an Albion berry, what he called a “good-eater” and has a long shelf-life.  Its robust and flavorful characteristics make it the most popular of the UC strawberry varieties.

“I hear people saying Albion is one of the best to grow — it has high yields and it just has a wonderful flavor,” said Grant Livingston, a UC Santa Cruz soil science graduate.

A Long Shot that Might Work

“The incentives to protect the crop are very high,” said Carol Shennan, director of the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) at UC Santa Cruz. “Soil fumigation is the ultimate silver bullet.”

Both Shennan and CASFS research associate Joji Muramoto have done comprehensive research on large-scale commercial alternatives in strawberry production while keeping agroecological principles in mind.

“If you plant strawberries frequently, it converts to a lower soil fertility and higher populations of lethal-pathogens in the soil,” Muramoto said. “More so than it would be for other vegetables. We demonstrated what growers speculated: that longer rotation is better.”

Muramoto maintains the importance of agroecosystem health on an organic strawberry-vegetable rotation system. He demonstrated that with more years of crop rotation and with the right crops in rotation —  lettuce attracts Verticillium fungus and broccoli hinders its growth —  the produce will be higher in quality and there will be less of a need for harmful pesticides.

Shennan and Muramoto have also made recent advances toward a “no-chemical approach” that is raising eyebrows.

“The method was originally developed in the Netherlands on small-scale farming systems,” Muramoto said. Known Anaerobic Soil Disinfestation (ASD), the practice has been expanded to  large-scale commercial strawberry production in California.

While ASD may seem unconventional to commercial growers, it proves to be highly effective in the eradication of soil-borne disease. ASD is saturated in a concealed raised strawberry bed with water, leaving no oxygen in the soil, purging all microbial activity.

Costs of conventional production are rising and many growers turn to cheaper alternatives.

“Methyl bromide application costs have increased as high as $3,500 per acre,” Muramoto said. “ASD treatment is measured around $2,000 per acre.”

However, gravity works against the chemical-free system in Watsonville’s Strawberry Hills. The region’s steep slopes and sandy sediment matrix are drawbacks, as water must be retained homogeneously in the raised bed for ASD to perform properly.

While research is still underway, Muramoto and Shennan are adopting their system to Watsonville’s geography, and they speculate more advances with tandem efforts of different techniques.

“We don’t think ASD could be the methyl bromide silver bullet as it is,” Muramoto said. “However, maybe it will when use the combination of this with mustard mill.”

Using ASD in combination with Ida Gold mustard mill, a naturally —toxic compound, Muramoto explained, could be highly effective.

Soil fumigation is a deep-rooted convention in strawberry agriculture and the Montreal Protocol intends to change this, but much is still in question.

Legal action against methyl iodide use in agriculture has been the recent focus for pesticide watch groups. In March 2011, Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA) rallied over 200,000 signatures in a petition to oust the chemical.

On Sept. 29, PANNA and Pesticide Watch, as part of a national campaign, will combine efforts at the regional Central Coast Forum on Methyl Iodide.

The Watsonville Strawberry Field Station is a model microcosm of the region’s rolling strawberry hills lined with miles of crimson. The longstanding pillars of soil fumigation are beginning to crumble under the industry and the state’s top researchers are working to provide more dynamic alternatives — keeping ethics and soil health in mind.

Meanwhile, strawberry growers strive to keep their yields up to make the cut, despite growing costs of conventional production methods.

Illustration by Bela Messex

Local non-profit organization Kidpower Teenpower Fullpower International received a $90,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation.

Based in Santa Cruz, Kidpower serves thousands of children internationally by teaching what it calls “people safety.” On the Kidpower website, executive director Irene van der Zande explains that the goal of the workshops is to relay “what individuals can do to keep themselves and others emotionally and physically safe.”

Since receiving the grant, Kidpower has been conducting a thorough needs assessment project to determine where the funds would be best used. Van der Zande said the money is beginning to have an effect on the organization’s programming, both in the community and online.

“We received the grant a couple of months ago, but we’re just starting to implement it,” she said. “We serve hundreds of people every year in the city of Santa Cruz. We provide a lot of online services for people all over the world.”

General funding for the organization is collected from a combination of class fees, personal donations and gifts from businesses and companies.

Van der Zande said no one is turned down for a lack of funds. Families are expected to give what they can and Kidpower secures grants and donations to supplement the costs.

In an economy where potential donors are facing financial turmoil, the grant will provide vital support to domestic violence prevention programming and for outreach materials.

While money is a serious need for outreach organizations like Kidpower, it is also important to have a passionate team to create change through programming.

“I want the UCSC community to know we are always looking for people to work with as volunteers and instructors,” van der Zande said.

Watsonville chief of police Manny Solano has been on the Kidpower advisory board for 15 years. He said the department’s partnership with the organization has had a positive effect on the community he serves.

Solano “was instrumental in receiving the grant,” van der Zande said.

The Watsonville Police Department is routinely called upon to give a number of presentations in the community, many of which have to do with child safety or how to prevent abduction or sexual assault.

The crime rate in Watsonville has been on the decline. However, violence between partners and family members in the city is a growing problem, Solano said.

“Even though we had the lowest crime rate in Watsonville in 30 years last year, what still seems to be a serious issue is the rise in domestic violence cases,” he said.

Solano said collaboration with Kidpower has improved the effectiveness of the department’s outreach materials.

“A Kidpower trainer brought to my attention that the information that we were not giving out was not the most up-to-date and relevant information,” Solano said. “They wanted to help us. That’s how I became involved — because I wanted to make sure the information we were giving out was good, modern and tested information.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Santa Cruz has your usual fast food chains: McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, Burger King and now a Panda Express. And it may soon be welcoming another. Despite the city’s history of favoring local restaurants over chains, In-N-Out Burger is setting its sights on Surf City.

In-N-Out, the famed burger chain of the West Coast, could come to Santa Cruz, said Carl Van Fleet, vice president of planning and development.

“Our real estate team has been looking at Santa Cruz County for some time and we hope to be there in the not-too-distant future,” Van Fleet said in an e-mail to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

But if In-N-Out were to come to Santa Cruz, it would have to jump through some hurdles regarding the city’s drive-through policy.

“By our Zoning Ordinance, the Downtown Recovery Plan, and the Mission Street Plan, drive-throughs are not allowed on Mission Street or in the downtown area,” Juliana Rebagliati, director of planning and community development of Santa Cruz, said in an e-mail. “They are allowed in other areas of town, such as Ocean Street, but there are many qualifying standards that serve to limit the number of locations where they may be built — such as they must be a certain distance away from a signaled intersection, they must be a certain distance away from an existing drive-through, et cetera.”

Is Santa Cruz becoming more and more open to chain restaurants and franchises?

On any given night, the new Panda Express near Safeway might have a line out the door. Since it opened Jan. 19, Panda is “doing OK,” manager Ken Chan said.

“We are meeting expectations,” Chan said. “They [our customers] are mostly locals, some students. We probably have stolen some [customers from other restaurants].”

Second-year student Charlene Tran said she is excited about the new Panda Express but even more excited about a possible In-N-Out.

“In-N-Out is the king of all fast-food restaurants,” Tran said. “It’s delicious, and they have the friendliest people.”

Founded in 1948, the chain now has over 250 restaurants across the West Coast, most of which are in California. Local business manager Seth Landig, of Betty Burgers on Seabright Avenue, is not too worried about the possibility of an In-N-Out.

“Any burger place would affect us, but we have a little different meat,” Landig said. “We’re not a fast-food place either, more of a restaurant. I mean, our burgers take 10 minutes to make.”

The limits on drive-throughs in Santa Cruz have been active for nearly 20 years and it might force In-N-Out to look at other nearby cities.

The search can be seen on Facebook, where Kurt Overmeyer, Watsonville city economic development manager, has set up a page to garner local support. Santa Cruz also has residents dedicated to bringing in an In-N-Out, and it looks like Santa Cruz is winning.

While “In-N-Out to Watsonville” currently has 3,180 fans, Santa Cruz’s “We Need an In-N-Out in Santa Cruz” Facebook page had over 9,000. In-N-Out vice president of planning and development Van Fleet said the use of social media would help the company’s decision.

“Community support is an important factor for us, and a Facebook site with numerous likers could be influential,” he wrote to the Sentinel.

Landig, manager of Betty Burgers, expressed confidence that local restaurants would still be competitive.

“We’ve always had some chains in Santa Cruz,” he said. “Some will come and go, but people who live in Santa Cruz will tend to frequent the local spots.”

Strawberries are a lucrative cash crop, ideal for the mild and cool mediterranean climate of the Central Coast. Soil fumigants like methyl bromide increase yields while risking the health of farm laborers and locals exposed to the carcinogen. The California Department of Pesticide Regulation is reviewing the registration of a new pesticide for strawberry production, methyl iodide, but opponents have criticized the new chemical as even more carcinogenic than methyl bromide. Photo by Molly Solomon.

With the help of soil fumigants like methyl bromide increasing yields, the Central Coast produces 88 percent of strawberries in the United States. Strawberry production in the Santa Cruz and Watsonville area is one of the highest per land area in the country. Local farms are visible from over 4,000 feet in the air. Photo by Prescott Watson.

Strawberry production on the Central Coast is part of a $2 billion industry.

Of all the strawberries grown in the United States, 88 percent of the crop is grown in California, with roughly 50 percent coming from the Watsonville, Salinas and Santa Cruz areas alone.

In the next few months, the Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) is poised to make a decision on the registration of a new pesticide called methyl iodide. While the Environmental Protection Agency has already approved the chemical at the federal level, local agricultural communities are demonstrating a resistance to the new pesticide at the state level because of its dangerous health effects on schools and residential neighborhoods nearby.

Ramiro Medrano is a grassroots organizer with the Brown Berets, a youth empowerment and education program in Watsonville. He is part of an effort to educate the local community, which largely comprises farm workers and their families, about the new pesticide.

“The students are the ones who are most interested in this, because many of them go to school near these fields,” Medrano said. “We tell them about the dangers, and they feel the responsibility to take this on through educating their parents and their student bodies about pesticides and methyl iodide.”

If approved, methyl iodide will replace the widely-used methyl bromide, a chemical that is being phased out due to its deleterious effects on the ozone layer, putting it in violation of the international Montreal Protocol of 1992. Both the new and old pesticides are soil fumigants, which means they are applied to the soil before the crop is planted in order to sterilize it and kill any weeds, organisms or other organic matter that might impede growth of the crop.

Critics cite the potential health effects of the new pesticide as the reason it should not be registered. Methyl iodide is a known carcinogen under Proposition 65, according to a report compiled by Susan E. Kegley, a consulting scientist for the Pesticide Action Network. It is four times more neurotoxic than methyl bromide, and up to 3.5 times more acutely toxic than methyl bromide.

The DPR commissioned two teams of scientists, some from within the department itself, along with eight independently contracted scientists, to review the toxicity of the chemical. California Watch, which is part of the Center for Investigative Reporting, reported that after receiving the scientists’ findings, the DPR then set the level of exposure 196 times higher than what their own scientists had recommended.

The California Strawberry Commission (CSC), which is based in Watsonville, represents a conglomeration of 600 growers, shippers and processors in California. Its members include both conventional and organic farmers, who pay 3.5 cents per tray of strawberries to fund research.

Carolyn O’Donnell, the communications director for the CSC, explained that the commission is waiting for the DPR to “complete their regulatory process” before taking a stance on methyl iodide. However, she did say that of the $13 million in research that the CSC invested in finding an alternative to methyl bromide, much of it was devoted to non-pesticide alternatives.

“The commission is looking into the future,” O’Donnell said. “Research devoted to farming without fumigants gives strawberry growers more options for sustainable ways to grow strawberries. There are a variety of potential solutions, and they are not a one-size-fits-all approach.”

Local assembly member Bill Monning is opposed to the registration of methyl iodide, and he is working with the community in the Watsonville area to prevent registration of the chemical. Monning’s dedication to this issue comes from his former work as an attorney for the United Farm Workers’ Union, in which he was involved in litigation on pesticide-poisoning cases.

Monning explained that the DPR was designed to be a bit more free-standing than the federal Department of Food and Agriculture, but it still has various interests to represent and sometimes does not take real-world farming practices into account.

“The department is charged with making objective and rational decisions based on science, but it’s also a balancing act of balancing the interests of agriculture and public safety concerns,” Monning said. “You can have certain standards and requirements listed on a label, but in the field, people don’t always follow the requirements. You have wind, you have tarps that fail. You have to factor in human error at some level.”

The education effort in Watsonville that Medrano and Monning are part of includes community town halls, pesticide awareness clubs in high schools, petitions and an effort to get local school boards and city councils to adopt a resolution formally opposing the registration of the chemical.

Last week, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District was the first school board to adopt a resolution against the registration of methyl iodide. School leaders emphasized the need for more scientific research on the pesticide before it is used in fields that abut numerous Watsonville school grounds.

While the school board’s actions represent a victory, Medrano said, he expressed some frustration at the fact that those most affected most by the issue — farm workers themselves — are the hardest to reach.

“A couple of farmers at our last forum showed us their hands, and some of them didn’t have any [finger]nails because of exposure to pesticides. That, or their skin was very deteriorated because of the same exposure,” Medrano said. “A lot of them, unfortunately, also have a very low education. Unless we go out there and inform them, they don’t know much about the danger.”

When it comes to an alternative to methyl bromide and methyl iodide, both Monning and Medrano stated that they personally believe organic agriculture is the answer. However, Medrano conceded, it is probably not possible to produce the amount of strawberries grown on the Central Coast without the use of fumigants.

“I don’t know if that’s a bad thing,” Medrano said. “A lot of these environmental agriculture jobs are very dangerous to the workers and the community.”

Steve Gliessman is a UC Santa Cruz environmental studies professor whose work as a farmer, author and teacher is centered on agroecology and sustainable food systems.

Gliessman said that while implementing more sustainable methods of farming strawberries might mean a reduction in overall yield, it doesn’t mean the loss of a lucrative industry altogether. He said the focus should be on more, smaller growing operations and fewer large ones, as well as selecting more resilient varieties of the crop to grow.

“The varieties of strawberries that have been used since methyl bromide have zero [natural] resistance to diseases,” Gliessman said. “Growers have been selecting varieties based on the [quantity of] fruit they produce, and not on their ability to resist disease, because they didn’t need it.”

Gliessman cited the enormous economic investment that strawberry farmers take on as part of the reason why using pesticides in production can be so tempting to a grower.

“There is so much risk in strawberry production: $25,000 to $30,000 per acre,” he said. “Almost half of that is pre-harvest. That’s a lot of money — you gotta get that back somehow.”

Martha Gustavson jumps at an Intercollegiate Horse Show Association competition on Oct. 16. Since UCSC has no horses or equestrian training facilities, the equestrian team goes to Watsonville to practice for competitions. Photo courtesy of Dana Frederick.

Members of the equestrian team travel 14 miles from UCSC to Watsonville in order to find what they don’t have on campus: a training facility, horses and a coach.

The team hired Cassie Belmont, who also coaches the Monte Vista Christian School horse riding program, this year.

For Martha Gustavson, third-year Cowell student and captain of the team, this marks an important shift in the team’s development.

“It makes it easier to be more of a team, because they can all ride together every day,” Gustavson said. “They can work with the coach as much as they want.”

Belmont has offered the team the opportunity to use the school’s facility in Watsonville at almost half the price of a normal lesson, which she said ranges from $50 to $60 per day.

“Here I have a pretty big program, and so I’m offering [the team] a reduced fee so they can come and ride,” Belmont said. “I have lots of horses. It’s a good partnership.”

Each member of the team pays for his or her own riding lessons. Training is required in order to compete at the Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) championships.

In the IHSA competition, the teams are not asked to own a horse. Instead, in each show, they are provided with horses owned by the association. This form of competing means smaller expenses than in a normal horse show, in which the rider must bring a horse to each competition.

While riders fund their own training, Gustavson said that the equestrian team receives some support from the university, which pays for transportation, horse show fees and team apparel.

Other state universities, like UC Davis — one of the few public universities with a barn — had to get rid of more than half of the school’s horses due to budget cuts, according to the Sacramento Bee.

Belmont said schools like Stanford are hard to compete against because “they have a very high-quality facility on the campus and lots of really fabulous horses for their students to practice on.”

In a couple of weeks, UCSC’s team will face well-equipped teams like Stanford, as well as the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of Santa Clara, among others.

Second-year Sarah Dennis, a new team member, noted the difference in UCSC’s equestrian program compared to others.

“We’re one of the only teams that doesn’t have [an on campus facility],” Dennis said.

Formed in 2001 by former College Eight student Allison Alrich, the team has struggled to grow. UCSC’s team remains as one of only two within the UC — along with UC Davis.

“We only had six competitors on our team in these shows, against teams with over 40 competitors,” Alrich said in an e-mail. “We knew we were a brand-new team and we wanted to make a lasting and positive impression at the IHSA.”

The team continues to improve, as seen at its last competition, in which it got two second place finishes: one for the open varsity rider and the other for the intermediate rider in jumping class. But the team is not quite where Belmont thinks it should be.

“It would help if they didn’t have to drive 40 minutes to take a lesson,” Belmont said. “These girls could be champions if they could only practice.”

Photo by Devika Agarwal.

Country Western artist Sherry Austin performs an on-air set as part of “Please Stand By,” a live radio show every Sunday morning at 10 a.m. hosted by DJ “Sleepy John Sandidge.” Photo by Morgan Grana.

“Warren T.” Sampson is at his best on air, picking songs one by one and taking requests. Photo by Devika Agarwal.

Real vinyl records. Buzzing acoustic guitars. And live DJs all day. This is KPIG Radio.

The station’s studio, affectionately named the “Sty,” sits behind a Chinese restaurant on Main St. in Watsonville. Inside, every inch of wall and ceiling is plastered with pictures of country music legends. The office is adorned with pig knickknacks, pig stickers and even pig Christmas lights.

Launched in 1988, KPIG Radio, found at 107.5 FM, is not your typical radio station. The station plays a large amount of local advertisements, local artists, fake commercials, song requests, live in-studio shows and features an always eclectic music collection, ranging from Tom Petty to Willie Nelson.

It is a typical Wednesday afternoon, and dic jockey Elsbeth Lansman, known on-air as “Ellie Mae,” is sitting by the telephone and microphone, taking requests as part of KPIG’s “All Request Out to Lunch Hour.”

“We are friends playing music for friends, and we don’t talk down to people on the air like most DJs,” Lansman said. “It’s more a personal relationship. You can call me. How many radio stations can you call and get the DJ who’s actually choosing the music?”

KPIG is one of very few commercial, privately-owned radio stations that still uses live DJs to hand-pick songs. In 1995, broadcast companies were not permitted to own more than 40 radio stations nationwide. After Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, however, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) relaxed the restrictions on how many radio stations a company could own, quickly altering the broadcasting environment. By early 2003, just four companies controlled approximately 70 percent of radio stations nationwide, with mega-companies Viacom and Clear Channel Communications at the masthead of 42 percent of those stations. These large companies cut costs, fired DJs, implemented new rules and standardized station playlists.

KPIG DJ Warren Sampson, known on-air as “Warren T.,” thinks Santa Cruz is the perfect place for a local radio station to survive amidst a sea of standardization.

“That basic idea, that basic profitability, is so much of what Americans hate today, so much of that mass-packaged, large-scale distributing,” Sampson said. “And doing that strips away personality — especially in a market like Santa Cruz which is increasingly hungry for local stuff, local stores, local foods, local whatever.”

Focusing on and involving the local community is an important part of KPIG’s mission. Every two hours the station plays “hog calls,” during which community members can call in and report a missing pet, promote an upcoming event or hock wares. They also host “KPIG Happy Hour” at Cilantros Mexican Restaurant, located down the street from the studio.

The number one radio station for adults 25 to 54 in the local market, KPIG pulls in 50,000 listeners a month in the Santa Cruz County and Monterey Counties, and gets 315,000 hits a month on its Web site. The DJs say it’s not uncommon for people to call in from other parts of the country — and even other continents — to request songs.

Sampson is a 23-year-old UC Santa Cruz graduate who was hired to work for KPIG three years ago by the late Laura Ellen Hopper, radio icon and former musical and programming director. Sampson says that KPIG — which plays a unique blend of country, Americana, blues and rock music — has a distinct spirit about it that defies the normal musical boundaries characteristic of most other major radio outlets.

“KPIG’s a funny station because it’s not a classic rock station. It’s not a defined station,” Sampson said. “Laura defined it herself, so everybody that listens to it has their own sort of idea of what KPIG is. And that’s special.”

Why Live?

Since 1996, profits have become the bottom line for most radio stations. Many companies plan playlists in advance, often from a headquarters thousands of miles away from where the music actually streams. Lansman said that KPIG has essentially refused to let that happen based on a belief that live radio is truly something different and special.

“It’s good company. Here I am alone in this room, but I’m in the same moment with all these listeners, people who are listening and we’re all keeping each other company,” Lansman said as “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead played on-air in the background. “All the listeners are listening to the same thing, and here I am choosing the songs one song at a time instead of choosing the songs the day before or 20 minutes before even.”

Michael Keith, a radio culture expert and historian from Columbia University, said that radio stations once operated with the public good in mind. They tried to serve their communities in their news reporting, traffic and weather updates and even in their song choices. Though times have drastically changed, Keith says he is impressed by KPIG’s commitment to maintaining a live, local and community-focused enterprise.

“I think that’s when radio’s at its absolute best: when it’s spontaneous, when it’s live, when it’s genuine, when it’s not pitching,” Keith said. “It’s admirable.”

Though stations like KPIG remain the minority industry-wide, Keith said tides may soon turn. While broadcast companies may not view it as cost-effective in the short-term, Keith believes stations will ultimately have to return to live formats in an effort to develop niches that better serve local communities and win listener support. When stations can develop loyal fan bases and establish themselves as genuinely valuable to the cities they serve, profitability often follows, Keith said.

“For a long time, I’ve thought radio needs to get back to its stitching, needs to remember what it used to be and emulate that,” Keith said. “You know it’s gonna be Darwinian. It’s going to result in [the] strongest surviving. And [the] most creative, original and local will still continue to have constituency out there.”

KPIG station manager Frank Caprista said it can take a while for a radio station to build a meaningful relationship with its community.

Caprista, who said it took seven years for KPIG to financially break even, believes KPIG’s unique approach has become part of the station’s success.

“I think people can identify with it in a lot of ways, but I think it’s unique and it’s different, and we try to be entertaining, and we try not to be boring,” Caprista said. “The whole trick is they don’t know what’s coming next. So they’re listening to hear what’s coming next.”

Chuck McCabe is a local singer and songwriter from Los Gatos, and his song “I’d Rather Be in Redding” has received significant airplay on KPIG. McCabe says that he — and other local and small-scale artists like him — appreciate KPIG’s creativity and willingness to promote lesser-known acts.

“We get a lot of support from KPIG, and I hate to say it [but] if it weren’t for an off-the-wall station like that, where would we get air play?” McCabe said. “Having a live DJ — it’s a beautiful thing. It’s a personality.”

In addition to building a rapport with the local community, radio that features live DJs also has other less-obvious benefits.

In Keith’s book “The Quieted Voice”, he talks about the public-service holes that are created when radio is outsourced to locations many miles away from the cities where they are broadcast. Keith notes that in 2002 a train derailment occurred near Minot, North Dakota and sent a poisonous cloud of toxic fumes through the town. Because the most listened-to stations in the area broadcast from more than 1600 miles away in San Antonio, however, nobody at the studios could be reached to warn the community of the danger.

In today’s world, despite the fact that Americans have a greater variety of news sources than ever, radio is in a unique position since it can be accessed practically any time, any where, even in the midst of a disaster.

“Here comes a tsunami. Who’s gonna warn you?” McCabe asked, pausing briefly to drive the point home. “KPIG.”

Two Worlds: Local and Corporate

Headquartered in Los Angeles, Mapleton Communications owns KPIG Radio along with approximately 40 other stations in California, Oregon and Washington. While the company maintains a professional relationship with KPIG, it also keeps its distance from the stations, according to DJ John “Sleepy” Sandidge.

“The relationship is: they own us; they tell us what to do,” Sandidge said. “But they know enough about business to keep their hands off of us because they don’t know how to program it, they don’t understand it and they don’t live here.”

Adam Nathanson, Mapleton CEO and president, called KPIG “One of the great radio stations in the United States,” noting that the company is proud to be associated with KPIG radio.

“The people who have been working at KPIG have been there a long time and clearly know what they’re doing,” Nathanson said. “So we see our job as to let the KPIG DJs and Frank [Caprista] and the people who work there keep doing what they’re doing and support them.”

DJ Lansman, whose parents started the station 21 years ago, prefers not to give the headquarters much consideration.

“I like to pretend that I’m not a part of anyone or anything. I’m in this little room, doing what KPIG is supposed to do. I don’t want to think about pleasing some people who don’t ever show up here,” Lansman said, a hint of frustration in her voice. “They don’t know what’s going on. They don’t know where the nearest 7-Eleven is. They don’t know the people who listen. They don’t hang out at Cilantros for KPIG Happy Hour.”

Nathanson concedes that part of KPIG’s success comes from their individualism and comprehensive knowledge of what local listeners want to hear. Nonetheless, the Mapleton company was forced in 2006 to cut KPIG’s live DJs between 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. and, last spring, the company cut the 8 p.m. to 12 a.m. live slot as well.

“It was a financial move, they say; it didn’t make much sense. If you cut out four hours, how much money is that? Is it worth it?” Sandidge wondered. “They seem to think it is. They’re a business. They’re in it to make money, and that’s not why most of us are in radio. We know we’re not gonna get rich, but we love what we’re doin’.”

With its large vinyl collection and seemingly tireless commitment to live radio, KPIG functions somewhat like a time capsule. But it was also the first radio station to go online in the summer of 1995, and over the past 14 years it has developed a following that spans the globe.

In an era of radio consolidation and an overall decline in radio listenership, McCabe admires the station’s demonstrated capacity for sustained success.

“I wish the whole country was KPIG. Maybe it will get there. But you know if someone puts the money behind them, they’re gonna want to start calling the shots and ruining the whole vibe,” McCabe said. “We’ve just gotta keep the PIG small and wonderful.”

Photo by Conner Ross.

Graffiti is constantly looking for a home.

Standing before a graffiti mural, the collection of colors and keen stylistic movement denotes the persistent argument of implication the art form has faced over the years.

Always expressing the passion and aptitude of the creator while providing an underlying message to the public space it inhabits, graffiti’s place in the greater community has proven to be a constant topic of debate.

With forms ranging from extensive illustrations to scant signatures stating a name or staking territory, the definition of graffiti often relies on interpretation, framed by the culture in which it resides.

Local graffiti artist Jake Kline* has been producing graffiti art in public environments for the past seven years and believes the art form represents much more than often perceived.  

“It’s an amazing thing to interact with your environment and to change it, to make it yours,” Kline said. “Just as scholars and the archaeological community covet cave paintings and native etchings, they should find merit in the marks that the people of yesterday and today and tomorrow are so bold to make.”

A Misunderstood Art 

Dating back to the 1960s, graffiti art has progressed over the years, leaving behind it a misconstrued history. Starting in Philadelphia with a man dubbed CORNBREAD, street art has taken multiple forms throughout its lifetime, from denoting gang competition to making poignant political commentaries.

Buried beneath the social and political debates over graffiti art is a unique craft that artists have expanded to incorporate more than just straightforward statements.

“There are a lot of things that drive me to do it,” Kline said. “It can just be a message or it can be a reflection on a concept that’s interesting to me. To have someone put their mind to a concept they find interesting or important and have them be able to add that to the community, that’s amazing.”

However, the way in which some people have decided to go about expressing their ideas and opinions has criminalized graffiti in society.

“I feel like graffiti has officially gotten a negative connotation, in the way that it’s a nuisance that just needs to be cleaned up,” Kline said. 

Part of this negative connotation likely stems from graffiti’s long-standing ties to gangs. But according to Kline, this represents a very narrow concept of graffiti, or tagging. He thinks that graffiti needs also to be recognized in a broader sense as a stylistic art form practiced by many different people for many different reasons. Other artists and advocates like Kline believe that this form of expression is ultimately in need of a forum for constructive development.

Bill’s Wheels, a Santa Cruz skate shop located on Soquel Avenue, has donated the outside of their building to this effort, welcoming graffiti artists to freely display their artwork on the space. The shop is one of the only local businesses known to offer this.

Bill Ackerman, who owns the skate shop, has established a long list of artists from around the county who want to paint his property. 

“[Graffiti] is an unbelievable skill and true art form,” Ackerman said. “Seeing these guys go from tagging public walls and trains to producing books of their artwork, you can see the different levels graffiti can be taken [to] and the artistic value it can have.”

People like Kline, whose name graces Ackerman’s list of interested artists, wish more places like Bill’s Wheels would provide graffiti artists with a backdrop to articulate their passion without the threat of being arrested.

“There are all these spots that people never go, with big pieces of concrete that have been put there for bridges to go over them or for water to run through them, and to this day they do have amazing pieces on them,” Kline said. “But these are the spots people should feel safe painting at.”

Nonetheless, some street artists revel in the idea that what they do is illicit and view the danger that comes with defying authority as part of the graffiti lifestyle and culture.

Jon Harden*, a graffiti writer living in Los Angeles, started tagging at age 13 as a way to get out of the house and hang out with friends. Primarily hitting spots under bridges and along the Los Angeles River, Harden never viewed his thrill as harmful to the community despite knowing it was illegal. 

“As a kid I loved the feeling of not knowing whether or not you’d get caught,” Harden said. “Even now, my heart still races if I’m working on a spot that has high visibility and I feel that pressure can be seen in my artwork.”

But despite enjoying the art-induced rush of adrenaline, Harden says he thinks the laws pertaining to graffiti art are too severe and said that police departments should spend their time and money on issues more threatening to human safety.

“I do believe that gangs tag as a way of marking territory,” Harden said. “But I also see so many different types of people out there just trying to make art, [so] calling it criminal just seems so extreme.”

Community Call to Action

For the past five years, the city of Watsonville has seen an increase in tagging and graffiti-writing throughout the community, and Watsonville police have responded.  

“[The] increases caused us to launch a special investigation to try and curb it and control it as much as we can,” said Manny Solano, deputy chief of police at the Watsonville Police Department. 

Four months ago the department launched a trail investigation called TAG, or Target All Taggers, which incorporated traditional means of catching criminals, such as talking to those involved and understanding the strategies behind tagging, coupled with an aerosol sensor developed by Broadband Discovery Systems Inc. of Scotts Valley. 

However, the police department has purposely kept the specifics of their investigation vague in order to maintain its effectiveness across the community.

“We also created a very thorough database and we’re sharing it with other agencies in the county,” Solano said. “Being that a lot of these graffiti writers will move around through different jurisdictions, we’ve begun sharing information to identify taggers throughout the county.”

Three months after TAG was initiated, 22 juveniles and 15 adults were arrested and charged with 885 counts of vandalism, according to the Watsonville Police Department. Deeming the pilot project a success for the community, other areas of the county have now joined in on fighting vandalism.  

“On Feb. 1 we started a graffiti task force in light of Watsonville’s success,” said Sgt. Robin Mitchell of the Santa Cruz County sheriff’s department. “We wanted to be on the same page.”

While the Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD) has not seen an escalation in graffiti within the city limits, they hope to implement a task force like Watsonville’s in future years.

“We’re looking into creating a task force that would involve compiling reported acts of vandalism onto a centralized database,” said Zach Friend, SCPD spokesperson, “but it’s relatively still in the beginning stages.”

Santa Cruz was incorporated into the task force overseen by the county, but due to lack of resources, they have yet to appoint a designated graffiti investigator, Mitchell said.

Nonetheless, volunteer organizations within the city, such as Graffiti Free Santa Cruz, have arisen in response to community aggravation over the presence of graffiti and the need for assistance in removing it from the public sphere.

Graffiti Free Santa Cruz’s mission is “to maintain the natural beauty of our city by preventing and removing graffiti through community involvement, eradication, education and enforcement,” according to its Web site.

In Watsonville, an annual $150,000 is spent on removing graffiti around the city, not including the amount spent by schools and other businesses paying out of their own pocket.

“It costs the county $10,000 just for the primer in covering up graffiti, and that alone leaves walls scarred and damaged,” Mitchell said. “People need to see that it’s not just artists trying to make murals — it permanently damages both public and private space, and the environmental impact is huge.”

In creeks and watersheds around the areas where graffiti markings can be found, empty spray paint cans and markers litter the area, leaving the natural beauty tainted with remnants of taggers, Mitchell said.

In addition to the efforts made to catch acts of vandalism, Watsonville has tried providing education and alternative outlets to discourage the desecration of public and private spaces. 

“The [Watsonville] Parks and Recreation Department is exploring ways in which they could start a community art wall,” Solano said. “We’ve tried this in the past and it hasn’t been very successful, but we’re going to give it another shot and hopefully steer this energy in a positive way.” 

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*Names have been changed.