Cannabis tax increase relief comes after summer increase
San Luis Obispo County cannabis cultivators will see their tax rate drop back to 6 percent this fall after operators told county supervisors that an automatic increase to 8 percent is putting additional pressure on an already struggling industry. The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors adopted an ordinance on Aug. 4 reducing the…
Nipomo mobile home park owner asks court to review county’s rent increase rejections
The owner of Buena Vista Mobile Home Park in Nipomo isn’t ready to back down despite the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors and the Mobilehome Rent Review Board twice rejecting its rent increase requests. On July 31, Buena Vista Mobile Home Park LLC filed a petition with the SLO Superior Court asking it…
Cambria fire engine purchase moves forward with federal funding
Last year, Cambria secured nearly $1 million in federal funding to replace one of its aging fire engines. Now, the Cambria Community Services District (CCSD) has purchased the roughly $1.17 million replacement, but firefighters could wait up to five years for it to arrive. U.S. Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-Monterey) visited Cambria on Aug. 6 to…
Supervisors approve $3 million for homeless services
The San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors earmarked more than $3 million in state funding to alleviate homelessness and make a plan to plug existing funding gaps in the future. The money comes from Round 5 of the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program administered by the California Department of Housing and Community…
Street talk
“What do you think San Luis Obispo needs?” 1986: 2026: Marcus Juarez, Paso Robles high school student: “I think they need to make it less annoying to get on and off from the highway. It’s kind of confusing when people are trying to get on, you’re trying to get off. … So, I think they…
Still kickin’!
If this newspaper is 40 years old, that makes me 34! I’ll always be younger than New Times, even though sometimes I sound like I’m 80. I was just reminiscing about the first shred ever: April 16, 1992. I waxed poetic about a pro-choice rally sponsored by the National Organization for Women (NOW) looking like…
Trump is coming for California’s coast
The same administration that is slashing funding for climate research and the Environmental Protection Agency, propping up the coal industry, gutting the Endangered Species Act, and planning to open the entire California coast to offshore oil drilling is now taking aim at the California Coastal Commission. In 2016, Donald Trump began a decade-long fight with…
SLO City Council doesn’t listen to residents
If tone deaf were an Olympic sport, San Luis Obispo City Hall would be on the medal stand. Raise parking fees, then partially walk them back. Promise to protect an oak tree, then approve cutting it down. Reject every grand jury finding while the problem with unruly fraternities rages on. Announce a commitment to equity…
Vote to lower Grover Beach building heights in November
We know that in October 2025, a survey was conducted by Grover Beach, which in part addressed citizens’ opinions of the new structures in town. Even then, a sound majority opposed these tall buildings. Citizens went before the City Council expressing concerns related to these structures and left council chambers frustrated when no action or…
Don’t throw Diablo Canyon into the sea
Take $30 billion. Carry it to the edge of the continent. Throw it in the Pacific. Then spend decades paying to replace what it did. That’s the plan for Diablo Canyon if it closes in 2030. Building a plant like it today costs about $30 billion. Georgia just did it. California already owns one. It’s…
New Times revisits its pages and slices of SLO County history as it turns 40
As New Times inched closer to its 40th anniversary, the time came to revisit its earliest issues, all painstakingly bound together in six-month increments weighing roughly 10 pounds apiece. Some names in the yellowed pages seemed more familiar than others, largely because they’re people who still live in San Luis Obispo County and contribute to…
Tourism booms in SLO County 40 years after 1980s prediction
Forty years ago, tourism was considered one of San Luis Obispo County’s most promising industries. Today, it’s a multi-billion-dollar economic force. In 1986, tourism supported 6,500 local jobs and contributed $260 million to the area economy, according to a report from Berkeley-based Applied Development Economics cited in one of New Times’ first issues. At the…
Dearest readers
In the last 40 years, the way that New Times gets put together may have changed, but our mission has remained constant. The vision of our late founder, Steve Moss, still drives us. As Moss put it: “Assisting readers so they can better comprehend the community in which they live is our main role. There’s…
Sheriff’s Family Day celebrates 30 years of connecting community and first responders on Sept. 19
For most people, a visit from law enforcement usually happens on one of the worst days of their lives. On Saturday, Sept. 19, locals will get to interact with these organizations for a more festive reason. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Sheriff’s Family Day, a free event that has grown from a small…
Meet four local musicians who’ve been around longer than New Times
Forty years feels like a long time. Steve Carell didn’t become a household name until he was 43 years old and starred in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Lucille Ball was 40 when I Love Lucy premiered in 1951. Yes, 40 years is a while, but compared to some SLO County players, it’s small potatoes, baby! Western…
Hospice SLO death film trilogy begins Aug. 12 at Palm Theatre
What happens when we die? That’s the central question of the When You Die Trilogy. Part 1 was scheduled to screen courtesy of Hospice SLO County at the Palm Theatre on Wednesday, Aug. 12. Dates and times for Parts 2 and 3 will be announced later. “Parts 2 and 3 are still TBD as we…
North County Dance Foundation to hold Nutcracker tryouts Aug. 22
As holiday traditions go, The Nutcracker may be one of the most venerated—a ballet that can trace its roots to 1892 and features Tchaikovsky’s familiar score, from a story that’s even older: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1816 short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. Set on Christmas eve, the story follows young Clara as family and…
One Night Only offers a charming romcom within a ridiculous premise
Will Gluck (Easy A, Friends with Benefits, Anyone But You) directs Travis Braun’s rom-com script set in a dystopian future America where premarital sex is outlawed under a “chastity mandate” except for one night a year. Two New Yorkers searching for love—Owen (Callum Turner), a pizza shop owner, and Allie (Monica Barbaro), a commercial jingles…
The Last House is a claustrophobic survivalist horror story
Weird rain has come to attack both the suburban neighborhood and apparently the entire world that Ann (Greta Lee) and Jason’s (Wagner Moura) family lives in. Kids Ruth (Riley Chung) and Graham (Noah Alexander Snosnowski) must navigate their new world as well, and it seems that there’re monsters lurking outside just waiting for them to…
Bang My Box: The Robin Byrd Story examines a cable TV trailblazer
Do you remember “leased access” cable television? The FCC mandated that cable operators must offer independent cable creators and producers rentable airtime. An example of a local cable access show was the fishing parody program Fishmasters, which aired from 1993 to 2004 at some ungodly hour. That’s basically what New York’s The Robin Byrd Show…
Good Vibez presents rock reggae act Pepper at Fremont Theater
I’ve always wondered where Hawaiian rock reggae trio Pepper got their name, and now I know. It was a Saturday Night Live skit with Dana Carvey and Adam Sandler called “The Pepper Boy,” available on YouTube. In it, Carvey is an experienced Italian restaurant “pepper boy” showing greenhorn pepper boy Sandler how to approach diners…
Visit Grover Beach’s only tasting room as the owners take to the skies for a new chapter
Millions of orange and black butterflies have taken flight from the designated grove of eucalyptus trees off Highway 1 in Pismo Beach. A hair south of the sanctuary, one Shell Beach couple realized it was time for a new adventure of their own. Partners Julie Garcia and Ercilia Martins bought Grover Beach’s Monarch Grove Winery…
