Cover Story
Event discontent: SLO County’s flawed event laws are a burden for almost everyone
San Luis Obispo County’s system for regulating events is seriously flawed, and everybody knows it. Event organizers know it. County elected officials know it. The County Planning and Building Department knows it. The SLO County grand jury knows it. Citizens know it. Really, people have known that the system is problematic ever since it first…
Court of appeal rules in favor of a Wal-Mart in Atascadero
Wal-Mart is one step closer to breaking ground in Atascadero. Atascadero officials announced July 9 that the Second Appellate District Court of Appeal ruled in favor of the city in a lawsuit brought by Save Atascadero, a citizen group opposing Wal-Mart. The lawsuit was part of a saga that began nearly a decade ago when…
Stay gold: Whether drizzled in sauces or eaten raw, local honey brightens Central Coast kitchens
Love is about the little things. Every morning, my early bird husband springs out of bed, throws on his all-purpose Levis and lets the chickens out of their coop. Then, he consumes a bowl of cereal in front of the computer. At exactly 7:30 a.m. sharp, I can hear him filling our bright yellow teapot,…
John Shoals announces candidacy for Grover Beach mayor
Longtime Grover Beach politico John Shoals will be running for the city’s mayoral seat in the upcoming Nov. 4 general election. Shoals debuted the news in a July 14 press release, and made a formal announcement at Grover Beach City Hall that afternoon. In the press release, Shoals touted endorsements from current Grover Beach City…
Anti up: Trouble is brewing between a card room owner and a prominent beer maker
Among the items heard by the Paso Robles City Council at its July 1 meeting were two amendment requests from Don Ezzell, owner of the Paso Robles Central Coast Casino (PRCCC). First was a request to amend the city’s zoning code so to allow cardrooms in the manufacturing zoning district. Second was a request to…
Grover Beach’s Peterson will seek a second mayoral term
On July 7, Grover Beach Mayor Debbie Peterson announced that she’ll be running for reelection in November. “There are lots of things that I want to do in the next two potential years,” Peterson told New Times. “Being mayor is a full-time job, and you have more of an opportunity to move things forward than…
What event would you most like to see in San Luis Obispo?
Debbie Schuck administrative assistant “I want SLO to bring back the 4th of July Parade.” Kristy Hamilton photographer “More concerts.” Caitie Matejcek optometrist “Concerts.” Samantha Sullivan writer “I’ve always wanted to see Lady Gaga or Pink.”
Suzy Miller combines dance and Shakespeare at SLO Little Theatre
“All the world’s a stage,” Shakespeare proclaimed in his gender-bending comedy, As You Like It. Now, it’s probably more apt to say, “All the world is Shakespeare.” Try as you might to escape his thumb-biting clutches, thou can’t elude him. In film, television, literature, the novelty sock industry, and even on the white-cotton front of…
Kenny Loggins plays Vina Robles Amphitheatre on July 12!
Because Caddyshack is pretty much my all-time favorite comedy, I will forever have Kenny Loggins’ song “I’m Alright” cycling through my head whenever I think about the film. That may be reason enough to see the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and guitarist perform at Vina Robles Amphitheatre with special guest Blue Sky Riders this Saturday, July…
Artifacts
Tale as old as time Bonjour! Bonjour! Préparez-vous, as the French say, because Disney’s Beauty and the Beast will be playing in San Luis Obispo from July 11 through 20 at the Spanos Theatre. Kelrik Productions is producing the play, and Erik Austin directs as this classic Disney movie comes to life on the stage.…
Adopt a cat or kitten July 12, 19, or 26 outside PETCO in SLO Town!
You know what’s adorable? Videos of kittens on Facebook! You know what’s even more adorable? Actual kittens right in front of you! Since I desperately want to play with some kittens, but I need an excuse to go to The Feline Network’s Adopt-A-Pet event outside the Madonna Road PETCO this Saturday, July 12, without actually…
Studios on the Park displays retro art of Burl Vreeland and Rick Davis
In a white room in Paso Robles, you can make a man’s head unhinge by the slight turn of a lever. If that seems too much, just a few steps over, you can make a man’s eyebrows wiggle. And if all this manhandling feels a little bizarre, there’s always the dune knight and glossy, wall-mounted…
Clubs 7/10/14-7/17/14
Goin’ South … THE CLIFFS RESORT: 2757 Shell Beach Road, 773-5000 or cliffsresort.com. CUVEE BISTRO AND CHAMPAGNE BAR: 550 1st St., Avila Beach, 595-2245. Live music Thurs. and Sat. 6-9pm. F. MCLINTOCKS SALOON: Two locations: 750 Mattie Road in Pismo Beach and 133 Bridge St. in Arroyo Grande. 773-1892 or mclintocks.com. Live music at the…
Indulge
Pig out: Central Coast culinary greats will converge in Los Olivos for a porktastic feast of epic proportions paired with wine, bourbon, and craft beer during Bacon & Barrels at Saarloos & Sons Field July 18-20 … Eureka Burger has combined Sprecher’s Hard Root Beer with vanilla ice cream to create a boozy twist on…
Downtown Boba’s Unicorn and Sidecar’s Rollin’ The Dice Cocktail
Boba is magic: Downtown Boba’s Unicorn The elusive unicorn is chillin’ at Downtown Boba, and I can tell just by taking a peek at the tea joint’s lilac-painted door. No, I’m not losing it. Each quarter, owner and proud Cal Poly graduate Samir Aburashed has resolved to paint the door a different hue in honor…
Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo dishes out summer lovin’
More than 16,000 children in San Luis Obispo County are eligible to receive free or reduced price lunches during the school year. But what happens to these children when school is no longer in session? Enter Lovin’ Lunchbox. Lovin’ Lunchbox is a program hosted by the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo, which gives…
Cougars & Mustangs
I remember my early Interneting days, fiddling about on the class computer until I was picked up from first grade. Every now and then, I’d see some pop-up or sidebar ad that claimed I could win a prize if I beat a little game that it offered, usually something along the lines of punching a…
Revisionist history: Not all historic SLO buildings are necessarily historic
The inspiration for the idea came from Anthropologie. Ariel Shannon, owner of Bluebird Salon, said she wanted to do something to improve the look of her new location, previously a nondescript stucco building on Marsh Street in downtown San Luis Obispo. Inspired by the reclaimed-wood façades on various Anthropologie boutiques, Shannon set out in April…
Grover Beach settles on $48 million for a street bond
After some initial discord, the Grover Beach City Council settled on a $48 million bond measure to help fix the city’s failing roads. The voters will ultimately decide the fate of the measure in the Nov. 4 general election. The City Council unanimously accepted the measure at its July 7 meeting, when members discussed the…
Morro Bay finalizes a measure that may give June primary the boot
Voters in Morro Bay will have a chance to give the city’s unique primaries the boot this November. On July 8, the Morro Bay City Council voted 3-2 to officially put the city’s June primary on the chopping block. Morro Bay’s summer primary was put into place in 2006 to ensure that no elected official…
John Conner makes a bid for San Luis Obispo mayor
A San Luis Obispo bed and breakfast owner, John Conner, will challenge Jan Marx for the mayoral seat this November. Conner, owner of Petit Soleil bed and breakfast in SLO, recently pulled his paperwork to run for office. In a phone interview with New Times, Conner said he’d considered running for City Council after Eric…
Paso water district bill loses key support
The two groups that birthed the idea of a water district to manage the ailing Paso Robles groundwater basin have pulled their support for a key bill, kicking further advocacy of the process over to the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors. Paso Robles Agricultural Alliance for Groundwater Solutions (PRAAGS), a vintner group, and…
A conservation plan seeks to dredge Laguna Lake
Docks surrounding Laguna Lake lie in the mud, tilted at angles that would make them difficult to walk on, much less launch a boat from. “We like to joke that we’ve got beachfront property,” Rob Davidson, a lakefront resident, quipped about the mud banks created by the shallow water. Davidson and many of his neighbors…
Over a double barrel of ale
I don’t know who wrote the national anthem, and I don’t really care. I figure that, whoever they are, they’re dead now and therefore incapable of carrying their fair share of a conversation about last week’s episode of Orange is the New Black or that funny thing George Takei just posted to Facebook. If they…
The Second Amendment was an afterthought
Greg Larson’s response (“What did Adolph Hitler have to say about gun control?” June 26) to Art Tyree’s letter to the editor of June 19 (“Yosemite Sam deniers and tyranny criers”) contains many factual errors. The most obvious and commonly cited one by gun advocates is the assumption that the Second Amendment is the overarching…
Public opinion is shifting
Mr. Wechter’s recent opinion piece on climate change is a puzzling grab bag of misapplied logic that was probably too confused itself to confuse many New Times readers (“Climate change nonsense,” July 3). Each “point” presented is easily refuted by a simple review of the facts and conclusions of current climate science, widely available and…
Science trumps Wechter’s opinion
If Gary Wechter (“Climate change nonsense,” July 3) held an advanced degree in any physical science, he would know that arguments for or against climate change must be based on observable/physical evidence. This is what the scientific community is using when it tells us, unequivocally, that global warming is occurring due to increased atmospheric CO2…
Be skeptical of PR packaged as reviews
I enjoy the film section of New Times, both for the fun commentary on films and the general information on new releases. On a few occasions, I feel New Times has done a disservice by printing promotional material that reflects what the filmmakers would like one to think a film is about, rather than a…
What’s going on here?
Our favorite feature is gone, discontinued, on vacation, or what? Kathy Marks Hardesty has left the country? The only reason we read each Thursday edition is to find out the latest wine and dining places on the Central Coast. It is hard to believe that you are going against your purpose of presenting “news and…
We can preserve book culture
William L. Seavey’s letter (“Physical books do survive,” July 3) pondering the survival of books made of paper, ink, and cloth merits further comment. Case in point: Last month I visited a book sale section in a Central Coast library. To my astonishment, I discovered Norma Broude and Mary Garrard’s 1994 lavishly illustrated and definitive…
Anybody else want to see some other names?
I just might believe that you folks may have received a lot of 55 Fiction letters. And believe me, some of them are real corny! But my complaint here is even though you may have picked about 17 that your judges call good, I am disappointed that a half dozen or more came from the…
Maybe I needed more salt
Dear Glen Starkey, I took your article with a few grains of salt, as per your suggestion (“Fighting words,” July 3). It still pissed me off. I’m sorry you had a negative experience at poetry church. I’m also sorry you have to be drunk to have a good time. Mostly though, I’m sorry you were…
