Cover Story
Happiness and cheese: Award-winning Palo Mesa Pizza makes its way to San Luis Obispo
I felt at home the moment I walked through Palo Mesa Pizza’s doors. There’s something truly genuine about the environment that owner Michael Stevens has built at his businesses—not to mention the amazing pizza. We’re talking internationally acclaimed pizza. In March 2013, Stevens competed in the International Pizza Challenge in Las Vegas and placed first…
San Luis Obispo prostitution sting nets nine arrests
San Luis Obispo police arrested eight people on prostitution-related charges—including a 16-year-old girl—during a sting operation at a SLO motel on May 29. In addition to the eight prostitution-related arrests, 20-year-old Douglas James Stephens of SLO was arrested on suspicion of felony human trafficking and pimping a minor, both charges involving the 16-year-old. According to…
If you could choose your last meal, what would it be?
Leif Casagrande hotel management, the Apple Farm “A salad of lemon wedges and cocktail olives in my martini at Giuseppe’s.” Thomas Palma aerospace engineer “A bottle of pinot noir, and a big juicy steak with mashed potatoes and buttered carrots.” Carmen Herrera housekeeping supervisor at the Apple Farm “I love clam chowder. It would definitely…
Hayley’s Bites
My own experiences in the kitchen read something like an episode of I Love Lucy, if she were to miraculously emerge from the zany hijinks with a quasi-fancy meal and a few burn marks (red hair and lipstick also add to this visual). Although my husband is pleased by the output, he bemoans my need…
A toast to all the things I’ve never eaten
Let me paint the picture: It’s 1993. You’re a barista at a hip, Hermosa Beach coffee shop, right near the strand. Machines are howling; frothy milk bits are flying through the air. Suddenly, a high-pitched voice appears from nowhere. “Latte with two shots, please!” You look down, only to see a 6-year-old girl donning a…
Former Blasters members Dave Alvin and Phil Alvin have a new album and a show at Live Oak Music Festival on June 13
I loved, loved, loved The Blasters in the early ’80s. The American roots revival act (as well as The Stray Cats) introduced me to rockabilly and turned me on to original rockabilly artists like Gene Vincent, Duane Eddy, Buddy Holly, Wanda Jackson, and Elvis Presley, the latter of whom I was aware of more as a…
The 2014 James Beard Book Awards serve up a heavy dose of high-minded British cooking; ARTS Obispo is looking for a few good poets
Beardylicious The James Beard Foundation Book Awards are the Pulitzers of the food writing world. This year’s awards were announced in early May, with the coveted Cookbook of the Year going to British celebrity chef and molecular gastronomist Heston Blumenthal for Historic Heston, a $200 slipcovered tome from Bloomsbury. The only-slightly-more-accessible Diana Kennedy, grande dame…
The 3rd Annual Central Coast Oyster & Music Festival happens June 7 at the Avila Beach Golf Resort
You gotta love a festival whose motto is “Shuck yeah!!!” I mean three exclamation points!!! They’re excited about oysters!!! And music!!! This Saturday, June 7, from noon until 8 p.m., the Avila Beach Golf Resort will be transformed into a foodie and music Mecca filled with cool artsy installations, food and drink vendors, and all-day…
Caitlin Freeman’s ‘Modern Art Desserts’ proves you can have your art and eat it, too!
Modern Art Desserts “Trees! How ghastly!” Piet Mondrian writes in his 1908 Notes of a Painter. The corresponding cry from Blue Bottle Coffee Company pastry chef Caitlin Freeman might be “Sheet cakes! How ghastly!” Though her creative confections may begin with the basic elements of dessert making, they end up as works of art. Freeman’s…
Next stop, November: the San Luis Obispo County primary finalized some races, left others undecided until the fall
It’s over! Well, mostly over. Actually, for some candidates, it’s over. We’ll put it this way: The June 3 primary election is over, which means some candidates now have another five months of campaigning ahead of them, while others must anxiously await the final tally before officially declaring victory or defeat. County Clerk-Recorder Julie Rodewald…
Clubs 6/5/14
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…
The Kona Ice truck will help you beat the heat
It began with a simple mission—to give back to the community. Yvette Alcoser and Mark Eagles, along with their 5-year-old daughter, Sophia Eagles, drive a bright blue, colorful van painted with a penguin sporting a Hawaiian shirt that spouts out tunes of familiar tropical melodies ringing through the crisp Central Coast air. The words “Kona…
Supes downsize an Avila Beach festival
A proposed two-day, 10,000-person Avila Beach festival known as Forever Never Land was denied a vital permit by the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors at the board’s June 3 meeting. After almost three hours of discussion, the board voted 4-1, with Supervisor Debbie Arnold opposed, to deny a Temporary Commercial Outdoor Entertainment License…
Cougars & Mustangs
O Mustangs, darkness strokes the road ahead, and beckons forth the monomythic bout. Here are your Finals. The trials and tribulations of your semester have brought with them knowledge and experience, and as the coiled hydra in the shadows rises, its scales and talons shifting and scraping about, calm your mind, summoning from that space…
Bring on the cheese: The Santa Ynez Valley Cheese Company embarks on a stinky and tasty evolution
Staring at me from a white sheet of wax paper is a blue- and white-speckled mass of Stilton. Drizzled alongside it are a few dots of lavender-vanilla honey. “They say mold loves sugar, sugar loves mold: You know, it’s a good marriage,” Kristin Collins, owner of the Santa Ynez Valley Cheese Company, tells me on…
You’ve been served: The Courthouse Café dishes up tasty food in a rather unusual location
Whether you’re paying off that speeding ticket, doing a background check, or reporting for jury duty, chances are most San Luis Obispo County residents will eventually end up at the county courthouse. After you walk through the metal detector and pass your metallic objects through the X-ray machine, though, the first thing on your mind…
Truffle shuffle: Could local truffles be the next fungus among us?
It’s hard to think of truffles without conjuring images of pigs snorting across dark European forests leading someone on a hunt through the woods in search of a potato-sized lump of culinary gold—there’s probably also a beret somewhere in this particular fantasy. In a few years, however, and with a little bit of luck, Terry…
Corrections
• The May 29 cover story, “Office politics,” misstated the sentence in a plea agreement case. The defendant in that case received three years’ formal probation. • The runner-up for Best Thrift Store in New Times’ recent Best Of issue was listed by an outdated name. The runner-up award winner is Wilshire Hospice Hope Chest.…
Paso Robles High School teacher arrested on suspicion of sex with minor
A Paso Robles High School teacher arrived to school the morning of June 3, and was arrested soon after. Jeremy Ryan Monn was arrested on suspicion of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor-a felony-and booked in the county jail. The Paso Robles Police Department (PRPD) began an investigation after receiving an anonymous tip on June…
A recent death in the San Luis Obispo County jail marks the third such incident in four months
An inmate recently died while in custody at the San Luis Obispo County Jail, the third such incident so far this year. According to a Sheriff’s Department press release, Timothy Richard Janowicz was found unresponsive in his bunk at approximately 5:40 a.m. on May 30. He was booked into jail on Nov. 20, 2013. According…
Abolish this
You are what you eat. There. My editors insisted that I gab incessantly about food like one of those people who constantly talks about food. You know the type? With the mouth and eyes and hands, and a lot of them have hair, too? They’re annoying, right? So now that that’s out of the way,…
I believe fireworks cause a dearth of birds
We have lived in Oceano now for six months, and I am disappointed in the lack of birds around compared to Arroyo Grande. Oh, we have the crows and the gulls that fly over us, but little else. I hear and see a turtle dove, a scrub jay, and in the distance a red finch…
Let’s preserve these springs
The movement to purchase and enhance what someday will become the Pismo Preserve points to the value of setting aside and adding to the many pristine natural assets we are fortunate to have here on the Central Coast. The Sweet Springs Preserve, which has been in existence for many years in Los Osos, is an…
This is survival, not politics
Thank you Heidi Harmon (“Climate crisis has no party affiliation,” May 22) for your succinct summary of the need to work together to address the most frightening threat to our world: climate change. It is surely here, and we, as the so-called intelligent species, must mobilize to implement solutions now. The math tells us that…
We need to pay off our climate debt now
Heidi Harmon eloquently addresses the fact that climate change is affecting all us right now (“Climate crisis has no party affiliation,” May 22). When the well runs dry, it won’t matter if the owner is a Republican or Democrat. Climate change is not an ideology. It’s a fact. The consequences of denying these problems are…
Reconsider the rodeo, you clowns
Your lighthearted portrayal of the Santa Maria Elks Rodeo in “No clowning around” (May 29) appears to be a public relations piece to counter animal welfare concerns. Rodeo animals receive nothing close to royal treatment, and claiming that the animals are bred to buck is ignoring the tools of the trade: electric prods, spurs, and…
What will end the obsession?
I used to keep a blog online fairly religiously, and I was good about it, offering witty, profane, provocative, decidedly liberal takes on the state of the world. I won’t bore you with a link or an admonition to go check it out, however, because a few months ago I threw in the towel. Shut…
