Cover Story
Creek Life
Additional videos Video by Steve E. Miller Videos below courtesy of Freddy Otte/City of SLO City of SLO steelhead video #1 City of SLO steelhead video #2
Weyrich’s out of the woods–for now
After five years of tax delinquency, David Weyrich—owner of the historic Carlton Hotel in Atascadero—paid the first installment toward an enormous property tax debt, only a month before the property would have gone to public auction on June 30. According to Lori Guidotti, redemption and payment processing manager at the SLO County tax collector’s office,…
Summer sweet
Many folks associate the month of June with gloom. Along the coastline of San Luis Obispo, thick banks of fog have begun to roll into the neighborhoods of newly paroled kids who just want to bust out their Moon Shoes and slip ‘n’ slides after nine months of hard time served at their grammar schools.…
What type of fish would you be?
Robin Newman Taco Bell cashier “A clownfish because I love Finding Nemo. Just keep swimming. Robin Walker former St. Joseph High School art and drama teacher “A rainbow fish. When I was a teenage girl, my mom gave me a book, The Rainbow Fish. She had all these beautiful scales, but her friends didn’t have…
Healthy Thai and Asian fusion
I’ve known many people who, while working in restaurants, are so personable they draw customers back again and again. A personable server or restaurateur is never enough for this food lover, much as I do appreciate great service. I judge a restaurant first by the food; service rates second place in my book. However, during…
Learn by doing!
If your only concept of Cal Poly students is roving bands of youngsters milling through Farmers Market or noisy neighbors with couches on their front porches, you’re only seeing a tiny fraction of the university community. The truth is most Cal Poly kids are sober, hardworking, ambitious young people eager to get out into the…
Go Uptown!
JC Brooks and The Uptown Sounds throw the kind of ’60s swinger parties that only happen in nostalgic fantasies or at the Chicago Playboy mansion five decades ago. The tight band delivers bright, soulful R&B filled with urban swagger, all delivered by a 6 1/2-foot-tall front man. Brooks is the son of a Jersey funk…
Meow!
If you’ve ever thought about having a cat, June might be the month to pounce on the idea. Woods Humane Society is celebrating 58 years of service by participating in National Shelter Adopt a Cat Month, and prospective adopters are invited to “name your own price” to adopt a cat older than six months. By…
McKinney exits Atascadero
Longtime Atascadero City Manager Wade McKinney has accepted the city manager position in the moneyed desert oasis of Indian Wells, the city of Atascadero announced in a May 31 press release. McKinney will be receiving a significant pay bump at his new job. According to his Indian Wells employment agreement, McKinney’s base salary will be…
You’re giving us a voice
Thank you, New Times, for seeming to be the only news reporters in town that have covered the obvious truth about the Morro Bay Aquarium. Any conscious and objective human being who walks in that place will leave with an unsettling feeling. The Morro Bay Aquarium is outdated and cruel. Thank you for confirming what…
Observe sea creatures in the wild
For more than three years, I volunteered at an Embarcadero concern adjacent to Morro Bay’s “aquarium.” Every day, disturbing and mournful cries of imprisoned harbor seals and other creatures wafted out into the street from their chain-link fenced-in enclosure and could be heard for blocks in every direction. The sounds of happy frolicking seals and…
More thoughts on news
I thank Gary Wechter for his response in the May 30 New Times (“A lesson to learn”) to my commentary (“Good News, bad news,” May 23) about the Good News Club, the religious group promoting its dogma in our public schools. However, he makes numerous logical errors in his critique. Space allows me to adequately…
I’m living one day at a time
Hello. My name is Steve, and I’m a gun-aholic. I started using firearms when I was a teenager. I began with the small stuff: a borrowed .22 single shot rifle, an occasional shotgun round. But soon, I advanced to purchasing my own weapons, including a semi-automatic rifle, 12 gauge shotguns, and a pistol or two.…
I told you so
Everybody loves to say “I told you so.” Old, passively racist grandmas who watch Fox News love to say it. Liberal hipsters who like their organic fair trade coffee with a side of trendy music love to say it. Smokey the seal would probably love to say it, if he weren’t imprisoned in a subpar…
My state of mind
As a guy, I was almost entirely ignorant of the stereotypes around which my masculine identity revolves until I hit college. I was thrown into a sporty dorm hall and met my two sporty roommates. As a resident of a fitness-themed dorm, I use the word “sporty” quite literally. Many people I’ve met come from…
CLUBS
Goin’ South … BRANCH ST. DELI: 203 E. Branch St., Arroyo Grande, 489-9099. Live music Fri. from 5:30-8:30 p.m. THE CLIFFS RESORT: 2757 Shell Beach Road, 773-5000 or cliffsresort.com. 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 Pismo…
Like musical chairs, but for arts organizations
Two of the community’s artistic heavyweights—the SLO County Arts Council, known as ARTS Obispo, and the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival (SLOIFF)—have seen a dramatic shift in leadership lately. First, Wendy Eidson, SLOIFF executive director since 2006, will move into a new role as the festival’s artistic director, focusing on year-round programming and marketing.…
What’s he building in there?
The opening sequences of British director Sophie Fiennes’ spectacularly eerie Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow could easily be the start of a horror film. Fiennes’ camera floats eerily through a landscape of what appears to be the ruin of some foreign city, all glass and lead and cement, as slow, atmospheric music builds to…
A cabinet of curiosities
Have you ever returned to your childhood playground, or school grounds, or even your childhood home, and remarked upon how small it now seems? That childhood haunts are always bigger in the mind than they are in reality is often attributed, of course, to the physical differences in size between a child and an adult.…
Cougars & Mustangs
As cries of agony reverberate across the shady courtyards of our fair town, Cuesta students menacingly sip their Amontillado under velvet umbrellas and smirk with satisfaction at a sound all too familiar: Cal Poly finals week. Whatever right they have to tout such smugness is a detail left to the reader’s interpretation, and will no…
Panga bust nets lots of dope
SLO County Sheriff’s Department officials announced that the recent arrest of suspected drug traffickers came with a major find: 53 bales—roughly 1,900 pounds—of marijuana reportedly worth some $1.3 million. According to a department press release, deputies spotted suspicious vehicles traveling into Montaña de Oro State Park just after midnight on May 29. The sheriff’s Special…
Grand jury advises a dispatch merger for Arroyo Grande and Grover
A May 30 San Luis Obispo County grand jury report recommends a consolidation of police and fire dispatch services in Arroyo Grande and Grover Beach. Similar ideas have been floated for many years, but this report requires all the major parties—city governments and the police and fire departments—to respond to the report’s findings by July…
What fracking moratorium?
On May 24, SLO Clean Water Action announced plans to deliver a petition asking state Assemblyman Katcho Achadjian (R-SLO) to support efforts to stop fracking in California. At that time, three bills in legislative committees threatened to put the kibosh on the controversial oil extraction practice until the state could study its effect on water…
Pismo to ground sky lanterns
A brush fire that blackened the hills above Pirate’s Cove last summer provided the motivation for Pismo Beach to outlaw a harmful invasive. Chinese sky lanterns—small hot-air kites powered by candle heat—run as little as $1 apiece when you get them by Internet bulk order. The one that crashed below Ontario Ridge on July 30,…
Dry Creek Vineyard 2008 Endeavour Cabernet Sauvignon
One of the finest Sonoma County cabs I’ve had recently, the Endeavour is this winery’s flagship. It was grown in Dry Creek Vineyard AVA in Sonoma Valley, and I was thrilled at the first sip of this handsome, harmonious red blend. Mostly cabernet with seven percent petit verdot and two percent merlot, its forward ripe…
Costa de Oro 2012 Sauvignon Blanc Santa Maria Valley
It’s not the type of white we locals normally crave from Santa Maria Valley (chardonnay), but this delightful sauvignon blanc is worth seeking out. It opens with a pretty bouquet of grapefruit and sweet melon flavors, nicely balanced by notes of grass, lime, and kiwi. It’s exactly the kind of white I crave with spicy…
