Cover Story
Connecting with home: Battered by COVID-19, SLO County’s foster care system is looking for more resource parents and emergency shelters
Reach out If you or someone you know is interested in resource parenting and providing emergency shelter, call SLO County’s foster care hotline at (805) 781-1705, or email info@slofostercare.com. When Atascadero mother Taylor saw her baby sit up for the first time over a video call, she feared she’d lost control of the situation. “I…
Meat prices are soaring, but SLO County eateries plan to provide delicious holiday dinners for all budgets
Talk turkey Order your carryout Thanksgiving meal at sloprovisions.com, or reserve a table at hatchpasorobles.com, oxandanchor.com, or piadinaslo.com. Visit slocal.com for upcoming lists of holiday dining options countywide. If you’ve already started shopping for Thanksgiving dinner this year, you may have noticed two things: bare shelves and high food prices. Shopping for the approaching holidays…
Everybody wins
If you haven’t heard of the reconciliation bill, then you probably have been in forced isolation for the past three months. The recon bill, a hotly debated piece of legislation that is consuming most of the media’s time right now, is $3.5 trillion worth of wish list that is about half of what the progressive…
Musings of a pack rat
My wife, Roberta, should be nominated as among the 10 most patient women on the planet. I say that because she lives with me. Unfortunately, over the years my collection of everything that might someday be useful multiplied secretly in the night, especially articles on national security, the environment, and energy. We won’t talk about…
Pismo author Raymond H. McDonald chronicles his lifelong friendship with Merle Haggard
Writing a memoir is a very personal thing. You peer into your past and decide what secrets you want to reveal to strangers. Likewise, writing a biography looks into another’s past, curating what important things you want to reveal about your subject. In the case of Pismo Beach author Raymond H. McDonald, he’s done both…
Cal Poly Arts presents Kurtis Blow’s The Hip Hop Nutcracker
Prolific hip-hop and rap artist Kurtis Blow is bringing The Hip Hop Nutcracker, a modern reimagining of Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet, to the Performing Arts Center (PAC) in SLO on Sunday, Nov. 7, as part of the production’s national tour (with stops in 31 cities). This year’s tour marks Blow’s first since his heart transplant in…
MYLR Gallery showcases photographer Christopher Petro in new solo exhibit, Californist Photography
Californist Photography, a new exhibition showcasing local photographer Christopher Petro, debuts at the MYLR Gallery in SLO on Friday, Nov. 5, with an Art After Dark reception held from 6 to 8 p.m. The show is scheduled to remain on display through the end of January 2022. Featured works in the exhibit are described as…
Change is overdue
In Santa Barbara County, the political class, who are strongly influenced by their well-heeled contributors, has always sought to lead the nation in environmental extremism. Their misguided governance has led to an almost total exclusion of any new and some old oil extraction facilities. These actions have led to a reduction in general fund tax…
Something I’ve wanted to do
Many kudos to Andrew J. Pridgen’s opinion response to Mr. Al Fonzi (“Self-ownership,” Oct. 28)! I have wanted many times to respond to Mr. Fonzi because he gets me so triggered! The thing is, everybody has an opinion, right? But how much credibility can someone have when they are never wrong or won’t admit they…
Grover Beach begins district map-building
From maps created with basic coding to those “even drawn on a napkin,” Grover Beach wants residents to help with its historic districting debut. “While we might be experts in the district formation process, you are ultimately the experts in Grover Beach. The law is really designed to make sure communities of interest are held…
SLO City Council shows support for new police station
San Luis Obispo is poised to get a new police station, rebranded as a public safety center, after City Council members stated their unanimous support on Nov. 2 for constructing a new facility over retrofitting the current one. How big that new center will be—and what features it will include—are still up for debate. “I…
SLO County hires first groundwater sustainability director
San Luis Obispo County has a new, one-man department dedicated to one local asset: groundwater. On Nov. 2, the SLO County Board of Supervisors finalized an at-will contract with hydrologist Blaine Reely, who will serve as the county’s first director of the Groundwater Sustainability Department. Reely, the founder of Monsoon Consultants, a civil engineering and…
Waterman Peace Village would rehab old SLO adobe, add art studio and tiny-home village
A historic California adobe. Modern tiny homes. A straw bale art gallery. Most people probably wouldn’t see any connection between those three concepts. But the city of San Luis Obispo and two local nonprofits say they’ve found one. The Waterman Peace Village, a project in its early planning stages, proposes to rehabilitate the city-owned Rosa…
Crime floppers
Cal Poly used to paint a red handprint on campus anywhere a sexual assault occurred. They were all over—a sad reminder that a young person was attacked on that very spot at a place they assumed was safe. In 2005, Cal Poly ended the red handprint campaign because too many parents and prospective students on…
Morro Bay City Council votes to let Vistra demolish the stacks
The fate of Morro Bay’s iconic stacks is no longer in the city’s hands, as the City Council voted on Oct. 26 to relinquish its power to maintain the stacks. In a June memorandum of understanding, Morro Bay and Vistra—the company that owns the stacks—came to an agreement that the city could opt to keep…
Iconic designer Pierre Rademaker has shaped more than the GAP logo
If you’ve ever walked around San Luis Obispo County, you’ve certainly seen Designer Pierre Rademaker’s work. Rademaker has left his mark all over SLO County for the past 40-plus years, creating logos and branding for beloved local businesses like the Apple Farm, EcoBambino, Meathead Movers, and the Madonna Inn. But you’ll also find his work…
Próxima Parada plays an album release show for Second Brother, on Nov. 6, at SLO Brew Rock
If the peace and love hippie ethos was still a thing, local act Próxima Parada would be at the forefront of the movement. Their music—according to the band—promotes “introspection, vulnerability, human connection, and a hell of a lot of joy,” and judging from the five singles they’ve put out over the past year that make…
The French Dispatch is auteur Wes Anderson’s love letter to old school journalism
THE FRENCH DISPATCH What’s it rated? R What’s it worth, Anna? Full price What’s it worth, Glen? Full price Where’s it showing? Galaxy, Palm Written and directed by Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom) based on a story by Roman Coppola and Hugo Guinness, The French Dispatch offers three main interconnected plots about…
Cal Poly students hope university officials will improve campus safety
Temperatures soared in San Luis Obispo County on Oct. 27, but Cal Poly’s students had a more heated topic they wanted to deal with that day. More than 100 students gathered around the open air plaza at Cal Poly’s University Union (UU) to attend a survivor support talk in the wake of the two sexual…
The Way Down
What’s it rated? TV-MA When? 2021 Where’s it showing? HBO Max “The higher the hair, the closer to God” has never been taken more seriously than by Gwen Shamblin Lara, founder of the Weigh Down program—an evangelical approach to weight loss. Taking evangelism to the extreme, Shamblin built an empire called the Remnant Fellowship that…
Planned school walkouts impact local districts’ absences
After more than a year of distance learning, Paso Robles Joint Unified School District (PRJUSD) administrators hoped this school year would see some of the highest attendance rates in a while. They thought kids would be eager to return to the classroom, and parents would be ready to have the kids out of the house…
Squid Game
What’s it rated? TV-MA When? 2021 Where’s it showing? Netflix I have to admit, this Korean miniseries sounded pretty silly to me—a bunch of adults playing kids’ games … with their lives in the balance. However, after struggling through the beginning of the first episode, I quickly became hooked and binged through the remaining series…
