Cover Story
Ditch your car
Welcome back, students! Goodbye, parking! # You education seekers are a boon to the local economy while being a plague on SLO’s single-lane highways and one-way streets but you don’t have to get stuck with that identity. Last week, while my boss paced back and forth in the newsroom, cursing my empty desk with each…
Radical and thriving
Two crackerjack board shops are taking skate, surf, and snow to a whole new level. The Central Coast is well known for the classic (and monstrously marketable) surf and skate lifestyles, as well as the many stores that cater to those wet-and-wild needs. But what makes certain shops stand out? Two local board establishments are…
Letters
Good news means no news I have noticed a marked lack of news about the Iraq war in many of our newspapers this last month. I have often heard the old adage, “No news is good news,” but now I’m wondering if the reverse is true, that good news means no news for our left-wing…
Meet the new guy
# Visiting Domaine Alfred in late August, I finally met their new winemaker Fintan “Fin” du Fresne and found that he was feeling pretty enthusiastic about the 2007 harvest. A day earlier, he brought in his first grapes: four tons of Pinot Gris, which kicked off their harvest in Edna Valley. The Pinot Noir was…
Sewer vote raises questions
Hundreds of Los Osos property owners have already returned their ballots on the town’s controversial sewer assessment, while hundreds of others have flooded county offices with questions and concerns, the SLO County Board of Supervisors was told Sept. 11. “The ballots are coming in fast and furious,” said Vicki Shelby of the county clerk’s office.…
Sound and nonsense, signifying passion
# For the grand finale of his Sept. 20 concert, “Gonzgo: Instruments of Sound,” Bob B. Hobbs plans to have audience members throw SuperBalls at a Wurlitzer piano that he stripped down to its bare bones. This playfulness, bordering on absurdity, is what drove him to create the six musical structures that currently reside at…
The true-life dorma-story
Some call on-campus living a time-honored college tradition, through which lifelong memories and friendships are created. Others consider it a form of torture akin to waterboarding, marked by limited privacy, small space, and large fees. Whatever living accommodation you choose, New Times is here to help shed some stark fluorescent light on a situation in…
Here’s how to create affordable housing
Having read the article “Affordable by choice” (Aug. 30) about the county’s and cities’ inclusionary housing programs, I felt absolutely compelled to respond. Where is it written that any developers, large or small, should have to sell off homes at below cost to a handful of people who are fortunate enough to win a housing…
Officials search for cause of Cayucos surf pollution
A popular North County surf spot was recently deemed too dirty to swim in after test samples revealed high bacteria levels in the water and county health officials don’t know why. On Sept. 10, the county health department posted an advisory at a Cayucos beach near Studio Drive after discovering high levels of fecal coliform…
San Simeon fined again for sewage violations
San Simeon’s Community Services District has been fined $60,000 by the Regional Water Quality Control Board for 20 violations of its discharge permit. The penalty follows two other fines totaling $164,000 in 2005, issued after excessive coliform bacteria was found in the community’s treated wastewater, which is discharged into the ocean 900 feet offshore. The…
Local beaches will benefit from cleanup
Old-fashioned transportation horses will be called upon for help with a modern-day problem trash on local beaches during the Coastal Cleanup Day on Sept. 15. # Hundreds of local families, surfers, and other beach-lovers are expected to take part in the beach cleanup effort, picking up around 6,000 pounds of trash and recyclables strewn in…
What is it good for?
For many incoming freshmen, thoughts of someday post-graduation celebrations are capped with visions of an easy transition from flip-flops and poverty to wingtips and salaries. But with the ever-increasing cost of tuition, the potential of tens of thousands of dollars of debt, and the uncertainty of the job market after graduation particularly for those planning…
Then there were two
“We’re nothing,” Dan Ainsworth scoffed, regarding the SLO City Parks and Recreation Department’s recent reclassification of his Men’s Senior Baseball League. “We’re just a recreational league.” He was reacting to changes that have given his league the lowest priority for use of the Sinsheimer stadium, where they’ve been playing for seven years. If Ainsworth sounds…
The perils of plastic
Robert Peters received a free T-shirt when he filled out his first credit card application during WOW at Cal Poly in the mid-’90s. But hidden between the lines of the fine print was a hard lesson that took its toll for years after the shirt was worn out. # “It made it easy to spend…
Don’t get fresh with me
Welcome! This seems to be the week to welcome new students, so I’m jumping on the bandwagon. The welcome wagon. The welcome bandwagon, if you will. WOW! You’re great, we’re great, and Cal Poly’s great! And the war in Iraq is going really well! Now that we’ve got our tone established, I want you to…
Claim alleges sheriff spied on chief deputy
The third-highest-ranking officer in the San Luis Obispo Sheriff’s County Department has filed a $1.25 million claim against his own division, alleging that a pair of co-workers illegally spied on him. Chief Deputy Gary Hoving filed a claim on Sept. 7, which accused two of his colleagues Sheriff Pat Hedges and Undersheriff Steve Bolts of…
Fast Facts
Ergonomic equals comfy goodness. And now you have the chance to experience it firsthand. Relax the Back, the Central Coast’s source for ergonomically designed products and furnishings, recently implemented a Medical Partnership Program. The direct pairing of physical therapists and physicians with Relax the Back liaisons creates assistance for patients, enabling a continuum of care…
Strong arm of the blues
# The Mississippi Delta, Chicago, Texas these are the regions we think of as America’s blues Meccas, but the West Coast has a long and storied blues tradition of its own, and part of that story is guitarist, singer, and songwriter James Armstrong, a master of the left coast blues style. Armstrong’s mom was an…
Local professor gets to know Macedonia
“And what are you doing in Skopje?” the dark-eyed woman asked as she handed me a pair of shoes I had just paid for with the last of my Macedonian denars. # And I explained, for what I knew would perhaps be the last time, that I was a visiting U.S. Fulbright Scholar and that…
