Pajaro Valley Magazine December 30 2022

PAJARO VALLEY

WELCOMING

New Year’s Eve celebrations planned from Santa Cruz to Gilroy

Anew year is upon us, and there are plenty of ways to celebrate the coming of 2023 throughout the Monterey Bay area.

While many will be staying in for a cozy night with family, or hosting their own events at home, local businesses and venues are also opening their doors to celebrate with the community.

Here are just some of the events happening locally this New Year’s holiday. All events take place on Dec. 31.

New Year’s at Cantine

Cantine, 8050 Soquel Drive, Aptos

Stop by Cantine, a winepub in Aptos Village for a New Year’s celebration. Dust off your dancing shoes, grab your friends and ring in the New Year with DJ Stoney. There will be wine, beer, cider and more on tap, and a tapas menu. Event starts at 9pm. For information visit cantinewinepub.com.

Noon Year’s Eve

Santa Cruz Children’s Museum of Discovery, 1855 41st Ave., Capitola

The Santa Cruz Children’s Museum of Discovery is hosting its annual Noon Year's Eve Celebration this year, as a fun way to ring in 2023 with the little ones. A timer will countdown to 12pm

on Saturday, complete with a disco ball drop and a blast of paper confetti at the end. Admission is $10 for just the event, and free with admission to the museum. For information, visit sccmod.org.

New Year's Eve Gathering in Gratitude

The 418 Project, 155 River Street South, Santa Cruz

The 418 Project: New Year's Eve Gathering in Gratitude will kick off at 8pm. Enjoy a cocktail, a vegan platter, or sip on a hot cacao elixir while enjoying artwork, performances and more from local

artists, poets, musicians and more. Join in on the countdown to midnight, knowing your ticket price benefits local working artists. Tickets start at $36. For information, visit bit.ly/3hXTX16.

New Year's Eve Dance Party

Chaminade Resort at Spa, 1 Chaminade Lane, Santa Cruz. Ring in 2023 at the Chaminade while dancing the night away with live music from The Joint Chiefs (Bay Area Funk and Classic R&B), assorted desserts, a balloon drop and a complimentary champagne toast at midnight (Cash bar for

additional drinks). Party begins at 9pm. Tickets are $25, plus tax and gratuity. Reserve a spot at chaminade.com. For information, call 475.5600.

China Cats New Year’s Eve Extravaganza

Veterans Memorial Building, 846 Front St., Santa Cruz Ring in the New Year with the China Cats premier Grateful Dead tribute band at the Santa Cruz Veterans Memorial Building at 8pm. Tickets are $45 in advance at bit. ly/3C41aDC.

Abbott Square

New Year’s Eve Bash

Abbott Square, Abbott Square Market, 725 Front St., Santa Cruz Abbott Square Market will be hosting free live music starting at 6:30pm with Mak Nova. Phreeborn will follow, with Mokili Wa finishing up the night. The vendors and bars at Abbot Square Market will be staying open late. For information, visit abbottsquaremarket.com.

Los Lobos

Rio Theatre, 1205 Soquel Ave., Santa Cruz

Popular band Los Lobos will help Santa Cruz County ring in 2023 this year with a special New Year's concert. The Los Angeles group, known for their unique fusion of rock, country, latin, folk

and many other genres, arrived on the scene in the early 1970s. The show starts at 9:30pm, with openers Mattson 2. Tickets are $85.05 plus fees. For information, visit folkyeah.com.

New Year’s at Gilroy Gardens

Gilroy Gardens Family Theme Park, 3050 Hecker Pass Hwy., Gilroy

Celebrate New Year’s Eve at Gilroy Gardens. Bring the whole family out to join a dance party, enjoy specialty food and drinks, go on all your favorite rides at night, and countdown to midnight to ring in the year. Doors open at 4pm. Tickets are $50. Admission is free for Premium Members. For information, visit gilroygardens.org.

New Year’s Eve Bowling

Boardwalk Bowl, 115 Cliff St., Santa Cruz.

The Boardwalk Bowl’s annual New Year's Eve celebration returns. Come by and toast the New Year with a glass of champagne or apple cider. The event includes party favors, shoe rental and Atomic

Bowling. Call 426-3324 to make your reservation. For information, visit boardwalkbowl.com.

First Night Monterey

Downtown Monterey (various locations)

The 30th annual First Night Monterey returns this year with family-friendly musical performances, art activities and more fun from 3pm to midnight. The award-winning event is a celebration of the arts, and includes an Opening Ceremony at Colton Lawn stage on Pacific Street. Kids Night Out! begins at 3:30PM with interactive art activities: face artists, puppet art theater, interactive art activities and folk music will entertain children of all ages, and the Twilight Procession begins at 5:30. For information and to preorder your entry button visit firstnightmonterey.org.

Johanna Miller/File photo

LIVE TUNES Local band Jive Machine performs at the first Abbott Square Market New Year's Eve Extravaganza in Santa Cruz in 2018.

Courtesy of Gilroy Gardens

LIGHT IT UP Gilroy Gardens will present a New Year’s Eve celebration with a countdown to 2023.

thought since 1990

In moments of quiet reflection that occasionally arise between bouts of multipleoffer madness, I often find myself thinking about the battle for the soul of real estate that’s taking place, one very few people are even conscious of or care about.

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Provoking thought since 1990

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Perhaps it’s the same battle that’s occurring in so many other aspects of our daily lives. The one reflected in deepening divisions and the steady unraveling of a culture that’s frayed at the edges, struggling to hold its center and seemingly afflicted by a strange malady that diminishes truth, values and the desire for human relationship.

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What am I talking about? It’s complicated, but I’ll start with a simple analogy: think of the last time you logged onto a new platform, ordered online or downloaded an app on your phone. All those algorithms are ostensibly designed to make life faster, easier, cheaper and/or more convenient. While access to the digital tools is also ostensibly free, there’s usually a trade-off that entails clicking a box to indicate you’ve read and agreed to the long list of underlying terms and conditions mentioned in the fine print.

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What are those terms and conditions? No one ever reads the first paragraph, let alone the whole thing. They’re incredibly vague and there’s nothing simple, easy or convenient about them. Most are CYA (Cover Your Ass) clauses crafted by the finest attorneys in the world.

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Now, let’s try adding real estate to this rapidly expanding internet of things and try to visualize it as just another platform or product or app designed to make life simpler. People buying or selling their largest assets and the centering places of their lives faster, easier and more conveniently through a series of clicks accompanied by a long list of terms and conditions nobody reads.

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Here’s the current state of real estate: Buyers usually follow the market by logging onto search engines that automatically update their inboxes with new listings. They often pick their Realtors online through digital portals that instantly connect them to on-call agents ready to show properties. Appointments are made through an app after a virtual walk through that often lasts longer than the real thing. A thousand pages of reports and disclosures are routed to them through platforms like Disclosure I.0. Zillow Zestimates conjures opinions on market value. Offers are generated in Zip Forms and signed through Docusign. A remote transaction coordinator handles the paperwork and escrow documents are signed via mobile notary. After all the funds (on average more than $1m) get wired into an escrow account, the transaction is over.

‘Castle’ in Larkin Valley

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Faster. Smoother. Easier. Are we missing anything? Next week: More about terms and conditions as the battle continues.

Tom Brezsny

Home at the top of a hill sits on acres of open space

This Larkin Valley home is described as being “perched like a castle on top of the hill.”

Located at 865 Woodside Drive in Watsonville, the 2,841-square-foot home includes four bedrooms and three bathrooms.

The home sits on a little more than one acre, but it is also part of an additional 37 acres of open space, which is co-owned by the seven homes in the vicinity. That

additional acreage includes equestrian and walking trails.

The home features a guest area over the three-car garage with a separate entrance and its own bathroom. The property also includes multiple barbecue and patio areas, a custom children’s play area, fountains and more.

The home, built in 1984, is listed at $1,599,000 by Bailey Properties. For information, visit wklys. us/3PYz.

Bailey Properties

Tom Brezsny

Realtor® DRE #01063297 831-818-1431 getreal@sereno.com PAID ADVERTORIAL

Brezsny’s Real Estate of Mind

Realtor® DRE #01063297 831-818-1431 getreal@sereno.com PAID ADVERTORIAL

Brezsny’s Real Estate of Mind

PHOTO GALLERY

RESTING POINT A Eurasian collared-dove takes a brief perch on a fence at Struve Slough in Watsonville.

IN STYLE A young man sports a stylish Panama hat as he heads to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

SUNSET A flurry of shorebirds clutter the sky above the pier at Seacliff State Beach.

Heading east to The Dalles

By TARMO HANNULA

With the first part of this story wrapping up in Fort Bragg on the Northern California Coast, Sarah and I continued our road trip north for a night in Klamath, the home of the Yurok Indigenous people.

A small museum there gave us a valuable window into the early days of how these folks survived in raw plank wood homes, hollowed canoes out of single hunks of wood, hunted grizzly bears, wove baskets and more.

For dinner, we ventured north into Crescent City to SeaQuake Brewing for a good sample of the local life and an amazing pizza with Humboldt Fog cheese. Road

construction along the winding Highway 1 left us stuck at three makeshift red lights for about 10 minutes apiece in both directions.

Our morning drive took us along Highway 1 into Oregon offering one dazzling view of the rocky coast after another, passing oddly named places like Humbug Mountain State Park, and the Dragonfly Farm, Slaughterhouse Lane, Rowdy Creek Road and Pistol River.

We sailed through Brookings, Gold Beach, North Bend and Coos Bay before reaching our stop for the night at Reedsport. The coastal drive was easy and traffic sparse.

In the morning we paralleled the Umpqua River along Highway 38 that took us through tranquil

Tarmo Hannula

COASTAL VIEW High tide moves in along the rugged coast of Northern California.

VISTA The Columbia River stretches east in northern Oregon.

farms, green pastures through the bizarrely named town of Drain and over a gentle pass to Highway 5 north. We passed through Eugene and Portland before turning east along the Columbia River toward The Dalles. As we drove along Highway 84 we discovered the Columbia River Scenic Gorge that steered us to The Vista House and—yes—the vistas from there were beautiful, with the Columbia River threading between majestic mountains and lush green plains toward the east.

It was in The Dalles that Sarah found Cousins’ Country Inn for a comfortable night in an entirely new land for us. For dinner we tracked down The Columbia Portage where we relished a New Orleans style meal of fried shrimp, red beans and rice, soup and a Caesar salad. Out the restaurant window we saw the sun go down over the dramatic steel bridge where Highway 97 crosses the Columbia River into Washington.

For breakfast the next morning

we found the River Cafe, situated in a former wood church. The warm settling offered a relaxing spot for our meal before we wandered around the neighborhood to get a sample of homes of the area.

We returned to the area of the Columbia Portage to get a deeper look at a series of old, wood decomposing homes that locals told us was where Indians had once dwelled. Indeed, there were still dilapidated wood remains of early day fishing platforms, still clinging to the cliffs above the expanses of the Columbia.

We turned our backs on Oregon and entered the third U.S. state of our trip, Washington. We climbed the low rolling hills of Highway 97 a short distance before turning east on Highway 142 with the goal of exploring the tiny town of Bickleton where Sarah’s family lived when she was born in 1949.

In the next part of this adventure we drive deep into Bickleton before working our way to Seattle and then to Vancouver, Canada.

FOREST DWELLING Huge trees are a popular draw at Redwood National Park.