25 A day in SCV

Santa Clarita A Day in

Emily Chang Ryan Factora Timothy Kang Minjun Kim Gaby Lesmana Quynn Lubs Vanessa McLaughlin Mary Waugh Emily Yoon

A great way to start the day in SCV is with brunch at The Daily Harvest café in Newhall. Their nutritious, healthy and delicious options will give you energy for the rest of the day. From oatmeal pancakes to avocado toast, there’s something for everyone.

Upon walking in, the friendly staff greet customers with a smile. Plant decorations and big windows create an open and bright atmosphere, perfect for enjoying breakfast with a friend.

The Daily Harvest focuses on elevating traditional breakfast foods by using fresh, sustainable and high quality ingredients in innovative ways.

Take, for example, their rendition of the classic steak and eggs. They add a fresh spin on the dish by serving the steak with a bright green chimichurri sauce. The fragrant chimichurri cut through the richness of the rosy medium-rare flat iron steak, leaving a pleasing aftertaste in the mouth.

Their omelet was massive, stuffed to the brim with peppers, zucchini and onions. The sweet gentle flavor of the vegetables paired

perfectly with the creamy white sauce and the acidic hot sauce.

Other dishes, like the breakfast pizza, were entirely novel. The steam rose from the surface of the pizza as it came to the table straight from the oven. The crust was a thin and crispy flatbread with the perfect combination of toppings: runny eggs, caramelized pancetta, pecorino cheese, fresh green onions and basil.

But where Daily Harvest really shines is in their açai bowl. The artistically arranged bananas, strawberries and granola on top of the vibrant purple smoothie base instantly brightens up the table. The sweet-but-tart açai smoothie was a refreshing contrast to the rich flavor of the banana and peanut butter granola. The açai bowl is a great breakfast option to feel light and energized for the day.

Daily Harvest’s modern ambience and farm-to-table food are not something often seen in SCV. Try something new and start the day right!

Also in Newhall is the record store Voodoo Vinyl, which offers a much-needed escape from modern life. Many of the stores on Main Street are independently-owned shops possessing a certain lived-in charm, and Voodoo Vinyl is no exception. The Santa Clarita location is operated by young adults who dreamed as teenagers of opening a record store. They own two, with the other location being in Lancaster.

When patrons visit Voodoo Vinyl, they can’t help but feel nostalgic surrounded by new and old music on vinyl — the first way people could listen to music after the phonograph. A visit will be accompanied by the chaotic yet refined tunes of rock, transporting customers back to the late 80s or early 90s.

A myriad of albums are on display; vintage jazz and underground punk records reside next to hits by The Beatles and Nirvana. The shelves are lined with album upon album, while the walls are covered in colorful reprints of old concert posters. The record player in the corner is blasting whatever the managers are feeling at the time — sometimes punk, sometimes surf, sometimes slow rock. With the resurgence of vinyl in pop culture, it’s a no-brainer for teens to want to shop around for their favorite music to play on records in their rooms.

What separates Voodoo Vinyl from the other record stores are its dedicated managers: Dante Pinker and Kiana Green. Their experiences playing in the LA-based band The Freakees gives them all the knowledge they need to smoothly operate a store filled with music.

“Kiana and I wanted to have a paid label, and then a record label, and then a record store because we were like 17 or 18, and we just really wanted to do that ourselves,” shared Pinker in

an interview. “My grandparents had a record store. At the same time, my dad had a T-shirt pressing company thing. I guess they had taken our enthusiasm for wanting to do it ourselves as to just convert their antique store and t-shirt thing into this. So here we are, four years later.”

Today, Voodoo Vinyl thrives as a haven for artists and musicians.

“We have a lot of people that we’ve met at the other store especially that we’re friends with still. I think that’s a pretty cool thing,” Green told The Paw Print. “Building connections, too. A lot of artists and musicians will come in.”

Punk shows used to be held at the Lancaster location; however, due to the overwhelming crowds of teenagers and the inevitable destruction of merchandise from crowd-surfers and rowdy punk kids, it’s unlikely that shows will be held any time soon — especially at the Santa Clarita location.

Pinker and Green also expressed concern at Santa Clarita’s tendency to stomp out any sort of underground culture, as well as the rapid emergence of corporation after corporation in the city. Pinker remarked, “The city here, they definitely try to stomp out any sort of non-corporately-owned culture. Newhall is the last part where you can have a family-owned shop.”

“Santa Clarita is a capitalist Disneyland,” concluded Pinker. Green added, “There’s days where it could be kind of slow just because, I don’t know, people are at the mall or something. A lot of people don’t know we’re here.”

If SCV residents have free time, Voodoo Vinyl on Main Street is the perfect place to indulge in new music while experiencing a blast from the past and supporting a small business.

After indulging in a hearty brunch and a quick trip to the record shop, grab some friends and take a scenic hike at Towsley Canyon. There are various hiking trails around the Santa Clarita Valley. However, Towsley Canyon offers its hikers two unique paths where they can enjoy sunny SCV.

The first trail is commonly known as the Towsley View Loop. This path is a 5.4-mile loop and has a 1,075-foot elevation increase. While hiking on this trail, you can explore a V-shaped canyon near the river that includes a rock tower for hikers to climb. Further down the Towsley View Loop, people can hike through a narrow trail to find the Towsley Gorge. While passing through the gorge, hikers

can observe oil and liquid asphalt residing in the tar pits.

The second trail, called the Canyon View Loop, is shorter and less intense than the Towsley View Loop. The Canyon View Loop is 1.9 miles and has a lower elevation. On this trail, people can bike and rock climb right next to the creek. It also passes through wide scenic fields that are perfect for photoshoots.

This trail is not as strenuous, so hikers have the opportunity to see a large amount of wildlife such as deer, rabbits, red-tailed-hawk and many beautiful flowers. To add to the view, there are also many scraps of metal and old bridges that create a rustic feel around the trail — however, some may not find this as appealing as others.

But no matter what trail, Towsley Canyon will provide a challenging, yet enjoyable workout.

When it’s time to wind down, take a trip down Valencia Boulevard and have dinner at El Cubano.

El Cubano specializes in serving up a wide variety of authentic, homestyle Cuban food. The experience starts with a complimentary pan frito, crispy fried garlic bread, that is served to every table. After ordering, the food came out quickly.

The unexpected star of the dishes was the mojo sauce — a flavorful blend of citrus, garlic, olive oil and other spices that was generously added to almost every entrée. Whether it was covering juicy, plancha grilled steak in the bistec de palomilla or crispy fried chunks of pork in the masas de puerco fritas, the mojo sauce added a bright, complex flavor to the dish. The combination of earthy black beans, sweet plantains and fluffy white rice

provided the perfect backdrop to the mouthwatering meat.

If you’re looking for something other than the classic Cuban dinner plate, try the arroz con puerco: a dish consisting of pork and a colorful array of vegetables cooked with a mellow, fragrant tomato and saffroninfused rice that tastes like something one of our nonexistent Cuban grandmothers would whip up.

That seemed to be the unifying theme in this restaurant — everything, from the quiet Spanish music playing in the background, to the warm attentive service, to the gentle, familiar taste present in every dish seems to scream “home.” It’s truly the ultimate way to end the ideal day in SCV.

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@wrpawprint

@wrpawprint

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