Follow the Money

This man, Lt. Gen. Mahmoud Ahmad, is also known as the "money man" behind the 9/11 attacks. He was also having breakfast, in Washington D.C., with House of Rep. Intelligence Committee Chair, Porter Goss as Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower (Goss eventually became the CIA Director and was instrumental in creating the Department of Homeland Security).

Mahmoud soon after retired from his post in the Pakistani intelligence and has disappeared....yes I've been watching 9/11 conspiracy docs.

Who's With Me?

Time to stop monkeying around. The time to act is now! Who the hell is with me? Oh, you probably want to know the plan.

I want to build the nation's most treasured disc golf resort in the lost ghost town hills of the Santa Cruz mountains. 150 acres are for sale for $11 million dollars. We could build three world class courses and have a hotel and camping accomodations....a mess hall....a pro shop....a tavern....the works!

We will never make back the money but we will live blissfully forever after....so are you with me?

Pricetag for Holy City: $11 million; Its oddball history: priceless
By Julia Prodis Sulek

Little is left of Holy City these days but legends and lore about the oddball cult whose members pumped gas, preached white supremacy and sold "holy water" to tourists in a hollow off Highway 17 in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

For the first time in decades, though, there may be dreams about its future.

Holy City is for sale.

One hundred fifty acres; $11 million.

The three men in their 80s who have owned it for nearly 40 years, including contractors Leo Pellicciotti and Harry Bellicitti of Saratoga, have put it it on the market.

It's a place commuters to Silicon Valley and beachgoers to Santa Cruz bypass every day, perhaps without even knowing it. The only clue from Highway 17 is a little blue sign with its name in white letters at the Redwood Estates turnoff.

A narrow, winding road lined with overgrown brush leads down a hill a half mile off the highway to all that remains of the once-thriving commune -- the old white farmhouse with green shutters once owned by necktie salesman-turned-cult leader,William E. Riker, and the ornate but abandoned single-truck fire house. A low-slung commercial building erected in the 1960s houses Tom Stanton's Holy City Art Glass studio, where he has blown glass ornaments, pumpkins and "Holy Roller" marbles for 30 years.

Out front, there's a bus stop. And although a bus often passes, Stanton has never seen anyone get on or off.

But that could change. The real estate agent who is listing the land, Jim E. Miller from Remax Valley Properties, envisions the possibilities: a winery, a housing development, a family compound, a religious retreat (and a disc golf sanctuary). The property in unincorporated Santa Clara County includes expanses of flat terrain, creeks, waterfalls, valleys and cliffs.

"We've got power, water and roads," said Miller, who works out of the Meridian Avenue office in San Jose. "We're only lacking sewer."

In its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s, Holy City was quite the attraction. A roadside billboard, now long gone, once welcomed newcomers with this: "William E. Riker: The only man who can save California from going plum(sic) to hell. I hold the solution!"


Riker founded Holy City in 1919 and over the years drew 300 disciples who turned over their savings and worked for him exchange for room and board. He ran for governor four times.

"He was kind of a con artist," said Leo Pellicciotti, 84. "He just had all these people there working and they did make a lot of money."

Riker built up a little village straddling the old Santa Cruz Highway. Then, it was the only route between San Jose and Santa Cruz. Some of the wooden facades of the structures, including a barber shop, post office, print shop, radio station and zoo, were cartoonish, painted white with murals of angels.

"See us if you're contemplating marriage, suicide or crime," a billboard entering town read.

But Holy City seemed more roadside attraction than religious experiment. The front of one shop was lined with eight-foot-tall plastic Santas, year-round.

His campaign for governor advocated white supremacy and so did a message written across the top of one of his buildings: "The gentile white man is the king of the entire world." Over the years, Riker was charged with numerous crimes, including bigamy, fraud, tax evasion, murder and sedition -- the last for writing fan mail to Adolph Hitler. He got off each time. He was defended once by famous San Francisco lawyer Melvin Belli, whom Riker tried to pay with "a seat in my kingdom in heaven." Belli got his money.

When Highway 17 was built in 1938, business dropped off and so did Riker's disciples. By the 1950s, a string of suspicious fires destroyed some of Holy City's main buildings. Riker brought in a partner, a Hollywood producer, but their relationship soured and ultimately, in 1968, Pellicciotti and his partners bought it -- for something less than a half million dollars.

As part of the sale, they agreed to let Riker stay in the old farm house and the remaining eight residents to stay in cabins on the property for a number of years.

"They were just, I don't know," he said struggling for the right word "they were wanderers," Pellicciotti said of Riker's followers.

At the same time, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, hippies were squatting in some of the abandoned buildings on the property.

Within a decade, they were all gone. Riker died at age 96 in 1969. And the new owners tore down nearly all the cabins, making way for what they hoped would be a recreational park, where visitors would pay admission to enjoy swimming pools, tennis courts and picnic areas. Although the project received a permit, the owners "lost interest" and never built it, Pellicciotti said.

"I would like to see it preserved," he said of the property, "not a bunch of houses or development." He'd like to see it turned into a park.

Stanton, who has rented the building for his glass blowing business since 1976, says the number of visitors to Holy City dropped off dramatically when the post office closed in 1979, and Santa Clara Valley residents could no longer have their Christmas cards stamped with Holy City postmarks.

Despite the town's name, no church was ever built in Holy City.

Instead, the only thing holy seems to be a cathedral of towering redwood trees growing in a circle behind Stanton's shop. The exposed root balls in the sunken grove form a natural shrine, where statues of the Virgin Mary have been placed.

Members of a motorcycle club ride through now and then, holding meetings there. So does a group of nuns from Los Gatos who stop in and say the rosary. Each month, when Stanton knows they are coming, he picks fresh wildflowers and puts them in vases in the shrine. He tidies up, too, propping up any prayer cards that were nudged away by deer.

To Stanton, Holy City, with all it's wacky wonder, is still a special place.

"I'm surprised a UFO hasn't landed here," he said. "Every possible thing has happened here."

We will still let the nuns visit and encourage them to hurl good disc!

Another great article of historic interest:
http://www.coastnews.com/history/holy_city.htm

Flying Fortress

For the past three days a B-17 has been buzzing the school after nap time. I want this everyday!

I could pay for a seat in the wicked beast....$425 for like an hour.

It wouldn't be worth it unless you got to blow some caps.

Dare to Compare

Bee Strike

I'm sure it has nothing to do with this crazy fool!

Studies conducted by German researchers indicate that the growing use of cell phones could in some way be responsible for the sudden disappearance of bees seen across America and parts of Europe since last fall.

A limited study conducted at Germany’s Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby.

Lead researcher Dr. Jochen Kuhn said this could provide a “hint” to a possible cause of what has been termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

The phenomenon has seen entire bee colonies disappear from their hives, leaving only the queen, eggs and a few immature workers.

Kuhn cautioned that his research was on how cell phone signals might affect learning, and not on CCD.

Dr. George Carlo, who headed an extensive study by the U.S. government and mobile phone industry on the hazards of mobile phone use during the 1990s, told Britain’s Independent newspaper the “possibility is real” that the use of cell phones could be contributing to CCD.

If I could have disappeared from CCD I would have but my mom made me go.

It used to be happy....

....but now it's just a day

"Booby Prize"

Santa Cruz, CA, where I work, help run a business and live has been named the 195th, "Best Places for Business and Careers" out of 200 by Forbes Magazine. The five cities that scored worse than us include:

196 Modesto CA
197 Visalia CA
198 Detroit MI
199 Stockton CA
200 Salinas CA

Fuck yeah, we beat detroit!

They even dedicated an article to us entitled, "Booby Prize"

Santa Cruz has no growth. But that's cool. As for recovering from that 1989 earthquake, we're working on it, okay?
Surf, in Santa Cruz, is the only thing that's up. On a hot Sunday afternoon in March bikini-clad undergrads from the University of California strolling along Pacific Avenue seem to draw inspiration from their school's mascot, the banana slug. With no sign of urgency, they meander among homeless panhandlers, past stores like hemp-peddler Avatar Imports and Mama Chola's Pagan Pantry.

Volkswagen vans clog parking lots near the beach as their owners, paunchy middle-aged surfers, gaze out over the crashing waves. For many years parking meters held no fear for Cruzians because a clown, wearing rainbow-striped pants, a wig and a big red nose would drop coins, gratis, into meters about to expire. It was his fey form of civil disobedience.

This kind of whimsical, lethargic atmosphere has cemented the image of Santa Cruz (pop. 250,000) as a bohemian utopia by the sea. But the same qualities that make it a haven for beach bums and students make it a frustration for anybody trying to do business. The city's five-year average job growth, --0.9%, ranks number 190 among FORBES' 200 cities. Santa Cruz has 300 days of sun a year, and its setting is supremely beautiful. But if this is paradise, how come no one is coming here to work?

The cost of living is 41% higher than the U.S. average. During peak commuting hours, traffic into and out of Silicon Valley--30 miles away--can be bumper-to-bumper. Politically, too, gridlock plagues the place.

Santa Cruz's citizenry is a squabbling, self-canceling mix of rich Silicon Valley executives like Netflix (nasdaq: NFLX - news - people ) boss Reed Hastings, service workers from restaurants and hotels, and 15,000 navel-contemplating university students. (Courses in the UC catalog include "Bob Dylan as Poet" and "Politics of Obesity.") Everyone is an activist. Petitions are forever being drawn up, fists raised and shaken. To get to the barricades here, you have to take a number.

Pot smoking they've managed to agree on: They're for it. A ballot initiative instructing Santa Cruz police to make adult marijuana arrests their lowest priority passed in November by 60%. They also agree on development. They're opposed to it.

The community's history of blocking construction goes back to 1974, when environmentalists stopped a plan to build a hotel and convention center. This victory led to the creation of a park that now costs $250,000 a year to maintain.

In 1999 the city council tried, unsuccessfully, to ban a Borders bookstore by requiring a special permit for ground-floor stores of more than 16,000 square feet. Two years later Outback Steakhouse tried to open next to a clothing-optional retreat house and meditation center. Permission was denied. In 2004 protesters prevented Home Depot (nyse: HD - news - people ) and Lowe's (nyse: LOW - news - people ) from moving into vacant factory space on the western edge of town. In 2005 petitioners crushed plans for a new hotel and conference center on the site of an aging hotel.

In 1989 the Loma Prieta earthquake devastated Santa Cruz's downtown. Seventeen years later reconstruction still isn't finished on one 15,000-square-foot parcel. As part of an effort to attract richer tourists, the city has tried for 13 years to convert a group of crumbling buildings near the city's boardwalk into an upscale hotel. Opponents have kept the project stalled by arguing that the building would compromise their views.

Santa Cruz's biggest problem is space. There isn't any. Of 700 acres zoned for commercial and industrial use, only one substantial site (20 acres) is unbuilt. "If someone wanted to grow here into a major campus--like a Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) or a Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )--we couldn't accommodate them, because there's not enough room," says Ceil Cirillo, director of economic development for the city. Over the past decade companies including Texas Instruments (nyse: TXN - news - people ), Lipton, Wrigley (nyse: WWY - news - people ) and Raytek have closed manufacturing plants on the outskirts of town. Some of that same space has since been taken over by UC, Santa Cruz, which pays no property taxes.

In lieu of manufacturing, the city wants to expand tourism and to create a "research-and-design" sector composed of young professionals drawn to the area for its beauty. They would work in fields like computer gaming, graphic design and architecture (provided, of course, they didn't design anything too big).

The most successful could afford to buy homes (the median price is $700,000). The less so would have to move along to somewhere less paradisaic. Says Chamber of Commerce Executive Director William Tysseling: "People will suffer a lot to live here." There's your next Chamber of Commerce slogan.

This is all a real hoot to me. I understand why a stuffy financial institution the likes of Forbes Magazine would have a problem with the generally laid back, at times communistic business ethic here in Santa Cruz. This probably ain't a good place to start a business or raise a family financially speaking. Most people who come here eventually have to leave because of something to do with money....they ran out or can't earn enough or can earn more elsewhere. Unfortunately there are a lot of generational Santa Cruzans that have had to pull the moving trigger themselves, for the same reasons....that's particularly shameful!

I'm understating the fact that it's near impossible to raise a family here. The struggles and sacrifices are too great. Those who succeed do so with a lot of assistance and/or have kick ass salaries over the hill.

Somehow, individually, I've been able to scrape by for 11 years in the surf city. I've been a part of two businesses, one of which sank and one which only floats with the help of love, magic and sweat. I personally understand the struggle well. I live it.

I'm here though because I'm dumb enough to love it! I'm crazy enough to try and stay. I'm silly enough to adapt. I've lived in a closet....and a van. At times I have worked three jobs at a time (currently two)(there's a saying here...are you gonna live to work or work to live?) I'm strange enough to embrace the culture and wild enough to ride the waves....the crazy, silly, stupid, beautiful waves of soul that distinguishes this place from any other I have been to before.

It's hard to get to Santa Cruz and even harder to stay...but for me it would be even harder to leave. It's not every body's cup of tea but for now it's for me. Struggle on!

thank heavens we beat modesto.

Doesn't Phil Guy have the best afro ever?

good reads

While on break I did eat up two great ones....two cautionary tales:


Bringing Down The House is a story about a posse of MIT-educated Thorpeites who team together to drain the coffers of the Vegas blackjack pits. It's the adventure story about the team's rise and fall and rebirth. Very entertaining if you enjoy the dichotomy of a great heist....although everything these kids did was just plain legal....and absolutely brilliant!


In Search of Captain Zero is the surf and travel journeying of a man and his dog as his man decides to forgo his citizenship in search of paradise and a lost friend. I will leave it at that because this book is going straight to Dubro and I don't want to give up a thing. I will say that this is the most cerebral surf book you may ever read. A dictionary will be a good companion piece....believe it!

off time

Over April school vacation week I busied myself with camping at Mercey Hot Springs, hanging at the beach, throwing too many frisbees and finishing off my garden. Although I was thankful for the time off I was surprisingly edgy, restless, unsatisfied, irritated and quite strangely vexed.

Can you even imagine? All that sounds like total luxury to me but for some reason I just felt off. Even doing the things I love couldn't bring me happiness.

I guess it felt like an odd time for vacation. At work we're gearing up for our big move. We're pulling up stakes and moving across town. It's all a three month process and this break should have been the calm before the storm but instead it was like standing on deck and watching this looming beast of a front before you with total knowledge that in a lick of time you will be be hurled into the pure and wicked belly of it. Not so relaxing.

My back fucking hurt too. I've been having some kind of lower back issues inciting misery and persistent discomfort. Even 102 degree mineral soaks wouldn't alleviate the dull throb. The only time it feels good theese days is when I'm busy and when I'm hucking frisbees too fast.

I know boo-hoo, poor me.....whatever, it is what it is, or was what it was.

Been back to work this week and life is busy but I feel better being here. Just getting back to the kids has lifted my spirits and starting to tackle our mountain of tasks feels like I'm doing something....something productive. Even my back feels better this week.

Not sure it's always so good for me to be thrown off my rhythm....especially when so much is up in the air. Fuck April vacation!

Checked out Gimme Shelter, the documentary about the 1969 Altamont Speedway Concert put on by the Stones. Wow. Holy shit!

The movie is a bad, bad trip mixed in with totally kick ass music the whole way through....from start to finish.

When word got out about the free show, 300,000 kids from all over the country piled in their micro buses and converged. Two venues canceled and the end result was this hapahzardly thrown together, last minute arrangement where total hell broke loose. Literally.

The concert promoters, in their infinite and stony wisdom, decided to hire the Hell's Angels (and paid them with whiskey and beer) to keep the peace. It was a mess right from the start....got so bad the Angels called in reinforcements. From bad to worse to straight up evil the Angels went ape shit after the crowd, sick of their abuse, started fucking with the gangs' motorcycles.

In the end one concert go'er was murdered....three others died in other incidents. The ironic twist of fate, 4 babies were born.

Been really getting into the Stones recently. I was blinded by Hot Rocks for too many years and now I'm discovering how amazing their catalog is.