San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
From floral smudge sticks to contemporary art, spend a day exploring Downtown Santa Cruz
You could spend days exploring the dozens of restaurants across Santa Cruz, the many art galleries, unique boutiques and even a surprising number of game and comic bookstores.
But even if you have only one day, you can lace up your sneakers and take in an encompassing tour of many one-of-a-kind destinations.
Your first stop should be to visit www.downtown santacruz.com, recommends Downtown Association of Santa Cruz Executive Director Jorian Wilkins. The site offers in-depth listings of places to shop, eat, play, pamper at a spa and much more.
There’s also a Downtown Information Kiosk run by full-time professional staff at 1130 Pacific Avenue K2, at the corner of Pacific and Soquel Avenues.
Checkout this handful of highlights:
A local and visitor’s favorite since owner Janet
Platin opened the quaint, cottage-style shop in 1984, the café sits on the eastern edge of downtown and affords you a scenic walk to your next destination, via the Santa Cruz Riverwalk Trail. Grab a seat on the garden patio, and treat yourself to from-scratch flaky croissants stuffed with ham and cheese, an apricot cheese twist or a poppyseed muffin.
Hungrier folks can dig into a huge breakfast sandwich of meats, cheese and eggs, or veggies, cheese and avocado layered on fresh-baked ciabatta.
Everybody loves the French toast, as well, with that delicious ciabatta soaked in cinnamon custard, griddled, then topped in seasonal fruit.
You’ll feel any stress melt away as soon as you enter this beautifully fragrant shop, brimming with organic herbs and herbal blends curated in Santa Cruz. Browse the pretty botanicals, purchase some plantable seed “lollipops” to attract bees in your home garden and sample some energizing Moroccan Rose tea.
If you have questions about bringing more vibrance into your busy life, shop owner Catheryn Bevier can suggest the perfect floral wand for you — perhaps a rose quartz crystal, rosemary, sage and lavender smudge stick-floral bouquet to attract romance, while promoting peace,
happiness and self-love.
Celebrating both Santa Cruz history and contemporary art, this colorful, high-energy space is good even for easily bored children. Through the summer, you can view intriguing exhibitions including “Strange Weather: From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and His Family Foundation,” a collection of works spanning five decades from 1970 to 2020. Take time to really study the mixed media installation that captures earthly happenings like Hurricane Katrina, our rapidly changing climate and even how our tempestuous weathers has affected forced migrations, industrialization, global capitalism and the consumption and commodification of Native American culture.
This is a marvelously curated selection of games, young reader graphic novels, puzzles, action memorabilia and new, vintage and limited edition comics. Check out delicious new stock items like “The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers: The Idiots Abroad and Other
Follies” (What, you don’t know? The underground comix characters were created in 1968 and have since sold more than 45 million comics in 16 languages). The Freak Brothers latest cannabis-fueled adventure was just made into a movie, as an animated series set in modern-day San Francisco, and stars the voices of Woody Harrelson, Pete Davidson, John Goodman, and Tiffany Haddish.
Fuel up with lunch at this new, casual restaurant that is winning fans for its highly flavorful halal beef and lamb doner kebabs, crispy falafel wraps and savory red lentil soup. Try some unusual vegan bites, too, like the lahmacun, a Turkish flatbread topped with seasoned minced veggies, lettuce, tomatoes, red cabbage, onions, herbs and lemon wedges. Finish up with a Turkish “surprise egg,” a chocolate candy filled with hazelnut and peanut cream.
Stroll over to the day spa, where owner SarahJoy Zell has set up partnerships with some 20 practitioners in a rainbow of specialties ranging from acupuncture to ayurveda, massage,
reiki, sound healing and more.
Since opening in 2019, owners Jess LoPrete and Andrew Sivak have found that their shop can be confusing for first-time visitors. As LoPrete jokes, “We get asked, ‘are these books for sale, or is this some kind of wine library?’ We used to get mighty frustrated when fielding this question, given that every book in the shop has a price sticker on the front cover.”
But it is indeed a unique setup, as a combination of bookstore, natural wine bar and restaurant. The hip, cluttered décor features crowded shelves of first edition and used books, couches, Persian rugs, bistro tables and an antique wood bar serving uncommon, covetable wines like pet-nat sparklings from Croatia, Italy, France and Slovenia, plus orange wines and traditional wines from around the world, Santa Cruz craft beers on tap, local kombucha and even real Mexican Coca-Cola.
You can nibble while you sip and scope out literary selections, too. The Midway catering and local farmers market chef Katherine Stern took over the kitchen last fall and provides healthy, plant-based snacks such as chickpea-fava hummus toast dolloped in yogurt and sprinkled in almond dukkah; a citrus salad tossed with marinated beets and caraway cream; sourdough chitarra tumbled with zucchini, peas, ricotta and mint; and a must-try vanilla pudding topped in roasted strawberries, candied yuzu and a lavender cookie.
Stern is a big deal, by the way. She formerly worked at La Posta Via, an Italian restaurant in Santa Cruz, and she showcases local vendors like Fogline Farm, Groundswell Farm and Fred the Forager. For an even fuller dinner experience, reserve the Animal’s private Rate Book Cellar, and if the chicken Milanese is on the menu that evening, get it. The savory, crispy-crust bird comes dressed with chard and farro salad, sweet-tart agrodolce raisins, preserved lemon, and pistachios — delish.