O.J. SIMPSON HAS DIED
Former football star accused of murder was 76
LOS ANGELES » O.J. Simpson, whose rise and fall from American football hero to accused murderer to prison inmate fueled a rancorous public drama that obsessed the nation and spawned debates over race, wealth, justice and retribution, has died from cancer, according to a family member's statement on X.
Simpson was once the country's most admired athlete, a formidable running back who broke records with grace and determination. He became a crossover star, lending his handsome face and affable personality to the slapstick “Naked Gun” movies and classic television commercials for Hertz.
He ended his run as an inmate at Lovelock Correction Center, 90 miles northeast of Reno, Nevada, where he was serving a term of nine to 33 years after his 2008 conviction on armed robbery, kidnapping, conspiracy and other charges stemming from his attempt to recover valuable memorabilia he claimed was stolen from him. His incarceration was widely viewed as longoverdue punishment for the 1994 murders of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman.
Although widely presumed to be guilty of the slayings, the former USC Heisman Trophy winner was acquitted in 1995 in a spectacular trial that was rife with vexing questions, none more divisive than the one posed by Simpson's defense team: whether a black man in America — even one who had crossed racial barriers and attained significant wealth and status — could be tried without prejudice for the murders a white person. Polls showed deep fissures between blacks and whites on the question of his innocence. When a predominantly black jury set him free, it drew those racial suspicions into even sharper relief.
“The only reason that we will care about O.J. Simpson 10 years after, 20 years after, is what it told us about race in this country,” said the New Yorker's
Jeffrey Toobin.
Simpson's acquittal was only the first chapter in a long legal saga. In 1997 a predominantly white jury in Santa Monica found him liable for the deaths in a civil suit brought by the Brown and Goldman families. Ordered to pay the families $33.5 million in damages, Simpson gave up his Brentwood estate and moved to Florida, in large part to evade the civil judgment.
His desire to shield his assets set in motion the events that ultimately would bring him down: the robbery in a cheap Las Vegas hotel room in 2007. After a short trial that received minimal media coverage, the judge pronounced him guilty, 13 years to the day after the so-called “Trial of the Century” had set him free.
Orenthal James Simpson was born July 9, 1947 in a housing project in the depressed Potrero Hill section of San Francisco. He was the second of four children of Jimmie, a bank custodian, and Eunice, a night orderly at San Francisco General Hospital. He saw little of his father after his parents separated when he was 5. Simpson said in a 1977 Parents magazine interview that he resented his father's absence, “especially when I became a teenager and was trying to find out who I was.”
He had rickets as a child and was left with spindly, bowed legs that attracted taunts from neighborhood kids. His mother fashioned a set of home-made leg braces that helped him improve enough to play football at Galileo High School. But his other extracurricular activity was stealing hubcaps and pies with a gang called the Persian Warriors. “I was always the leader — the baddest cat there,” he recalled.
He shaped up enough to enter San Francisco City College, where he scored 54 touchdowns in one season. At USC, he lead the nation in rushing, running for 3,423 yards in two seasons and in 1968, his senior year, captured the highest honor in college football, the Heisman Trophy. He'd been a runner up the year before.
He was snapped up by the Buffalo Bills in the 1969 National Football League draft but became problematic immediately when he demanded the largest contract in professional sports in the U.S. — $650,000 paid out over five years. Initially Simpson disappointed but ended up leading the team in rushing for nine straight years.
In 1973 he broke NFL records by becoming the first runner to surpass 2,000 yards in a single season with a then-record 2,003 yards and broke Jim Brown's single season rushing record, once thought to be unobtainable. He was NFL Player of the Year in 1972, 1973 and 1975 but only reached the playoffs once and never got to the Super Bowl. His style was idiosyncratic, known for twisting, fleet-footed runs that stymied the opposition. “O.J. gets right on top of you, looks you in the eye and then — pfft — he's gone,” former Pittsburgh Steelers defensive lineman Joe Greene told Newsweek in 1975. He went by O.J., but he was also known as “The Juice.” In addition to his athletic gifts, he had what Newsweek's Pete Axthelm called “an expanding, wellrounded personality” that was attractive to Hollywood moguls and Madison Avenue advertisers.
By the mid-1970s the charismatic sports icon was acting in movies such as “The Towering Inferno” and “The Cassandra Crossing” and hurtling through airports as the star of a Hertz rent-a-car television campaign. In 1979 he retired from football after an undistinguished season with the San Francisco 49ers, the same year his 12year marriage to the former Marguerite L. Whitley ended in divorce.
His first marriage produced three children: Arnelle, Jason and Aaren. In August 1979, Aaren, then 23 months old, drowned in the family swimming pool. Simpson rarely discussed the accident in public.
By the time that tragedy occurred, Simpson was already dating Nicole Brown, whom he had met in 1977 when she was a waitress at a Beverly Hills nightclub, the Daisy. A former homecoming princess at Dana Hills High School in Orange County, she was blond, beautiful and 30 years his junior.
She dropped out of Saddleback College in Mission Viejo to move in with the famous running back and, after living together for several years, they were married on Feb. 2, 1985. Their first child, Sydney, was born that October. A son, Justin, was born in 1988. When Simpson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1985, he thanked Nicole, noting that she entered his life “at what is probably the most difficult time for an athlete, at the end of my career. She turned those years into some of the best years I have had in my life.” He became a sports broadcaster
for NBC and ABC, including a brief run as a replacement for broadcaster Howard Cosell on “Monday Night Football.” He played a disasterprone detective in the slapstick “Naked Gun” movies.
His pursuits enabled him to provide Nicole with a glamorous life. In addition to the $5-million Brentwood estate, they had second homes in Laguna Beach and New York, his-and-hers Ferraris, and frequent vacations to Vail, Aspen and Hawaii.
But theirs was a volatile relationship. They fought and made up with regularity. On New Year's Day in 1989, however, an anonymous 911 call summoned police to the Simpsons' home. When police arrived at 3:30 a.m., Nicole rushed out from the bushes where she had been hiding. Her lip was split, her eye was black, and a handprint was visible on her neck. “He's going to kill me, he's going to kill me,” she cried, according to the police report. The famous former athlete emerged from the house, yelling “I got two women, and I don't want that woman in my bed anymore.”
Simpson pleaded no contest to domestic violence and was ordered to pay a $700 fine, obtain psychiatric counseling and perform 120 hours of community service. He also was placed on two years' probation. The couple issued a statement calling the altercation “an isolated and unfortunate incident.”
In 1992, the couple divorced. Simpson kept the Brentwood house while Nicole and the children moved into a town house a few miles away. He started to date model Paula Barbieri but friends said he remained obsessed with his former ife. On a 911 tape from Oct. 25, 1993 — widely aired after the murders — Nicole is heard pleading with the operator for help. She said O.J. had broken her door down and was “going nuts.”
There were several unsuccessful attempts at reconciliation. In late May, Nicole told her family that she was done with O.J.
On June 12, 1994, Simpson attended his daughter Sydney's school dance recital. According to witnesses, he sat alone and glared at his ex-wife during the performance. When she left for a post-recital dinner party with her children, Simpson was not invited.
This much is certain about what happened over the next hours: After dining at a neighborhood restaurant, Mezzaluna, Nicole took the kids to get Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Back home, her mother called around 9:40 p.m. to ask Nicole to retrieve a pair of eyeglasses she had left at the restaurant. Nicole reached her friend, Goldman, who was a waiter at the restaurant. He said he would drop the glasses off after he left work around 10 p.m.
A little more than an hour later, a blood-streaked Akita would lead a Good Samaritan to a grisly discovery: two bodies covered in blood outside Nicole's Bundy Drive condo. When police arrived, they found Nicole, 35, with a deep, wide gash across her throat. Goldman, 25, had stab wounds to his throat, lungs and abdomen.
The children were asleep upstairs. When the police tried to notify Simpson, they learned he had left on an 11:45 p.m. flight to Chicago for a meeting with Hertz executives. By the next day, his Rockingham Road estate had become a crime scene.
Police had discovered blood stains on the driveway and a bloody glove in the yard that appeared to match one recovered on Bundy Drive. They found traces of blood on a white Ford Bronco parked haphazardly at the curb. The estate's famous resident quickly became the focus of the investigation. The enduring image from the days immediately after the murders would be the Bronco cruising down eerily empty freeways, trailed by a fleet of police cars. For seven hours on Friday, June 17, the celebrated former athlete eluded the authorities who had planned to arrest him that morning. Behind the wheel of the Bronco was Simpson's boyhood friend and former NFL colleague, A.C. Cowlings. In the back, reportedly holding a gun to his own head, was Simpson.
Tipped by news reports, crowds gathered along the Bronco's route as it sliced through Orange and Los Angeles counties. Some bystanders cheered “Go, O.J., go!” as the Bronco passed, as they were witnessing was one of his legendary runs on the football field. Others held up signs: “We Love the Juice,” “Save the Juice.”
An estimated 95 million people — bigger by several million than the number of people who tuned into the Super Bowl that year — watched the slow-speed pursuit on television. Later, some commentators would trace the roots of reality TV to the surreal, 60-mile car chase that transfixed the nation and ended without violence in Simpson's driveway, where he finally surrendered. “Don't feel sorry for me,” Simpson said in a suicide note his friend, attorney Robert Kardashian, read at a news conference earlier in the day. The note ended with a plea: “Please think of the real O.J., and not this lost person.”
Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor who became a fixture as an analyst for CBS during the trial, said the case and the chase became a cultural touchstone. “He really does define the combination of modern pop culture with the modern justice system,” Levinson said. “He was the origin of reality TV. You followed the Bronco. You followed the trial. You followed the everything after. It's like the Bronco chase continues.”
The trial opened on Jan. 24, 1995 in the downtown Los Angeles courtroom of Judge Lance Ito, whose decision to allow the proceedings to be televised was later heavily criticized. Quickly dubbed the “trial of the century,” it offered a cast of slick lawyers — Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and Robert Shapiro leading the defense and Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden for the prosecution — and intriguing supporting characters, from the sympathetic sister Denise Brown to rumpled houseguest Kato Kaelin. Vanity Fair writer Dominick Dunne called the trial “a great trash novel come to life.”
With no murder weapon or eyewitnesses, the evidence was purely circumstantial. But Clark promised the jury that a trail of blood evidence would lead them directly from the gory crime scene to Simpson's mansion. The prosecution presented DNA findings that the blood found next to the size-12 shoe prints leaving the scene belonged to Simpson (who wore size 12 shoes), that blood found on a sock in his bedroom belonged to Nicole, and that blood detected in his Bronco belonged to Goldman. As for motive, the prosecutors portrayed Simpson as a jealous man obsessed with his ex-wife and frustrated he could no longer control her through expensive gifts, threats and beatings. He killed Goldman, Darden said, “because he got in the way.”
The defense demolished the DNA evidence, arguing that police conspired to fabricate and contaminated evidence. It turned a key exhibit, the bloody glove, into a symbol of official malfeasance. Not only did Simpson's lawyers allege that the glove found in their client's yard that matched one found at the crime scene had been planted by a racist cop — Det. Mark Fuhrman, whose derogatory references to African Americans and boasts about manufacturing evidence were exposed in court — but the gloves didn't even fit when Darden asked Simpson to try them on.
“They're too small,” Simpson said, struggling to pull on the gloves. Those were the only words he uttered to the jury during the 10-month trial. The dramatic demonstration gave Cochran the line that cemented his closing argument: “If it doesn't fit,” he intoned, “you must acquit.” And less than a week later the jury acquitted the celebrity defendant, after deliberating only three hours. But Simpson was never truly free again.
The civil trial took place in 1996 and deepened the portrait of Simpson as an abuser. More liberal rules allowing hearsay evidence allowed lawyers for the Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman families to use excerpts from the murdered woman's diaries. The journal entries detailed incidents when Simpson terrorized her with a gun, shouted profanities at her, tried to coerce her into aborting their unborn son and threatened to turn her into the Internal Revenue Service.
This time, Simpson testified. He denied ever hitting or beating Nicole. Instead, he offered a picture of himself as a concerned husband who nursed her through pneumonia after their divorce and worried about her even after he became involved with someone else. But his testimony failed to convince the mostly white jury. After deliberating for three days, they returned a unanimous verdict against him. Finding him liable for the deaths of Nicole and her friend was the closest the legal system could get to branding him a murderer.
Simpson was forced to sell his Brentwood home of 20 years at auction several months later; it was razed in 1998. Two years later, he moved to Florida, where the laws made it easier for him to shield his remaining assets. He lived off his $19,000-a-month NFL pension and investments.
In 2006 he wrote “If I Did It,” a bizarre “fictional memoir” about how he might have committed the murders. His potential to profit from the book stirred such outrage that the original publisher, Judith Regan, was fired and thousands of copies were destroyed.
In an effort to collect on the civil verdict, Goldman's father, Fred, gained the rights to the book and had it published in 2007. The book, which became a bestseller, featured Simpson's original manuscript but with an introduction by the Goldmans, who viewed the story as Simpson's confession. Taking the book away from Simpson was a coup for the Goldmans, whose lawyers constantly dogged him to turn over valuables.
Fred Goldman later speculated that losing the book pushed Simpson over the edge. On Sept. 13, 2007, he assembled a rogue's gallery of ex-cons to confront memorabilia dealers Bruce Fromong and Alfred Beardsley, whom an intermediary had lured to a room at the Palace Station Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Told to expect a “mystery buyer,” they were stunned when Simpson burst into the room with his ragtag band of cohorts, two of whom brandished guns as Simpson demanded the return of a number of items he said belonged to him. He left with a bag full of mementos, including an All-American team football and three game balls inscribed with the dates he used them to break records.
Simpson was arrested three days later on charges including armed robbery and kidnapping.
At his trial, there were empty seats in the courtroom. At his sentencing, Simpson was contrite.
“In no way did I mean to hurt anybody, to steal anything from anybody. I just wanted my personal things,” he told the judge after hearing his sentence. Then, with wrists shackled to a chain around his waist, he was taken to his cell.
Long before the city woke up on a fall morning in 2017, Simpson walked out of Lovelock Correctional Center outside Reno, a free man for the first time in 9 years. He didn't go far, moving into 5,000-square-foot home in Vegas, with a Bentley in the driveway.
The media had been told he'd be released the following day, so he had the desert morning to himself as he was driven toward Las Vegas. It was a final trick play for a man who'd spent a lifetime running away from trouble.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2023
Community Health Trust of Pajaro Valley’s (CHT) El Mercado Farmers’ Market will reopen on April 18, 2023, for third season. El Mercado is a California‐ certified, seasonal, and health‐centric farmers’ market aimed at reducing food insecurity and chronic illness.
Located at Ramsay
Park in Watsonville, El Mercado is more than just a farmers’ market; it intentionally increases access to fresh produce, nutrition information, wellness resources and referrals to social services for residents in the Pajaro Valley. El Mercado features organic and conventional agricultural vendors, ready-to-eat foods, local artisans, events for the whole family, as well as health-promoting services change and the Farm Bill
The 2023 Farm Bill presents opportunities for Farmers and Ranchers on the frontlines of climate change. Farmers and ranchers, the people who produce our food, are often on the frontlines of the challenges facing our society. Among the most pressing of those issues are the changing climate and an industrial food system that prioritizes profits over the well-being of people and the planet. Combined with the unprecedented loss of biodiversity, these issues can be considered a triple threat to humanity. Fortunately, agriculture also offers solutions to these challenges when practiced in a sustainable, organic way. And despite an increasingly divisive political climate, support for agriculture continues to be a bright spot for bipartisan legislation. The upcoming Farm Bill cycle presents
Central Coast
Contributed photo
By Gordon Merrick and Elizabeth Tobey, Organic Farming Research Foundation
It is clear that a changing climate is no longer a future concern, but a current hazard. Organic agriculture can help. But, in order for organic to reach its full potential in mitigating and responding to climate change it needs support from federal funding, especially research.
It is a Farm Bill year in DC. What gets included or excluded from this bill has a tremendous impact on farming and food systems in the U.S. It will determine programs ranging from access to crop insurance for farmers to providing access to healthy foods to families; from beginning farmer like health screenings, cooking demos, vaccine clinics, and a variety of community resources in partnership with nonprofits.
El Mercado offers several incentive programs funded by state agencies to subsidize the cost of produce for low-income consumers, including CalFresh. El Mercado is also the main redemption site for VeggieRx, CHT’s produce prescription program that provides free fruits and vegetables to individuals experiencing food insecurity and diet-related illnesses. Local residents in the tri-county area who are Medi-Cal recipients, have a diet-related illness, and are facing food insecurity are eligible to register for the VeggieRx program where they receive a
an opportunity to support farmers and ranchers who are uniquely poised to address these issues.
The Farm Bill is a package of legislation, updated once every five years, that sets the stage for our food and farming systems. The current Farm Bill expires in October of 2023, and a new suite of legislation will be developed and put into action. This Farm Bill cycle is a ripe opportunity to make advances toward types of production that mitigate and adapt to our changing climate, support the health of the land and the people producing our food, and can help prevent food insecurity by increasing the amount of organic, nutritious food on America’s plates.
Farmers keenly feel the challenges presented by warmer temperatures, increased flooding, and other extreme weather events. Caroline Baptist, owner of River Valley Country Club, a small farm in a variety of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields. Their goal is to create opportunities for under-represented communities in STEM and help make their voices, knowledge, and concerns central to what science is and what questions and concerns science addresses.
The BioJam agenda for the first two weeks engaged teens through their own creativity and culture in bioengineering and biomaterial design, with a focus on growing biomaterials, biomaterial recipes, circuitry components, and live plants. In the final week, the teens participated in engagement activities training to financial and technical support for sustainable farming practices.
Although we now understand the climate benefits of organic agriculture; there are still day-to-day challenges organic farmers face. Public funding for agriculture research in the Farm Bill is vital to provide solutions for these challenges.
The 2023 Farm Bill has continually been framed as a “flat farm bill.” Put simply, this means for any program to see an increase in funding, another program must be cut. This is a dangerous position at a time when so much is at stake.
The Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF) has its roots in Santa Cruz, California, but has grown into an organization with staff across the country. Although weekly voucher for fresh produce. Program participants also receive health-conscious recipes and are enrolled in a series of health and classes provided by CHT’s Diabetes Health Center.
With grant funding, Community Health
Trust plans to build the long-term organizational capacity of El Mercado by doubling the foot traffic, increasing VeggieRX participants, increasing the number of agricultural producers and average gross sales over a three-year period. The proposed strategies of growth are focused on sustainability so CHT can continue to address the needs of Pajaro Valley residents experiencing food insecurity and access to
Now accepting vendor applications for the 2023 season! Local farmers, artists, and food vendors welcome at El Mercado. Vendor benefits include digital marketing promotion CHT’s platforms, traffic, and recurring customers
CHT’s VeggieRx Contact Liz Medina, CHT’s Programs Associate Health Collaboratives, lmedina@pvhealthtrust.org or (831) 726-4264 for details.
VeggieRx
By Gordon Merick Elizabeth Tobey, Organic Farming Research Foundation
in Washington state that recently experienced an extreme flooding event, said, “Some areas of the farm were underwater by 15 feet and accessible only by canoe,” Baptist said. “This flood and every flood since is a sobering experience, illustrating clearly that the climate crisis is real, and it affects farmers firsthand.”
Many methods of conventional food production are an outgrowth of the technological and chemical advancements of the mid-20th century, which resulted in a rapid increase in the ability to export calories in the form of commodity crops, such as corn and soy. This production depends on the ubiquitous use of cheap agri-chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and continued expansion of farmer debt to increase scale and maintain technological relevancy. This ‘get big or get out’ production system decreases biodiversity and weakens the landscape’s capacity to adapt to our changing climate or slight shifts in things like crop production or labor availability. In contrast to industrial agriculture systems, organically managed lands help build resilience in adapting to
what they during camp elementary-aged
explaining concepts of bioengineering and human-centered design that were learned during the prior weeks. The program strives to create a pathway for participants to share their learning in their home communities.
This year’s program was MCOE’s second summer collaboration with the BioJam team and served an entirely migrant student cohort. BioJam took place at a variety of local school sites, including Everett Alvarez High School, Salinas High School, and MCOE. The program also included an overnight educational it may be normal to discuss the weather, this year we have noticed a difference. Almost every staff meeting starts with a first-hand account of extreme weather events: historic tornadoes, hail, and smoke in the midwest; swinging from a millennia-era drought to unprecedented flooding in the Pacific-West; a heat dome and drought in the Southeast; and everyone east of the Rockies breathing smoke-filled air from Canadian wildfires. This month Vermont made the news with historic flooding, after reporting a shortterm extreme drought earlier in the year, and a record-breaking late frost in the spring. While everyone is feeling these changes, farmers and farm workers are on the frontlines of these weather events and of
Please join us for season three of El Mercado at Ramsay Park in Watsonville, every Tuesday from 2:006:00
PM, April – October
climate change through increasing ecological vitality, while providing safe, high-quality food. Expanding public investments into solving organic agricultural management challenges will help to continue growing domestic organic production to match the growing demand for organic goods, whilealso moving us closer to climate goals.
Because of their place on the front lines of these challenges, farmers and ranchers represent a vibrant space of innovation and creativity to meet them. These farmers and ranchers should be sources of inspiration on policy tools and instruments for the 2023 farm bill.
One example is Jesse Buie, president of Ole Brook Organics in Mississippi. One of the main environmental factors that Buie deals with is frequent and intense rain. To combat this, he focuses on building healthy soil by making sure that he is constantly adding organic matter. Any grasses or crop residue left after a crop is harvested are tilled back into the fields, forming a closed loop of nutrient cycling. This makes the soil better able to absorb moisture in extreme water events.
At Sumpter Cooperative Farms, farm manager to the of
Santa Cruz, in workshops at the Agro-Ecology program and visited an aquaponics farm in Halfmoon Bay.
A closing ceremony was held for participants and live streamed in MCOE’s MCAET Black Box Theater, with students presenting their knowledge on topics such as Milpas, Soil, and Chinampas, all of which are systems and components used in agricultural farming.
To find out more about MCOE’s Migrant Education program, visit www.montereycoe.org/ divisions-services/migrant-services. the risk they pose to their farming operations. Hours before the flooding in Vermont this month, amid road closures and evacuation notices, farmers rushed to harvest ahead of the storm. As flood waters rose near Burlington, Intervale Community
Provided
program,
CHT’s Community Health Worker, Ofelia Garcia at ogarcia@pvhealthtrust. or (831) 732-5397 for
information.
About Community Health Trust of Pajaro Valley
Founded in 1998 and serving the tri-county area, Community Health Trust (CHT ) is recognized
Provided photo
Shaheed Harris deals the opposite environmental concern: too little water. Harris addresses this challenge by implementing Dry Farming practices learned from his family's farming heritage. This style of farming, which combines unirrigated crop production with shallow cultivation, offers a promising alternative in times of uncertain water resources. The USDA itself has made historic investments in financially supporting and providing technical assistance to growers transitioning to organic production, with the $300 million committed to the Organic Transition Initiative. Ensuring that assistance is backed by high-quality scientific, economic, and cultural research is imperative.
What is needed now is a continued commitment to meet the challenges facing organic and transitioning producers.
Federal research, conservation, and market development programs created and funded by for its leadership as a convener in the South Santa Cruz County area. CHT is motivated to foster an equitable
Valley with health, wellness and a full quality of life for all through access resources, activities, and choices that help prevent illness and improve quality of life. past Farm Bills have helped but expanded support is necessary to continue to support farmers and create a healthier future for people and the planet. To that end, the
Farming Research Foundation has outlined three priority areas for the 2023 Farm Bill. First, increase the organic research funding at the Agricultural Research Service to represent its market share, producing environmentally and economically sound management systems for all producers. Second, continue to support and develop the investments the National Institute for Food and Agriculture has been making in organic agriculture research. Lastly, fully fund and expand the Organic Market and Data Initiative.
If you want to learn more about the 2023 Farm Bill or get involved in advocating for a better food system, contact Gordon Merrick (gordon@ofrf.org) at the Organic Farming Research Foundation!
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out call volunteers. “They to harvest beets carrots,” reported news outlet, Vermont Public. Farm Manager Andy Jones explained that crops that came in contact with the floodwater would be at risk of contamination, and not | | | able to sell to consumers. “This is just one example of climate change making it riskier to farm,” Jones told Vermont Public.
We are living in the anthropocene, a geological age defined by the
FRIDAY, APRIL 21, 2023
Benefitting Monterey County Fair Heritage Foundation
Take a fun “beer-cation” and celebrate the 20th Annual Monterey Beer Festival, presented by Chukchansi Gold Resort & Casino, at the beautiful Monterey County Fair & Event Center on Saturday, July 8, 2023 from 12:30 - 4:00 pm. A notto-be-missed event for anyone 21 and over, the Monterey Beer Festival benefits the Monterey County Fair Heritage Foundation.
The Monterey Beer Festival attracted 4,000 attendees in 2022 who enjoyed tasting an array of outstanding beer and
Provided photos held Thursday, May 11, 2023, at Driscoll’s Rancho Corralitos
Provided
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A 32 food. In addition to many new beers to delight the senses and please your palate this year, the Monterey Beer will feature live entertainment and a DJ, all in a totally fun, relaxed party atmosphere.
Taste the very best beer from around the globe from your very own souvenir Monterey Beer Festival tasting pilsner included in with admission. The festival will provide hundreds of beers to sample, plus a variety of delicious food available to pair with your beer of choice. Find some new favorite beers! There will be lots of new local craft beer choices, too, plus special festival surprises. Several food trucks with tasty offerings will be on site.
The entertainment on the Main Stage will feature Festival Emcee Fredo
This event is for women involved in or who support local agriculture. The luncheon raises funds for Agri-Culture’s Focus Agriculture program, the Jimmie Cox Memorial Scholarship fund, and the Santa Cruz County Farm Bureau’s educational
Salud Para La Gente
Jim Brown
Virgilio Ricardo la Cruz on the Radio.
All ticket holders will receive a Monterey Beer Festival souvenir beer pilsner glass. Tickets are now available on Eventbrite
General Admission Presale Price (through July 7, 2023) is $60, or tickets are $65 at the gate. (Note: There will be no VIP tickets this year.)
More details and participating breweries will also soon be available on the website at www.montereybeerfestival.com. Designated Driver tickets are available. Designated drivers bring someone to the Festival for the fun but not the alcohol to get you home safely for $25 per person. The Monterey Beer Festival encourages all patrons to drink responsibly.
Parking is available on Fairground Road. All Ticket holders must be age programs. A portion of this year’s proceeds will also go to the farmworker flood relief efforts. The featured speaker will be Emily Bonder, the owner of Santa Cruz Bee Company, who will speak on “Bees: Essential Pollinators for a Healthy Planet.”
Safety, Sutter Maternity
Ganzhorn
Gerrans
Megan Goddard
CCOF
Grant
Central Coast Program
Heuer
The Grower of the Year
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21 and over and show a current ID. Buy your tickets early and enjoy a discount!
The Coolest
Necklace
Festival-goers are invited to wear their coolest Beer Festival necklace to the Monterey Beer Festival as part of a new contest judged on-site at the Festival. There
The mistress of ceremonies for the event will be Krista Snelling, President/CEO of Santa Cruz County Bank. Tickets are on sale now for $150 per person. To make a reservation, become a sponsor, or make a donation
Contributed photo
Krista CEO
Snelling
Phil Tavarez & (2019); (2017). be of
UCSC will be 3 winners who will receive tickets to the 2024 Monterey Beer Festival.
Take advantage of great community sponsorship opportunities. A limited number of sponsorship opportunities are available with many unique benefits. Call Wendy Brickman at (831) 594-1500 or email brickman@brickmanmarketing.com to the event, call (831) 722-6622, or email agri-culture@sbcglobal. net, or purchase tickets at www.eventbrite.com by searching for “Down to | FARM | for more information on being a sponsor.
The Monterey County Fair & Event Center is located at 2004 Fairground Road in Monterey (enter Gate 5). For information, call 831-372-5863 or email: heritage@montereycountyfair.com. Information and tickets will be available at www. montereybeerfestival.com.
Earth Women Luncheon.” Driscoll’s Rancho Corralitos is located at 242 Corralitos Road. The luncheon starts at and ends at
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Provided photo of Rod Braga on the sixth annual OGS,