In a press conference in front of the P.G. post office Aug. 4, activist David Dilworth is the second to sign a petition to recall Mayor Dan Cort and three council members. The first to sign was Dilworth’s right-hand man, former P.G. Councilman Terrence Zito.Pacific Grove Mayor Dan Cort has announced his surprise resignation, effective Aug. 31, in response to the threat of a recall.
In an email to Cort sent before 6pm August 3, P.G. activist David Dilworth informed the mayor he planned to begin gathering recall signatures at 11:45am Aug. 4—unless Cort promptly resigned.
Category Archives: Coast Weakly
Here’s To You City Leaders
Stability is crumbling, Arnie is taking our tax dollars, you gave away the Mvsevm, town’s going broke, citizens are turning out in droves over where to park cars so they can walk dogs, and where are they? On vacation.
The city hasn’t had a permanent city manager since December, and the recruitment has taken months longer than expected. Interim City Manager Charlene Wiseman agreed to extend her six-month term by two months, but has indicated she won’t stay beyond August.
The leadership void was underscored in mid-July, when both Wiseman and Mayor Dan Cort were away on overlapping two-week vacations.
The Weakly Shames Pacific Grove
for not respecting cultures. Can’t even carry on traditions without being told we are all bad, bad citizens.
On the left side, a gallery celebrates the Feast of Lanterns, a P.G. tradition since 1905. Though the signs feature an Asian-inspired font and a bamboo trim, they don’t address why white P.G. high school students started enacting a “Chinese operetta” (featuring Princess Yum Yum) only a few years after P.G.’s actual Chinese-American residents were forced out of town. It doesn’t address what originally inspired the festival’s trademark Chinese lanterns, dresses and art styles. It doesn’t discuss Stanford Ph.D. student – and excavator of the Chinese village artifacts – Bryn Williams’ theory that the Feast of Lanterns tradition sprang out of a human need to romanticize, and appropriate, pieces of the very cultures we destroy.
There always was culture, and from the P.G. Chinese community – but not what the P.C. weenies at the Weakly would want . .
P.G. Tribune, 1974
Moe Ammar – I Don’t Buy American
The man needs to be fired.
the unpopular water company has a friend in Pacific Grove Chamber of Commerce President Moe Ammar, who praised the German-owned corporation: “Cal Am has been a good neighbor, a good corporate citizen. That is why I drive a Mercedes Benz instead of a GM.”
Substainable Pacific Grove To Take Over Safeway?
Mayor Cort thinks that adding ‘substainable features’ to a business is somehow beneficial. Maybe more morons will shop there. Disagree and maybe they will impose eminent domain to take over the property and ruin Forest Hill too.
Cort says the city-owned Bathhouse, golf clubhouse and golf links should be tapped to make more money. The city should encourage the Safeway on Forest Avenue to expand and add green features, he says, and look for more opportunities to use philanthropy for public services.
Stupid Art Galleries – Paint A New Sign, Will Ya
While Pacific Grove lays claim to many family-friendly events – the Butterfly Parade, Good Old Days and Feast of Lanterns – when the sun goes down and the grown-ups want to make merry, P.G. is reliably an early-to-bedder.
But on special Friday nights, the tide turns in the town’s favor during the aptly named Wine, Art & Music Walk.
Oh, look! There are FOUR more galleries just up the street, right?
Lessee, there’s Trott’s for one
The gallery with “Ol’ One Eye” for two, but it’s not even open..
The one with the scarves and balloons for Three
And that’s it. There is one former gallery or two. I lose count of ex galleries. Stupid artists, go back to Carmel..
Farmers’ Market to Moooooove?
The farmers market on Lighthouse Avenue really has not grown since it’s beginning. There’s only so much demand for tomatoes or the sparse offerings of P.G. residents. Maybe if we had more chickens in town there would be an egg booth. Solid Fact: There are not many farmers in P.G. It’s a town of vacant vacation homes and people too busy to walk to town every week in search of carrots.
Change the location & change the format and it might take off. Then the cranky downtown store owners would complain that the market is taking away all the shoppers from downtown.
“Pacific Grove on a Monday afternoon before the Farmers Market was empty: parking everywhere, no people on the street, totally dead,” she says. “With the Farmers Market, there are definitely more cars around.”
The subcommittee will meet over the next few months to explore alternative market locations, including the parking lot behind the Holman building (on Lighthouse and Grand Avenue) and the lot below Pepper’s (on Forest Avenue at Lighthouse), Valuch says.
Meanwhile, in an effort to draw more traffic in the typically sluggish chilly season, Peppard wants to invite vendors from all of Monterey County to participate in the “non-certified” (prepared foods and crafts) section of the market.
Colossus Of Gold Statue & Artist Together At Last
The new owners of the Steinbeck home presented Snick with the inspiration of the comic. The pedestal where the statue stood for many years is now bare.
“I used to make fun of it because it’s the ugliest piece of crap I’ve ever seen,” Farkas says. “Now it’s something of an icon, and I want to save it.”
In 1994 Farkas, a pop artist who works at a P.G. vacuum store, debuted a comic strip in which the statue is hit by lightning and grows to “hideous proportions” to become the “Colossus of Gold,” who rambles through the coastal town of “Specific Groove” lampooning its public figures. Farkas posts the cartoon at Gene’s Barbershop and www.93950.com/cog, and occasionally performs it at P.G. City Council meetings.
Before
Book About Cannery Row
Cannery Row Post Card – 1970s
Author A.L. Lundy reveals some history of the street now crowded with tourists.
Still, Real Life on Cannery Row has many nuggets of gold. One that made me want to head to Cannery Row with a headlamp suggested that secret passageways connected the Wing Chong Co. building to the adjacent La Ida’s so that opium users could elude police in the ’20s and ’30s. Another sidebar gives away a recipe for “Half-Way House Salsa,” which was a condiment that topped burgers Steinbeck used to enjoy at a bar that was formerly located at 598 Lighthouse.
Where’s Joe Bennett?
Forest Grove Principal departs. Without fanfare I guess.
Interim principal Beller says he knows nothing about Bennett’s departure and is still assessing whether to apply for the permanent principal position.
P.G. Teachers Association Negotiating President Wendy Milligan, a Forest Grove teacher, says she’s legally bound to a confidentiality agreement regarding Bennett, in contradiction to Lozano’s claim that no one is under a gag order.
“No one can talk about it. It’s extremely confidential,” Milligan says. “It was a very sticky situation. There were some complaints, and finally those complaints turned into action. I want to tell people what’s going on but I can’t, legally.”