Brad Kava

New Rochelle

Editor at Good Times SC

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Articles

The Editor's Desk | Good Times

2 days ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

You don’t have to work too hard to keep Santa Cruz weird. It’s always been weird and it always will be, we hope, despite the homogenized housing towers blanketing the downtown, right? We are the Northern California capital of kitsch, but in a good way. This is a community that boycotted efforts to build a chain bookstore downtown and has favored independent stores over chains.
EDITOR'S NOTE | Good Times

2 days ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

I was a huge Pele Juju fan, thinking this Santa Cruz all-women world beat band should be the next big thing nationwide. I would drive from San Jose to see them at the Catalyst whenever I could and have been sorely disappointed that they disbanded. I always wondered what they were up to, and now I know at least one member has taken on a different beat: she’s building green homes.
The Editor's Desk | Good Times

2 weeks ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

With co-president Elon Musk, or whatever his title is, championing the power of the hallucinogenic drug ketamine, we were very curious about its possible positive and negative effects. Writer Lucille Tepperman volunteered to try the drug in a controlled setting and gave us her impressions. The good news is that there are professionals trained in guiding people on their trips of discovery here in Santa Cruz, unlike the old days when people simply dropped LSD and other drugs for fun and frenzy.
The Editor's Desk | Good Times

3 weeks ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

As the late Christopher Hitchens reportedly said, “Everyone has a book inside them, which is exactly where it should, I think, in most cases, remain.”Yet in our highly literate and educated community, there are so many budding authors with important stories to tell, clawing their way to be heard. The odds are staggeringly bad, as bad as the 10–year-old gamer who wants to make millions as an influencer or the street basketball player who wants to make the NBA.
Best of Santa Cruz County 2025: Editor’s Note

4 weeks ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

Just when I thought I knew everything about Santa Cruz, having lived here long enough to have had three dogs with complete life spans, I see great recommendations in this issue that I never knew. There’s a man-made waterfall near Medicine Buddha? Wow. I’ve been there a million times and didn’t know it. A massage place where you keep your clothes on? Had no idea. A shop with a major selection of beans?
The Music Never Stopped

4 weeks ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

Music fans have been listening to David Gans playing Grateful Dead music on the radio for decades and reading his books on the band. Now they have a chance to study the band’s 60-year career in a Stanford extension course online, starting in April. 1. What is your goal in teaching a Grateful Dead course? What do you want students to learn? What makes the Dead worth a course? I am a musician and a journalist.
The Editor's Desk | Good Times

1 month ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

This town is filled with struggling musicians. Throw a quarter and they pop out of the woodwork like pigeons chasing bread. (I’m not being mean—I am one.)But one band has found a way to make it big, playing great music here for 40 years. How did the Banana Slugs do it? Our writer, DNA, talked to them to find out the how, why and wherefore. There’s a lesson here for all of us trying to live on the arts. One thing they did right was playing educational music for kids.
The Editor's Desk | Good Times

1 month ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

I had high hopes for Jeff Bezos when he bought the Washington Post in 2013. Before the days of mega corporations owning media, newspapers were owned by wealthy entrepreneurs who were members of their communities and invested in their well-being, supporting charities, and building museums. I thought Bezos would follow those traditions and keep his newspaper following journalism’s most revered tradition of bringing light into the darkness and making truth its highest standard.
BARS PUT WOMEN'S SAFETY FIRST

1 month ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

While cocktail bars are intended to be places where people go to play, the unfortunate reality is they can also be where predators come to prowl. But Santa Cruz is at the forefront of making bars safer by offering patrons a new type of coaster that can quickly detect if your cocktail has been spiked. Simply smear a few droplets of your drink on the testing area of the coaster and it can tell if ketamine or GHB, often referred to as “date rape drugs,” are present.
The Editor's Desk | Good Times

1 month ago | goodtimes.sc | Brad Kava

I invited a couple of millennials to watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and was shocked by their response—“It’s too old,” they said after watching a preview. TOO OLD?? It got me thinking: what’s the difference between something being dated or classic? What would they think of the upcoming Alfred Hitchcock Festival in Scotts Valley this weekend, written about in our cover story by Mathew Chipman?