There were 90,375 people who read Noozhawk this past week. Here’s what I’ve cooked up to say about your top stories:
1. Struggling Sojourner Café Owner Reaches Out to Community for Help
Noozhawk breaks the story of the Elephant Bar Restaurant closing and traffic goes through the roof. Noozhawk breaks the story of the Sojourner Café struggling to stay afloat and traffic goes through the roof.
Note to self: Failure is an option. For us.
But the venerable Sojourner Café at 134 E. Canon Perdido is not dead yet, and if longtime owner Donna Mudge has anything to do with it, it will somehow find a way to revive.
It’s an uphill battle, of course, but Mudge turned to Noozhawk in a bold effort to call attention to her plight and an ambitious attempt to enlist the community’s help. Staying silent, she told our Gina Potthoff, was not something she could live with as the 37-year-old restaurant withers away.
“We’re like a landmark at this point,” she said. “If I don’t tell people, they’re going to say, ‘Why didn’t you say something?’”
Mudge, 53, who has owned “the Soj” outright since 1999, is looking for a business partner or an investor — someone who could ease her load and/or fund a looooong-overdue renovation of the place, which opened in 1978 and was way ahead of the healthy foods trend but has since been left in the dirt.
“This has always been a really nurturing establishment,” she said. “We’re like family here.”
As with any family, Noozhawk readers were not reluctant to tell Mudge what she should do.
Although there has been a healthy serving of snark, our comments section has included a remarkably broad set of thoughtful, genuine and energetic suggestions. I’m not surprised, mind you — OK, I’m a little surprised — but the ongoing engagement has been encouraging.
Good luck, Donna.
Click here if you’ve not yet weighed in on the discussion.
2. Isla Vista Massacre Report Reveals Chilling Details of Killer Elliot Rodger’s Plans, Actions
In his short, pathetic existence, 22-year-old mass murderer Elliot Rodger contributed very little of value to this earth. It seems a real shame that the whiny little man will live in infamy because of what he managed to accomplish in the last eight minutes of his life.
Almost nine months after Rodger’s homicidal rampage through Isla Vista, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department on Feb. 19 released its long-awaited report on the sequence of events surrounding his killings on May 23, 2014.
The 68-page report is exhaustive, and it paints a chilling picture of a psychopath racing pell-mell past the point of no return. But as horrifying as it is to read, the report does shed some light on the hows if not necessarily the whys. For those reasons, Sheriff Bill Brown and his team of investigators are to be commended for the small measure of closure the report is able to provide.
Having hounded the Sheriff’s Department for months, Noozhawk executive editor Tom Bolton and news editor Giana Magnoli received a tip on Feb. 18 that the report’s release was imminent. They got to work early the next day, ready to read, and by the time they were emailed a copy they already had tag-teamed quite a lot of background to fill in any blanks.
Within 90 minutes of receiving the report, Noozhawk broke the story first. Throughout the next couple of hours, Tom and Giana continued to update as they meticulously picked their way through the document. Later in the afternoon, Tom pulled out new information for an additional story to pair with our main one. Afterward, Giana constructed a timeline to further explain what happened that night.
I’m a slow reader so I’m way behind Tom and Giana, but I was transfixed by Rodger’s obsession with Nazi madmen, his apparent stabbing rehearsals and the fact that his tipping point may have been triggered by his failure to win the Powerball lottery. Not winning the lottery may have been the only example of him ever being “just like” everyone else.
It will be interesting to see if the report contains any new information about Rodger’s parents, who evidently had no problem dumping their mentally ill son in our community — 90 miles away from theirs. No spoiler alerts, please.
In the meantime, we must remember not to forget the six UC Santa Barbara students who died in the carnage: George Chen, Katie Cooper, Cheng Yuan “James” Hong, Chris Michaels-Martinez, Weihan “David” Wang and Veronika Weiss. Rest in peace.
3. Suicide Suspected in Death at Goleta Beach
Authorities say a man found dead in a car parked at Goleta Beach Park on Feb. 17 appears to have committed suicide.
According to Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Kelly Hoover, emergency personnel arrived at 9:15 a.m. and discovered the man apparently had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The man’s identity has not yet been released pending notification of relatives.
Click here for free suicide prevention resources that are available 24/7.
4. Goleta Woman Struck, Killed by Freight Train Near La Patera Lane
With Union Pacific railroad tracks running through the heart of the entire South Coast, it’s hard to miss the trains that roll through all day and night. But it happens.
On Feb. 14, 49-year-old Suzanne Worsham of Goleta was killed when she was hit by a freight train near the depot at La Patera Lane. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Kelly Hoover said Worsham’s death appears to be accidental, but the circumstances are under investigation. Authorities say the woman apparently was talking on her cell phone while walking on the tracks and did not hear the oncoming train.
The next day, a man survived being clipped by an Amtrak passenger train at the State Street crossing near the Santa Barbara train station. Authorities believe the incident may have been a suicide attempt.
According to Santa Barbara Fire Battalion Chief Lee Waldron, witnesses said the man was on the tracks but appeared to edge out of the way at the last second, getting hit with a glancing blow by the train.
The man was taken to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital by an American Medical Response ambulance. His identity and condition were not disclosed.
Meanwhile, in a different kind of casualty the night of Feb. 13, a pickup truck parked too close to the tracks had its front bumper ripped off by an Amtrak train leaving the Santa Barbara station. No injuries were reported.
5. (Tie) Dos Pueblos High Senior Accepted Into All Four Military Academies
Zach Frontado is an 18-year-old senior at Dos Pueblos High School, a member of the powerhouse Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy, and he has dreams of becoming a pilot and an engineer.
This fall, he will start down that runway as a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
Acceptance at one of the nation’s military service academies is an achievement in itself, given how competitive the process is and how stellar the applicants are.
What further separates Zach from the elite company these schools keep is that he pulled off the relatively rare feat of being accepted into all four of the service academies to which he applied. In addition to the Air Force Academy, the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.; the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.; and the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., all came calling.
“As I did research and talked to more officers and cadets, I found out that I wanted to pursue flying and the Air Force Academy offered me the best chance to become a pilot,” Zach told our Giana Magnoli.
“It’s something I would love to do, serve my country and also get a five-star education in the process,” he added. “I didn’t see any other path that would be as fulfilling as choosing that.”
Zach is the son of Kim Frontado of Goleta and Tina and Greg Frontado of Santa Barbara.
HT to my friend, Tina Frontado, for the news tip.
5. (Tie) Eastside Santa Barbara Restaurant Thrust into Business Improvement District Debate
Taqueria El Bajio occupies a tiny storefront on Santa Barbara’s Lower Eastside, but it has a large following of loyal customers who crowd in for caldos, menudo and some of the best carne asada around. And I know a thing or two about carne asada.
For the last week, however, the restaurant at 129 N. Milpas St. has been a bit of a flashpoint between the two loosely organized sides of the electrifying debate over a proposed Eastside Business Improvement District.
For those of you not paying attention, later this year the City Council is expected to consider approving a special-assessment district along the Milpas Street corridor and in the adjacent commercial/industrial area. Businesses within the district essentially would be taxed to pay for marketing and promotion, events, security and other services the city doesn’t cover.
The Milpas Community Association, with the enthusiastic support of El Bajio owner Santos Guzman, backs the EBID. The local activist group PODER (People Organizing for the Defense of Equal Rights) opposes it.
Things got heated a couple of times in the last week as PODER protesters gathered outside El Bajio to press their cause. According to police officers who responded to calls, the demonstrations involved sign waving, chanting, customer intimidation and deriding restaurant employees as “sellouts.”
The PODER folks say their protest was intended “to focus attention on the dangers of the Milpas Community Association and its proposed gentrification plans for the Eastside.”
As our Gina Potthoff reported, PODER is particularly upset with Guzman, whom they accuse of working against the wishes of the majority of Latino-owned businesses in the area.
Meanwhile, a number of elected officials and Milpas Community Association members gathered at El Bajio for a demonstration of their own, staging an “eat-in” to support the longtime Latino-owned business.
“Certainly, any business ought to be able to conduct business without being harassed about what their political choices might be,” City Councilman Frank Hotchkiss told Gina.
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Mountain bikers are not an unfamiliar sight on Santa Barbara County trails. But these dudes take the sport to a new extreme in the Himalayas.
(Mercedes-Benz Films video)
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— Bill Macfadyen is Noozhawk’s founder and publisher. Contact him at wmacfadyen@noozhawk.com, follow him on Twitter: @noozhawk, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.