The hub of social programs and government outreach needs to become unforgettable

After spending most of its history in “la trailita”—a double-wide trailer parked next to Poet’s Park—the Beach Flats Community Center (BFCC) thought it had found a permanent home in 2003, when the Santa Cruz Redevelopment Agency completed construction of the colorful Nueva Vista housing development at 133 Liebrandt Avenue. The community center was given space at the heart of the ground floor with a computer lab, day-care center, and classrooms, surrounded by 48 units of low to very-low income housing. But only five years later, what the city had given would now be taken away; the building still stands, but the public funding for the BFCC, what Resource Coordinator Reyna Ruiz calls “the liaison between Beach Flats and the city government,” has disappeared into the void of deep budget cuts and economic woes.

It’s the DH, stupid

By now, I’ve heard just about every possible reason for why the American League is just a better league. This is based on the head-to-head interleague records and the streak of AL wins in the All-Star Game.

Now, personally I like to call the National League “baseball” and the American League “Disney on Ice” because of the DH, which destroys the integrity of the game’s strategy. But more than hampering the in-game strategy, I think what we’ve seen since the last expansion rounds — which added 3 teams to the NL and only 1 to the AL — is the more sinister effect of the DH, the one that occurs in the off-season.The media has been bemoaning the lack of parity in the league since the last expansion, that in baseball your wallet size trumps everything else. What they’re missing, because of the incessant focus on the New York/Boston rivalry, is that this is only true in the American League.