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The Art Factory Studios Reopens in Aptos
By Suki Wessling Art Factory owner Yvette Contois, 52, stands at the entrance to her big, bright new studio in Aptos. She’s beaming. “We love our memories of the first eleven years in our little art cottage, and now we’re truly grateful to be starting the next chapter: Art Factory 3.0 in its new home,” she says. ”We couldn’t ask for a more fantastic space to celebrate our fifteenth year in Aptos!” This reopening has been a long time coming. Yvette’s former onsite business, housed in a little fairytale cottage in the redwoods, was a pandemic casualty. Even with everything going online, it was hard to leave the charming location,…
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Look Lively, There’s a New Kid’s Store Downtown
As the bright, mid-morning light streams through the Lively Kid’s storefront windows, owner Kayti Mata thoughtfully puts the finishing touches to her picture-perfect store. Surrounded by her hand-embellished furniture and snap-shots of her kids and their elementary school peers grinning down from the walls, Mata is completely in her element in the store of her dreams, located in the heart of her hometown. A third-generation Santa Cruzian, Mata always wanted to raise her two young children here, where they could have the same hometown experience she adored growing up. “There are so many roots here for our family… Santa Cruz was [always] the main option for us,” Mata said. “I’ve…
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When the County was Ablaze, Alaniz Gave Coffee to Firefighters
In a world ruled by big corporations, Eddie Alaniz had the radical idea to take charge of his own fate. Eddie built the brand Coffee Conspiracy, deriving inspiration from the idea of cultivating community and using coffee as the vehicle for counterculture. Eddie set out in Aptos on a bike armed with homemade cold brew and coffee beans in July of 2020. Born and raised in Campbell, Eddie, 40, first fell in love with coffee at 17 when he got his first job at Peet’s Coffee. He was immediately enamored with coffee culture, and now roasts his own coffee at a co-op in Oakland and sources his beans from single…
