Salinas Underground

This week, our guest is Susan Shillinglaw, Director of the National Steinbeck Center. Throughout the rest of September and October, the National Steinbeck Center will be hosting several workshops and talks about Steinbeck and his love for Mexico. Susan is a world renown expert on Steinbeck and she tells us some great stories and insight into Salinas's most famous son.

This week our guests are some of the volunteers for the Yes on Z campaign. While we never endorse any political candidates or causes we felt this campaign is so important to Monterey County that we had to have them on. Measure Z aims to ban fracking in Monterey County and is the first time such a measure is going to ballot in a major oil producing county. A lof of good information in this episode!

This episode was recorded at the Caminos Del Arte Art Festival and Car Show. Natividad Creek Park was transformed into a giant festival grounds featuring five stages of music and a car show. We set up at the skatepark stage and talk about Salinas under the beautiful California sun.

This week we have no guest so we talk about the topics that have been bouncing around in our heads for a couple of weeks. So we get into, Diablitos at the swap-meet, questions about a Salinas councilmember at the Earthquakes game and Oz getting some content stolen from his Twitter account and bananas.

This week we welcome back our local cannabis regulation expert Joey Espinoza. With only a couple of months left until the elections, we decided it was time to bring him back to explain what can possibly change in November. Oz was particularly curious about the possible taxes which sound astronomical to him. Listen to this episode if you have any questions and reach out to us if you need any more answered.

This episode our guests are Salinas-based Metal band Propheta. These dudes have been jamming together in one way or another for the past six years and they are working harder than ever. We talk about the history of the band and the plans for the future. This is a fun interview that includes some interesting Salinas trivia.

In this episode, we welcome our friend, and listener, Walter. We discuss the Dim Sum Inn on the Northside of Salinas and why everyone should try it as soon as possible. We also talk about which style of Chinese food we prefer, Mandarin or Cantonese. Oz also comes up with a plan to get back some of our tax money from the city using a strategy that the city is sure to disagree with.

This episode was recorded at the Green Library on the campus of Stanford. It is the oldest library on campus and houses most of the special collections of rare books that belong to the university. Our guests are Dr. Roberto Trujillo, director of special collections, and Ignacio Ornelas, a PhD candidate at UC Santa Cruz and Salinas native. We talk about the role Mexican immigrants have played in the history of the US and how the historical study of Mexican-Americans is still in its infancy. This was recorded in a room with some books over 500 years old. 500-year-old books!!

This week we welcome a new member into our podcast family. We now have a person to help us with various tasks on the show. If you want to be a guest on the show you will most likely be dealing with her. Click play on this episode and learn about Stefania.

In this episode, the guys solve the gun violence issue in the country. By that we mean we babble incoherently about a topic we are not smart enough to be talking about. Oz also talks about his experience at the Alisal Center for the Fine Arts showing of La Esquinita, U.S.A. a one-man show about a town struggling after a major employer leaves town.