Upcoming Events

Friday, October 30th – 9:00 PM – 12 Midnight – LARGE THEATER Live Drag Rave + DJ + Dance Experience 🎃🧛🏽‍♀️THE DRAG RAVE RETURNS SERVING CULT, for the SECOND YEAR IN A ROW🕯️💋. THE BEST HALLOWEEN PARTY IN SANTA CRUZ, we’re serving VAMP, CAMP, CULT, CLOWN AND MORE! 9PM IN THE 418 Project Main Room

GET READY FOR BONE RATTLING BEATS BY afterPRTY, A KILLER COSTUME CONTEST, and the BIGGEST DRAG SHOW in SANTA CRUZ! LET THAT FRIGHTFUL FREAK FLAG FLY💀🕯️🧨🕷️

Are you ready to get your afterlife? 🧟‍♀️ Follow @wedanceordie and @squeebster for all things DANCE OR DIE! Tickets: $15 advance / $20 at the door.

About Forage Species IV

The objective of Forage Species IV is to give learners and our community a deeper perspective on critical ‘feeder species’ in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS). Learners will help the artist model a life-sized school of Pacific Sardines (Sardinops sagax) using their hands and imagination to capture the kinetic movement and schooling dynamics of one of the most vital keystone species in the ocean.

In the background, learners will also explore visual presentations on the historical sardine fishery in Monterey Bay, climate-driven migration shifts, and the profound effects on marine life including seabirds, pinnipeds, dolphins, and whales.

STEM into STEAM: Four-Part Lobby Sculpture Build

Forage IV is a collaborative four-part build for a major hanging sculpture suspended from the ceiling halo in the main lobby of The 418 Project. Each day will focus on building the piece, shaping the fish, and discussing the ecological relationships of forage species. Learners will be asked to write up their takeaways from the build once it is completed.

• Texturing 560 Pacific Sardines made of light aluminum, using hammers and specialty tools to shape the individual fish.
• Creating the wire armature that will shape and hold the swirling school.
• Hanging the sculpture from the halo suspended from the ceiling of the main lobby.

Through a STEAM approach (combining Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math), students work in focused collaborative teams:

• Texture Teams: Hammering organic contours and light-catching features onto nearly 600 aluminum sardines, crafting the distinct personality of each fish.
• Wire Teams: Working the structural wire armature and attaching the fish to the lead wire matrix that becomes the sculpture itself.
• Hang Teams: Assisting the artist in suspending and securing the armature from the lobby fixture.

Class Agenda & Build Schedule

Each of the build days will focus on the various aspects of the creation of a major public artwork:

• 11/4 – Kickoff & Introduction: A brief introduction to the Pacific Sardine (Sardinops sagax) followed by students breaking out into teams focusing on the build:
  • Texturing the 560 aluminum fish.
  • Working the wire armature that will suspend the school.
  • Attaching the fish to the wire armature.
• 11/11 – Build Day 1:
  • Focus on hammering the texture onto the fish.
  • Hanging and shaping the armature from the fixture.
  • Wiring the fish to the armature.
• 11/18 – Build Day 2:
  • Continue process of creating the fish, the armature, and the wire.
• 12/02 – Build Day 3:
  • Teams continue to texture fish and attach them to the wire that will hold them.
  • Sculpture takes shape.
• 12/09 – Build Day 4:
  • Student teams continue to work on the fish, the hang, and the wire.

Finishing & Public Reveal

Continued build as needed by the artist, and any students that wish to participate. The build window is tight and any finish work remaining after the student build days will be accomplished by the artist. Student participation in this finishing stage is welcome and can be arranged with parental, 418, and artist approvals.

*Project to be revealed to the public at a date to be determined by 418 management.

About the Artist & STEAM Instructor: Edward Martinez III

Edward Martinez III is an environmental sculptor, designer, serial entrepreneur, and marketing strategist with nearly 4,000 individual pieces created since 2012 from reclaimed materials and metals. His credits include featured installations at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) and The 418 Project. He has been featured at the prestigious Palo Alto and River Art Festivals, The Tannery Arts Center, numerous Maker’s Faires, and Santa Cruz County art galleries. Edward also has major permanent works installed in commercial sites across the country, and private collections throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Thurs., November 5th – 7:30 PM [SMALL THEATER]

“CONFESSIONS OF A FILM POSTER ADDICT: From Golden Age Completist to Big Paper Film Classics and Women Leaders Behind the Camera” – Illustrated Lecture with film historian & collector Dwight Cleveland

During his illustrated talk, longtime film historian and poster collector Dwight Cleveland will walk us through his 50-year collecting odyssey, sharing images from around the world hoping to energize our aesthetic and awareness of why these fragile paper posters are important documents of U.S. cultural and cinema history. He will focus on the often-overlooked and under-recognized women of Silent Era (directors, writers and producers) who played leadership roles and were essential to development of the cinema business as we know it today.

Dwight will have limited copies of his book "CINEMA ON PAPER: the Graphic Genius of Movie Posters" available for purchase and signing at the event.

Bio:

Dwight started collecting film posters as a high-school senior in 1977 and has owned more than 250,000. In 2016, he sold his archive which represented 115 years of film history and was comprised of over 45,000 items. There were posters from 58 countries and all 83 "Best Picture" Academy Award Winners. Dwight wrote the first article on film posters to appear in a major arts publication, The Antique Trader, in 1981 while a student at Columbia College in New York. Since then he has published books on various categories of his personal collection including 1920's and 1930's lobby cards, big paper representations from famous titles, and as varied as Mexican Golden-Age Diva María Félix. He has lent images to newspapers, magazines and books over the years including Light + Noir: Exiles and Émigrés in Hollywood, 1933-1950 at the Chicago Holocaust Museum. His first exhibition was at the 2014 Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival. He has donated significant posters to institutions around the United States including the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, the Library of Congress, and to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. And among those internationally, the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum at the University of Exeter.

In July 2019, a portion of Dwight's collection was displayed at the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida. The exhibit, titled Coming Soon: Film Posters from the Dwight M. Cleveland Collection, included over 200 rare posters (and 1,250 movie 'Coming Attraction' glass slides) that span across multiple film genres from the early 20th century to the late 1980s. The exhibit ran from July 12 through October 29, 2019. Dwight's book, CINEMA ON PAPER: the Graphic Genius of Movie Posters was published by Assouline in 2019. Ben Mankiewicz, host of Turner Classic Movies and grandson of Herman J. Mankiewicz screenwriter of CITIZEN KANE (1941), wrote the foreword.

Dwight’s latest collection is comprised of over 10,000 silent film lobby cards focused on films relating to the careers of over 1,000 women whose careers have heretofore gone unnoticed and unrecognized. This collection was on exhibition under the title Behind the Camera: The Unknown Women of Hollywood at Poster House in New York City from April 7th thru October 9th, 2022. In March 2024, Cleveland organized his sample collection of lobby cards in Glamour & Grace: The Anna May Wong Legacy Unveiled, a focused exhibition at the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum highlighting the career and cultural impact of the pioneering actress. The show ran from March 1–10, 2024. These were then part of the exhibition Unmasking Anna May Wong at The Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles which ran from May 24, 2024 through April 27, 2025. In 2026, selections from Dwight’s collection of Maria Félix posters were on exhibition at the American University of Paris from March 24 thru April 17. This was the first-ever retrospective on the most recognized Spanish speaking star of the Mexican Golden Age who made 47 films in Argentina, Spain, Italy and France.

Cleveland has been the subject of two episodes on NBC's The Hunt for Amazing Treasure with a story on discovering the earliest known Mickey Mouse poster from Barn Dance (1929) and later a large find of U.S. movie window cards used as insulation in a house built during the early 1930s. He has been interviewed, quoted, in a broad range of news outlets including the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Classic Images, Classic Chicago, Movie Collector's World, the Chicago Tribune, The Sun Times, BuzzFeed, The London Independent, Forbes Magazine and The ROBB Report. In 2022, Dwight collaborated with Dartmouth College's Media Ecology Project by allowing them to digitize 10,000 silent lobby cards from his collection as part of the Early Cinema Compendium. Dartmouth received a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant to fund the digitization. MEP is a sustainability project that develops literacies of moving image and visual culture history and functions as a collaborative incubator, fostering new research questions and methods. Those range from traditional arts and humanities close-textual analysis to distant reading, which relies on computational methods to help analyze graphics and visual culture components as data. For his contribution of scale to the project, Dwight was named to the newly created post of Associate Visual Cultural Curator. In 2023, Dwight gave a fellowship to Columbia University in honor of Frederica Sagor Maas which supports historical research on women artists from the 20th century silent film industry. The scholarship cultivates and encourages students’ abilities to preserve the work of female filmmakers, making possible the future expansion of archival resources and exhibits.

Doors open at 7:00 PM, presentation at 7:30 PM at The 418 Project, 155 South River Street, downtown Santa Cruz at the Dragons Gate.

$10 in advance, $15 at the door.

Sat. November 7th – 7:30 PM – LARGE THEATER

THE ZABRECKY HOUR Magic Show

A Comedy, Magic & Variety Show Like No Other with Rob Zabrecky

"Zabrecky - the name means 'Abracadabra,' sideways" - LA Weekly

Prepare to step into a world where the boundaries of magic, comedy, and performance art blur beyond recognition. Rob Zabrecky’s The Zabrecky Hour is an astonishing, one-man tour de force that brings audiences face-to-face with a unique brand of storytelling, offbeat humor, and mind-bending illusions. It’s less a show and more an experience — one that feels like it’s been lifted straight from the strangest corners of your imagination.

If David Lynch turned his attention to the art of illusion, The Zabrecky Hour might just be the result: a fusion of the bizarre, the beautiful, and the unsettling. Onstage, Zabrecky is a figure both distant and magnetic, pulling you into his off-kilter universe with equal parts warmth and coldness. His magic isn’t just for magic lovers — it’s for those who don’t even realize they’re fans of magic.

Zabrecky’s absurd, often chilling persona plays like a character out of a lost 1950s sci-fi/horror B-movie. He's an alien from a bygone era, attempting — and often failing — to relate to the world around him. His charm lies in this dissonance, this tension between the familiar and the utterly unfamiliar. The result? A show that’s at once unnerving and irresistibly engaging.

Zabrecky’s magic breaks the mold in ways that will have you questioning your very perception of reality. Each moment unfolds with a subtle complexity that pushes the limits of your expectations. His performances are at times unpredictable, and darkly humorous. And when you least expect it, the show morphs into a strange reverie, an altered state where magic is more about emotional resonance than mere illusion. With The Zabrecky Hour, you're not just watching magic — you're being transformed by it.

A six-time award-winning act at the Magic Castle, Zabrecky’s reputation for unflinchingly original performances has earned him accolades worldwide. Critics have taken note — including the Chicago Tribune, which declared in 2022: "Zabrecky is very funny, assuming you like your humor cynical and caustic, akin to a horror show of a bygone age. His improvisational genius, mixed with a penchant for pushing boundaries, makes every moment a dangerous gamble."

The show’s eclectic mix — a dose of comedy, a sprinkle of song & dance, a touch of parapsychology, and a dash of audience interaction — all serves to create an unpredictable, one-of-a-kind atmosphere. This is magic for the adventurous soul, a performance that dances between darkness and whimsy with effortless ease.

Zabrecky’s dry wit and deadpan delivery add to the allure. Think Steven Wright’s absurdist humor meets Robert Bloch's eerie storytelling, laced with the offbeat awkwardness of Emo Phillips and the suspense of Hitchcock. His dry, quirky punchlines deliver the goods, pushing everything just far enough into the absurd to keep you hooked. After an appearance on Penn & Teller’s Fool Us, even Penn Jillette remarked, “We were trying to think if there’s ever been a mentalist doing a mentalist act that was sincerely funny and sincerely good. You may be the first ever.”

In The Zabrecky Hour, nothing is predictable — except for one thing: You’ll never forget it.

Running Time: Approximately 60/70 Minutes

Tickets: $25 advance / $30 at the door

Doors open at 7 PM, show begins at 7:30 PM at The 418 Project, 155 South River Street, downtown Santa Cruz at the Dragons Gate.

Sunday, Nov. 8th – 5:00 PM – SMALL THEATER

New Indie Comedy – Santa Cruz Premiere - Cast Q&A!

THE BIG WHOOP (2025, 88 min., dir. Lisa Satriano).

“*The Big Whoop is a hilarious clown caper that made me laugh my socks off. If you’ve found them, will you return them to me, please?” – Eric Idle of Monty Python

“Hilarity battles sadness and, as usual, we all win.” – Patton Oswalt

“Sam Beckett meets Sam Shepard meets Sam Kinison meets ‘What the Sam Hill is this?’” – Jay Martel, head writer of Key & Peele

“Clowns used to make the world laugh. Now they make the world scream.” A trio of desperately out-of-work birthday party clowns, including an Emmett Kelly-wannabe-but-never-will-be, Big Bugs (beloved comedian Jim Turner, MTV’s Randee of the Redwoods), the unintelligibly mumbling Corky (Mark Fite), and the equally-unintelligible Swedish butler, Gustav (Dave “Gruber” Allen), find themselves losing out on jobs to a much younger, sexier and well, better, clown named Darius (Shin Lim). After screwing up their latest gig in spectacular fashion, they go on the run with an accidentally-stolen artifact, pursued by a ruthless thief (Samantha Cole) and cross paths with a Who’s Who of comedy legends including Sandra Oh and Penn Jillette (who co-produced the film with Kristy Pitchford). In the spirit of classic slapstick farces like Peter Seller’s THE PINK PANTHER films and Arthur Hiller’s THE IN-LAWS, THE BIG WHOOP is a dark indie comedy that is both a hilarious and hilariously-tragic portrait of the trials & tribulations of three working (er, barely) comedians.

Bios:

Mark Fite is an L.A. based actor and comedian. Originally from the Midwest, Fite received a B.A. in Communications and Theatre Arts from the University of Iowa. In Los Angeles he's worked in theatre, film, tv, animation, commercials, and comedy for 35 years. Film & TV credits include MOM, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., SpongeBob SquarePants (25 episodes), Grey's Anatomy, NCIS, Mr. Show, NewsRadio, Friends, Seinfeld, Embattled, Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Big Whoop.

Dave (Gruber) Allen has appeared as a long-haired, bearded weirdo in all sorts of TV programs (like “Freaks & Geeks” and “Gilmore Girls”) and some movies (“Bad Teacher”). He lives in Salt Lake City.

Jim Turner spent seven years as a series regular on HBO's hit show ARLI$$, playing Kirby Carlisle, the ex-quarterback with a gambling/girls/booze and self-esteem problem.

Film credits include Bewitched, Kicking & Screaming, Meet Dave, Golf In The Kingdom, The Ref, Lost Boys, The Right Stuff, Joe's Apartment and a gob of others that will never even seen the light of straight-to-video day. He appeared regularly, and ran for President, on MTV as Randee of the Redwoods in 1988. Theater credits include Girly Magazine Party, Clowntown City Limits ,The Return of Pinocchio, The Brain That Wouldn't Go Away, and 2 Headed Dog. He's been a charter member of Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater for the past 50 years.

Steven Banks is the Emmy nominated head writer of SpongeBob Squarepants. He wrote and starred in the one-person show, Home Entertainment Center, currently on Amazon Prime. Other plays include Love Tapes, co-written with Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) and Shadowland, which he co-wrote with the dance/theater company Pilobolus and has been performed in 40 countries. His books include the series Middle School Bites and the YA novel, King of the Creeps. Steven is a drop out of Los Angeles City College and a graduate of the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey’s Clown College.

Lisa Satriano is a filmmaker with 30 years of experience spanning directing, producing, and first assistant directing across studio features and premium television. Recently announced in Deadline, Lisa will direct "Iris," a female-led noir action film shooting in Spain and Japan. Her directorial work includes the independent feature "The Big Whoop," ABC's "The Wonder Years," and HBO's "Made For Love." As a Producer and 1st A.D., Lisa has contributed to over 50 studio productions, including "Ally Clark" (directed by Phillip Noyce), "Animals" (Ben Affleck), "Artificial" (Luca Guadagnino), Eli Roth's "Borderlands," Lee Daniels' "The Deliverance," "Black Adam," "Thor: Ragnarok," "Black Panther," "Straight Outta Compton," and many more.

Discussion following with cast members Jim Turner, Mark Fite and Dave (Gruber) Allen and writer Steve Banks.

Tickets: $10 advance / $15 at the door.

Doors open at 4:30 PM, film at 5 PM at The 418 Project, 155 South River Street, downtown Santa Cruz at the Dragons Gate. Safety protocols will be in compliance with local guidelines at the time of showing.

LA HAINE (1995, Janus Films, 97 min. Dir. Mathieu Kassovitz)

Mathieu Kassovitz took the film world by storm with LA HAINE, a gritty, unsettling, and visually explosive look at the racial and cultural volatility in modern-day France, specifically the low-income banlieue districts on Paris’s outskirts. Aimlessly passing their days in the concrete environs of their dead-end suburbia, Vinz (the great Vincent Cassel, from IRREVERSIBLE and BLACK SWAN), Hubert (Hubert Koundé), and Saïd (Saïd Taghmaoui)—a Jew, an African, and an Arab—give human faces to France’s immigrant populations, their bristling resentment at their marginalization slowly simmering until it reaches a climactic boiling point. A work of tough beauty, La haine is a landmark of contemporary French cinema and a gripping reflection of its country’s ongoing identity crisis – notes courtesy of Janus Films.

Discussion following moderated by The 418 Project board member Amber Wyld and special guests on issues raised by LA HAINE on racism and identity, financial hardship, alienation, and immigrant communities being terrorized by law enforcement.

Tickets: $10 advance / $15 at the door.

The Night Agents aren’t just a band—they are the ultimate social dance party. Founded by Jeremy Pilling, professional dancer and owner of the Palomar Ballroom, the group was built with a singular mission: to create a cover band that would keep the dance floor packed all night long. Not only can you freestyle to every song, but you can partner dance to every song, something unique to their band.

Fronted by the suave male & female lead duo, they deliver an authentic multi-decade, multi-genre experience few bands can match. This intriguing 5-piece band moves effortlessly through rock, pop, hip-hop, and disco. From the grit of ZZ Top and the groove of Michael Jackson to the flow of Young MC and the pure pop of ABBA, the momentum is dramatic and energetic.

Whether you’re looking to West Coast Swing to a modern groove, East Coast Swing to a classic rock hit, or just freestyle to the 70s–2000s, the energy never stops. If you're ready to dance through the decades, they are ready to play.

Evening Schedule

• 7:00 PM – Dance Class: Kick off the evening with a fun, accessible dance class designed to get everyone moving and comfortable on the floor (dance style and instructor TBA).
• 8:00 PM – Live Social Dance with The Night Agents: High-energy live sets taking you through decades of hits. Partner dancing and freestyle are both welcome and encouraged all night long!

The Night Agents Band

• Jeremy Pilling – Vocals, Guitar, Keys
• Maddie Partida – Vocals, Keys
• Jory Rice – Lead Guitar
• Paul Francisco Gonzalez – Bass
• Zephyr Christenson – Drums

Esalen Institute Presents:

HUMAN FUTURES: PRESERVING HUMAN POTENTIAL IN THE AGE OF AI– Illustrated lecture by Esalen’s Sam Stern

Artificial intelligence can be extraordinarily useful, creative, and powerful. As it becomes more deeply embedded in our lives, however, it also raises questions about what we may be outsourcing, weakening, or losing along the way.

Drawing from his work at the Esalen Institute and the history of the human potential movement, Sam Stern considers the history of the Human Potential Movement: the enduring importance of embodiment, authentic relationship, community, somatics, agency, creativity, and direct experience — qualities that may become more valuable, not less, as intelligent machines become more capable.

Bio: Sam Stern is a Senior Content Creator at Esalen Institute and host of the million-download podcast Voices of Esalen, where he’s interviewed voices shaping psychology, spirituality, and culture, including Sonya Renee Taylor, Richard Schwartz, Michael Pollan, Bayo Akomolafe, and Stanislav Grof. Sam is a cum laude graduate of Brown University, where he received the William J. Weston Award for excellence in Film and Video. At Esalen, he frequently teaches on human-centered AI, guiding others to approach emergent technologies with curiosity, critical thinking, and play.

Tickets: $15 advance / $20 at the door.

Sun., November 15th – 6:00 PM – SMALL THEATER

Documentary Screening + Panel Discussion

HOMETOWN HOMELESS (2025, 20 min., dir. Maleah Welsh).

Co-Presented with the Association of Faith Communities of Santa Cruz and The Coalition to End Homelessness

HomeTown HomeLess is a collaborative documentary film which takes place in the Potrero district of Santa Cruz California. A space that is the industrial zone of the city, the site of cement plants, garbage processing facilities, graveyards, discarded train tracks and homeless shelters. As the industrial zone ends, the redwood forest begins. Deep in the trees is where we find unhoused poet Momma Shannan and her community of resilient women, who have found a place for themselves out of the public eye.

Facing uncertain and precarious circumstances driven by rising laws that criminalize homelessness, the women come together to have conversations about life, love, loss. Anchored by moments of poetry and propelled by both the women's conversations and events within the community, HomeTown HomeLess offers an intimate portrait of both people and place.

Discussion following with director Maleah Welsh and participants in the documentary.

Bio:

Maleah Welsh is a Santa Cruz-based documentary filmmaker, photographer, and social justice activist. Working in both analog and digital media, she first discovered her love for image-making in the darkroom—a tactile and meditative process that continues to shape her visual approach. Her background in photography informs a filmmaking practice rooted in careful composition, texture, and visual intimacy.

Maleah’s current work centers on the stories of unhoused women, exploring the layered experiences of displacement, resilience, and belonging. She weaves poetry, sound, and other artistic modalities into her films to evoke emotion and reflect the complexity of her subjects’ inner worlds. Guided by a deep belief in the power of storytelling, she seeks not only to challenge prevailing narratives but to offer space for reflection, connection, and dignity. Through her practice, she explores themes of collective memory, the meaning of home and land, and the intimate objects that tether us to our histories, identities, and sense of belonging.

Maleah holds a master’s degree in Documentary Film from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she completed the MFA in Social Documentation.

$10 Suggested Donation.

Friday, November 20th – 6:30 PM – SMALL THEATER

ALEISTER CROWLEY ON PEYOTE – Illustrated Lecture by artist & scholar Michael Pearce

Join us for an immersive exploration of the hidden history of the 20th century’s most infamous occultist, Aleister Crowley. Art historian Dr. Michael J. Pearce peels back the curtain on Crowley’s dual life as a scandalous bohemian and a pioneering psychological experimenter who utilized altered states of consciousness to unlock the human mind.

We will follow Crowley’s journey through the avant-garde bistros of Paris and the secret rituals of London. Discover how he used early pharmaceutical extractions of hashish and peyote to achieve astral projection and mystical samadhi, decades before the 1960s counterculture movement.

The presentation will highlight:

• The "Oliver Haddo" Persona: How a Gothic horror parody by W. Somerset Maugham was hijacked by Crowley as his own literary pen name.
• Psychedelic Ritualism: A look inside the Rite of Luna, where Crowley dosed audiences with a potent, visionary libation.
• The Artist and the Occult: His late-career pivot into painting and his volatile relationships with contemporary writers, models, and visionaries.
• The Thoth Tarot Legacy: The stormy, five-year collaboration with artist Frieda Harris that produced a masterpiece of esoteric art, hidden for decades before capturing a new generation.

Whether you are interested in art history, the evolution of tarot, or the origins of Western psychedelic culture, this lecture promises a mesmerizing look at a man who lived with an inescapable drive to put his soul on canvas.

Bio:

Michael J. Pearce, Ph.D., MFA, is a British-born figurative painter, art critic, and renegade scholar whose electrifying work has blown open the gates surrounding psychedelic, visionary, and transgressive art. Dr. Pearce isn't interested in safe, predictable institutional art trends; instead, he champions the raw, honest, and explosive visual movements exploding from the counterculture to smash cold, academic modernism. A true champion of the underground, Pearce serves on the board of the vanguard Psychedelic Arts and Culture Trust (PACT). He is presently writing a definitive history of psychedelic art, mapping a law-defying lineage of artists who utilized altered states to bare the deep, unadulterated mechanics of the human consciousness.

His research isn’t confined to archives. Pearce lives on the front lines of art preservation. He played a real-world, detective’s role in tracking down and recovering artist Dion Wright's long-lost 12-foot-tall epic masterpiece, the Taxonomic Mandala from a barn in Washington State - a legendary painting that once stood at the center of the vortex of California's 1960s psychedelic counterculture. Whether he is deconstructing the political machinery of the art establishment in his brilliant columns for MutualArt or exploring neuroaesthetics and the psychedelic sublime in his foundational book Art in the Age of Emergence (2015), Pearce is on an uncompromising mission. He is dragooning visionary art out of the fringes and cementing it where it belongs: at the absolute center of serious global art discourse.

Tickets: $15 advance / $20 at the door.

Doors open at 6:00 PM, event at 6:30 PM at The 418 Project, 155 South River Street, downtown Santa Cruz at the Dragons Gate.

Safety protocols will be in compliance with local guidelines at the time of showing.

Sat., November 21st – 2:00 PM – SMALL THEATER

BEAT ARTISTS ON ACID – Illustrated Lecture by artist & scholar Michael Pearce

Step into the smoke-filled, mattress-strewn dark rooms of 669 Oak Street—the Lower Haight Victorian flat that served as the headquarters for a coven of artistic rebels. Years before the 1960s hippy revolution exploded into the mainstream, an underground network of brilliant poets, heretic upstarts, and avant-garde painters were already using pure peyote cactus to shatter the boundaries of American conformity in San Francisco.

Forget the sanitized, media-packaged myth of the "beatnik." These creators despised the term. They considered themselves serious aesthetic gladiators, waging a spiritual war against a sanitized society.

Prepare to Uncover:

The Oak Street Beats: Enter the wild, law-defying nexus where legendary assemblage artists of the Batman Gallery rubbed night-draped shoulders with Dave Haselwood’s radical Auerhahn Press poets.

Alan Russo’s Forbidden Smoothies: The mind-bending story of the thickly muscled peyote gatherer who tossed raw cactus buttons into a kitchen blender, serving up a divine, psychic sacrament to the underground elite.

The Battle for ‘Real Reality’: Dive into the fierce philosophy of a young Dion Wright, who argued that peyote wasn't some cheap, hallucinated trick—it was a nuclear blast of raw revelation that made "reality getting all the more real."

Brace yourself for a wild trip through police raids, institutional censorship, and the pure, unadulterated birth of the West Coast psychedelic underground.

Michael J. Pearce, Ph.D., MFA, is a British-born figurative painter, art critic, and renegade scholar whose electrifying work has blown open the gates surrounding psychedelic, visionary, and transgressive art. Dr. Pearce isn't interested in safe, predictable institutional art trends; instead, he champions the raw, honest, and explosive visual movements exploding from the counterculture to smash cold, academic modernism. A true champion of the underground, Pearce serves on the board of the vanguard Psychedelic Arts and Culture Trust (PACT). He is presently writing a definitive history of psychedelic art, mapping a law-defying lineage of artists who utilized altered states to bare the deep, unadulterated mechanics of the human consciousness.

His research isn’t confined to archives. Pearce lives on the front lines of art preservation. He played a real-world, detective’s role in tracking down and recovering artist Dion Wright's long-lost 12-foot-tall epic masterpiece, the Taxonomic Mandala from a barn in Washington State - a legendary painting that once stood at the center of the vortex of California's 1960s psychedelic counterculture. Whether he is deconstructing the political machinery of the art establishment in his brilliant columns for MutualArt or exploring neuroaesthetics and the psychedelic sublime in his foundational book Art in the Age of Emergence (2015), Pearce is on an uncompromising mission. He is dragooning visionary art out of the fringes and cementing it where it belongs: at the absolute center of serious global art discourse.

Tickets: $15 advance / $20 at the door.

Doors open at 1:30 PM, event at 2 PM at The 418 Project, 155 South River Street, downtown Santa Cruz at the Dragons Gate.

Safety protocols will be in compliance with local guidelines at the time of showing.

Grateful Dead Dance is a community dance night at The 418 Project. A community member DJs the music of the Grateful Dead, and the floor is open to everyone: Deadheads, spinners, and anyone who just wants to move.

Admission is by donation. No partner or experience needed.

Photo: Revisorius, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons (source). The photo is from a Grateful Dead concert, not from this event.

Sat., December 19th – 6:00 PM – LARGE THEATER

KRAMPUS CELEBRATION AT THE 418 -- An Evening of Folkloric Holiday Traditions with author AL Ridenour, featuring pre-show Cocktail Hour, live German holiday songs, costumed Krampuses and screening of Krampus video highlight reel!!

Join us for an evening celebrating everyone’s favorite Alpine monster, with author and Krampus expert Al Ridenour and friends. Ridenour is the author of The Krampus and the Old Dark Christmas (Feral House, 2016), the only in-depth English-language study of the folkloric creature. Now in its second printing, it has been praised by critics including the LA Times’ Elizabeth Hand, who found the book “gleefully erudite,” remarking that it “deserves to become a classic.” He’ll give an illustrated presentation revealing how the often-misunderstood figure of the Krampus is connected to centuries-old witchcraft beliefs and an older, darker understanding of the Christmas season as a time offering access to the spirit world.

COSTUMED KRAMPUSES

A contingent of horned and switch-wielding devils will also be on hand to sniff out exactly who has been naughty this year! Photo ops galore! Mind the switches!

VIDEO SHORTS

Ridenour will also present a quirky collection of short European Krampus videos, featuring DIY horror shorts crafted by Krampus troupes, Krampus disco shows, Krampus music videos for metal bands, workshops for those traumatized by the creature, and other oddities. Alongside the Krampus clips, a short excerpt will be included from the rare 1955 German film Der Struwwelpeter. Based on the 1845 children’s book by Dr. Heinrich Hoffman, Der Struwwelpeter presents charming tableaux precisely mirroring Hoffman’s original illustrations of naughty children meeting terrible ends.

LIVE MUSIC

The evening will also feature an appearance by renowned singer Christina Linhardt performing traditional St. Nicholas songs associated with the Krampus.

CRAFTS AND VENDORS

In addition to the auditorium presentation, attendees will enjoy a pre-show cocktail hour during which they can peruse the wares of local artisans crafting Krampus candles, chocolates, and related items.

BOOK SIGNING

Signed copies of The Krampus and the Old Dark Christmas will be available before and after the event. Author Ridenour will be available for personal inscriptions immediately after his presentation.

COME IN COSTUME

We encourage attendees to don their finest creepy apparel and folkloric costumes, with crowd favorites receiving prizes.

Bios:

Al Ridenour has lectured on Krampus traditions (and related) topics at the international Goethe-Institut, The San Diego Art Institute, New Americans Museum, Tucson Museum of Modern Art, The Bowers Museum, and in the UK at London's Last Tuesday Society and Whitby's Winter Ghosts conference. Ridnour also created Krampus masks and suits, which have been exhibited at the University of Southern California’s Doheny Museum and provides Krampus suit rental for film and television and events. He discusses dark folklore topics similar to the Krampus in his podcast Bone and Sickle and has recently published A Season of Madness: Fools, Monsters & Marvels of the Old-World Carnival (Feral House, 2025) on folk customs of Carnival, a topic intimately intertwined with the Krampus tradition. Since 2022 he’s presented an annual sold-out Krampus Night event at The Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles.

Christina Linhardt has enjoyed an eclectic and versatile career as a concert singer, writer, and actress. She is most known for her "Classics to Cabaret" act (which was the headliner for the opening of the Grand Concert Hall in Saxony, Germany). As well as being a regular entertainer at the Hollywood Magic Castle. Ms. Linhardt is a recommended chanteuse for the coveted Southern California Chamber Music Consortium. She has performed for the 2010 Los Angeles Opera Ring Festival, the House of Blues Gospel Brunch, The Grove, The Brand Plaza Concert Series and even down in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Christina was the lead singer of the acclaimed Angels of Venice (Windham Hill Records) and The Honey Lulus Tiki Trio.

KRAMPUS LOS ANGELES

In 2013, as co-founder of Krampus Los Angeles, Ridenour helped gather a troupe of Krampus performers, crafted suits and went on to organize an ongoing series of parades and themed shows known as LA Krampusfest. Over the years, Krampus Los Angeles has appeared alongside the first Europeans visitors to appear stateside in traditional Krampus costumes (2014), hosted an entire 15-person troupe from the state of Salzburg (2015), and presented a 19th-century Austrian Krampus-Nicholas play (2015-17). Many of the current troupe members now wear suits obtained from European artisans and appear at the annual Krampus Nights at PRS in Los Angeles.

Ticket Price: $25 advance / $30 at the door.

The 418 Project, 155 South River Street, downtown Santa Cruz at the Dragons Gate.

The 418 Project presents Jonathan Lynn's courtroom comedy classic MY COUSIN VINNY (1992, 120 min), starring Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei.

About the Film

When two Brooklyn college kids are falsely accused of murder in rural Alabama, they call on Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci), an inexperienced personal injury lawyer from Brooklyn who took six attempts to pass the bar. Marisa Tomei's legendary automotive testimony won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.