Good morning, beach lovers. When a old friend flew into town back in May, despite the fact that she’s a Red Sox fan I decided to show her a few of the tasty treats on the north coast. One place I thought she’d like is Hole in the Wall Beach.   And in case you’re  wondering where the name comes from, just check out the first photo. When you come down the steep path from the parking area you are greeted by Panther Beach to the right and this massive arch.   This truly amazing sight is less than ten minutes from Santa Cruz and one of the hidden wonders of the north coast.

Hole in the Wall offers a beautiful wind-swept beach, towering cliffs and spectacular rock formations (photo #4.) This jewel along the coast is only accessible at low tide and has more natural beauty than a Miss Hawaiian Tropic contest. Nature has gone wild with sea stars (photo #5) of every race, creed and color and tide pools packed full of sea anemones (photo #6.) This is a place you definitely want to visit.  Bring and friend and a camera.

It’s also a great place to toss around a frisbee. And speaking of toys, it’s hard to believe in the age of iPhones, Xbox 360s and educational video games like Grand Theft Auto, that the Hula Hoop once was the hippest toy around. That’s right, boys and girls. All the hoopla began 50 years ago when entrepreneurs Richard Knerr and Arthur “Spud” Melin sought a trademark for a plastic cylinder based on a similar toy that had enjoyed modest success in Australia’s school yards. Before long, the Hula Hoop had more hips swiveling than Elvis Presley on amphetamines.

Wham-O Inc. sold more than 100 million Hula Hoops at a suggested retail price of $1.98 apiece after just a year on the U.S. market. In the words of Bob Barker, “the price was definitely right.” “It became a real piece of Americana,” says toy historian Tim Walsh, whose book about Wham-O is scheduled to be published in October. Just like baseball, apple pie and cigarettes.

The Hula Hoop became so ubiquitous that the former Soviet Union banned the toy as a symbol of the “emptiness of American culture.” In response, the United States banned borscht as a symbol of ” a really weird colored soup” and forbid Americans from playing Russian roulette.

Not long after that, the Hula Hoop became a glaring example of the toy industry’s now familiar boom-and-bust cycles. Almost as quickly as they became a household staple, millions of Hula Hoops began collecting cobwebs in garages, closets and malt shops across the country. “The Hula Hoop was the grandaddy of all fads,” says Chris Guirlinger, Wham-O’s vice president of marketing and licensing. This was followed by Pet Rocks, the Chia Pets and voting Republican.

Like a Brett Favre pass in the NFC Championship Game, Hula Hoop’s downward spiral nearly ruined Wham-O, which had increased production to satisfy the once-frenzied demand for the toy. Fortunately, the company had developed another offbeat toy – a flying disc called the Frisbee – that took off just as Hula Hoop sales plummeted.  I could be wrong, but I believe this Frisbee thing is starting to catch on-no pun intended.

Saddled with a glut of unwanted Hula Hoops, Wham-O stopped manufacturing the toy until 1965, when Knerr and Melin came up with a new twist: They inserted ball bearings in the cylinder to make a “shoosh” sound. That helped revive interest in the Hula Hoop, which still makes money for Wham-O. Ironically, I threw out one of these “shooshers” two nights ago as it had snapped. As a youngster I had a Hula Hoop. I loved putting backspin on it so when I would throw it out it would come spinning back to me. That’s unconditional love between a boy and a piece of plastic.

Wham-O has had other iconic toys like the Superball, Slip ‘N Slide and the Make Your Own Diet Pizza Oven, but none of them came close to enthralling kids like the Hula Hoop once did. But the Hula Hoop might be poised for another spurt in popularity. It’s one of the activities featured in a new Nintendo Wii video game promoting physical fitness. Sadly, at this point in life, I prefer hula dancers to hula hoops.

That will do it for another week in the blog land.  Coming up on Monday we’ll return to the color in the sky.  So enjoy the Hole in the Wall, have a great summer weekend and we’ll catch you on the offensive side of the line.  Aloha, Yankee fans.

Greetings and welcome to the central coast chronicles. Since we’re all friends here I thought it would be a good time to take a look at our anenomes. All these shots, including the snowy egret at sunset, were taken in tidepools around the arch at Its Beach. When searching the coves and shallow pools to shoot these exotic subjects, I am always amazed at their electrifying colors. They are pounded by waves all day yet don’t seem to be bothered by any of the ocean’s motion. Like a good basketball player they are happy to let the game come to them-they know how to go with the flow.

As my favorite poetry teacher once told me, love thyself, love thy neighbor (but don’t get caught,) and most importantly, love thy anenome. So here are some fresh facts about these wild-looking coastal creatures. The sea anemone is a polyp that looks like a plant but is really a voracious meat eating animal. In order for it to dine it cannot order out-it must wait for its food to swim by and when the prey touches one of its tentacles, it mechanically triggers a cell explosion that fires a harpoon-like structure which attaches to the organism that triggered it and injects a dose of poison in the flesh of the prey. Interestingly, this is the same way I met my wife. This gives the anemone its characteristic sticky feeling while at the same time paralyzes the prey which is then moved by the tentacles to the mouth for that day’s entree. And of course, all entrees come with your choice of soup or salad.

Speaking of food, riots have broken out in several poor nations (Haiti, the Philippines, Bangladesh) during the last month that have United Nation, NBA referees and other officials arguing that the growing diversion of the grain harvest to ethanol fuel is causing a global food crisis. “The reality is that people are dying already,” says Jacque Diouf of the Food and the Agricultural Organization.” Surging food prices, further stoked by rising fuel costs, have triggered protests around the world. The increases hit poor people the hardest, as food represents as much as 60-80 percent of consumer spending in developing nations, compared to about 10-20 percent in industrialized countries and 5-10 percent in super model’s diets.

Global food prices have jumped 83 percent of the past three years as the world’s main agricultural producers have shifted their focus to biofuels. Indian Finance Minister Palanaippan Chidambaram (PC to his friends) has called on industrial nations to cut off all subsidies for such alternative energy production and focus on providing food for the developing world. U.N. statistics say the amount of corn it takes to fill an ethanol fueled SUV can feed a child for an entire year. The U.N also added that the children may get better mileage eating on the highway than while eating in the city. Here’s one more number for you to chew on. 750,000 acres of Brazilian rain forest (equal to the size of Rhode Island) were lost in the last six month in order to grow crops to make biofuels. What are we doing to our planet?

But even if we grow larger crops, soaring food prices that have sparked unrest across the globe are likely to persist, threatening millions of people worldwide. Prices of wheat and rice have doubled compared to last year, while those of corn are more than a third higher. Grain prices have risen as a result of steady demand, especially from China and India, supply shortages and new export restrictions. Here’s the bottom line. Hunger is nothing new. People and children in underdeveloped countries have been dying of starvation for years. That’s a given and horrific fact. We can’t prevent droughts or wars that keep food out of people’s stomachs, but we can give food to hungry children rather putting it into gas tanks. We want to rid ourselves of the dependence on oil but do we want to do at the expense of human suffering? Fast for a day. See what your life is like when you’re hungry. And then just think about how fortunate we are here in America, particularly with the NBA playoffs in full swing.

There’s a lot more to this story, particularly how all this bifuels business actually makes global warming worse, but we’ll save that for another day. In the meantime, be grateful that you don’t live in a place like Haiti where the really poor are subsisting on dirt cookies. Seriously. That’s not something you’ll want to dunk in the glass of milk. So enjoy the day, enjoy Steve Nash, Chris Paul and Deron Williams and most importantly, don’t be your own worst anenome. Aloha.