In the late 1970s, Lee May was looking to “get out of the big-corporate world,” as he recalls now. He and a partner started some weeklies locally, and in 1977 he hit on the idea of a Visitor Guide for Santa Cruz. “It was a little black-and-white tabloid we put out six times a year,” says May.
Then, in 1980, “this college kid came to my office and said, ‘you should really do something with this paper,’” May remembers. That kid was Dan Pulcrano, and once he came on board, the Visitor Guide began expanding its editorial and aesthetic scope, with Santa Cruz artists like Jim Phillips and Futzy Nutzle drawing the covers.
In 1982, May sold the Visitor Guide to Good Times founder Jay Shore, and it evolved and flourished, eventually becoming the glossy annual magazine you hold in your hands today.
This year, Pulcrano and May had a homecoming of sorts with the Visitor Guide, as CEO and VicePresident, respectively, of Nuz Inc., which returned Good Times to local ownership when it purchased GT earlier this year.
“We’ve kind of come full circle,” says May. He believes the mission of the Visitor Guide is the same as it ever was—as is the need for it. “It’s a good source of information,” he says. “Every good tourist city needs something like this.”
—Steve Palopoli, Editor, Good Times
