SNACK ATTACK

Up late studying for a midterm and low on snacks. Got no car and the vending machine’s broke. What’s a student to do?

Order online is what the creators of Campus Munchies hope they do. The new Davis grocery delivery service brings chips, soda, candy, ice cream, gum and more right to customers’ doors.

Cousins Jimmy Lorencillo and Gustavo Perez, both of Richmond, said they decided to start their business in Davis because they were already spending so much time here visiting UC Davis undergraduates Elaine Tran and Maple Peng. Tran, a biology major, and Peng, a sociology and communications double major, help with deliveries.

Lorencillo, an entrepreneurial major at San Francisco State University whose family runs a paella catering business, said similar snack delivery businesses have sprung up at Cornell University and George Washington University.

He and Perez wanted to start small and build gradually. In mid-November they put an ad in the California Aggie and posted fliers on campus. “We didn’t put up too many because we didn’t want to cause litter,” Lorencillo said. Still, Campus Munchies averaged 30 orders a night its first month.

The service, available 4 p.m. to midnight Mondays through Saturdays and 4–11 p.m. Sundays, also delivers regular groceries like flour, spices and milk from a local market. But some of the most popular items are energy drinks and ice cream.

ALL ABOARD

London recently retired the last of its Routemaster double-decker buses from service, but fans can rest assured that UC Davis Unitrans’ vintage red buses ride on.

Unitrans, which has had double-deckers since 1968, may be the last bus service anywhere to regularly operate the classic model with the open rear deck, said General Manager Geoff Straw ’88. Unitrans has six altogether, with four in service and two being rebuilt. The newest one was built in 1954. Aficionados know them by their numbers: RT 742, RTL 1014, RT 1235, RT 2819, RT 3123 and RT 4735.

Straw is looking to buy two modern double-decker buses that will hold nearly twice as many people, have doors that open curbside rather than in the middle of the street and are accessible to wheelchairs. But they would supplement rather than replace the old ones. “We’re going to keep them as an icon of our service,” he said.

To maintain the Routemaster buses, Unitrans’ shop must make many of its own replacement parts. In fact, staff and student mechanics have rebuilt most of the engines, converting one bus to run on compressed natural gas with a second conversion under way.

But Straw, who enjoyed driving the buses as an undergraduate 20 years ago, said there’s one thing the mechanics probably will never be able to fix. “When it rains, they leak like sieves.”

VAULTING TO THE SCREEN

Former Aggie gymnasts Tiffany Chan and Nicole Doherty appear in a new Disney/Touchstone Pictures movie, Stick It, starring newcomer Missy Peregrym as a rebellious 17-year-old and Jeff Bridges as a gymnastics coach.

Chan, who won four individual national titles, and Doherty, who tied for a national title on uneven bars, were cast as “background elite gymnasts” in the film, which is scheduled to open in theatres April 21.

“That pretty much means that when the main characters are doing routines or talking in the foreground during the ‘competition,’ I am doing flips and dance in the background,” Chan said.

Among other background gymnasts were former competitors from other colleges. Getting to work with them was one of the best parts of being cast in the film, Chan and Doherty said.

YEAR OF THE PENGUIN

It might be the Year of the Dog by the Chinese calendar but penguins, cats, Gary Larson cartoon animals and Sudoku puzzles rule the months at UC Davis. The campus bookstore’s top-selling 2006 calendars, according to trade-book buyer Paul Takushi, are:

• College Wall Calendar
• New York Public Library Student Planner
• Penguins Wall Calendar
• Far Side Mating Rituals Wall Calendar
• Bad Kitties (Cute Kittens) Calendar
• Far Side Mating Rituals Mini Wall Calendar
• Far Side Mating Rituals Desk Calendar
• Sudoku-A-Day Calendar

KEEPING IT 'REAL'

First there were MTV’s Sorority Girls, Survivor: Vanuatu and The Apprentice: Martha Stewart. Now UC Davis can add MTV’s Miss Seventeen to its growing list of reality television shows starring UC Davis alums and students. First-year student Connie Xiao Qin Bi of San Bernardino was one of four finalists for an internship with Seventeen magazine, cover photo and college scholarship when she got cut from the show in episode six. Judging from the questions Bi now gets from her classmates, other Aggies may want to follow suit. “Many want to know what show business is like,” she said.

COHOME-MADE

The Memorial Union Coffee House has a new Web site that describes the daily menu in true CoHo style:

• “Creamy Tomato and Feta—A tasty mix of tomatoes, cream, and don’t fretta... there’s plenty of feta!
• “Kara’s Tomato Basil—A simple tomato-based sauce with a distinctively tangy flavor that can’t be beat, unless, of course, by Chuck Norris.”

The site, at coffeehouse.ucdavis.edu, also promises to feature a recipe each month.