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Comment count is 11
Menudo con queso - 2009-02-14

The end remix takes it down a notch, but it's still priceless.


svraz - 2009-02-14

I think each individual submission in this compilation would be worth 5 stars.


Cleaner82 - 2009-02-14

I think I need to go to these things, now.


Wonko the Sane - 2009-02-14

suffers from the remix


Frank Rizzo - 2009-02-14

ending ruined it.


yeahjim - 2009-02-14

I've lived in SC for a while now. I lived here for a long while back in the eighties, as well. I hardly know where to begin.

This town used to be a west coast refugee camp for hippies, surf rats, and anarchists. And I don't mean the sorts who make payments on their cars by day and spout rhetoric by night; I mean the people who are truly trying to find an alternative to the rat race. To some extent, Santa Cruz used to be the genuine article. When the Silicon Valley boom hit, things changed. The price of rent shot up drastically and home ownership became a pipe dream for anyone who made less than six figures a year. Yuppies and BoBos flooded into town, paradoxically appreciative of its unique and somewhat twisted flavor, yet distasteful of everything that comes with twisted uniqueness. Quirky downtown fixtures and hole-in-the-wall shops closed down as Starbucks, Borders, and the gang moved in.

I think it's also fair to say that UC Santa Cruz's subtle shifted from a radically unconventional campus into a slough for they who didn't make the grades needed for UC Berkely quickened considerably. Meanwhile, the homeless folks were as politically organized and active as ever (a good thing IMO), but their ranks were flooded by bitter-buttercup children of the wealthy. This is to say that the face and demeanor of the Santa Cruz homeless changed significantly, as well. Gone were the instruments and stories, in came the pockmarked demands from punk kids who should have just gone home. The police force got a big new station and a great big budget. Downtown is heavily patrolled, now. No riding bikes on the sidewalk.

The migrant Latino population exploded as well, but we don't talk about that. Simply too distressing to even consider and we've got our zen to think about. So we just let the cops take care of it and hope we don't get incidentally stabbed during a Norteņo-Sureņo territory dispute.

The folks who were part of the old face of Santa Cruz, those who have managed to hang on despite the rapidly changing social and economic face of the town, many are trying to maintain "things as they were." They're befuddled, in a new-age Joad sense, that things aren't working like they used to. They want their weed and their breakfast and their waves and the sex shops and the diversity centers. And the Yuppies and BoBos simply can't understand why the garbage isn't swept off the street.

I suppose I ought to leave as soon as I'm done with school. Forgive the rant.


Helena Handbasket - 2009-02-14

I almost went to school there... and by amost I meant I wanted to but never applied. I loved the campus and I've visited a few times.
You've pretty much described what I suspected about the place. My first impression of Santa Cruz was that there were no public bathrooms and the ones we found we full of homeless people.

I do however really love that Brazillian resturaunt, got some nice fried plantains there.


Aelric - 2009-02-14

You just described what has happened to my once quirky little college town of Olympia, WA. I think you've just told the story of many an ill fated township.


Lauritz Melchior - 2009-02-14

"I have never urinated in public."


The Townleybomb - 2009-09-15

"...and it just TEARS ME UP INSIDE."


casualcollapse - 2020-12-07

Weird account, only ever posted stuff from Santa Cruz, even spookier name


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