Keep Santa Cruz Weird

On my first day in Santa Cruz I saw this bumper sticker mounted on the rear window of an old VW bug, driven by an aging surf bum with his board mounted on top. “Keep Santa Cruz Weird” it said.  It made me laugh, though I took it with a grain of salt. In my expierience, there were many places that claimed to be things they were not. I would soon discover that Santa Cruz was not one of them.

Rarely in my experience has there been a place whose reputation for something has lived up to the claim it stakes. People make such claims on whim or assumptions based on brief visits. No such claim can ever be validated until you have actually LIVED in the place in question. In all the places I’ve lived there has only been two that have lived up to the hype of their reputation. One is Detroit (‘nuff said) and the other being Santa Cruz...

It’s hard to explain, its something in the water…a feeling in the air. Something was always just a little off kilter in that damned little town. The problem wasn’t that you were on edge; the problem was that you were far too at ease. One could say it was too perfect. It was like the society ignored the larger picture, that this tiny patch of beach side land situated at the top corner of the Monterey bay, trapped between the ocean and the red woods of the Santa Cruz mountains, was plagued by things that aren’t supposed to exist. And yet the naïve citizens of this community go about their daily business enjoying their perfect climate and pretending that all is fine and dandy in their nifty little ocean side community.

They overlook the pale, skin and bone gutter punks that line the streets and look like they are infected with some rare skin disease. They ignore the freak butterfly invasion, the fortune tellers, the frighteningly charismatic street musicians, and frighteningly beautiful cross dressers.

They overlook the 7 foot man dressed in the blue plush jester outfit, his face concealed behind a mysterious mask; standing on a box playing strange instruments while he hypnotizes children like the pied piper did rats. They ignore the group of well-to-do woman who would gather outside my apartment every weekend, dressed in strange outfits, singing bizarre ritualistic chants, and then stop to stare at you as you’d pass. Giving you a sadistically evil eye as you uncompfortably made your way to town. Only when you were a fair distance away would you hear the chanting begin again.

They overlook the zombie like man who walks with one foot in front of the other, literally toe to toe at a mathematically even pace, up and down the main street. He is a brick wall; his eyes looking only forward, nothing can be done to make him acknowledge your existence. A joker like perma-smile plastered on his face while holding a big black umbrella above his head. Umbrella? It never rains in Santa Cruz. Theres barely ever a cloud in the sky.

They ignore the bizarre noise that would permeate the town at night and roll in off the ocean like the sounds of sirens luring men out to their deaths. At first you’d think it was the sea lions...but listen closer.

Though not too close.

At night, we would drink on that pier, listening to the seagulls and the waves crashing. We would stay up all night hedging our bets on the origin of this uncanny utopia. We knew that if the dead should rise, we would have no where to run, trapped between the mountains and the ocean.

Some thought the town was constructed over an Indian burial ground or a ghost ship lay sunk just off its beaches. No one questioned the existence of the vampires that inhabited the mountains, deep in the forests, hanging upside down from the limbs of the giant redwoods waiting for night fall.

I was a firm believer that everyone in the town was a member of a secret cult. The town had clearly been brainwashed and coerced to play out its mysterious agenda. Or perhaps Santa Cruz is just a door way…a door way to some other place. A skewed alternate reality where man, as we know him, is not meant to exist.

And the fog rolls in at night and the secrets reveal themselves, but you can only discover them one at a time, because that is the nature of fog. It prevents you from seeing everything at once. And so right when you think you have it figured out is usually when you’ve lost your way and discover you’re all alone, deep in the Santa Cruz mountains. Surrounded by pine trees, darkness, and the knowledge that there is something out there in those trees. Something waiting for you to let your guard down. Something that’s been leading you deeper and deeper into the forest.

So don’t stray too far from the main streets. Don’t ask too many questions or appear too suspicious. And whatever you do…well, I cant post it here for fear of what would happen to my family and friends. But some night over a few drinks you might get it out of me if you’re lucky. And that’s all I’ll say.

And after a while I felt myself being infected. Like the body snatchers were curling their plant like tentacles deep into my flesh, while I watched my clone come alive as I died a slow dreamy death. I realized that I had accumulated secrets that no one should know. Done things that weren’t right, but here in Santa Cruz weren’t necessarily wrong. I was not the person I used to be. I felt like I was not a person at all. I was becoming something else. A ghost perhaps, or more likely one of these creatures that apathetically inhabit the streets of Santa Cruz and is sucked into the timeless eternity that this town perpetuates.

You never die...you just get stranger. Until that one rainless day you find yourself with an umbrella, shuffling down the street toe to toe.

But that said, I never learned what the slogan “Keep Santa Cruz weird” meant until the week before I left. A local explained it all to me. It seemed that a more conservative branch of the city council had tried to push a measure that forbids street performers from performing within 40 feet of any entrance or window of downtown establishments. Theaters, restaurants, bars…everything. To enforce such a law would mean the literal extermination of all street performers and one of the vital assets that made this weird fucking community so god damn fascinating.

There was an immediate outcry of protest. Within days posters and bumper stickers were printed that simply said “Keep Santa Cruz weird!”

And eventually the law was rebuked. And to spite those who tried to push the measure through the town initiated another plan that allowed for the street musicians to register themselves and receive a payment for their mysterious gifts.

And so dear reader, our story ends happily. In the sense that Santa Cruz, though suffering a bit from the effects of commercialism, is still as fucking weird as ever.

And sad in the sense…that I am not there any more to be infected by it.