Santa Cruz Travel Notes

As a transplanted Sureño, one of the things I miss most about SoCal is being able to spend a nice day at the beach. San Francisco’s Ocean Beach is a great place to catch pneumonia in a foggy riptide. Alameda is nice as far as Oakland beaches go, but it’s hardly Laguna. But just an hour away there is Santa Cruz, a little spot of sun and sand that’s as good as anything in the O.C. I’ve been touristing in Santa Cruz since the late 70s, and no summer is complete for me without a few visits. While I’m hardly a local, I’ve traveled there enough to know what I like, and here are a few of my favorites.

The Boardwalk - Beachfront amusement parks used to line the California coast from San Diego to San Francisco, but this is the only one still standing. Compared to a modern chain park it’s ridiculously old-school, down to the redwood-timbered Giant Dipper, my favorite roller coaster ever. And unlike those mouse-eared and flag-waving mega-parks, at the Boardwalk you can still buy individual tickets instead of an all-day pass. So if you just want to ride the Dipper a few times, you’ll still have plenty of cash left over for funnel cake. And Dippin’ Dots. And deep-fried candy bars. And salt-water taffy. And by the way, you’ll probably want to enjoy all that deliciousness after you ride the Giant Dipper, not before. I’m just saying.

Shakespeare Santa Cruz- At the opposite end of the cultural spectrum, UC Santa Cruz has one of the best Shakespeare programs in the country. Every production I’ve seen here has been world-class, most recently A Midsummer Night’s Dream.Their outdoor theater, set in a redwood grove on the UC campus, is the perfect place to indulge your taste for the Bard. Bring a picnic and a bottle of your favorite poison, and make like a groundling under the big trees.

Zachary’s - Once you’ve breakfasted at Zachary’s, any other joint is just a greasy spoon. Everything on the menu is delicious, but I’m partial to the sourdough pancakes, the house-made hash, and the unbeatable fried potatoes.

New Brighton State Beach- Lodging in the Santa Cruz area is notoriously over-priced, with your typical crappy motel room costing as much as a three-star in San Francisco. But if you bring your own tent you can enjoy beachfront living and million-dollar views for about $20 a night at this gorgeous state park, located just a few minutes south of town between Capitola and Aptos. The only downside: you need to book months in advance, especially for the summer months.

Pacific Garden Mall- As a general rule I hate shopping, but Pacific Avenue has so many quirky little stores that even I can have a good time here.  Independent booksellers, oddball importers, vintage and consignment shops, and a watering hole strategically placed every block or so. So when I grow weary of retail and Mrs. M wants to keep at it, I can sit down for a pint and enjoy the book I just bought.

Motiv- Earlier this year I was crushed to learn that my favorite Santa Cruz restaurant, the Pearl Alley Bistro, had gone down the tubes. But now there’s a new restaurant in the same space, and I’m happy to report that it’s even better. Forget the downstairs lounge, the happening scene is upstairs, where executive chef Anthony Kresge is working some serious Mediterranean mojo. A Napa Valley expat, he’s also brought a great wine list to the place. I was, as they say, completely stoked, and I’m already dreaming up excuses to go back and eat here again.

Stagnaro Brothers Fish Market- Located at the end of the Municipal Wharf, Stagnaro’s sells smoked fish that’s just like I remember it from my boyhood days in Orange County. The flaky goodness of smoked albacore, and the oily, salty, bony deliciousness of smoked herring. The latter, which my family affectionately referred to as ”stinky fish,” is just about impossible to find anywhere else these days, and Stagnaro’s does it exactly right. Give me a half-pound, a cold beer, and a breath mint, and I’m ready to climb in the car and drive home. But I will be back. Oh yes, I will be back.

Meat Parade Memories

“Great idea,” I said to my friend John when he proposed that we enter a meat-themed float in the “How Berkeley Can You be?” parade and cover it with meat-grilling, meat-gnawing, cigarette-smoking freaks dressed in leather and fur, spewing clouds of charcoal smoke, under a banner reading PETA: People Eatin’ Them Animals. “Great idea, except we might get killed. Those peace-loving Berzerkeley moms will rip us to pieces.

“We need our own protest marchers,” I suggested. ”We’ll field our own counter-demonstration.” And thus was born the VegetAryan movement, a brave cadre of brown-shirted, jack-Birkenstocked, sign-waving, slogan-chanting thugs, violently opposed to all things carnivorous and willing to disrupt the “meat people” by any means necessary.

Thanks to the efforts of DocumentAryan Puzzling Evidence, we can now enjoy the thrills and (grease) spills of this epic confrontation and its sequel (“Meat People II: Straight to Video”), in which we returned to the streets of Berkeley the following year with more meat, more fur, more cigarettes thrown to children, more pig heads on stakes, more

White House “Beer Summit”

In one of the biggest non-stories of the year, President Obama met yesterday with the principals in the soon-to-be-forgotten but currently-notorious, racially-charged, violently overblown incident up in Cambridge, in which a black Harvard professor was arrested for disorderly conduct after allegedly breaking into his own home after a trip abroad, and not reacting well when the police were called in. Our usually well-spoken Chief Executive, remarking that the police had acted “stupidly” in the affair, found himself promptly tasting shoe leather, and hastily invited Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley to the White House to discuss the matter “over a beer,” and perhaps turn bad PR into good PR by creating a “teaching moment” for the Nation. In other words: desperate spin control. 

The resulting “Beer Summit,” covered in exhaustively shallow detail by the national media, was frought with symbolism, intentional and otherwise. As a so-called Beer Expert, I feel the need to step in as an analyst, and help you decipher the Story behind the story.  Because while the event may have been nothing more than a feel-good photo-op, the beer selections of the participants say a lot about race and class in this country, and the perceptions of our perceptions about race and class.  So let’s take a look at exactly which beers were called in to grace the nation’s highest picnic table on that fateful afternoon…

President Obama’s beer choice: Bud Light. The message: “I don’t really like beer, but I don’t want to come off as an elitist, wine-drinking douche, so I’ll order the best-known brand in America and hope I poll as a regular Joe, albeit watching his weight.”  The sub-subtext: “I’m still paying for that ‘guns-and-religion’ comment in the PA primary, and  I’m going to need Joe Sixpack on my side to get Health Care passed.” Beeradvocate.com’s review of Bud Light: C (mediocre).

Ghosts of Old New Almaden

The Michels, my great-great-grandparents

While I’m hardly a genealogy nut, I do consider myself the keeper of the keys when it comes to family history, and I try to keep opening old doors whenever I get the chance. One research trip that’s been on my list for way too long is a trip down to the New Almaden Mining Museum south of San Jose. According to my mom, her great-grandfather Pascal Michel worked there in the 1850s as a mining engineer, and I’ve always wanted to check the payroll records and get the full story. A few years back I phoned the museum and they confirmed that they had tons of records dating back to the early days, but they told me I’d have to come down and do the research myself – and only on a Saturday or Sunday.

Weekends are tough for me, since I usually work – but finally the planets lined up and I had the time, so I hit the road for the 90-minute drive down to the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. On the way down, munching a chorizo burrito and blasting Los Cenzontles to get me in the mood, I reflected on what I knew about Pascal Michel. A French Mexican, he was either born in or emigrated to Sonora, where he married Petra Murillo, an eductated girl from a good family in Hermosillo.  Mining was the family business, and he plied the trade in Sonora for some time before heading north. According to the stories, he and Petra started a family together down in Mexico, but all the kids from that first batch were wiped out in an epidemic, which had a lot to do with their decision to start over in Alta California.

Take Me Out to the Bullfights

It’s not easy being a bullfight fan in California.  Sure, bloodless corridas are legal, but the Portuguese societies that sponsor them wisely choose to fly under the PETA radar, making them both hard to reach and hard to hear about unless you’re part of the community. Most of the venues are out in the dustiest corners of the Valley, in little farming towns that are hours from the cities. Most of the fights are on weeknights, conducted in Portuguese, and only written up in Portuguese newspapers. There’s a fan website in English, but it’s no longer being maintained, and the URL is up for sale. In other words, you’ve really got to love this sport if you want to see it.

And make no mistake, this is definitely sport. When a team of forcados leaps into the ring, eight brave men versus one angry bull, it’s like being catapulted back into the Stone Age, when bull-jumping and bull-baiting were some of the world’s earliest athletic spectacles.

100 Great Stories

Because so many Top 100 lit lists are so full of crap, I’ve decided to make my own. No Proust, no Joyce, none of those put-you-to-sleep, emperor-has-no-clothes writers that we’re supposed to like but really don’t.  Just good ripping tales well told — works of fiction that I’ve read and enjoyed and can recommend. If you want to read any of them, great. If you want to argue about what’s on or not on my list, or recommend other titles that you think I ought to like, that’s also great. Friend me on Goodreads.com if you really want to mix it up.  Anyway, here’s my list, sorted alphabetically by author. Enjoy!

COVERT Number 1

Not an Actual Photograph

Like most of John Law’s events, it began with cryptic instructions: “We will be leaving from the Vaillancourt Fountain in Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco at 7:01 pm sharp. Look for the man in the Top Hat. Bring legal ID, $2.75 in quarters, and a flashlight.”  There was no indication of what we would be doing, other than the event name, ‘COVERT,” and John’s rich history of hosting off-the-grid excursions.

A veteran of the Cacophony Society and its predecessor, the Suicide Club, Law has organized everything from illicit bridge climbs to tours of undergound military facilities to elaborate street games. COVERT seemed to be in the tradition of the Suicide Club’s notorious “Into the Unknown” events, where the participants had no clue where they were going until they arrived.

Mrs. M and I arrived at the fountain at the appointed hour, and along with 48 other adventurers we were relieved of our cell phones, digital cameras, and all other electronic gear for the duration. No photos, no Tweets, no permanent record of the event was to be allowed, other than what we carried out in the folds of our puzzled little brains.

A Brief History of Naughty

I’m probably going to Hell for this, or maybe I’ll just get sucked into a massive black hole, but I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what one of those dorky Penthouse letters would sound like if it was read by Professor Stephen Hawking.

I saw Dr. Hawking once on the streets of Berkeley, or someone who looked just like him, accompanied by a tall, rather sexy nurse in crisp white uniform. I remember thinking: “Way to go, Doc!” After all, his condition hasn’t stopped him from fathering three children. He’s a man, damn it, not just a disembodied brain with a speech synthesizer!

So here you go: a little soft-core pillow talk from the smartest man in the world. Enjoy!  Dear Penthouse

C28: Fundamentalist Fashion

You know how the car radio occasionally scans up a station that sounds like standard indie rock, with big guitar riffs and some guy singing about getting high, kicking ass, and falling in love? But then you listen for a minute and you realize he’s getting high on God, kicking Satan’s ass, and falling in love with Jesus? C28 is the rag-trade equivalent of that sneaky FM station, a retail chain selling faux-hip clothes and gear for young evangelicals who don’t want to dress like Mormon missionaries, but whose moms won’t let them shop at Hot Topic.

Poised between the godless Bay Area and America’s pulsing red heartland, I have a rare vantage-point from which to observe this sort of phenomenon. It’s called Sun Valley Mall, and it’s easy enough to find the C-28 store if you know what to look for. Just stand in front of Hot Topic, then look across the mallway to the store that looks just like it, only instead of being staffed by surly teens with clip-on nose rings, has a fresh-scrubbed cheerleader type working the door.

Return of the Giant Beers

A friend texted me this morning: “All of us are going to the Bistro for the double IPA fest today.” I got all worked up for about 90 seconds, until I realized he was off by a week, and it’s not until next Saturday. Which is a workday for me. Damn.

If you’re fan of giant beers, the Double IPA Fest is the Super Bowl of tastings. Held at a little beer bar in Hayward, it’s the flagship event in this year’s SF Beerfest. I would so be there if I could. But since I can’t, I’ll have to make do with a few Plinys and maybe a Racer X down at my local pub to wash away the grief.