Beauty and the Break
Summer Comes to Santa Cruz. It’s Dark and It’s Gnarly.
Every town has its noir-ville. It’s easy to find in Santa Cruz.
We live in what’s called “paradise,” where you can wake up in a pool of blood with the first pink rays of the sun- rise peeking out over our mountain range. The dewy mist lifts from the bay.
Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful—we were made that way, like Venus rising off the foam with a brick in her hand. We can’t help it if you fall for it every time.
We live in a place where the screaming never stops. No, not the publicly psychotic. Our crown jewel, the reason a million-plus pleasure-seekers visit every year, is the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, a roller coaster–screamin’, cotton-candy amusement park.
Our most famous ride, the Giant Dipper, will plunge you seventy feet down its wooden tracks at fifty-five miles per hour. We hear your cries all the way down the river- front. Hell yes, you had a good time!
My friend Willow Pennell, is second-generation Santa Cruz. She reminded me that the 1980s S…