My Summer Vacation - Santa Cruz

dipper
Originally uploaded by dangunderman.

Here endeth the sunburn lessons.

Our Summer Vacation began and ended in Santa Cruz, California, because the missus and I were attending a wedding there. No one's interested in weddings of people they don't know, so suffice to say, the wedding was beautiful, the couple attractive, their families lovely, and the whole event about as pleasant as can be.

Right, so Santa Cruz...

Santa Cruz has a lot going for it. On top of the coffee places and restaurants that one would expect in any self-respecting college town, there's also a beach and a boardwalk, and the Giant Dipper (pictured), an old-school wooden rollercoaster. The Left Coast's answer to the Coney Island Cyclone. Minus the freak show. A great ride. You leave thrilled and bruised, the way you should feel after any good rollercoaster ride.

You can enjoy playing and sleeping seals, go on whale watching tours, swim, surf, shop, and go to the Mystery Spot, which is both incredibly cheesy and a total blast. We ate super-delicious tacos at a number of different joints, all of which were cheap and awesome.

Demographically, it's probably what you'd expect from a college town, too. Some rich people, hippies of all ages, college kids, angry locals...

And one of the most thriving crystal meth addict scenes I've ever witnessed.

Young, white, at-first-glance healthy, and seemingly homeless near-hipsters dominate downtown Santa Cruz. An attractive woman sits on the sidewalk asking for change, smiling a charming-yet-toothless smile. Her boyfriend stands nearby holding his skateboard with a blank expression on his face. A 20-year-old dude fights a case of the nods from behind a sign asking for help. Groups of youthful vagrants keep their eyes peeled on passersby for a potential score.

I've lived in New York City since '94, and the missus has worked in some shitty neighborhoods throughout the boroughs, and we agreed that we felt less safe at times in Santa Cruz than we've ever felt in New York. Addicts present a bit of a wild card where safety's concerned.

Obviously, I'm aware that there's a nationwide crystal meth epidemic, but nowhere had it been so thrust in my face. And it seems like a new enough problem that there's no help for addicts yet. Santa Cruz is a progressive town. One would think that it would be ground zero for addict outreach. Maybe it is. Maybe it's unfair for me to assume that there's no outreach just because I didn't see any in my two whole days in downtown Santa Cruz.

But the whole scene left a bit of a lingering bad taste.

Insert meth mouth joke here! Zang! ZzzP-POW! Wocka wocka wocka!

Oh, boy...