Santa Cruz still rides its own wave of fun

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — What do you say about a town where surfing is tantamount to a cult religion, the banana slug is the local university's official mascot, and old hippies are treated like the town's most honored citizens? That it's out of the mainstream?

Some people would say Santa Cruz is, quite happily, out of the stream entirely. Like, sitting in a lotus position on the shoreline and smoking something, uh, herbal.

Separated by a steep coastal range from Silicon Valley, reached via a congested highway that locals refuse to widen, this city of 55,000 isn't often thought of as a vacation destination. But if you go by the same rule that says you should scope out the politics of a community before moving there, this California beach town makes the perfect getaway for the young, the restless and the politically relaxed.

Santa Cruz resident Tom Deasy, whose great-grandfather bought land near here from the Spanish back before the gold rush of 1849, explains, "It's because it's the left coast of the United States. It's as far as people could come." People who weren't satisfied with the status quo in New York or Ohio picked up everything they owned and went west.

Deasy, 62, lives on his sailboat in Santa Cruz Harbor and likes it.

"Having the mountains and the sea, both the redwoods and the ocean, it's beautiful. It's so contained between the ocean and the hills, there isn't room for sprawl. Plus it's a real old hippie town and it's great."

Downtown denizens

On the pleasant downtown shopping street, Pacific Avenue, a bronze statue memorializes one old hippie of a sort: Tom Jefferson Scribner, whose statue sits playing a musical saw, as Scribner did on this street until his death at 83 in 1982. A famed local counterculture figure, he was once an organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World — the Wobblies.

There are plenty more old hippies, still alive, around downtown: scraggly bearded types playing chess in Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Co. (where every cup's made to order); gray ponytails high-fiving in front of fabulous, home-owned Bookshop Santa Cruz; banjo players busking on street corners.

And there are plenty of young nuts-and-berries types, thanks to University of California at Santa Cruz, born as a counterculture college similar to Evergreen in Olympia but which nowadays gives, gasp, grades. It does, however, cling to its original, whimsical choice of a school mascot: the banana slug. (A college chancellor pushed "sea lions" as a more dignified mascot in the 1980s — even had a sea lion painted on the gym floor — but students rebelled and by overwhelming vote made the slug official.)

Where surfing came ashore

And then there are surfers. They come from all over the world, and you'll see them anytime, anywhere in town, wrapped in wetsuits, toting their boards, heading for the beach.

There's a history here. Santa Cruz is where surfing came to the mainland United States in the 1880s, when some Hawaiians attending a local missionary school brought their surfboards along.

Drop by the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum (how many places have one of those?) to learn more. The museum, housed in a tiny brick lighthouse on West Cliff Drive, overlooks so-called Steamer Lane, where winter surf gets to be about 20 feet tall.

"This is the best surfing in America," said Jesse Shank, a surfer and parks employee who helps run the museum. (It has something to do with the geography. Even though Santa Cruz is on the West Coast, it faces south, and waves coming around Lighthouse Point break just right.)

The museum is crammed with old surfboards, many of them built in local high-school wood shops when the surfing craze swept Santa Cruz in the 1930s. Look for a 1941 photo of the Santa Cruz Surfing Club, all with old-style longboards, many twice the surfer's height.

"They had to build the boards that long because they didn't have lightweight material and they needed to be big to float," Shank said. "Some of those guys are about 80 years old now and they still volunteer here on Fridays."

Ride high

Rent a bike and take a ride on the gorgeous West Cliff bike path, past cypress trees as bent as an 80-year-old surfer, amid thick ground cover of brightly flowering ice plant, and look down on the best surfing hot spots. Or glance down — quickly — from atop the Giant Dipper, a 1924 wooden roller coaster, among the many rides at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, one of the best old-fashioned beachfront amusement parks in America.

You'll find plenty of Californians whooping it up there, people down for the day from San Jose or Oakland. But you won't be among hordes of tourists from Middle America. For the most part, they haven't found Santa Cruz yet.

And, chances are, they'd be happier at Disneyland, anyway.

Far out.

Brian J. Cantwell: 206-748-5724 or bcantwell@seattletimes.com