Has Santa Cruz changed or have I?

I swear that once upon a time the beaches there were really nice. Herland cafe and bookshop was a hip hangout. The Saturn Cafe had good food (it was the first place I aver had chai . . .). It was a really queer-firendly town. Crawling with lesbians.
I haven’t been to scruz regularly for ten years. I used to date a Santa Cruz girl. I would go nearly every week down to Capitola. I told my parents that I was participating in all night movie marathons at a friend’s house, but I was really going out to see this girl. Then, she dumped me and I went away to college. This was a smart move on her part as I was a complete asshole at the time.

Anyway, getting back to the present tense, or at least the recently past tense, when Ellen wanted to know where was a nifty place to go to the beach, I said that Santa Cruz was a hip little town with a nice beach. So yesterday, we hopped in the car and drove down a looong stretch of 880/17 to get to the beach. We hopped out at the Boardwalk. Ok, the boardwalk is not cool and never has been, but we walked down the beach aways and saw sea lions. The sea lions were pretty cool. the long dock near the boardwalk has pieces of it close to the water that sea lions were napping on and barking at each other.
the beach was grayish. Noise pollution from the boardwalk floated down it. I walked barefoot and let the frgid water run over my feet.
then we went to the downtown. Full of chain stores. I went to the Santa Cruz Dyke March a few years back. It was a small and fun affair. It included street theater, chanting, partial nudity and a brief protest outside of the Barnes and Noble store. It was the first chain store on the main street. Some subterfuge had been involved in it’s getting there. Some community members were outraged. those outraged people clearly lost that battle and maybe left town, i dunno. Baby gap. Urban outfitters. etc etc etc.
So we went to herland to get a cup of coffee or some hummus or whatever. It’s not a cafe anymore. It’s a bookstore only. They had to move down the street from their old location. the person behind the counter was a baby boomer goddess-worshipping type. The store was playing really bad out of tune folk music. the books were all published by Naiad press. Lame lame lame. I got a copy of the latest Dykes to Watch Out For book. The woman behind the counter said, “Since you’re planning to go out to lunch, are you sure that you don’t want a bag?”
Closetted? In Santa Cruz? What’s happened to the world? I’ve been whining that people on the East Coast aren’t out. But this is California. This is Santa Cruz, which in 1993 or 1994 was reported by the San Jose Mercury News to be 25% lesbian/bisexual/LUG. (The first place I ever saw the word LUG (Lesbian Until Graduation) was in that article.) Did the whole world change when I wasn’t paying attention?
We walked through the yuppied throngs amidst the chain stores towards the Saturn Cafe. I was feeling discouraged. A piece of my youth is gone forever. Or was it always lame and I hadn’t noticed because I was young and breaking so many rules by going down there?
The Saturn Cafe was recently in the news for responding to the French Fries/Freedom Fires debacle by renaming their fried “Impeach Bush Fries.” Alas, now the menu just says “Fries.” And they’re not very good. The only hint of the activism and queerness that I thought still lurked in scruz was a manifesto on Saturn’s bathroom doors about how they were fighting against binary gender divisions by making their bathrooms officially non gendered. If only thier food was still good.
Ellen was a good sport. She said that it was a good learning experience and she’s glad we went all the way down there to find out she doesn’t need to go back.
Alas. either the town has completely changed or I have. Or maybe both of us. Everything in the world is different. The girl I dated isn’t even a girl anymore.

More Fun

Last night I rode BART to Milbrae to go meet Polly for dinner. Milbrae is, of course, one of the new BART stops out in the penninsula and it’s the last one on the line. It’s also a Caltrains station, which could make getting to the south bay via transit much easier, although it is an hour long ride just to there. I like the new stations because they have art in them and no ads.

Polly, darling of the flute community, seems to be doing well. I used to play bass in her backup band and we played at the National Flute Association convention in Vegas last August. August may not be the best time to go to Vegas, but the flutists loved her. Anyway, she has a new bassist now (alas!) and is playing some gigs. We went out for Thai food and got caught up and discussed Liturgical Drama. Seriously. I also learned that KDFC (your radio concert hall), the Bay Area’s lone classical station, gets all of its CDs through the indie network. So if you’re on an indie label, you better have a distributor with their own indies. This sounds confusing because an “indie label” is a record company not owned by the big five record companies. But, people who are “indies” and work for the “indie network” are so-called independent folks that funnel payola from the big five to radio stations. Recall that payolla, paying a radio station for playing your record, is illegal. So many record companies have found independant contractors who give stuff to radio stations and who get stuff from record companies when those stations play the record company’s songs. The indy pockets the difference. However, the indie network has largely been purchased by Clear Channel, so how this is different than payola is completely unclear. anyway, this is part of the reason that commercial radio sucks.
So anyhow, after Thai food, Polly and I went and met Paul at Starbucks and talked more. It was groovy.
Finally, I rode BART back to the East Bay and got picked up by Ellen. The night was still somewhat young, so we went to the White Horse and did some drinking and dancing. We cavorted (this is Polly’s mom’s word for having illicit fun, but any claim of illicitness would be overstated).

Who is this Ellen of whom you speak?

She is the person living in casaninja while Christi and I are away becoming educated. Ellen Fullman is the inventor of the Long String Instrument. There are plans to install it in the first floor of casaninja. Many pieces are in place, but no strings yet! Technical issues are still being worked out, alas.
She played her newest CD, Ellen’s Songbook, for me. It’s coming out soon on Choose Records, but they don’t seem to be listing it yet. It’s awesome. All the pieces are songs except for one instrumental piece. She does the singing. All the songs are catchy and smart. The production is really slick. College radio stardom is clearly in her future. The songs remind me of the Magnetic Fields, because they are pop, but so much more is going on than in your average pop songs. Many of the songs are tuned in just intonation. Her singing voice is very similar to her talking voice: pretty and “real”. She spent time studying Indian singing and it comes through in some of the songs. Of course, the Long String Instrument is present and percussion and even cheesy 90’s techno sounds on the second to last song. It’s just cool.

Stuff

Wedding Photos are finally online. These pictures taken last August by the staff of London, Ontario’s Crystal Wedding Chapel. Note that we weren’t lying about getting Elvis to sing.

Only one person has written to say that she’ll be coming to my New Years Eve shindig. Are the rest of you (are there more of you?) just silent? I won’t be buying much beer, I guess. (No, it’s not in danger of being cancelled. Many of Ellen’s friends are coming.)

Christmas

Ellen and I went down to San Jose for xmas with my family. She went willingly, god bless her. Ellen is really nifty.
We went to Brother Bob’s house. Also in attendance were: my brother Paul, my Uncle Chuck, friends of my late mother: Bunny and Seymore, my Dad (Ed) and my Dad’s um friend Danielle.
I hardly talked to my uncle. He’s doing some car racing this year, but not much and I don’t know when. Talked to my brother some. He’s not dating anybody, gave up his consulting buisiness due to a shortage of clients. He re-wried the electricity on his house.
Bunny and Seymore report (ok, mostly Bunny reporting) that they’re not well and that they haven’t done anything fun lately and have no hobbies. Seymore has a wound on his foot, which is healing. Bunny says I look so much like my mother and went on at length how angelic my mom looked on her deathbed.
the assertion of an angelic appearance is true. The progression of her ilness was such that worries and pain ceased. not that I enjoy being reminded of such things. Nor are the holidays entirely stress-free to start out with.
My dad smiled a lot. More than I’ve seen him smile for maybe . . . ever. He told several amusing stories about when he was in the army. Ellen said, “I like your dad. He’s really cool. He smiles a lot.” It was pretty cool to see him seem so happy.
Brother Bob says he attended three funerals in the last week. Distressed, but otherwise doing well, I guess. He seemed happy to have everyone over and made outstandingly good food.
the person with whom I spoke most was Danielle, who I had never met before. She is a former “Volunteer of the Year” with the Women’s Philharmonic. She goes to the SF symphony regularly with my Dad. My Dad has season tickets. She is also Yoyo Ma’s Masseuse, something she talked about at length, relating how she sent tapes of farm animal sounds to his children. And in what circumstances the farm animal sounds were listened to. If you need the dirt on farm animal sounds in the Ma household, she’s got it.
she’s a new music fan, which is certainly a good thing. the world needs more fans of new music. Especially ones that buy CDs. I got her a CD of Meredith Monk and was worried that she would already have it, but she wasn’t familiar with Monk, so I was safe.
She also talked for a long long time about how her deceased husband was a Southern Baptist minister and how fundamentalists are spiritually awesome, even if polically bad. She’s a catholic and a fundie. She doesn’t like progressive churches because in those churches god is like Santa Claus: always good. She helped out with Billy Graham’s crusade and helped organize three of his local stops. I asked her, “what does spirituality mean if it’s working for evil?”
My brother stood up suddenly. My dad asked him why he was standing up. My brother said, “it’s 9:00.”
Danielle considered the evidence against Graham and conceeded that he was indeed working for evil. She then started talking about the bad way the Southern Baptists treated women and started talking a lot about how some women in the 70’s were so committed to feminism that they actually came out as lesbians but, even though they tried, they just couldn’t bring themselves to . . .
My Dad stood up. It’s a bit after 9:00.
I said. “Indeed. some people are bisexual and some people are not.” And thought, “I can’t beleive I just said ‘bisexual’ in front of my Dad.'”
Danielle started explaining that queer issues (she didn’t say “queer” she said “homosexual” as some would-be liberals are wont to do) were even more important to her than women’s issues with the Baptists.
I stood up, explaining that while I did tend to run later than the rest of my family, it was time for the 9:00 standing.
She went on further to me about women who just couldn’t bring them selves to. First talking to me (when I suddenly got very interested in the pomegranites that were out around Bro Bob’s house) and then at length to Ellen who very politely nodded.
Ellen is so cool
And so, Danielle seems very nice and certainly has interesting things to say. Plus she’s a maseusse and my Dad seems happy, which is very good. I’m happy to see him smile so much.

New years eve party!

see below

More FAQ

  1. Do you miss Christi?
    Yes, terribly
  2. Can we have dinner?
    Absolutely, but I am on public transit only for a while, so this impacts my ability to get around. My scedule is pretty wide open as yet.
  3. Isn’t your truck here?
    Yes, but I tried to switch the registration from my dad to me before I left for school and there was a problem, so I need to go to the DMV to sort it out. Also, since it’s co-registered to Christi and I, if it turns out the CA domestic partnership laws go into effect Jan 1st, then there is an advantage to be gained by waiting till then.
  4. Am I invited to your new years eve party?
    Yes
  5. Where is it?
    At my berkeley address
  6. Should I RSVP?
    It would be easier to figure out how many consumables to stockpile if you call or email ahead of time. Or if you don’t want to rsvp (just in case you’re waiting to see if Hugh Hefner calls at the last minute), you can come anyway and byob.
  7. Should I get you a Christmas gift?
    No.

FAQ

  1. Are you in California now?
    Yes, I am staying in Berkeley. I will be here until January 18th
  2. How can I reach you?
    You can call me at my home phone number in Berkeley. You could also try calling my cell phone: 860-301-2508. My cell phone was broken and I grabbed it when I left to come here, with the idea that I might be able to disassmble it and repair it, or trade it in for a phone that takes pictures or something. the picture thing was causing gear lust. I didn’t even grab my charger.
    well, I was standing outside the Oakland airport waiting for my ride, when I suddenly became frustrated with my phone and started beating it savagely. It returned to life. So I have a working phone (that also acts as voicemail), but no way to charge it. so if you also have a Nokia and want to hang out with me, perhaps I could make some use of your charger while we hang out?
  3. Er… ok. so, how was your flight?
    United Airlines is charging for food on the airplane! If you want a sandwich, you better have a ten bucks. What’s more, all of the food options have meat in them. Contrast this with AirFrance, which serves good food (that would be good even off of an airplane) and wine. Plus the steward types on airfrance are much more polite and unlike United, do not give you the silent treatment. On the other hand, one of the people in my row (on United) started berating the steward about how crappy the inflight movie (Seabiscuit) was, as if he could do anything about it.
  4. Okaaaayyyy. So why aren’t you in France anyway?
    Christi has 60 hours of class per week + homework. apparently, she got somewhat behind when I was there before for just a few days. she called me up and said, “I love you dearly, but you can’t come for a month. I have a week off around Christmas, can you come then?”
    Alas, it was too late to do anything to my tickets, so, in order to avoid derailing christi’s educational experience, i have come home instead. also, I really wanted to see you.

book deals

The top thing on blogger.com right now is people getting book deals based on their blogs. This, of course, causes me to become starry-eyed. Would Random House be interrested in the ramblings of a neurotic grad student who hasn’t changed her sheets since October? Then I remembered that I only post tired Marxist political rants and papers written for classes.

(I wear pajams. it’s not that bad. i’ve been busy. Like you’ve never done it.)