"Early one bright,hot August morning,during the first week of the third grade,my stepfather picked me up and tossed me out the front door."...from Runaway Girl by Phelps and Warren
the eternally cash strapped city of Santa Cruz is essentially bipolar,
one pole is The Boardwalk (tourism, local business) and the other pole is UC Santa Cruz
which is run by the Regents who are immunized to local governements
in between are the well off NIMBYs of the Westside.
now SC is a beacon of warm weather for the local and out of region homeless
and the more squeamish among us worry that downtown SC is
the second coming of Bezerkeley's Telegraph Ave where last year
an aggressive panhandler stabbed a reluctant giver.....
this IMHO is bullshit but it is what many believe and
write about in the daily fishwrap here.
now local charities and the County do the best they can
with limited resources,as i know from the inside as a local volunteer
but still the homeless are are constantly hassled and denied
basic human rights in downtown and i know several advocates
who are suing the city of its treatment of same.
so the usual Out of Sight out of Mind philosophy applies
to the nearby greenbelt area The Pogonip
where the homelss are being chased out of their camping
(and infrequent drug dealing) so that nearby Westside yuppies
can run in relative safety (it's nearby to UC too).
so why am i telling you all this?
last week, on the front page and on the local Salinas based TV news
were stories about the caves beneath the Westside
(unseen by tourists and casual visitors)
on a rumor that someone "might have cooked Meth there"
the cops were cleaning out the homeless,
now if you have seen THE LOST BOYS
which was shot in SC you will recall the
caVE SYSTEM IS RATHER LARGE AND
EXTENDS MILES DEEP UNDER uc
(shit shit shit) and unless one has X ray vision you would not know
the homeless were encamped there,
did i mention that SC has continually cut funding for
homeless services while wasting almost a million $$ on a
lawsuit of one of the advocates for a five second Nazi salute a decade ago????
so that is a Slice of Life here in Paradise.
aloha2u today
namaste
mega
the eternally cash strapped city of Santa Cruz is essentially bipolar,
one pole is The Boardwalk (tourism, local business) and the other pole is UC Santa Cruz
which is run by the Regents who are immunized to local governements
in between are the well off NIMBYs of the Westside.
now SC is a beacon of warm weather for the local and out of region homeless
and the more squeamish among us worry that downtown SC is
the second coming of Bezerkeley's Telegraph Ave where last year
an aggressive panhandler stabbed a reluctant giver.....
this IMHO is bullshit but it is what many believe and
write about in the daily fishwrap here.
now local charities and the County do the best they can
with limited resources,as i know from the inside as a local volunteer
but still the homeless are are constantly hassled and denied
basic human rights in downtown and i know several advocates
who are suing the city of its treatment of same.
so the usual Out of Sight out of Mind philosophy applies
to the nearby greenbelt area The Pogonip
where the homelss are being chased out of their camping
(and infrequent drug dealing) so that nearby Westside yuppies
can run in relative safety (it's nearby to UC too).
so why am i telling you all this?
last week, on the front page and on the local Salinas based TV news
were stories about the caves beneath the Westside
(unseen by tourists and casual visitors)
on a rumor that someone "might have cooked Meth there"
the cops were cleaning out the homeless,
now if you have seen THE LOST BOYS
which was shot in SC you will recall the
caVE SYSTEM IS RATHER LARGE AND
EXTENDS MILES DEEP UNDER uc
(shit shit shit) and unless one has X ray vision you would not know
the homeless were encamped there,
did i mention that SC has continually cut funding for
homeless services while wasting almost a million $$ on a
lawsuit of one of the advocates for a five second Nazi salute a decade ago????
so that is a Slice of Life here in Paradise.
aloha2u today
namaste
mega
That sucks. It's probably the same everywhere, though: A few rich folk have everything, many poor have nothing, and the middle class stands between them, eager to side with the rich in hopes of not ending up like the poor.
ReplyDeleteWhat a country! :)