When I wake my MacBook up from its sleep, it doesn't always immediately home onto our shared household DSL connection.
We live across the street from a major office hub, and there's dozens of neighbors these days with high speed connections.
Like tonight, it asked me:
None of your trusted wireless networks can be found. Would you like to join the open wireless network named "gayanalfrottage"?
La Frontera means the border, or the frontier, in Spanish. In our neighborhood, The "Club Frontera" used to be a bar with sawdust on the floor that catered to Mexican men. It was on lower Main Street in Watsonville, the heart of central-coastal California.
The Santa Cruz County line is a block away from Club Frontera at the Pajaro River. Monterey County is on the other side of the bridge. The river also divides Watsonville from its poorer sister, the unincorporated community of Pajaro.
The Club Frontera was closed down a couple of years ago, after years of notoriety. The Watsonville Police Department Headquarters is located on the far side of the club's parking lot, about a hundred yards away from the front door.
You can picture Captain Renault, from Casablanca, making the final raid: “I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gambling is going on here, and prostitution, and heroin, and cocaine, and arms sales, and the fencing of stolen property!”
This story is by my friend Andy Griffin, the organic farmer whose brilliant newsletter about food, farming, ecology, and politics, is called the The Ladybug Letter.
On the other side of Club Frontera from the police station is El Pollero restaurant, a former drive-thru hamburger joint that now serves spit-roasted chicken. In Spanish El Pollero means “the chicken herder.” In street slang, a “pollero” is an ironic term for a smuggler who brings undocumented workers, or “pollo,” across the border— making the name of our chicken shack on lower Main a fowl-smelling pun.
Anyone walking down Main Street, seeing a Pollero next to a Frontera can hardly have any illusions about where our most important border is. It isn’t the dry riverbed that defines the county line. The real frontera lies eight hours to the south, and it divides our community everywhere we go.
But let’s change the channel from yesterday’s news and watch cartoons. Every Saturday morning at our house, Wile E. Coyote tries Acme-brand booby traps, Acme-brand dynamite, and Acme-brand H-bombs to sabotage the Roadrunner. And— Beep, beep!— every Saturday morning the Roadrunner escapes, leaving Wile E. to play the fool.
Wile E. is a Hollywood coyote. Real coyotes— the feral canines with dirty gray fur, bright yellow eyes, sharp teeth and street credibility— have to get their birds, or they won’t survive. Their range extends across mountains and deserts, from Chiapas to the Yukon.
There are human coyotes at home on the same range, so named for their cunning, their scavenging instincts, and their capacity to adapt to a harsh environment. In colonial Mexico, the Castilian grammar of the conquistadores imposed itself on the indigenous Nahuatl noun, coyotl, and a New World bastard-verb was born. The regular “ar” ending to coyotear, means to behave like a coyote. Yo coyoteo, tu coyoteas, el coyotea, etc. Such slinking behavior in a man is met with a mixture of disdain and admiration in Mexico. Coyotes are not heroes, but they are survivors.
Wile E.’s canine cousins have adapted to suburbia. They sip cool water at dawn from swimming pools on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Coyotes eat the cat food that’s been left out for Muffy, and they’ll eat Muffy, too, if they catch her, before they slip into the brush to sleep the daylight away. Suburban pet owners, who build spacious homes oblivious to their surrounding habitat, get outraged at this eruption of wilderness when coyotes stalk prey inside the city limits. But “crossing the line” is an abstraction to a coyote.
For the coyote’s human namesake, “going over the line” is a job. El coyote is the person who gets illegal immigrants under, over, or around the border. Pollero is a synonym for coyote. We all know how much a coyote enjoys a chicken dinner! Right now the price a coyote charges is about $2000 for a one-way trip from Otay Mesa or Mexicali to San Jose— more for women with infants or children.
Coyotes come in all shapes. Some coyotes are diversified businessmen who smuggle drugs across the border along with their human cargoes. “You want some coke with your chicken?”
Some coyotes are milder in spirit and guide their customers across the desert the way a hen guides her chicks. I knew a coyote once, a marimacha, or Mexicana dyke, named "Little Pistols," or María Pistolitas. Her husband was serving a life sentence on the Mexican prison island Islas Marias, for growing opium poppies. Maria worked to support her family as a lay midwife and curandera when she wasn’t smuggling immigrants. María was a sweetheart in a brassy, wise-woman sort of way, always ready to prescribe herbs and massages.
During George Bush Senior’s administration, the U.S. Mexico border was so porous that the price a coyote could charge a chicken fell precipitously. Business got so bad that one coyote I knew, Tío Raul, had to quit the life. He got a job pushing a broom around the Wrigley’s Gum factory in Santa Cruz. Tio Raúl had house payments, car payments, a wife, and two expensive teenaged daughters to maintain.
Luckily, for all the hard-pressed coyotes, President Bush was defeated by Bill Clinton. President Clinton threw a bone to his critics on the right and started “Operation Gatekeeper,” which promised renewed Federal attention to the border situation.
“Gatekeeper” placed almost all active INS officers on the international frontier. By moving I.N.S agents to the deserts, well away from any employers who felt harassed by onerous federal regulations, Clinton honored the needs of the business lobby, while managing to look tough for the press and the public. Bill Clinton is a man who knows how to conjugate the verb coyotear. Tyson Chicken, one of the biggest poultry producers in the world, is based in Clinton’s home state of Arkansas, and was one of his biggest political supporters. Bush Jr. knows the Tyson folks too.
Due to enhanced border enforcement, the cost of trespassing into the United States went up dramatically for the pollo. Darwinian logic meant that the marginal coyotes— the dumb, the unconnected, the unlucky— were hunted down by agents in lime-green four-wheel drive Broncos, and culled from the desert.
Smart coyotes were back in business. Borders move around, but there’s always a line to cross. What about Bush’s new fence? It was always dead on arrival; the real coyotes would've found ways to build that fence with undocumented laborers.
The way I see it, year after year we see the same cartoon landscape scrolling in the background— while in the foreground a bald eagle tries to solve social problems with Acme-brand dynamite. The varmint gets away in every episode. Beep, beep!—my "*". I can hear a coyote licking his chops right now, as he relishes another chicken dinner.
(c) by Andy Griffin, The Ladybug Letter. Photo of "Prima," Andy's new baby.
I love my local used bookstore. It's called Logos, and they sell outrageously arty remainders, unbelievable picture books, piles of OOP hardbacks, lyric sheets, real vinyl, and significantly weird poetry.
They are also a nice cool place to sit when it's broiling outside.
For those of you who live in Santa Cruz, or driving distance, I'm going to let you in on a secret: Logos just acquired a mammoth Underground Comix collection of a local fellow who passed away. His family didn't want his dirty comix, his Crumb, his Furry Freak, his Guy Colwell, his Slow Death and Heavy Metal... so they sold them all to the store, and now Logos is selling them to anyone who walks in. There are hundreds of esoteric titles that any fiend is going to lose their mind over.
I walked in and dropped $100, which was a pittance of what I really wanted to spend. I'm afraid I took ALL the Tits & Clits first editions, so you can just gnash your teeth at a distance.
Don't forget to ask for a look at what they put away in the "really expensive and really erotic" section, too. I couldn't afford any of those, but I loved browsing.
I finished myself off the same afternoon with an entirely different kind of porn: a gigantic photo book by uber-star Elizabeth Taylor on the subject of her jewelery collection— which must be one of the most amazing private collections in the world.
Liz says that she will take her Krupp diamond off and lets anyone try it on who asks! She tells one outrageous drunken, sex-fueled, bling-bling spending spree story after another, and makes you wonder why you ever had a spat with a lover that didn't end in a sprint to Bulgari's secret "money room."
The pictures are JAW DROPPING. Who needs peyote when you have this many facets to blind yourself with? She has one pear-shaped natural pearl the size of some people's cocks, that she had strung on new necklace designed in the fashion of one of its former owners, Mary Queen of Scots. She gossips about the outrageous history of every byzantine design. She loses priceless heirlooms under the rug in rages and fits... then sobs with ecstasy when they are rediscovered. It's enough to make you watch The Taming of the Shrew all over again!
I love jewels— the colors, the light magic, the imagination of their design. When I was little, I pretended I had three daughters, and their names were Ruby, Emeralda, and Sapphire. They were always getting into trouble, and I was always drawing them new outfits— in their namesake colors, of course— to give them a new start!
I've never had anything remotely like one of Liz Taylor's hairpins, but I'm inspired nonetheless. I may have to get out my crayons again!
I love the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk amusement park. I just took Ducky Doolittle and her book tour partner, Christine, for a glorious day's outing.
The Boardwalk is our local California groove daydream of Coney Island, with the giant wooden roller coaster, legendary surf babes, and pop concerts in the sand.
Seeing Nancy Sinatra in white go-go boots singing in front of a crowd of sunburned drag queens a few years ago was one of the best Boardwalk memories of my life.
This place has been running since 1915. My grandparents had memories of playing here! The 1911 Looff Carousel with its original 342-pipe organ, and the Giant Dipper are still beloved attractions. Plus, the family that owns the Boardwalk just bought Laughing Sal, the Playland icon, who you can watch in the Ducky-video below.
Many of you will end up in Santa Cruz at some point in your life, if you have not already settled here. It's an all-ages, all-types affair where people really DO get along and have a bloody good time at it!
My Top Ten Boardwalk Treats:
1. Surf City Grill for the french-fried artichokes and the heart-melting photographs of the Miss California beauty pageant winners who used to compete on the beach from the 20s to the 50s.
2. The summer free concerts, Friday nights. This year I'm going to go see The Family Stone (everyone except Sly, and my god, they're awesome), The Fixx, The English Beat, and then my old-school Boardwalk favorite, Herman and the Hermits. Peter Noone can work you into a debauched frenzy like no one else.
3. The totally homegrown salsa dance party that happens every Sunday afternoon on the sidewalk leading to the arcade. Someone brings a boombox and cranks it.
4. The oldtimey stuff in the Casino Arcade. They have all the modern games and thrills, but I like the weird antiques: peep show boxes, 60s sports-car postcards, and the Western Dress-Up photo parlor where you can look Drop-Deadwood in minutes.
5. I have been known to go a little crazy in the Pirate Store. Ducky got a "Release Your Booty" hat on our latest trip.
6. The Boardwalk is cheap. Go nuts on $20! One of the best things about this place is that it isn't a gated community. This is not like Disneyland or Six Flags. Online, they have a zillion coupons for things like half-price deep-fried Twinkies— and you could easily share one of them with five people. There are also "locals nights," usually Monday or Tuesday, where everything is 1900s prices. You have to call about that, though.
7. Step down a flight of wooden stairs, and you are on the most beautiful white sandy beach. Bring your blanket, park it, leave it. Yes, it is legal to sunbathe naked on our beaches. But you can't smoke. So you have to have your clambake back in the car.
8. Best Ride to Voyeurize Other People Being Terrified: The Double Shot
9. Best Ride for Sissies Like Me Who Want to Have Fun Anyway: Loggers' Revenge
10. So Lame It's Funny: The Cave Train. Built in 1961, it's perfect for cranky babies, making out in the dark, and cooling off.
Dress for success for your Boardwalk visit— and by that I mean as if you were cruising for a good time.
As far as I'm concerned, the hottest ride there is people-watching. Young and old, fat and scrawny, are all working it. Your neon platforms, gold chains, hot pants, leathers, titty shirts, filthy bikinis, and offensive belt buckles are all WELCOME here. Do not wash the sand off.
Santa Cruz is in the conservative crosshairs again.
The very name of our surf town sends wingnuts into a tofu-foaming, crystal-smashing fit. This past week, I found myself as a mysterious statistic in one of their tempests.
My story starts with the media coverage of a pro-peace student group at U.C. Santa Cruz, "Students Against War." They've had tremendous success pressuring military recruiters off of campus.
They organize to stop the armed forces
from showing up at campus job fairs with their "Go To Exotic Places
and Kill People" rap. I like their politics. I went to UCSC too, a twenty years ago, and was involved in similiar activities.
UCSC is the biggest employer in our town, the reason we have a sizeable population and traffic snarls most of the year. Ever since they broke ground in 1967, there has been a resentment by "old-timers" that the university brought braless heathens, pot smokers, and liberal politics to an otherwise peaceful (redneck) hamlet. Our local paper, The Sentinel, likes to intensify this town/gown seething at every opportunity.
I don't know if I'm being contrary, but THESE days, it seems like the older generation in "town" is far more New Age and liberal than the students on campus. Gown drinks more beer; Town smokes more weed.
This year, army recruiters declined to come and face the protestors, and their plight aroused outrage from hawks around the country. It became a Drudge Report hysteria item.
I may be cynical, but I don't think the recruiters retreated because satanic communist hippies run the university— if only that were true! If they did, maybe they would do something to alleviate the traffic mess.
No, the bigger issue is that military pitchmen have no prayer of recruiting upper middle class kids from Orange County whose GOP parents are footing the bill for their darling sons to matriculate from Banana Slug U.
The majority of UCSC students today, despite what you've heard, are upper-class, apolitical, sheltered, and vaguely conservative— like every other elite campus in the UC system. They aren't going to Iraq— not because they take a stand— but because mommy and daddy have other plans. The recruiters will do much, much better hassling people at the junior college (which they do) or the working class high schools.
Nevertheless, Michelle Malkin, hippie-hating blogger extraordinare, went ballistic on the Student Against War activists, and published their home addresses and phone numbers, prompting tidal waves of hate mail and death threats.
I hesitate to link you to Malkin; I'll let you find her on your own. Suffice to say she makes Rush Limbaugh look like a drug-addled old hasbeen. Oh, right...
This all reached fever pitch LAST week, Easter week. On Saturday, I woke up and went out to the car with baskets of eggs, ready to embark to our annual pagan preparations. As we drove off, I changed lanes and realized someone had smashed my passenger side-view mirror.
I got out, looked around, and discovered the passenger door had been dented as well.
SHIT! You know how it is when someone wrecks your car. But I wasn't about to cancel my Easter Egg Hunt. So I decided to deal with it the next day.
Sunday morning I picked up the daily Sentinel with the blazing headline:
Men in Black Vandalize SUVs on Santa Cruz's Westside!
Vandals apparently went wild in my neighborhood— slashing tires, breaking mirrors, keying paint jobs. Some cars with spray-painted with left-wing "politically charged" slogans.
The Sentinel found one "witness," a hopping mad Ms. Andrea Muzzi, who said she saw 30-40 young people in black trenchcoats (Matrix!) riding away on 10-speeds. Muzzi surmised they must be radical Slugs!
She has re-graffittied her own car to read: "Die UCSC."
The Sentinel story, aided by Malkin, has now got everyone in the country thinking that it's the student peace group that ran amok.
I called the police to report my disaster too, and they were quite interested to hear from another victim from the exact same area and time period.
But I had a new angle for them. I said, "My car is a HYBRID— I drive a Prius." Can the Sentinel explain that?
I wonder how many marauding right and left wing vandals could be working the same block at the same time. With 40 bicycles in the street, it could get chaotic. The police, meanwhile, are flummoxed. Ms. Muzzo is not their star.
Me— I don't think it was the Baader-Meinhof gang. It certainly wasn't Students Against War. I say, it was a bunch of drunk assholes, who along with the desperate junkies, are the two groups who usually vandalze cars in our "historic" neighborhood.
But now the FBI has been brought in! Gosh, we know how tough they're cracking down on environmental terrorists! I hope they've brought plenty of fax toner! Can they get me a rental while my car's in the shop?
Someone's cute kids... location unknown!
Are you ready for your morning fiber of small-town politics?
Well, you're about to get a stomach-full! Below is a letter I wrote this morning to my city council, county board of supervisors, the local newspapers, and the State Dept. of Parks and Recreation.
I live in Santa Cruz, which is known for its surfing, university, produce farms, natural beauty— and toxic real estate prices. (I have lots to say about all those topics, too).
But today, I'm in full battle-mode about a locals' issue close to my heart: our special park by the sea, called Lighthouse Field, that up 'til now, has had "leash-free" dog walking hours from dawn to 10 am, and 4 pm to dusk. It's the last six hours of civilization left in this town!
Read on:
Dear Bigshots Who Could Do Something About This,
There is one hour of my day that has always been the sweet spot. It's about to get the ax.
That hour is our family’s daily dog walk at Lighthouse Field and Its Beach. It is the single most civilized, wholesome, social space in the entire town. It is a unique social climate in this town, a model for decent behavior.
And now it’s being closed down. No more off-leash walks. People who bring their dogs at 6 AM on November 15 are to be given citations. Dog-walkers are now criminals who have been charged with ruining a community asset. How could such a short-sighted decision be allowed to stand?
We all know the ugly social and economic issues this city is up against. The future has looked so dark lately. The “dog walk hours” at the Field have been one of the few bright spots in the midst of our troubles, an oasis of cooperation and generosity.
Every day for five years, our family has been part of the Lighthouse Field dog crowd, in all kinds of weather. We come at dawn or at dusk. We pick up the poop, we talk about the weather, and the changing seasons. We call each other by our dog’s names: I’d be Mrs. Cody, to many who know me there.
The decision to close the park to the ones who enjoy it the most, is unconsciousably cruel. There are many folks for whom this is their only exercise and social connection to our community. What are we supposed to do now?
Dogs familiar with the park cannot simply be “put on a leash,” to follow the new rules. They won’t understand, and will assume they’re being punished. Frankly, that’s exactly how it feels to me.
Before my family adopted a puppy, I was afraid of dogs. I was the type who emitted the “fear” smell that dogs pick up on so quickly. I’d never been to Lighthouse Field, or anywhere where a dog might be around, on leash or not.
But my young daughter was an animal-lover, and had gone to great lengths to prove that she was ready to raise a dog. I decided to get educated, and address my phobia.
What I learned about dog was a revelation. Phrases like “puppy love” and “man’s most loyal companion” took on new significance. I saw that dogs offer something to humans that we don’t consistently give each other: unconditional faithfulness and affection, desire to do good, and putting the group’s interest above all. I'm saying this as a die-hard cat person who finds these traits remarkable in human beings, let alone animals.
These characterisitics seem to be the opposite of the city and state’s recent decision, where bureaucracy and insensitivity rule the roost, letting the bitter chips fall where they may. A handful of well-financed litigants paved the way for this decision, and their agenda is the pinnacle of bullying. The quality of people’s lives has been hurt in a way that won’t go unnoticed, or unpaid for.
What have been the objections to the leash-free hours at the Field?
Of course we hear about abused and neglected animals who are dangerous to themselves and others. The pit bull in Live Oak who’s trying to kill the mailman, or the monstrosity in the San Francisco apartment complex. They’re the headline grabbers— and you’ll notice they’re not part of our park.
Dangerous animals aren’t the kind of pets that get taken for nice walks at Lighthouse Field! People who chain their dog up all day at their meth lab aren’t taking a stroll at Its beach with an extra bottle of water, and cookie treats! "
My dog has never been in a fight at the Field, in five years of daily visits. The worst thing I’ve witnessed was minor orneriness, between people, not dogs, over the disposition of a chewed tennis ball.
The people who oppose leash-free hours are a mystery to me. I never see them in the park. I don’t see them enjoying it during the “non-dog” hours. They certainly don’t come out in the cold or rainy weather. Are they afraid of dogs, as I once was? Are they misanthropes who have adjacent homes and want a view with “no people” in it? I get the feeling they dislike people more than dogs. Without the dogs, they know they’ll get rid of the people. The park is otherwise barren.
The environmental concerns have always been a nonstarter. The butterflies? Well, the first thing you need to know about butterflies is that they are attracted to feces. They would probably like it better if the dog owners of Lighthouse Field weren’t so dedicated to cleaning up things with our plastic bags.
The other flora and fauna? The gophers seem to thrive despite the desperate attempts of the dogs to catch them. It is a city park, not a long-lost wilderness.
The other regular guests to the park? Now that you’ve gotten rid of those goody-two-shoes dog walkers, your main population will be the beer drinkers and pot-tokers— who, up ‘til now, have been on THEIR best behavior because the dog-people created such straighten-up-and-fly-right peer pressure. You take Lassie and Rin Tin Tin out of the equation, and with it, goes the wholesomeness.
Where do we take our dogs who’ve been accustomed to off-leash exercise? What’s the alternative? Without decent exercise, these animals turn on themselves: they chew holes in their fur, worry themselves with bad habits, can’t settle down at home. It makes the family miserable. I have a 80 lb. mutt, not a teacup poodle. He’s a teacup Newfoundland.
This decision is hurting so many people and animals who “never hurt anyone” and only brought social courtesy and comradeship to this city. What cold winter are you looking forward to with an empty Lighthouse Field? Why is the City determined to cannibalize this rare good spirit?
Many of us recently turned out at the Lighthouse to mourn the death of Dan Houston, the beloved city Parks and Rec. ranger who knew every dog and visitor to the Field.
I remember looking at the mourners, and thinking, “I’ve never seen these folks except for our walks; I’ve never seen them without their dogs.” I know very few of them by name, and yet I could have hugged any one of them. We have a kinship and history that is remarkable, and to think it is being destroyed by this Scrooge-like executive order is nothing less than a human sacrifice. What does it take to turn this awful decision around and make it right again?
Susie Bright
Photos, from top to bottom: Cody as a puppy; Aretha, Susie, & Cody in front of mural in Pt. Townsend; Ducky Doolittle & Cody; Cody and Xiao Bond, International Meow of Mystery; and Cody and I in the Field.
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