Home @ 01 Feb 2007 10:53 am by Christina Waters
I struggle to stay optimistic, even though just trying to see a matinee at the Del Mar Theatre involves running a gauntlet of street maniacs who have decided they are entitled to all of the sidewalk, all of the street and all of the atmosphere. Yelling expletives, threatening to kill each other, decorating the benches and doorways with the contents of their 1) bathrooms, b) kitchens, c) lives, these packs of human hyenas aren’t the frail, tender, pathetic homeless or mentally impaired. They’re thugs, loadies and jerks somehow allowed to run amok. Why do shop-owners, tax-payers and those who love Santa Cruz continue to tolerate this? Freedom of expression is not freedom to infringe on the rights of others. Read John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” for a little refresher course on the freedoms our country justly prizes.
Over lunch with two friends who own a business in Carmel, we asked why that town doesn’t have this street scum problem. We were told that Carmel’s police are tough on squatters and vagrants. Offenders who continue to destroy the peace, accost by-passers and urinate, etc. on the sidewalks are given one-way tickets out of town. Waaaay out of town.
Sounds good to me. What about you?
A footnote to this issue. A lovely person who owns a restaurant next door to the Metro terminal between Front & Pacific, emailed me to ask if I would come check out her restaurant. It needed some patron oomph. What I really wanted to say to her was this: Your business could be selling genuine relics of the Holy Grail and it wouldn’t work because of location, location, location. I used to ride the bus. I am not being an elitist when I simply observe that those congregating in and around the Metro center are driving away clientele from otherwise deserving businesses, and driving down property values.
Everyone knows there’s something going wrong. But nobody is willing to do the politically-incorrect thing and fight back!
Good for you, Christina, for giving voice to the silent majority in this town. Been here 35 years and ±I deplore what has happened to downtown. Throw the bums out.
Ah yes, let’s make Santa Cruz just like Carmel–a chichi town I avoid like the plague–and shift the burden where exactly? Homeless youth don’t bother me, either actively or passively, and I walk downtown every day. Your name calling and exaggeration (”thugs, loadies and jerks…run amok”) suggest some emotions you’re not quite in touch with yet. If you’re afraid of the “maniacs” I sympathize, but that might be your responsibility not theirs. The restaurant next to the Metro would stand a better chance of getting my business (I’m a dim sum lover) if they stacked their soy sauce boxes and supplies out of sight and displayed other clues of care and aesthetic sensibility. I don’t ask that of the youth, they aren’t asking me to eat their food and pay for it.
Thanks David for that pop psychological analysis, but yes I am in touch with my emotions. That’s why I’m pissed off!
Gee David, you apparently are not worried about the gang related shootings and attacks on women going on in this town. Granted not all of this actvity is downtown, but I’m reluctant to go down there even in the daytime when there are lots of folks around…and I used to live in Oakland.
Pacific Garden Mall used to be a pleasant place to go… no more!
I go downtown a lot - day or night - often by myself - I have never encountered a rude pan-handler. Never! One time I was grossed out by some people burning sage while I was trying to eat at one of the kiosks, and one time I had a somewhat unnerving encounter with a mentally unstable person, but those were two incidents in about 15 years.