🚀 go-pugleaf

(Normally I trim articles so as to only get to the meat of what I'm
replying to. However, with the forwarding business, I'm leaving this
untrimmed. Comments after the quoted part.)


In article <1172434129.974186.182090@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
<dhm_at_best_dot_com@yahoo.com> wrote:

> -----Begin Forward-----
> 
> From:  "Becky Johnson" http://groups.yahoo.com/group/huffsantacruz
> Date:   Sun, 25 Feb 2007 09:38:13 -0800
> Subject:   [huffsantacruz] Trash on Pacific Ave: Letter in the Sentinel
> Feb 25 2007
> 
> 
> NOTE TO READER: Julie Bernhard of Santa Cruz writes that she will
> continue to work and shop downtown despite "undesirables" blowing
> smoke in her face, and urges the community to create an atmosphere of
> mutual respect downtown "together." However, her letter ignores that
> the current city policy is exactly the opposite:  A small group of
> business leaders, meeting behind closed doors with Vice-Mayor Ryan
> Coonerty, Lynn Robinson, and Cynthia Mathews have orchestrated a
> police sweep in an effort to cleanse Pacific Avenue of those "sights"
> which make Ryan Coonerty's customers at Bookshop Santa Cruz
> "uncomfortable. "  The sight of a panhandler is apparently the "broken
> window" that must be fixed.  But rather than face the fact that the
> employment opportunities for homeless and poor panhandlers are few,
> the pay substandard, and the gap between those wages and the sky-
> rocketing cost of housing have left too many out in the cold.  These
> same business interests who spent $100,000 last year to defeat Measure
> G, a raise in the minimum wage, are now spending beaucoups bucks on
> police overtime, selectively enforcing a mulititude of minor
> ordinances against anyone who is not shopping fast enough.   --- Becky
> Johnson of HUFF


I often spend half a day in downtown Santa Cruz, not buying a single
thing. I browse the three main bookstores, I sit on the benches using
my WiFi connection to one of the many hotspots, I wander in and out of
various stores. I don't buy much because I see little to buy--and I do
my grocery and clothing and suchlike shopping in areas that actually
have grocery stores and general clothing stores. 

(I often stop on my way home at the Trader Joe's a block off of the
main street that is being discussed in the above quote. But, to the
point Becky makes, the cops on Pacific Avenue certainly have no
possible way of knowing that I will later drive my car from the parking
lot over to the TJ's parking lot and buy some groceries. As far as they
can see, I am just a middle-aged buy without any shopping bags marked
"The Gap" or "Gloria Jean's" or even "Bookshop Santa Cruz.")

So, in 25 years of spending time on Pacific Avenue--including the years
when it was called Pacific Garden Mall--I've never been "rousted" or
"removed" from the area. Nor even "ticketed." 

Nor even _questioned_ about what I am doing in town. 

This is not even a function of what I'm wearing, as I usually just wear
a pair of Levis, some sandals, and whatever shirt and light jacket is
handy.

Perhaps it's because I haven't unrolled a sleeping bag in front of a
jewelry store and set up my "camp." Perhaps it's because I haven't
wandered through Bookshop Santa Cruz shouting obscenities. Perhaps it's
because I haven't sprayed hydroflouric acid (or whichever etchant they
are using) on the glass windows of shops along the street.

Or even perhaps it's because I haven't dropped my pants and deposited a
load next to Peet's Coffee.

The bums and winoes and drifters and addicts who drift into Santa Cruz
are not deserving of money taken at gunpoint from those who worked for
their incomes and their savings. If they wish "shelter" they should get
jobs and work, as most Americans are forced to do. And if Santa Cruz is
lacking in jobs they "want" to do, they should either adjust their
wants or find towns and states where the work is more to their liking. 

(Frankly, low skills jobs in our upscale community are mainly done by
Mexicans. These whites who arrive and are not fit to do landscaping, or
yard maintenance, or roofing, and who are unskilled in computers, chip
design, the medical industry, etc., really cannot expect there to be
jobs for them, now can they? And since they unwilling to get up at
Oh-Dark-Thirty for the morning shift at Denny's, not a lot of jobs in
Santa Cruz. Or Santa Barbara. Or Santa Monica. Or any other affluent,
high-skilled areas. And yet they drift into town, find the needle
exchange place, sign up for the marijuana giveaways, seek "benefits,"
complain about how they are not being given shelter, and whine to
liberals like Becky and Robert and Dan that they are being repressed.)

And, practically speaking, any and all "programs" for these bums and
drunks and Rastafarians and such have had one obvious effect: it has
increased the number of such drifters who arrive in Santa Cruz looking
for "programs" and for lax enforcement of laws.

Feed the pigeons and get more pigeons. 

Don't feed the pigeons.


--Tim May, Santa Cruz area visitor since 1973. Santa Cruz area resident
since 1982 (minus 3 years over the hill in Mountain View).