Santa Cruz
Jumping back on Highway One, we zoomed into Santa Cruz and checked in to a Knights Inn. Seems like a nice place and we've got a decent-sized room right by the broad walk, but it was cheap, but maybe too cheap... It's a little disconcerting and made us wonder if this was a bad part of town.
The sense of foreboding continued as we walked into town for dinner. The whole front end of Santa Cruz, the waterfront district was crumbling and depressing. We walked along, not seeing anything except teens on corners and overweight parents and a large brood of kids walking along..... We explored the pier and were drawn to strange noise... Fifteen or so seals were stretched out on a deck attached to the pier.
We went to a family fish restaurant and I had a great jambalaya. Disappointed with Santa Cruz, I gave it one last attempt and went online on my British phone, at great cost, to find out where on earth the life was in this dingy seeming town... I found out about a dive bar called the attic, above a gay bar which specialized in live folk and Americana. Sounded perfect, so off we went. We found the gay bar, which was now a heavy rock venue and that should have been a clue. The bouncer had to think back and finally remember there had been a bar above the Blue Lagoon, but it closed years ago...
We decided to explore the main road and found a bar targeted at 18-year-olds, so it was full of girls in tiny outfits and big earrings and boys in massively baggy jeans, hockey jerseys and baller caps..... Nice... Onwards and we saw plenty of odd people, a girl with a kitten on a leash, a five-piece street hippy band, and the beginning of a stoner movie.. Two guys were stood on a street corner, one of whom was freaking out about the fact the other one had lost his backpack and who then went tearing off in a pushbike with a trailer attached to find it.....
We ended up going back to the Blue Lagoon as it seemed the best bet, for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (terrible) and a live rock band (good) it was a very working man’s kind of place, with a rock overtone.
