patrick.net

Wow, Santa Cruz prices. But in Santa Cruz, those prices will get you closer to the beach @ that general size and disposition of the crap shack.

That's a lot of money not to have to wear the occasional coat or run the HVAC a few months a year.

Boomers have too much money.
Most of the buyers are north of 60

I used to think that 6-700 dollars a square foot in Capitola Village was outrageously expensive. Plus, they flood in the flats every few years, sometimes two years in a row like these last years. Some of the beach bungalows by the pier got washed out, the old guy was living on the second floor of his 3 million dollar hutch without utilities. Of course, the pier got carved in half, too, and re-damaged while they were trying to repair it this last winter.

I dread to look at the prices now.

Back in the mispent days of my yoot, I lived in a studio apartment in Encinitas, right off Moonlight Beach. I was escaping a more serious life, became a Deadhead, took up windsurfing, and scraped by as a lab rat at the Scripps Research Institute. Took the bus down 101 everyday to work.

Back then, there was a group of vagrants called the Sand People who lived on the Encinitas beach. One year, the head of the group acquired a push sweeper and would try to cajole the local shop owners to kick him some money for sweeping up the sidewalks.

Had a good friend, a fellow Deadhead from Lawng Oyland, who drove the midnight delivery shift for VG’s donuts. He lived in what is now a multimillion dollar home with roommates of diverse interersting backgrounds. One was on the lam from a drug dealing warrant in Florida. One was a dreadlocked trustafarian with a lude addict girlfriend who literally fell asleep in a bowl of soup at dinner one day. A real Animal House on drugs. One Thanksgiving, we were playing rough house football inside, and the neighbors called the cops. When they arrived at the door, the fellow on the lam vaulted off the balcony and took of running. The cops asked what was wrong with him. He just doesn’t like police, we said. The same guy grew pot plants on the balcony, only to get them ripped off ostensibly by thieves who lifted them onto the roof and made their getaway.

My life slowly became a bit more serious, but I look back at those days with a great deal of fond memories. But if you told me back then that the homes in Encinitas would become multimillion dollar homes, I would have hit you up for some ganja.