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Re: OT SANTA CRUZ site of the Y2K9 International Live Looping Festival
This is the one year in the past five that I might actually be able to
make
it there, actually. Got to sell the house first though...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Walker" <looppool@cruzio.com>
To: "LOOPERS DELIGHT (posting)" <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2008 12:26 PM
Subject: OT SANTA CRUZ site of the Y2K9 International Live Looping Festival
> This is a fascinating article about the city that has declared
> International Live Looping
> Day in the city for the last five straight years and still boasts
>perhaps
> the largest
> per capita population of live looping artists of any city on the planet.
>
> I'm proud of this place so I wanted to share it with all of you who have
> played the
> Y2K festivals in past years or are considering doing so.
> Rick Walker
>
>
> The Leftmost City: Power & Progressive Politics in Santa Cruz
>
>
> by G. William Domhoff
>
>
> December 2008
>
> Santa Cruz, California may be the most politically progressive city in
>the
> United States.An unlikely confederation of socialist-feminists,
> social-welfare liberals, neighborhood activists, and environmentalists
>has
> stopped every major development project since 1969 and controlled the
>city
> council since 1981. Berkeley, Burlington, Madison, San Francisco, Santa
> Monica -- none of them had as progressive a government for even half as
> long.
>
> Since most cities are usually controlled by real estate developers and
> their buddies, Santa Cruz is a good test case for comparing theories of
> urban power. Atypical cases are helpful in eliminating theories from
> consideration if they cannot explain the unexpected events.
>
> That's why Richard Gendron and I wrote /The Leftmost City: Power and
> Progressive Politics in Santa Cruz/
> <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0813344387/adamschneishomep>
> (Westview Press, 2009). It concludes that the growth coalition theory
> <http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/local.html> of urban
> power is the one urban theorists should build on because the basic
> political conflict in Santa Cruz pitted downtown landowners and real
> estate developers against neighborhood activists, who unexpectedly
> triumphed because they had the help of faculty, staff, and students at
>UC
> Santa Cruz, the most liberal public university in the country, as well
>as
> environmentalists who wanted to protect the beautiful coastline from
>Santa
> Cruz to San Francisco. We then point out the weaknesses of the three
>main
> alternatives to growth coalition theory: public choice theory, urban
> Marxist theory, and public choice theory, which are also discussed on
>this
> site
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/rival_urban_theories.html>.
>
> This Web site can be considered a supplement to that book for those who
> want to know more about the history of the city and the political
>leaders
> who have run it. It also provides information on other books and Web
>sites
> about Santa Cruz.
>
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/map-california.jpg>
> Map of California
> [enlarge]
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/map-california.jpg>
>
>
> About Santa Cruz
>
> Santa Cruz is a picturesque city of 58,000 people on the Pacific
> coast, 75 miles south of San Francisco. It may not be paradise,
> but it's a very attractive place to live compared to many American
> cities. Nestled on a ten-mile strip of coastal shelf land between
> the heavily forested Santa Cruz Mountains to the north and the
> shorelines of Monterey Bay to the south, the city has breathtaking
> vistas
>
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/wharf-bay-monterey.jpg>
>
> from
> both its hillsides and beaches.
>
> The city enjoys an invigorating climate with moderate temperatures
> year round: no snow or freezing weather in the winter, and very
> few days in the summer with high humidity or temperatures above
> 85°F. Most of the rain is in late fall, winter and early spring,
> leaving many months of the year virtually free of precipitation.
> The wind can be chilly near the ocean, and the fog a bit
> depressing when it hangs on late into the day for a week or two,
> but most days are sunny and clear.
>
>
> A Brief History of Santa Cruz
>
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/giant_redwood.jpg>
> Logger on old-growth redwood tree, early 1900s
> [enlarge]
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/giant_redwood.jpg>
>
> Thanks to a fast-flowing river and the heavily forested mountainsides,
> Santa Cruz had a number of natural assets that made it possible for real
> estate owners in the little central business district to attract
> capitalists and workers to the area. The river currents were ideal for
> powering lumber and paper mills, which provided a major boost for a
>timber
> industry that was profitable first and foremost because of its giant
> redwood trees, renowned for their beauty, durability, and resistance to
> decay and insects. An ample supply of madrone and alder trees, which
> provided a good base for making explosives, brought a manufacturer of
> blasting powder and gunpowder to an area in the mountains a few miles
> northeast of the city.
>
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/lime_kilns.jpg>
> Lime kilns at the Cowell Ranch (now UCSC)
> [enlarge]
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/lime_kilns.jpg>
>
> The abundance of bark from tan-oaks -- a cheap source of the tannic acid
> necessary for tanning hides -- led to a large tanning industry; by 1870,
> ten tanneries, making use of hides from the Mission Santa Cruz and the
>few
> remaining cattle ranches, supplied half the saddle leather produced in
>the
> state. And the limestone in the hills and mountains behind Santa Cruz
> became valuable because of its role in making plaster and mortar for use
> in the construction of stone or brick structures, leading to the
> development of several limestone quarries that by 1880 were supplying
>more
> than half of the lime used for construction in the fast-growing cities
>of
> San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento.
>
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/suntan_special.jpg>
> A 1947 "Suntan Special" train arrives from theBay Area
> [enlarge]
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/suntan_special.jpg>
>
> Because of its beachfront setting, Santa Cruz started to be a tourist
> destination very shortly after California became a state in 1850, and it
> has long been known for its laid-back atmosphere and beachfront
>amusement
> park and boardwalk, complete with an old-fashioned wooden roller
> coaster -- the Giant Dipper -- that dates back to 1924. Santa Cruz is
>also
> renowned as a great place to surf or watch surfing contests, earning it
>a
> mention in the Beach Boys' 1963 classic "Surfin' USA."
>
> Santa Cruz became a college town in 1965 with the opening of a new
>campus
> of the University of California. The local landowners were overjoyed by
> winning the competition for the new campus; they envisioned huge growth
> based on new industries that wanted to be near a university. But no new
> industries arrived. To their chagrin, however, the campus became a
> competing power base, with its faculty, staff, and students providing
> neighborhoods with the added money, expertise, and leadership necessary
>to
> reject or control new real estate developments when they impinged on the
> quality of local life. The campus became even more of a "Trojan horse"
> after 1971, when the 26th Amendment granted voting privileges to 18- to
> 20-year-olds and made an already activist student body into an
> overwhelmingly progressive voting bloc large enough to swing elections
>in
> a pro-neighborhood, pro-environment direction when it could be mobilized.
>
> Click here
> <http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/history.html> for a
> much more detailed history of Santa Cruz and its growth coalition.
>
>
> The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake
>
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/pacific_garden_mall_damage.jpg>
> Damage from the 1989 earthquake
> [enlarge]
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/images/pacific_garden_mall_damage.jpg>
>
> Beyond its atypical power structure, there is another reason why Santa
> Cruz is an interesting test case: eight years after the progressives
> finally took control of the city council, they faced an unprecedented
> challenge when the main business district was almost completely
>destroyed
> by a large earthquake that struck the area on October 17, 1989, with its
> epicenter just 10 miles from Santa Cruz. Three people were killed in the
> downtown area and nearly half of the downtown buildings had to be torn
> down, with many others suffering damage that required major repairs.
> Stunned city residents huddled in grief as they saw the entire downtown
> core being fenced off.
>
> The downtown businesses that didn't go bankrupt or move elsewhere had to
> move into large tent-like pavilions that were hastily erected on city
> parking lots just outside the cordoned-off area. In the process, the
>quake
> also put power issues on the table once again. It handed the
>disheartened
> business leaders what some of them saw as a golden opportunity to regain
> their political ascendancy by showing how necessary they were to
>economic
> prosperity. For the progressives, the disaster was fraught with
>political
> danger: they needed to rebuild the downtown in order to have the tax
> revenues to continue their ambitious social programs, but they feared
>and
> distrusted the downtown land and business owners after almost two
>decades
> of bitter political warfare.
>
> After a long political argument between the progressives and the
>downtown
> business community (which is discussed in detail in /The Leftmost
>City/),
> the city slowly recovered in the late 1990s and now has a new Pacific
> Avenue that is almost as vibrant as the old Pacific Garden Mall.
>
>
> For a more detailed account of the history of Santa Cruz from a
> sociological perspective, please read the document entitled "The History
> of Santa Cruz"
> <http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/history.html>,
>which
> leads directly into"Progressive Politics in Santa Cruz"
>
><http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/progressive_politics.html>.
>
>
> <http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/santacruz/?print>
>
>
>
>
>