Village People

In 1979, I arrive in Santa Cruz. I meet a guy who knows about a studio for rent in Capitola Village. It’s a block from the ocean on San Jose Avenue and the landlord is charging $90 a month.Although it’s a one-room “granny unit,” it suits me fine with its brick patio outside the back of the duplex, shared by a techie who works at Seagate and a couple of hippies up front.

There was lots of hanging out. People sunning themselves on porches. Kickball in the street, chatting with the local shopkeepers: Aries Arts, with its eclectic mix of clothing and trinkets; the Chocolate Shop, with its mile-high cakes; the Craft Gallery (full size); Hot Feet; Oceania Imports; The Kite Store—and just up the street, Gayle’s Bakery (chocolate croissants).

Mornings my boyfriend and I would walk the block over to Mr. Toots Coffeehouse, where our friend (later our roommate) worked, and we’d tank up on café mochas or café mit schlags. We’d smoke a joint, sit by the beach. This was before Margaritaville, but there was always a bar scene. There was The Ark restaurant—that was a hangout—and a small bookstore upstairs. It seemed we had everything we needed.

Days I would go to the University, where I was studying creative writing, or work at the sandwich shop that paid me enough to make rent and buy whatever else I needed. Days off I’d take my beach chair and settle in reading a self-help book (Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain or I Deserve Love by Sondra Ray). My boyfriend and I bought wetsuits and we would swim out with the surfers and watch the waves and the goings-on onshore. Sometimes an otter would poke its head up, but mostly it was peaceful, floating in the safe harbor of the gentle waves off Capitola Beach.

I traded places with my neighbors and lived in the front duplex for a while. Their garden became mine and then I moved across the street above the piano store, where the proprietor, Joe Hanson, cast a fatherly figure and fed my cat. One neighbor opened a Cajun bakery on the first floor of the Victorian building she owned. People started doing cocaine (it was the ’80s). My boyfriend put a television in the ground, face up, and tourists and passers-by would watch what he was playing or watch themselves on TV.

I don’t remember traffic jams, cars backed up at stop signs, even on the weekends. I remember moonlit walks on the beach. When Pizza My Heart opened in 1981 slices were $1. We had a laundromat where I would bring my clothes (a two-block walk) and a movie theater that Audrey Jacobs and her sister owned, taking tickets out in the booth (double features were cheap), and our neighbor Laverne cleaned each night. I religiously combed St. John’s Helpful Shop for treasures. I’d take my dog for walks on the train trestle. Sometimes Creepers and I would get into it with a local policeman—sometimes there were altercations over parking—but generally everyone got along. On Oct. 17, 1989, came the big quake. There was a tsunami warning for Capitola Village. We stayed. Frightened but close to the ones and the place we loved.

Magdalena Montagne is a poet, editor and teacher who leads poetry writing workshops in conjunction with Santa Cruz libraries and hosts the long-running Poets’ Circle Poetry Reading Series at the Watsonville Public Library. Her book Earth My Witness is available from Finishing Line Press. Find out more at poetrycirclewithmagdalena.com.