Re: OT SANTA CRUZ site of the Y2K9 International Live Looping Festival

["SP Goodman" <spgoodman@earthlight.net>]

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>
>
>
>
>
>