You’d hardly know him.

He wears a tan floppy hat, thin wire glasses, an ordinary grey sweatshirt with an Easter yellow collar peeking though, faded jeans, and dirty grey shoes. The pink plastic flowers adorning his feet are the only visible clues to his identity.

The hunt for Robert Steffen, one of Pacific Avenue’s unique and regular characters, was no simple task. It took three days and the entrusting of a personal phone number with a homeless man. But when Steffen finally returned the call, there was certain excitement and urgency in his voice.

More commonly known as “The Pink Umbrella Man” or simply “The Pink Man,” Steffen has abandoned his family life as a NASA electrical engineer only to wind up a homeless Santa Cruzan spending his days shuffling endlessly around, and left, ultimately, alone.

We face extinction.

The ‘we’ I speak of can be any number of groups since UC Santa Cruz students (and really, just about everyone else) are now at the center of a constantly changing cultural, political and financial landscape.

But our university, our community, our microcosm of the real world that awaits our uneasy arrival, is facing extinction.

And when extinction becomes a possibility, the masses turn.

It’d be hard to find two students who study in exactly the same way. Some enjoy the structure and silence that characterizes McHenry Library on a mid-week morning. Others require the nighttime bustle and caffeination offered up by the numerous downtown coffee shops. No matter how we like to get the job done, though, every UCSC student needs an occasional escape from the ordinary study routine. Thankfully, Santa Cruz has several supreme study spots to offer — many of which you may not have discovered just yet.

As another year of our esteemed higher education begins, perhaps it’s time to treat our bodies to a new way of eating. The collegiate culinary cycle of ramen, frozen pizza, forget to rinse the dishes, repeat, can in fact be broken and forgotten – and probably much more easily than you’d assume.

Learn more about four overlooked sports: Disc Golf, Archery, Paddleboarding, and Roller Derby.

Every Sunday around 2 p.m. at San Lorenzo Skate Park, mallets swing, hockey balls roll and bicycles collide.

Its time for some bike polo.

Afternoon traffic on San Lorenzo Boulevard stops as rubbernecking drivers swivel their heads to ogle at pick-up games of the emerging sport in which teams of three bikers each attempt to shoot a small plastic ball through the opposing goal using four-foot mallets.

I just got dumped.

The boy and I finally got to the fork in the road where we had to analyze what we were, where we were going, and what we wanted to do.

I felt like we were in a relationship, I was in love with him, and I wanted to get serious.

He liked hanging out with me, cared about me, but…

Anyone who’s broken up knows that “but” is a heavy word. 50 percent of the time there’s nothing good that follows it.

“To thine own self be true.”
-Polonius to his son Laertes, moments before the younger takes off for a journey abroad at the end of Hamlet, Act I, Scene iii.

It’s a familiar mantra invariably relayed to wide-eyed young adults as they prepare to embark on the great journey in life known as college. And while we do encourage you to stay true to yourself and where you come from, never losing sight of your family and your morals and your values, college is the time to break out of your comfort zone and see what you are all about.