Illustration by Matt Boblet.

One week after the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival lineup was announced, the show sold out. The Saturday announcement, a disappointment to the tens of thousands of fans who had yet to buy their tickets, was both unexpected and unheard of.

Coachella, a three-day monster of a music show, annually boasts big-name headliners and a slew of smaller up-and-coming acts. Despite its notoriety as being California’s entertainment event of the year, it shocked fans and critics alike to see event passes sucked up as quickly as they were.

This begs the question: Why did Coachella sell out so fast?

Facebook gossipers and forum ragers point to this year’s lineup as the cause. And who could blame them?

Kanye West, Kings of Leon and Arcade Fire — among many others — are known for drawing large crowds. But popularity isn’t solely to blame.

Why not? Because there are still many ticket opportunities for those wanting to go.

Scalpers are the ones who have bought out nearly all of the over 75,000 tickets. A quick check across eBay, Craigslist and Stubhub reveals plenty of tickets available, if you’re willing to pay at least three times the tickets’ original price ($269). The generous scalpers also have a bountiful number of camping permits available for the three-day event —with bids averaging around $300.

As ludicrous as these jacked-up prices are, perhaps the most infuriating detail to this story is where the scalper’s bread crumb trail leads back to: the original ticket salesmen themselves. Since the 1980s, Ticketmaster has developed itself into a giant in the ticketing oligarchy, now selling tickets for 27 of 30 NHL teams, 28 of 30 NBA teams, and numerous other high-profile stage events, including Coachella.

The ticketing tyrant plasters its ticket sales with absurdly high service charges — charges that have amounted to up to 50 percent of the ticket’s actual worth, in some cases.

On top of the back-breaking prices come questionable business practices.

Ticketsnow.com, a subsidiary of Ticketmaster, serves as a secondary sales place for tickets — in other words, a scalper’s market. Multiple lawsuits have since been filed alleging that Ticketmaster conspired to divert tickets sales to Ticketsnow, so that the brokering website might “resell” the tickets at higher prices.

In a move that would just about monopolize the industry altogether, Ticketmaster sought to merge with Livenation, another ticket sales company, back in February 2009.

All that stands between the two is an anti-trust investigation by the US Department of Justice.

Now here’s the punchline: Back in 1993, alternative rock band Pearl Jam first performed at the Empire Polo Club grounds, the site that would later play host to the annual Coachella Festival. The performance, which attracted an audience of about 25,000, was a move meant to boycott Ticketmaster. How’s that for irony?

The moral to this story comes from feeding the scalper culture. The best move that we, as music-loving consumers, can do is simply not buy their tickets.

So the real question isn’t “Why did Coachella sell out so fast?” It’s “How badly do you want to go?”

Illustration by Muriel Gordon.

They did their best to suffocate their countries.

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak blacked out the Internet when nearly a million Egyptians demanded he step down from his 30-year rule. Conservative leader of Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, clamped down on Twitter and Facebook after thousands of protestors used it to organize against him. Two of China’s largest news sites kept people from searching “Egypt,” earlier this week, in order to prevent people from getting ideas about how they might take out leader Hu Jintao.

Since the inception of the Internet, control over this worldwide communication tool has been a key way for dictatorships to maintain power. In the United States, the president, who already has the power to declare war as commander in chief, may also soon come to possess the ability to turn off the Internet.

Sen. Joe Lieberman’s Protecting Cyberspace as a Natural Asset Act, also known as the “kill bill,” gives the president the power to declare a “cyber emergency.”

If the bill passes the many committees of Congress, ­the president would have the absolute power to shut down the Internet.

Today, over 300 million people in the United States use the Internet for news and social networking. Without having access to information, our ability to make well-informed decisions — the very core of democracy — would be threatened.

Giving the president the power to turn off the Internet is a violation of our First Amendment rights, primarily the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press.

The language in the “kill bill” is strikingly similar to that of the Patriot Act, which has greatly reduced restrictions on law enforcement to search property, e-mails and phone lines. Obama recently extended this act, which claims to monitor Americans in the name of national security. The “kill bill” is another step in this frightening direction, where government control wipes out the rights of the people.

Furthermore, giving the president the power to strike down the Internet could have highly negative repercussions on U.S. companies and the entire economy.

The Chinese government’s attack on Google was certainly a bust to those holding Gmail accounts, but that incident does not warrant the president having the right to hijack the Internet.

The FBI and Internet providers have already adapted cyber security and spend millions a year on cyberspace security, so the U.S. federal government has no absolute need to award the president a new means of increasing security.

Our leaders know this. Just last Wednesday, the White House press secretary made it clear: “We support the universal rights of the Egyptian people, including the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly.”

This statement is available for any one who has Internet access.

Illustration by Bela Messex.

If you’ve ever watched the TV show “Cops,” you’re familiar with how this scene plays out. A suspect is found, arrested upon reasonable suspicion of a crime and taken away. This is standard procedure for criminals across the United States.

But what if the picture is much broader than that? What happens when the police need more evidence to convict you after arrest? In recent years, it’s become extremely easy to get that extra evidence, no further effort required.

Three years ago, a man was pulled over for being involved in an ecstasy drug deal in Ventura County. He was arrested and interviewed, and his personal belongings were taken from him, including his cell phone. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department then proceeded to search through the phone and came upon an incriminating text message that officers showed to the man, causing him to admit his guilt in the drug deal.

The police claimed that this was not an invasion of privacy. But Gregory Diaz, under the defense that a warrantless search of his cell phone violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, took his case to trial. This amendment says a person has the right to be guarded against unfair searches and seizures.

Appealing to higher courts did not do Diaz much good either. On Jan. 3, the Supreme Court of California upheld the lower court’s ruling, which means statewide police forces can continue to search cellular devices without a warrant. Diaz was convicted of selling a controlled substance and was sentenced to three years of probation.

Diaz’s case raises the long-debated question of what makes an acceptable balance between liberty and protection in the United States, and how this relates to new technology. The Patriot Act of 2001 was a prominent and controversial example of how an individual’s private life can intersect with the public sphere of the government, and now the issue of public versus private is finding its way not just into legislation but also to the judicial branch. With the increase in information younger generations put on the Internet and cell phones, the meaning of privacy itself may be redefined in coming years.

In her dissenting opinion of the case, Associate Justice Kathryn Werdegar said, “The potential impairment to privacy if arrestees’ mobile devices and handheld computers are treated like clothing, … fully searchable without probable cause or warrant, is … great.”

People v. Diaz is not the only well-known case that has dealt with governmental control versus privacy in an age of new technology. A recent case that set precedent for Diaz’s is United States v. Kyllo. It held that the use of thermal imaging to monitor movement inside a person’s home when the party under surveillance is in public view did not violate the Fourth Amendment, as it was not considered an unreasonable search.

Additionally, the Patriot Act, enacted under former President George W. Bush, has continued to broaden the scope of protections under the Fourth Amendment through wiretapping and other, otherwise illegal activities during a state of emergency.

Steve Clark, captain of Santa Cruz Police Department, said that his force has been searching cell phones after arrest without warrant for “quite some time,” and that it is difficult for the department to track how many of those types of searches have happened since the case was upheld. He said, however, that the amount of cases was numerous.

“We have an interest in collecting all the relevant evidence and keeping it from being destroyed or somehow slipping through our fingers,” Clark said. “We find it particularly useful with drug dealing.”

Clark said that now relevant evidence is extended to cell phones. His department has found that cell phones include a large amount of information about crimes people commit, such as in text messages, photos and contacts.

“It helps us put together a better case and to find people who might be associated with illegal activities,” Clark said. “Especially when it involves some more major crimes.”

Linda Parisi, 30-year criminal defense attorney and professor at Lincoln Law School in Sacramento, said the court was concerned with what “containers” are subject to search.

“I would submit that a cell phone should be kept private and subject to the warrant requirement,” Parisi said in an e-mail.

Clark said that his department does not “push the envelope,” or consistently use warrantless evidence in the event of arrest, while adding that it has an interest in gathering all the information necessary to build good cases for victims of crime.

“We’re more interested in putting together cases that are solid, cases that are going to be credible in court,” he said. “We don’t want to have the reputation in court where they think we’re playing fast with the rules.”

Clark said that in some cases, the SCPD is able to conduct complete forensic examinations of cell phones to use as evidence without search warrants, which means using specialized software to recover data from that phone, including anything that has ever been deleted. They are then able to use that information as evidence.

“Once it’s digital, it never really goes away,” Clark said.

Generally, however, the police department will obtain a search warrant for that more intrusive search, he said, but it still leaves the door open for another department to take advantage of the forensic examination mechanism.

UC Santa Cruz sociology professor and local American Civil Liberties Union member Craig Reinarman said that this “next step” of overstepping privacy boundaries has already been taking place within police departments across the country.

“For instance, [the police] say to you, ‘You don’t have anything in your pocket, do you? Because when I search you, I’m going to find it, so just tell me now,’ and kids are scared and confused and they don’t want to go to jail, so they pull out the roach or the joint, and then they’re in trouble,” Reinarman said. “Then they get busted for something like having marijuana in public view. The police have abused this privacy power up one side and down the other, particularly with regard to drugs.”

This is precisely the reason that some notable Santa Cruz residents are critical of warrantless searches. Mayor Ryan Coonerty expressed concern over the case and its implications for the future of Fourth Amendment privacy rights.

“I’m surprised by the [Diaz] ruling,” Coonerty said. “It would obviously help police investigations, but like anything it’s about balancing civil liberties with public safety. It’s a very difficult line to draw.”

Illustration by Bela Messex.

Coonerty, who is also a politics lecturer at UCSC and licensed attorney, said that problems concerning emerging technology continue to be an issue. Although laws have been enacted to address issues of new technology, including false impersonation, identity theft and cyber-stalking, continual development widens the scope of problems that need to be tackled.

“When I teach my classes on civil liberties at the university, I always make the point that your rights to privacy are set by what is a reasonable expectation of privacy,” he said. “I think the younger generation is lowering that expectation of privacy with everything they’re putting online and their sharing of data.”

Student Union Association chair Tiffany Loftin said it is the individuals’ responsibility to filter their online personalities and be in charge of their own privacy especially on social networking websites, she said.

“Whatever you put on the Internet or Facebook or Twitter, you put it on there because you choose to do that,” Loftin said. “Is it lowering the expectation of privacy? I say no. It’s up to you.”

She related the situation to UCSC’s recent graffiti threat scare.

“If [the perpetrator had] put up their status as something silly like, ‘I did that, everybody on campus is stupid,’ we would know who did it and get them in trouble,” Loftin said, “and then classes wouldn’t have gotten cancelled.”

Police captain Clark said that the SCPD has dealt with similar incidents with some arrestees.

“You’d be surprised what people are willing to post on their Facebook page,” Clark said. “We’ll have certain people tell us, ‘No, we’re not a part of that gang’, and then we pull up their Facebook page, and there it is.”

Clark said that new technologies make it easier to incriminate people.

“We find a lot of very useful information that has helped us on occasion put together some very complex cases, including homicide,” he said.

Loftin said that so far, there has not been a reasonable expectation of privacy with Facebook.

“Everything I put up on Facebook is up there because I choose to put it up there,” Loftin said. “And if I don’t want people to see it, then it gets taken down.”

Head of the local American Civil Liberties Union chapter and former mayor Mike Rotkin said that police convenience should not come before privacy rights, for precisely this reason. He opposes further violation of the Fourth Amendment in the face of new technologies.

“I don’t buy it,” Rotkin said. “Is the Constitution inconvenient? Yeah, because you have to spend time, and you have to argue that there’s a valid state interest in something. It’s a pain in the butt.”

He said that it was absolutely necessary that there be a search warrant in Diaz’s case.

“I’m hoping that higher courts find it unconstitutional,” Rotkin said. “I think it’s a total invasion of people’s privacy.”

Linda Parisi said the court went “too far” in this case.

“The phone is not the person,” Parisi said. “And in today’s world, a cell phone is more like a diary or journal that contains personal information.”

Reinarman is hopeful that if appealed, the case will be found unconstitutional. Rotkin said that the police do have valid reasons for searching arrested persons for dangerous weapons or potentially harmful items, but he does not think cell phones come under this category and that he does not want this ruling to lead to further, more invasive rulings in the future.

Rotkin said the Fourth Amendment faces constant pressure, as under the Patriot Act, enacted in 2001. The act permitted warrantless searches through people’s computers and personal mail and let law enforcement listen in on private phone conversations.

“If it’s absolutely necessary that [the police] get evidence without a warrant,” Rotkin said, “I want to hear what the argument is. I don’t see any valid argument here other than convenience.”

Clark said that warrantless searches were only conducted in his department in cases in which it was obvious to the police that the suspect was guilty. He said that although his department does not, the current situation gives leeway for police to conduct searches only based on inconvenience.

Reinarman said he was disappointed that some Bush policies like the Patriot Act, which falls along the same lines of privacy infringement, have not been repealed by a new administration.

“I find it disturbing, because of the long history of constitutional protection against those sorts of things that were written into the very fabric of the legal blueprint for our country, the Bill of Rights,” he said. “It’s a further narrowing of the Fourth Amendment. The framers made the point to say that citizens have the right to be free of these sorts of unreasonable searches and seizures.”

Reinarman said it was “worrisome” that the highest court in the most populous state in the country has upheld that cell phones can be searched without a warrant in the event of an arrest because the state has no business knowing what movies you watch on your phone or what you just texted your girlfriend or boyfriend.

“This case removes the necessity of probable cause,” Rotkin said. “It opens up a slippery slope. Now we want to search your house without a warrant, now we want to search the cell phones of all the people we found doing an investigation on your phone, now we want to search the houses [of your cell phone contacts.] We’re totally obliterating any type of privacy rights, and I’m not being extreme in my view.”

On the syllabus for one of his classes, Reinarman includes a particularly pertinent quote from William Douglas, former member of the Supreme Court.  Reinarman said the quote exemplified the idea that just one case can have the power to chisel away at the structure of privacy in the United States. He searched through the papers surrounding his desk and finally came upon the quote, reading it aloud:

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must all be most aware of the change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

Illustration by Kristian Talley.

Illustration by Kristian Talley.

“You never know with Free Skool.”

Wes, a typical Santa Cruz granola, wearing loose-fitting slacks and a button-down shirt, leans back in his chair, speaking calmly and evenly. He sits at a rectangular brown table towards the back of Stevenson Café.

Wes rode his bike here, so there’s sweat dripping down his face, meeting his curly reddish-brown beard, which matches the hair on the top of his head. He has kind eyes, a wide smile and a friendly voice.

“Most classes there have been about 15 students, but today is the last class, so we’ll see who shows up,” he said.

When it’s time for the class to start, about eight people have shown up at the café. Wes welcomes them.

“This is ‘Games as a Strategy for Living,’” he says. “I’m Wes, and I am ostensibly the facilitator of the group.”

“Ostensibly” the facilitator. Wes’ wording perfectly reflects his own laid-back nature, and it also gives a glimpse into what Free Skool is all about.

Free Skool Santa Cruz was started in the spring of 2004 by a small group of self-identified anarchists looking for a different kind of education. They saw the traditional set-up of paying people to teach different skills or ideas as problematic.

So, they created a network in which anyone who wanted to teach something useful could do so, and anyone who wanted to learn was able to attend the classes — for free.

Free Skool has experienced a lack of continuity, but it is an idea that has thrived in Santa Cruz, and well beyond the city by the sea.

Francisco Ferrer of Spain, an anarchist, started the first free skool in the 1890s. Ferrer wanted an educational system that was not tied to the state or a religious institution, so he founded a “modern school” that pioneered experimental teaching.

“Governments have ever been known to hold a high hand over the education of the people,” Ferrer said. “They know, better than anyone else, that their power is based almost entirely on the school. Hence, they monopolize it more and more.”

As far as anyone can tell, Santa Cruz hosts the first Free Skool in modern times.

The idea of free education is important to the anarchist ideology. Anarchists embrace “do-it-yourself” culture and reject corporatization. Free Skool collective member Brandon Wade points out that Free Skool is free in the monetary sense and free in the sense of free thought and expression, as well as being free from hierarchy.

“Most Free Skools are based on the anarchist principles of self-reliance, autonomy and mutual support,” Wade said. “Unlike most structures in our society, there’s no manager or leader. Everyone’s equal within the project.”

Free Skool publicizes its classes by creating quarterly calendars and putting them in restaurants and other public spaces, as well as on its website. Anyone can apply to teach a course. Classes are held in such informal settings as teachers’ homes and cafés around town.

There are no books, no tests and no required attendance — just a passion for learning and instructing.

Since the genesis of Free Skool, Wade estimates that it has had thousands of classes, which means Santa Cruz residents of all ages and economic backgrounds have taken classes, varying from boat design and “Female Physiology for Everyone” to “Rooting Out Capitalism.”

Wade was enthusiastic about all the possibilities that come with such an open format.

“Our whole calendar is full of really unique classes,” he said, “because unlike the university, we’re not bound by a particular field or majors, so people teach classes because they’re passionate about the classes they’re teaching. So if somebody’s really, really excited about, say, conservation and waterways, there might be an Elkhorn Slough exploration class. If someone’s interested in auto repair, there might be a do-it-yourself automotive class.”

If there is any problem with Free Skool, it might be that it’s too informal for its own good. A different incarnation of it existed in Santa Cruz before, but petered out because of lack of dedication, organizers coming and going, and those involved changing every season.

Still, at a recent quarterly picnic at Ocean View Park, “Annie,” who has been involved as both an organizer and student since the beginning, defended the Skool’s nature. Annie declined to use her real name out of fear of negative backlash for her self-identification as an anarchist.

“We’re pretty open to different things,” she said. “Maybe it’s a little weird, but maybe there’s something good about that.”

Annie was one of the founders of the current incarnation of Free Skool Santa Cruz.

“There was another Free Skool in Santa Cruz, and I had gone to those classes,” she said. “It’s kind of like it comes out of DIY anarchist culture, this idea of sharing skills with people for free.”

Annie added that when Free Skool started out, it was solely about skill-sharing, then more academic and discussion-based classes were added because people wanted to teach them. She said that almost all class topics are accepted into the calendar, though there are a few exceptions.

“We don’t want any classes about business,” she said flatly. “We avoid career-focused classes, because we’re looking for life skills, not business skills.”

The putting together of the calendar is a discreet task, without a headquarters, because the group wants to avoid being targeted as known anarchists. Because classes don’t cost anything to attend, the Skool attempts to bridge the education and opportunity gap in society.

Annie shared the example of the dance movement process class she is taking this season.

“It’s completely free,” she said. “If [a traditional school] taught a class like that, it would probably cost $300.”

Wes was at the picnic as well, where he gave his reason for teaching his “Games as a Strategy for Living” class.

“I was listening to this lecture about how the joker or jester role is missing now in society,” he said. “If we viewed what we do more as a game, we’d have a different approach.”

Wes’ class is in itself a game: participants start out playing, then break to discuss what can be gleaned about real life from their games. It’s relaxed, without the usual hierarchy that traditional classes have.

Wes listens carefully to everyone’s input, and begins sentences with, “If it’s alright with everybody,” and “I hear what you’re saying, and I think…”

Wes also taught a class this winter titled “Soapbox 202,” which was an attempt to create an anarchist public speaking series. A UCSC alumnus, Wes explained why he embraced anarchism and Free Skool.

“To ignore the benefit and lost opportunity of people to organize is really a loss,” he said. “What is lost in turning our power over to institutions? What is lost when we can only choose certain classes?”

Wade also praised Free Skool’s unique tendencies.

“The thing I like most about Free Skool is that it connects people in this radical project that encourages them not just to learn in a new way but to connect to each other in a new way,” he said. “Free Skool blurs the line as much as we can between teacher and learner, so we learn as much as we can from each other.”

Wade gave examples of how the open nature of the program also makes it possible for students and teachers to have an effect on the larger community.

“In our community, with thousands of Free Skool teachers and students participating over six years, the deep connections and friendships that have been established are deeply powerful,” Wade said in an e-mail. “Several DIY projects have spun off from Free Skool classes: Red Root Herbal Collective offering herbal health alternatives, various parenting groups, a radical marching band, regular campus forest walks and even the DIY New Year’s Parade.”

Santa Cruz isn’t the only city with a successful Free Skool —though it was the first. Wade discussed the impact Free Skool Santa Cruz has had across the nation.

“What we are seeing is more people questioning conventional education, with free skools popping up, near and far,” he said in the e-mail. “People are working on free skool projects in Santa Barbara, East Bay, Portland, Indiana and a dozen other places. We want to do what we can to make sure these projects are successful and sustainable.”

The Davis People’s Free School, which was started in winter of 2007 by students living in the co-ops on campus, is mostly student-run and student-attended, though it is open to the entire community.

Organizer Brett Anne Balamuth has recently taken up the helm of operations, after a brief hiatus due to lack of organizers.

“The people involved didn’t realize what a big time commitment it was, or they just aren’t the organizing types,” Balamuth said. “So I’ve been organizing since this fall. And it’s interesting. Just about this week, it’s really starting to come together. We had this massage workshop and maybe 20 or 30 people showed up, which was totally unexpected. Everyone went away being really psyched that they’d come, and they’re signing up for the next one. It’s really great. I’m feeling really victorious in my efforts.”

Balamuth said that a major goal for Davis People’s Free School, which is “based mostly on the Santa Cruz model,” was to reach out to more people in the community.

“Specifically so that we can fall in line more with our mission statement, we want to be helping different demographics in Davis,” Balamuth said. “Mostly so far it’s been 20-somethings, and most of them are UC Davis students. We want to get all the age groups. We’re trying to get into some of the periodicals that get read by older people in Davis.”

Considering the trouble Balamuth has experienced getting the free skool started again, she explained why it’s a concept that’s worth working for.

Illustration by Kristian Talley.

“By bringing people together around something that’s free, we hope to ensure that everyone that’s coming wants to be there and is there for the right reasons,” she said. “I think it’s important that people want to be there, and aren’t just doing the least that they can to get their paycheck.”

Davis People’s Free School member Greg Zaller knows about working with a community to promote education.

He was volunteering in Sargoda, Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake that crippled the country. He remembered how bad conditions were, especially at the local schools.

“Schools were so bad there, it was unbelievable,” Zaller said. “Teachers didn’t even show up. And the students felt powerless.”

Zaller had always seen empowerment through education as key, and even handed out pens with the message “This pen is mightier than the sword” and his contact information on them. A person he gave one to in Pakistan started an e-mail conversation with him about education, and the idea for a free skool in Sargoda was born.

The schools were mostly attended and taught by women. The more educated women traveled from the cities to teach reading, writing, science, social studies and crafting to the women living in more remote villages. There was a very small fee for tuition, and teachers were paid nothing.

“I found that when you pay people, you’re pretty much doing things because you’re being paid,” Zaller said, “so I said I wouldn’t pay the teachers. The motivation was that they were being appreciated.”

Today, there are about 30 free skools in Pakistan, with around 4000 students.

Zaller is back in Davis now, teaching a free skool class called “Yoga for the Rest of Us.” His fellow collective members are working on getting grant money to expand free skools.

Balamuth talked about how collective members are working to get a grant so they can write a computer wiki program for Free Skool. This would help other cities start free skools more, and make calendars and e-mail lists more easily.

“Once we’re able to develop this, we would make it public to anyone, and hopefully this would allow free skools to pop up all over,” Balamuth said. “We’d also like to be able to start filming our classes and get them on the web and start a video library, so that people across the country can use them.”

Free Skool Santa Cruz also wants to expand its impact.

“We want to focus on outreach so people know about Free Skool and have the tools and resources they need,” Wade said.

Back at Stevenson Café, Wes’ “Games as a Strategy for Living” class is going well. A dialogue has opened among him and some students about when viewing life as a game with rules can be helpful, and when rules should be broken.

After listening to viewpoints from a young man who says games were his “life as a kid,” and from a woman who makes a living illustrating for games, Wes interjects some wisdom into the discussion.

“Sometimes not playing by the rules is just about strategy,” he said.

He’s talking about games and life, but it also applies to free skool. They aren’t following society’s typical rules, but they’ve got their own strategy.

Following his speech at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on Jan. 31, civil rights activist Terrence Roberts was awarded a key to the city. Photo by Kyan Mahzouf.

Famed civil rights activist Terrence Roberts visited and spoke in Santa Cruz for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation and a discussion panel at UC Santa Cruz this week.

Roberts was part of the “Little Rock Nine,” a group of nine black students who became the first to attend an all-white high school in Little Rock, Ark. in 1957, just three years after the Supreme Court ruled segregation in public schools unconstitutional.

At the convocation, Roberts, a peaceful activist, spoke about his choice to love his enemy, as Martin Luther King Jr. taught him to do when he was a high school student in Little Rock.

“As human beings we have this belief that we have to fight to keep what we have,” Roberts said. “My mother told me, ‘You are an animal, this much is true. But you are a human animal. You don’t have to fight for anything.’”

Roberts received his master’s in psychology at UCLA and currently maintains a private psychology center.

At the 27th Annual Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation held in Santa Cruz’s Civic Auditorium Monday night, the audience nearly filled the venue.

Wearing gold and purple, Inner Light Ministries Choir welcomed the audience by performing traditional civil rights and contemporary gospel songs.

As Roberts took the stage, he was met by a standing ovation.

The next day, he came to the Stevenson Event Center to address a panel of UCSC students and audience members.

Jeff Rockwell, UCSC director of special events for university relations, said the M.L.K. Jr. Convocation Committee chose Roberts to speak in Santa Cruz.

As the chair of that committee, Rockwell also said that the UCSC panelists were picked by the Rosa Parks African American Theme House (R.PAATH) community in Stevenson.

“What a perfect parallel,” Rockwell said. “These guys are trying to bring desegregation to Stevenson. They are RAs and students who believe in the ideal.”

The R.PAATH was started last year in response to hate crimes across the UC community, as a way to foster racial harmony on campus.

Only 2.6 percent of the UC Santa Cruz population is black.

Tiffany Loftin, chair of the Student Union Assembly, introduced Roberts by telling the audience about his academic and professional career.

This background and his experiences in the civil rights-era South have equipped Roberts to give advice to audiences.

Student panelist third-year Dt Amajoyi kicked off the event with a short speech.

“We should know that it is possible to create change, that it is necessary to spread awareness, that it is worth it to stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone,” Amajoyi said.

One of the panelists asked how Roberts was able to overcome the pain of being discriminated against.

“The first thing to recognize is that you’ve been wounded,” he said. “The actual healing of that will include reconciliation with the person who wounded you.”

Roberts stated that the civil rights movement did not begin in the 1950s — but 335 years before that, when slavery began.

Roberts said during the panel that anything is possible and humans can make the choice not to believe in racist ideology.

“The U.S. is an affirmative action state and we’ve never had integration,” Roberts said. “The overwhelming majority of us prefer something else. Everyone is afraid to crack the crust. If we are willing to poke through the crust I’m willing to do it. As long as we continue to be this pseudo-community, we cannot be a community.”

An audience member communicated his discontent with the administration’s treatment issues affecting black people on campus and asked for advice.

“You need to learn how to navigate your environment,” Roberts said. “Racism is not running around in a white hood anymore. It’s sitting around the boardroom table.”

Camilla Cooper, a third-year theater arts major, discussed the relevance of the topic.

“The civil rights movement hasn’t died and we are reigniting it here today,” she said.

Roberts said the lack of progress until the 20th century was a result of people being people.

“When you are born, you step into a drama that is already underway,” Roberts said. “That was the case with me when I was born in Little Rock in December 1941.”

Roberts said that education is the key to progress, and it is the most important tool an individual can utilize.

“The problem with humans is our beliefs in mythological constructs,” Roberts said. “There is no such thing as race. The word itself is new to the lexicon. We the people bought it. I meet people and they say, ‘I’m proud to be a part of fill-in-the-blank race.’ I just smile and walk away. Smiling and walking away is my usual response to idiocy.”

Patrons throng Penny Ice Creamery’s counter on an unseasonably warm January afternoon. Kendra Baker and Zachary Davis, the shop’s owners, are back operating their business after attending the State of the Union Address. Photo by Prescott Watson.

Updated 2/15/2011 at 8:40pm

First Lady Michelle Obama invited Kendra Baker and Zachary Davis, owners of the Penny Ice Creamery, to attend President Barack Obama’s delivery of the State of the Union address.

Baker and Davis initiated contact with the White House in October by posting a video on YouTube. The video thanked the Obama administration, Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Rep. Sam Farr (D-Santa Cruz) for their roles in the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The business partners were originally covered under a 90 percent loan guarantee provision when they filed for a 7(a) loan from Lighthouse Bank. However, the provision expired in June 2010 and reverted back to 75 percent. This caused total approved loans from the 7(a) program to fall to $647 million for June from $1.9 billion in May.

When the provision expired, Lighthouse Bank said they would have to put everything on hold and wait for Congress’s vote to renew the loan prevision. Without the loan, Davis said, the business plan may have been put on hold.

“For about three days everything was up in the air,” he said. “Had it not been renewed … we would have had to find out if we could open without [a loan]. It definitely would not have happened on the timetable it did.”

The 90 percent loan guarantee was extended to the end of 2010 under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Baker and Davis opened shop in August, and Davis said timing was key to their business plan.

“Opening when we did was really critical to our success because we were able to catch the end of the summer and make people aware that we are here,” Davis said.

Vice President Joe Biden personally called Baker and Davis in November to express his support of their new business and respond to their YouTube video.

“Joe Biden is a big fan of ice cream,” Davis said. “He threatened to come eat all of ours. He often holds public events at ice cream shops.”

Baker and Davis arrived in Washington, D.C. at 4 p.m. the day of the speech. They attended a reception at the White House for those whom Michelle Obama personally invited. Davis said it was an experience to remember.

“It was a really nice cross-section of the United States,” Davis said. “There were young people, small business owners like ourselves, service people, and some CEOs from bigger companies. It’s very rare that you would find all those different types of people in one room with the opportunity to talk and share experiences.”

The president’s address focused on restructuring American institutions to meet the needs of a changing global economy.

“We can’t win the future with a government of the past,” President Obama said. “The true engine of job creation in this country will always be America’s businesses. But government can create the conditions necessary for businesses to expand and hire more workers.”

City council member David Terrazas said Baker and Davis have achieved the kind of success that the president hoped would come from the Reinvestment Act.

“The Penny exemplifies what President Obama was talking about in his speech,” he said. “They made an investment that changed the look of the whole block. It’s an amazing story.”

While many, like Davis, embrace Obama’s vision of the economic future, some representatives are critical of his policies. C-SPAN aired House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) response to the President’s new and extended policies.

“Whether sold as ‘stimulus’ or repackaged as ‘investment,’” Ryan said, “[The Obama administration’s] actions show they want a federal government that controls too much, taxes too much, and spends too much in order to do too much.”

Some welcome the new policies, noting economic or community benefits. Davis appreciates the president’s policies and rhetoric regarding business in the United States.

“I really appreciated the time he spent talking about the importance of small business,” he said. “The tax incentives that they’re putting in place enable us to survive when the economy is hitting a rough patch.”

Terrazas said 7(a) business loans must be granted responsibly. While there should always be scrutiny in circumstances where the government backs economic development, he said, extending the loan to businesses like the Penny Ice Creamery makes him feel confident in the policy.

Although the Penny Ice Creamery was not one of the businesses featured in the speech, Davis said being among those Michelle Obama invited was gratifying.

Baker and Davis work well over 40 hours a week to keep their business running strong. Davis didn’t waste any time getting back to work after returning to Santa Cruz.

“I was back in the shop scooping less than 12 hours after the speech,” he said.

Davis said the 7(a) loan program was essential for his business plan to take off. He said the speech’s focus on the policies that have been implemented are keeping small businesses alive.

“Small businesses don’t have deep pockets,” Davis said. “The owners and employees are all working together so when the economy struggles, everyone gets immediately affected. It was great to hear him give a shout-out to small businesses.”

Friends gather at a memorial in remembrance of Rahsheka Keith. Keith, an active member of the UCSC community, died in a snowboarding accident Jan. 22. Photo by Isaac Miller.

Purple was Rahsheka Keith’s favorite color. Purple cloth hung over the altar at the memorial service for the former UC Santa Cruz student, arranged by friends in her memory last Thursday.

At the memorial, a small crowd of those who had been close to Keith stood in a hushed circle bordering the redwood building’s Engaging Education office and remembered their friend.

Keith died in a snowboarding accident Jan. 22.

She studied intensive psychology from the summer of 2006 through the spring of 2010. Family, friends and members of various organizations she was affiliated with spoke of their admiration for her ambitious pursuits and open personality.

“Everyone’s still very much in shock when we think about what happened, and we’re just all trying to remember the good things,” said Rahne Keith, Rahsheka’s older sister. “She was a good person and gone much too soon.”

Loved ones mourn Keith, who died of blunt force trauma in a snowboarding accident at Lake Tahoe’s Granlibakken resort.

Keith’s close friends remember her as someone who had a positive impact on those around her, and big plans for her future.

“I remember [telling Rahsheka], ‘When we’re older, we’re going to be [Engaging Education] and Rainbow [Theater] alumni,’ and we would come back … and talk about how it all started here,” said fourth-year Sara Mokhtari-Fox. “I was thinking about society’s loss and thinking about how much she gave, how much she could do. That’s what hurts the most. If somebody was going to change the world, it was Rahsheka.”

Keith’s plans — geared toward social activism and inspired by her coursework — led her friends and colleagues to remember her as an individual poised to be a strong influential figure. She planned to attend law school in Chicago.

“She had a lot more to do here, and it’s very sad,” Rahne Keith said. “She wanted the world to be a really good place and a fair place for everybody — not just minorities, for everybody.”

Rahsheka involved herself in various community outreach programs at UCSC, like Engaging Education and theater arts projects. She was also an active member of the African American Theater Arts Troupe [AATAT].

“Rahsheka lives in all of us,” said Don Williams, director of cultural arts and diversity for the Student Affairs Division and AATAT. “She was one of the most extraordinary people. She came to this university, and she was a server. She encouraged people.”

Those close to Keith remember her as a well-balanced and composed person, and as a lover of all things purple and all things Michael Jackson. She was well known for her Michael Jackson earrings and Michael Jackson ringtone, which often let her colleagues know she was in the room.

“We drove all the way from Santa Cruz to San Diego for an outreach meeting with all other UCs,” said Paulina Raygoza, organizing director for Engaging Education. “The whole time she had her iPod on, all we listened to was Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder. That got us through the [eight-hour] drive down and the drive back.”

Keith’s friends and colleagues said she was an important influence in their lives.

“She was a student leader that showed incredible integrity,” said Sayo Fujioka, director of Student Organizing Advising and Resources. “I think she inspired a lot of students and staff. She brought a sense of community.”

Keith’s family — who has been following activity on her Facebook page — said they are thankful for her friends’ considerations.

“A lot of her friends from the school have reached out to the family,” Rahne Keith said. “Our family has read every single [Facebook] post, and it’s really nice to see how many people she touched.”

The family will have quiet hour today from 4 to 6 p.m. in Duggan’s Funeral Services. Memorial services will be held on Friday at 11 a.m. at Cornerstone Missionary Baptist Church in San Francisco. A memorial was held Wednesday night at the Namaste Lounge at College Nine.

Rahne Keith wrote to friends on her sister’s Facebook page with details, and a request that they keep Rahsheka in mind when dressing for the service:

“She was never a fan of the idea of wearing all black to a memorial service,” Keith said on the page. “Some black is fine, and her favorite color is purple.”

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Maddening deserts, revered music and modernist thinking are what Paul Bowles will be remembered by.

Author, musician and expatriate Paul Bowles uprooted himself from U.S. culture, breaking free of national conventions. He spent most of his life in Tangier, Morocco, until his death in 1999. Bowles revitalized his creative viewpoint by writing music and literature as a U.S. outsider looking in.

Celebrating what would have been Bowles’ 100th birthday, the Paul Bowles Centennial Celebration releases much of his music for the first time while honoring his literary contributions. Performances of his renowned compositions, experimental writing, film and personal anecdotes about Bowles will celebrate the artist in the Cowell Conference Room and Music Center Recital Hall this weekend.

Many of his friends are expected to attend the celebration, which will feature Bowles’ short stories and films stemming from his life and works. Irene Herrmann, inheritor of Bowles’ musical estate, is making it accessible to the public. Story readings, concerts and anecdotes will celebrate a man who was not confined to any one medium of artistic expression.

Literature professor Tyrus Miller has organized writing performances such as short stories and paper readings for the ceremony, which will take place in the Cowell Conference Room. Bowles’ writing pushes boundaries, Miller said.

“He has a kind of moral transgression,” Miller said. “He’s willing to actually contemplate without judgment, without moral dismissal, instances of violence, instances of cruelty, his personal derangement, madness, extreme states — and he’s able to tell that in a very cool voice.”

Bowles demonstrates his calm narration of the horrific in his most well-known novel, “The Sheltering Sky.”

The New York Times best seller delves into the North African desert, telling a story of doomed characters who fall into a sandpit of madness, disorientation and a dry reality as unforgiving as the desert itself.

“He actually represented a bridge between the earlier generation of Gertrude Stein and the Paris expatriate thinkers of the 1920s and this later generation, the beat generation writers of the 1960s, even contemporary writers,” Miller said.

Presenting a paper on beat literature at the event, literature graduate student Jimmy Fazzino said he considers Bowles an influential thinker for American writing.

“I study beat lit not just in an American context, but in a world context,” Fazzino said. “Bowles would be someone who I would say broadens American writers. Since Bowles was in Tangier, it attracted other writers to Tangier and to Morocco … bringing them out of an American point of view.”

While Bowles left a heavy footprint in literary circles, his trek through 20th century music is less broadcasted. Herrmann, the event’s music director, is the inheritor of Bowles’ musical estate — a one-of-a-kind collection of music, including scores composed by Bowles that have gone unpublished or out of print. These pieces will be showcased at the event in a unique array of orchestra, spoken word and opera.

“I’m the one person who can distribute his music,” Herrmann said. “It’s a rare opportunity for [students] to hear very exceptional American art music … performed by people who will really do the music justice.”

The Bowles celebration will also be an opportunity to hear firsthand accounts of this artist. Herrmann knew Bowles during his last years, when she bonded with him through music.

Herrmann said the event will have a personal connection, full of insight not just about Bowles as an artist but as a person.

Hermann, who invited many of the guests scheduled to speak at the celebration, extended invitations to people who knew Bowles personally.

“It’s a mix of scholarship and personal anecdote at a university conference, which is something very unusual,” Herrmann said.

Elaborating on what makes Bowles’ works distinct, namely in his novel “The Sheltering Sky,” Miller offered his thoughts on Bowles’ new take on ethics.

“[Bowles expresses a] moral experimentalism that sort of says, ‘I’m going to step back and tell you something that normally you would only be told with a certain kind of judgment,’” Miller said. “‘I’m going to tell you and I’m going to leave it up to you to judge.’”

Watsonville mayor Daniel Dodge (left), speaks out for his residents at a discussion panel after the screening of the documentary “Hanging by a Thread.” The film showed the struggles of UC employees many of whom are Watsonville residents. Photo by Sal Ingram.

Maria Romero can’t support three kids on her annual salary of $30,000. The University of California pays the single mother less than living wages to feed students at a UC Santa Cruz café by day. She cleans boardwalk bathrooms at night. Romero is a central figure in Rico Chavez’s documentary “Hanging by a Thread,” which illustrates the treatment received by the UC workers and staff as opposed to the regents, and their differing lifestyles.

The Student Union Assembly, community studies department and the California Federation of Labor co-hosted a screening and follow-up discussion of the film at Merrill on Jan. 27. The discussion was led by a panel comprising Watsonville mayor Daniel Dodge, associate professor of psychology Regina Langhout, fifth-year student Moses Massenburg, Romero and her translator. They explained the pressures workers face under the UC system for an audience of around 30.

About 40 percent of UCSC workers reside in the Pajaro Valley, which includes Watsonville. This is because living in Santa Cruz is expensive, said Dodge, a self-described “activist who just happens to be the mayor of Watsonville.”

“When we talk about high rents, in Santa Cruz County the cost of living is comparable to Manhattan,” Dodge said.

Romero struggles to make rent in Santa Cruz, and she doesn’t know how she will send her children to college.

“[I] can’t say [I’m] going to pay for it,” she said with the help of a translator. “All I can do is hope for the best and hope my kids are doing well enough in school now to receive grants or scholarships that are going to help them and push them to where they want to, because that’s pretty much practically the only way.”

While the UC provides scholarships for the children of university faculty, many service workers do not know about them, Langhout said. And their family situations make it more difficult to get into a UC. The children still have to get the grades, apply and be accepted before applying for scholarships.

Another financial dilemma is found in the UC’s health insurance plan, the recent changes of which affect faculty, staff and workers.

“The price doubled to stay on Health Net,” Langhout said. “They offered instead this thing called the ‘Blue and Gold [HMO]plan,’ which I’m calling the ‘Blue and Black plan’ because I think it’s more appropriate.”

Not all employees’ doctors are included in the new budget-friendly plan, according to the “Frequently Asked Questions” page of the Health Net Blue & Gold HMO website.

“Health Net Blue & Gold HMO features a select network of participating providers,” according to the website. “Due to its narrower size, it costs less for both the university and the employees who choose it … If your medical group isn’t in the network, it means they did not meet the participation criteria for cost-efficiency and access.”

Langhout said she is upset with the new plan because it costs about the same as the previous plan but has limited services.

“Everybody would have to change their doctors,” she said. “UCSC is a big employer in Santa Cruz County and if something like that happened, it could potentially destabilize health care for a lot of people in Santa Cruz County … There’s also the issues of what we’re paying now and people not really having a choice.”

On top of the financial obstacles the UCs put before their employees, faculty and workers are not acknowledged for their work, fourth-year Massenburg said.

“There are some workers who are over-qualified and clean when they understand the appropriate measures for chemicals,” he said. “And some of their supervisors’ supervisors just sit behind desks and push papers, and have no idea what [the workers] are doing. A lot of times the [workers] are put in danger.”

Romero said labor strikes can increase the difficulty of the job, but most workers cooperate through a union.

“Are you going to miss a day of work and fight for what you want,” Romero said, “or are you going to risk losing your job that’s paying for rent and whatever your responsibilities are?”

Dodge said while being on strike can be a “romantic notion,” it’s not a good sign when these employees say things are so bad at this institution that they have to stand up to it.

He credits the UC workers’ oppression to a cycle of near-poverty.

“A single mother, for example, can’t afford to send her children to this academic institution,” Dodge said. “So by the wages that are paid, you’re not allowing for the people who work here, who provide the service to the community here, are not allowed or able to send their children here. What you’re seeing here is keeping working people in the sense of poverty … Everybody is two to three paychecks from being in poverty.”

Members of the men’s rugby team practice on the lower East Field during their Thursday practice. The team is preparing for a memorial match in honor of former team member Benjamin Quaye, who died February last year. Photo by Prescott Watson.

Shade slowly crept over the lower field last Thursday afternoon as the men’s rugby team huddled in a scrum. Grasping each other’s shoulders and grunting inaudible commands, grass flew as each scrimmaging team struggled to hook the ball to their eightman. As the sun continued sinking, loud guffaws and sideline banter pierced the air as men watched their teammates on the field.

“Just a year ago, we didn’t even have enough players to field a full scrimmage,” senior forward Colin Dalton said. “Now we have 30 on the pitch and then some.”

The men’s rugby team, a club sport, has seen exponential growth and improvement in the last year. This is due in part to its new coach, Jeremy Sanford.

Sanford, who joined the team in 2008, began exercising more control over the team’s development in 2009.

“He brought a lot toward the infrastructure side of the club,” team president Philip Brody said. “He really wanted us to get together a student committee that was accountable. He wanted us to embrace the fact that we are the ones who should be making the decisions.”

The development of this mentality has led the club to be completely student-run.

“Our coaches are our coaches — they don’t do any of the administrative stuff,” Brody said. “That’s what we do.”

The rebuilt team will take part in a match against rival San José State University this Saturday. The match will serve as a “then and now” memorial event to honor those who have helped UCSC men’s rugby since its founding in 1967 as the first club on campus. It will also be played in remembrance of club friend and teammate Benjamin Quaye.

Quaye died in the early morning hours of February 7, 2009 the day after the team’s victory against Humboldt State University. The night that the teammates heard the news, they gathered at a Chinese restaurant and remembered their friend.

“We told stories about Ben and we were crying,” team captain Michael Richtik said. “We then walked over to where he passed and we all said something about him. The next weekend, about 20 of us drove down to be at his funeral.”

There, the team gave Quaye’s mother his jersey, and retired his number for the remainder of the year.

“It was tough,” Brody said. “It definitely took the wind out of the sails for a while.”

Though it was initially difficult, Sanford and teammates agree that the loss of their teammate was one of the major factors that brought the team closer.

“This season, the team is especially tight-knit,” Sanford said. “The loss of Quaye was a big blow to everyone … but it helped pull the team together, so this year there has been a real emphasis on teamwork and commitment.”

Fourth-year Jenna Conway is one the organizers of Party, Bike and Jam, a monthly bicycle event meant to promote local bands and alternative transportation. Photo courtesy of Jenna Conway.

Organizer of group bicycle ride “PB&J” — Party, Bike and Jam — Jenna Conway speaks to the magic of mobbing. For the fourth-year history of art and visual culture student, it’s a profound, community-building and extremely exciting experience — no good feeling outdoes that of riding the town with an eccentric group of students and locals.

Last Friday, the second PB&J ride, the monthly mob of over 300 bikers took on various cycling routes around Santa Cruz, riding from one venue to the next to listen to and support local bands and to promote alternative transportation.

As a participant of the last PB&J ride, I was completely taken aback by the vibe of kinship that surrounded me while riding the streets of Santa Cruz with strangers and friends alike.

Conway comments on her experience as organizer and her ideas that ignited this magic mob, explaining her vision of the “alternative world.” For her, the goal is to bring group bike riding to the attention of the public and make that world accessible to everybody.

CHP: What inspired you to organize the PB&J bike rides?

JC: I went on one of the FMLY rides [a previous organized “family” bike ride that originated in Los Angeles] here in Santa Cruz last spring, and I was introduced to the thrill of mobbing. I had never imagined streets filled with laughter and bikes instead of noisy, dirty cars. It gave me a vision of an alternative world that I wanted to live in.

I took a class at UCSC over the summer that exposed me to a lot of critical theory and visual cultural studies. I wrote a research paper on the Critical Mass [group bike] rides, and after doing so much thinking about it I decided to make it a goal to become involved in organizing bike rides. … I was so inspired by the overwhelming feelings of community I got from that — a group of young people working together to create a positive and welcoming space within a hostile environment.

CHP: How do you go about starting to organize such a huge project?

JC: For such a radical and visceral experience, these rides start in a very virtual medium — Facebook … It makes the planning process much easier, because it allows for direct feedback from the cyclist community throughout the entire process.

CHP: Why and how do you choose the venues and bands that perform?

JC: There are some very talented groups here in Santa Cruz, and I love being able to build our community up by giving our local bands a chance to engage with the biking community. The rides draw a really large audience, and they can provide great exposure for new and established groups alike.

However, I think that the results of this ride have necessitated some changes in what we consider to be venues. I think we’re going to need to get more creative and start using open, abandoned spaces to avoid confrontations with city residents and the law.

CHP: Speaking of the law, the police showed up at the last venue on Friday. Thoughts?

JC: It’s pretty hard to hide 300 bicycles … no matter how crafty you get. So when the cops showed up en masse to the last stop, I felt disappointed but sort of resigned. I understand that the police are obligated to respond if someone in the community complains about the noise. I don’t blame them for doing their job.

I want it known that I do not condone aggression towards police officers [and it] is not something that I ever want to support. It goes completely against the spirit of the ride, which is admittedly political in many ways, but intended to be peaceful and fun-loving. I would thoroughly discourage anyone who wants to behave violently from attending any future rides.

CHP: What makes this effort worth it, what is your favorite aspect and what are you promoting?

JC: I love mobbing. … While leading the last ride, I kept compulsively glancing back to see the mob behind me, because I honestly couldn’t believe it was really there. … I love riding bikes, I love the biking community, I love music. When [all] are combined on such a massive scale I feel like the happiest girl in the entire world.

CHP: What is the purpose of a ride like PB&J?

JC: Above all, the rides are about utilizing visibility as a statement to create awareness in the relationship between drivers and bikers. The intent of PB&J is to create a sense of camaraderie amongst the cyclist community, and also to expand its reaches. The experience is meant to encourage riders to get on their bikes and become bike advocates themselves.

CHP: Where do you see this project going?

JC: My hope is that PB&J will grow big enough to engender a degree of philosophical change in Santa Cruz. Ideally, I’d like to achieve a state of cooperation at the city government level that allowed for a program like San Francisco’s Sunday Streets [a program that closes large stretches of roads in the city for several hours, restricting their use to cyclists and pedestrians], only here in Santa Cruz.

Illustration by Rachel Edelstein.

Santa Cruz has your usual fast food chains: McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Jack in the Box, Burger King and now a Panda Express. And it may soon be welcoming another. Despite the city’s history of favoring local restaurants over chains, In-N-Out Burger is setting its sights on Surf City.

In-N-Out, the famed burger chain of the West Coast, could come to Santa Cruz, said Carl Van Fleet, vice president of planning and development.

“Our real estate team has been looking at Santa Cruz County for some time and we hope to be there in the not-too-distant future,” Van Fleet said in an e-mail to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

But if In-N-Out were to come to Santa Cruz, it would have to jump through some hurdles regarding the city’s drive-through policy.

“By our Zoning Ordinance, the Downtown Recovery Plan, and the Mission Street Plan, drive-throughs are not allowed on Mission Street or in the downtown area,” Juliana Rebagliati, director of planning and community development of Santa Cruz, said in an e-mail. “They are allowed in other areas of town, such as Ocean Street, but there are many qualifying standards that serve to limit the number of locations where they may be built — such as they must be a certain distance away from a signaled intersection, they must be a certain distance away from an existing drive-through, et cetera.”

Is Santa Cruz becoming more and more open to chain restaurants and franchises?

On any given night, the new Panda Express near Safeway might have a line out the door. Since it opened Jan. 19, Panda is “doing OK,” manager Ken Chan said.

“We are meeting expectations,” Chan said. “They [our customers] are mostly locals, some students. We probably have stolen some [customers from other restaurants].”

Second-year student Charlene Tran said she is excited about the new Panda Express but even more excited about a possible In-N-Out.

“In-N-Out is the king of all fast-food restaurants,” Tran said. “It’s delicious, and they have the friendliest people.”

Founded in 1948, the chain now has over 250 restaurants across the West Coast, most of which are in California. Local business manager Seth Landig, of Betty Burgers on Seabright Avenue, is not too worried about the possibility of an In-N-Out.

“Any burger place would affect us, but we have a little different meat,” Landig said. “We’re not a fast-food place either, more of a restaurant. I mean, our burgers take 10 minutes to make.”

The limits on drive-throughs in Santa Cruz have been active for nearly 20 years and it might force In-N-Out to look at other nearby cities.

The search can be seen on Facebook, where Kurt Overmeyer, Watsonville city economic development manager, has set up a page to garner local support. Santa Cruz also has residents dedicated to bringing in an In-N-Out, and it looks like Santa Cruz is winning.

While “In-N-Out to Watsonville” currently has 3,180 fans, Santa Cruz’s “We Need an In-N-Out in Santa Cruz” Facebook page had over 9,000. In-N-Out vice president of planning and development Van Fleet said the use of social media would help the company’s decision.

“Community support is an important factor for us, and a Facebook site with numerous likers could be influential,” he wrote to the Sentinel.

Landig, manager of Betty Burgers, expressed confidence that local restaurants would still be competitive.

“We’ve always had some chains in Santa Cruz,” he said. “Some will come and go, but people who live in Santa Cruz will tend to frequent the local spots.”

Illustration by Louise Leong.

Last Thursday, I let my gaze wash down a river of people who ran from Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk’s Coconut Grove all the way to the wharf. I felt impassioned — my fellow Giant fans were wasting their time waiting in line to get a picture taken with the World Series trophy.

I had urges to play Moses and berate them for their idol worship.

I know I have my memories of Pacific Avenue exploding with every run and every win. I know that Tim Lincecum’s hair, Brian Wilson’s beard and Matt Cain’s striking resemblance to Bobby from “King of the Hill” will forever be burned into my mind. I felt it dishonest to pose by a trophy that could never encompass the magic of a season.

I’m a Giants fan, which means I’m cynical, yet painfully loyal. My relationship with the team is a haphazard clip-show of defeats grasped from the brink of victory. I still can close my eyes and see Scott Spiezio’s three-run homer in 2002, or José Cruz Jr. dropping the can-of-corn fly ball, or J.T. Snow getting thrown out at home plate.

The fact that the team won this year still boggles my mind. It’s the only incongruity in a history of heartbreak.

I’m a Giants fan, which means I felt certain the team would get swept in the final series against the Padres and miss the playoffs. It means I gripped tightly to a whiskey double during every playoff game to ease my nerves. It means I believed no lead was large enough, that Brian Wilson would blow every save.

Perhaps it’s this same mentality that made me doubt the trophy celebration.

But halfway down the line of fans, I met Larry Werner and John Means, and I started to believe there might just be some value to this event. The two 40-something-year-old men were grinning and giggly, and they wore matching T-shirts. The front said, “The Negative Brothers.” The back explained: “Two Negatives Make a Positive.”

Werner and Means are Giants fans, which means they are cynical, yet painfully loyal. They watched every game along with Werner’s brother-in-law, and they have nicknames for each other.

“Our names are Bitch, Whine and Moan,” Werner said, chuckling. “So we were pleasantly surprised this year.”

We stood reminiscing, laughing at tears gone by. Means remembered Willie McCovey’s line drive not quite clearing the leaping Yankee shortstop in Game 7 of the 1962 World Series. I mentioned Steve Finley’s grand slam that knocked the Giants out in 2004. Werner recalled the Loma Prieta earthquake that helped the Giants get swept in the 1989 World Series.

I respected the men, so I had to ask why they would spend hours in line. What did the trophy really mean to them?

“It means a lifetime of waiting for it,” Werner said. “I was 10 years old, and my father was taking me to Seals Stadium in San Francisco. I’ve been around for a long time.”

At first I was confused why these self-proclaimed Negative Nancys would spend their afternoon waiting for a cheesy photograph. But then I started to understand that the draw was less about the gold and more about finally owning a tangible representation of something we’ve always lacked. The picture was a guarantee against forgetting, a safeguard against ever losing sight of the fact that in 2010 we really did win.

“Don’t Stop Believin’” played through the speakers as I walked back towards my car. The music was loud, but I could still overhear a man standing next to a stroller say, “He’s two years old. I felt like I needed the picture. This could be his last chance.”

I realized that every person in that line was a Giants Fan. They were cynical. But they were also painfully loyal.

The scene was festive, with music blasting and every fan wearing their colors proudly, but what really led them to spend an afternoon in line was the nagging thought that the Giants might not win for another 56 years.

Yankees fans don’t wait three hours to take a picture with a trophy. They don’t need a photograph as a safeguard against time. They can rest assured that their team will win again soon.

But we are Giants fans. We know what it feels like to wait 56 years. We’ve watched a team blow games in every conceivable way. We are cynical, yet painfully loyal.

So why not spend a mid-winter afternoon waiting for a photograph and basking in the victory?

Who knows when it will happen again.

(from left to right)

“Probably throw a party and start to build a real community.”
Sarah Fishleder
Recent graduate, College Nine
Independent major: multiculturalism and the arts in education

“I’d be aimless. I guess I’d go to the library and read a book.”
Neil Clark
Fourth-year, Stevenson
Philosophy/sociology

“Do you remember when it did shut down? I’d freak out at first but then be generally happy and find something to do.”
Miya Libes
Third-year, Stevenson
History/sociology

“I’ll retreat to my bunker. The end is near.”
Mary Bryn Concannon
Fourth-year, Merrill
Philosophy

(from left to right)

“Time management, because it’s one of the keys to success in a post-collegiate experience.”
Michael Kanning
Second-year, Cowell
Environmental studies

“More nutrition courses, because it’s an upcoming field, and there is not enough offered here.”
Katy Kaufman
Third-year, Stevenson
MCD biology

“The rules of walking, because I feel like everybody doesn’t know that there needs to be a constant pace.”
Daryl Washington
Second-year, Merrill
Psychology

“A finance course — how to get the most out of the UC system. Yeah, I don’t think they have that here.”
Isabel Bohorquez
Third-year, College Ten
Sociology