A Beautiful Day for Progress
Thairie Ritchie organized an amazing march to celebrate Juneteenth. The people who came to participate and support were awash in a June sunlight and glowing from an inner sense of joy.
Juneteenth in Santa Cruz
Category: Santa Cruz
Robert Fallon
Hi, I’m Felix.
My dreams? Yes. I generally don’t remember them.
Oh, yeah. You know, the usual thing flying and then getting tangled up in. In the electrical lines and stuff like that. And, you know, not being able to maintain altitude. And then there are things I don’t know, they’re zombies or what on the ground trying to grab, you know, standard dreams that all kids have.
Originally, there was some places I seemed to go to with some regularity. The last dream I had, it was about a country of was Russia. And there was the number 3 million something involved.
I don’t know. That’s all I remember of it. A lot of people keep dream journals and I think that’s a wonderful thing.
Well, I hope to take a shit every morning. You know what?
When you get up in years, I’m going to be 83. So that’s an important thing. You know, old people get together. Did you have a bowel movement? How was your sleep? You know? Oh, my back, you know, it’s the usual kind of thing.
There’s so much. I’ve built all these projects which are material things and places, and then the what happens in them, and that includes the gallery, which was one of my favorite things that I’ve been a part of me and a group of my friends were working on the, the bins for Streetlight Records and earthquake proofing, and we welded up all the metal fixtures.
And when we’re done, this building was here and it was just like paint storage. It had horribly low ceilings, didn’t have any windows, and we had all these really talented guys. I think Streetlight Records had more welders on tap than any other record store in the whole universe, you know, And people would kind of come in and say, What are you guys doing over open the records, Sir, I’m a welder, I’m a metal sculptor, and they came to realize what an incredibly talented I think there are more artists per capita.
And in Santa Cruz than almost any other place. And I met so many really great people and I saw said, Well, let’s make it our art gallery. And we met. The city was really helpful to us when we were putting Streetlight together. And there are you know, there are homeless people living here in the what’s our courtyard now?
And there was no wall between the alley. And so the whole alley was home full of homeless people. And so they were instead of making it difficult to get permits, they really wanted us. We paid to put the wall there that between the gallery and and and the alley. And the city was building a gate there. And we met the architect of the gate, the designer and the city engineer, and he helps us engineer the the roof here.
So the people were really nice to work with the building inspectors and, you know, the whole thing. It really was really cool. We we did a window after we opened. We put sand in the window, a streetlight, and we had a little toy, a roller coaster and merry go round. And we had some aliens and stuff like that and maybe some vampires or small, you know, not not full sized, not life sized ones.
And of course, you have to feed them at night and stuff like that. So we just had a little toy vampires and we said Santa Carla welcomes Street Records, you know, Santa Carla?
Yes, Yes. It’s one of my all time favorite movies, right?
Well, that gets wrapped up in, my general feeling about living in the middle of the decline and fall of Pax Americana.
it’s really wonderful. It’s one of the most wonderful I’ve traveled around and this is one of the most wonderful little communities in the world geographically. It’s wonderful. You go to Miami or something like it’s just mile after mile of sand and high rises here.
Each beach has like an individual or is geographically separated from the other ones. And it’s one of the neat things the coastline is so varied. You get things like the the wharf and the wharf and Capitola and the wharf that used to go out to the concrete ship and all that. So I’m very positive about this place.
I’m, you know, I, I really have a hard time understanding why anybody has to live in the streets and on the sidewalk in the most in one of the wealthiest societies that has ever existed. You know, I’m shooting 83. I’m going to have a big retrospective show of my work in the gallery on August 4th. You’re invited to my birthday.
Sophie Warren: People of Santa Cruz
Hi, I’m Sophia Warren.
I have the craziest dreams, I have like multiple dreams per night.
They’re always complex narratives with, like, other world logic and, like, multi-dimensional different versions of me.
It’s frickin wild trip.
It was a dream within a dream where I dreamed that I had a recurring dream every night where I went to a planet that was an alien, otherworldly, bizarre black market carnival.
And I would sit at this table and listen to all these aliens do drug deals every night for a week.
But that was the dream within the dream.
I have multiple different timelines and different dimensions.
Dreams that come in sequence.
But I don’t I don’t exactly know when.
I don’t really have reoccurring dreams, though.
Mostly they’re like pseudo, like a pseudo version of my house
or a pseudo version of Santa Cruz or
sometimes a completely different place I’ve never been.
I want to be the best filmmaker in the entire world ever.
I want to go to Burning Man.
So, I’m making these to give to people at Burning Man. Other than that, just film
filmmaking.
I’m working on a big screenplay–like my, like, huge feature that I want to make one day–and then a smaller one, a short film called The Doll.
That’s a horror film that I want to make.
The best part is when my ideas finally come and click into place
and I just–I can’t wait to get to the point where my screenplay is finished.
That that moment of just finishing that screenplay and having it done, I’m really excited for that moment.
Letting the ideas come.
I mean, it’s the same thing. I love it.
I used to be really jaded about it because I grew up here, but now I love it.
Wilder Cliffs
The ocean has a tremendous ability to make us feel better. I would be lying if I said I know what it is, but I almost always feel my mood improve when I spend time by the sea. The vast wilderness of water even in its immensity feels personal and intimate. It is as though this whole unfathomable ocean is speaking directly to me.
Feeling better is just a side effect, though. It’s not why I go to the ocean. If I need to adjust my mood, I use writing and exercise. Those two practices never fail me. I can write or run my way out of any rut. That’s not why I go to the coastline.
I go there to study the landscape and to track the light. It’s a relationship and putting in the miles is how I keep my end of the bargain. I walk alone along the cliffs to read the crags and to hear the wind. Springtime brings an afternoon gale to Santa Cruz, and it has an unrelenting message: the sea is primal. The storms are finished for the year, but the energy is still there. The winds blow away bad energy, smudging the hiker with salty new skin.
I started hiking north from Wilder Ranch parking lot around five. The plan was to reach 4 Mile for golden hour studying the trail and all went according to plan. As I approached the iconic tower of rock that designates the space the wind was blowing steadily, and I kept a steady footing as I approached the steep cliff’s edge. I decided that the light was perfect for a shot from the beach, so I headed to where you can make it down safely, towards the beach. The cliffs along this stretch are no joke and are not stable. Every year they take some unwitting explorers’ lives.
I made it down safely, though and came around the corner to the spot where I wanted to shoot. The ocean was whipped up by the wind hurling small but mighty waves at the beach and cliffs. Nobody was on the entire beach. I had seen a few novice surfers with soft tops trying to paddle into the wind swell who were clearly not from town. It was not good surf, but the wind doesn’t show in photographs.
I had this sense of amazing joy being there in that moment, knowing that it would only last for a few minutes and I would climb back up the cliff and start heading back to town. I also knew that I would be able to share this golden scene with others because of the magic of digital photography. We live in a special time with all the ancient joys and contemporary tools for sharing our experiences.
I made my photos and returned to my windy walk home.