Shanked by a Crystal on Star People Turf
You know, I'm finding out that Santa Cruz isn't all lamb tails and fuzzy caterpillars. There's a dark side. No, I'm not talking about the bongos. See, to properly tell this story, I need to go back about 12 years.
The scene: Turpentine Cat Video. My friend Jeff owned the store, and I hung out there a lot and held down the fort when he needed to go out of town. Jeff was an interesting guy. He was in my mom's graduating class, called himself an "unreconstructed hippie", and was a huge fan of independent and avant-garde films, which was pretty much all he carried. He was also an astonishingly good poet, and had been published in the Paris Review.
He spoke softly, laughed a lot, and smoked unfiltered Camels to the point where the fingernails of his right hand were yellow. He was rail thin, had long black hair, always wore a leather jacket, and walked with a limp (and sometimes a cane, like a bad-ass punk version of House). He walked with a limp because he'd gotten into a motorcycle accident a few years earlier and had shattered his femur. He had one surgery to replace part of it, which involved a titanium ball joint, and then he had another one a year or so after that because he broke another part of the leg while having sex.
Jeff is sort of tangential to this story, but I wanted to tell you about him because he had a huge impact on my life, and because he died a few years ago and I miss him. Anyway. I brought him up because the video store was next to a bookstore called Wellspring Books. This was a place that would fit in very well in Santa Cruz. They sold crystals. They sold trinkets to help balance the chakra and all kinds of really cool rocks. And books, of course. Lots of books about astrology, and the Goddess, and Wicca, and paganism, and eastern religions, etc. Health food, too! I think I saw my first seaweed bar there (shudder).
Wellspring Books was very popular. There was a constant influx of people with flowing clothes, lots of scarves, very intricate earrings, and, if I may say, overly dramatic gracefulness. Not all of them, but some of them wanted to SWEEP from place to place. Gliding past the patriarchy, if you will. This description applies to men as well as women, by the way. The men simply had a greater love of vests and pointy beards.
Jeff called them Star People, and I think that's the perfect way to describe them. Their heads are in the stars, and they seem to have a weird sort of peace about them.
The point? Some of the Star People in Santa Cruz have a dark side. I was walking out of the Santa Cruz Bookstore recently, and wasn't paying attention to where I was going. I was walking through an alley that was painted to look like the main street of some vaguely European town, and I was about halfway through when I noticed that I wasn't alone. There were Star People in there, leaning against the frames of painted doors, attempting to hide themselves in the shadows below painted balconies. They stirred as I got closer, and I could hear them tinkling ominously.
I turned around and walked back out. I wasn't about to get shanked by a crystal on Star People turf.
The scene: Turpentine Cat Video. My friend Jeff owned the store, and I hung out there a lot and held down the fort when he needed to go out of town. Jeff was an interesting guy. He was in my mom's graduating class, called himself an "unreconstructed hippie", and was a huge fan of independent and avant-garde films, which was pretty much all he carried. He was also an astonishingly good poet, and had been published in the Paris Review.
He spoke softly, laughed a lot, and smoked unfiltered Camels to the point where the fingernails of his right hand were yellow. He was rail thin, had long black hair, always wore a leather jacket, and walked with a limp (and sometimes a cane, like a bad-ass punk version of House). He walked with a limp because he'd gotten into a motorcycle accident a few years earlier and had shattered his femur. He had one surgery to replace part of it, which involved a titanium ball joint, and then he had another one a year or so after that because he broke another part of the leg while having sex.
Jeff is sort of tangential to this story, but I wanted to tell you about him because he had a huge impact on my life, and because he died a few years ago and I miss him. Anyway. I brought him up because the video store was next to a bookstore called Wellspring Books. This was a place that would fit in very well in Santa Cruz. They sold crystals. They sold trinkets to help balance the chakra and all kinds of really cool rocks. And books, of course. Lots of books about astrology, and the Goddess, and Wicca, and paganism, and eastern religions, etc. Health food, too! I think I saw my first seaweed bar there (shudder).
Wellspring Books was very popular. There was a constant influx of people with flowing clothes, lots of scarves, very intricate earrings, and, if I may say, overly dramatic gracefulness. Not all of them, but some of them wanted to SWEEP from place to place. Gliding past the patriarchy, if you will. This description applies to men as well as women, by the way. The men simply had a greater love of vests and pointy beards.
Jeff called them Star People, and I think that's the perfect way to describe them. Their heads are in the stars, and they seem to have a weird sort of peace about them.
The point? Some of the Star People in Santa Cruz have a dark side. I was walking out of the Santa Cruz Bookstore recently, and wasn't paying attention to where I was going. I was walking through an alley that was painted to look like the main street of some vaguely European town, and I was about halfway through when I noticed that I wasn't alone. There were Star People in there, leaning against the frames of painted doors, attempting to hide themselves in the shadows below painted balconies. They stirred as I got closer, and I could hear them tinkling ominously.
I turned around and walked back out. I wasn't about to get shanked by a crystal on Star People turf.
coughed this up at 1:04 PM
2 El Commentos:
There used to be a Turpentine Cat Video, in Upland, CA, and it had a limping hippie guy who ran it. This must have been your friend Jeff, I guess he must have moved his store to Santa Cruz at one point?
I remember going to his video store as a teenager to rent the movie versions of the books I was supposed to read in school. And Jeff would always warn me in advance of the differences between the book and the movie so I didn't get in trouble.
For instance, when I rented "The Grapes of Wrath", he said to me: "Man, you gotta at least read the last chapter of the book, after you watch the movie. They end totally differently".
His video store was my favorite place to rent.
Wow, small world! Yeah, that was Jeff. I was a teenager when I hung out there, too.
He didn't actually move up here, but it seems like it would have been perfect for him. He was forced to sell The Cat in '96 or '97 (I think), and he died a few years later. He sold most of his videos to Cinema Paradiso behind Rhino Records in Claremont. I could still find some of his tapes there up until a few years ago.
That quote absolutely sounds like Jeff! Always helpful and sort of gently knowing. Didn't mind if you were going to cheat, just wanted you to do it right.
I miss him AND his dog Sophie...
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