Pacific Avenue, the centre of down town Santa Cruz life, on a Monday afternoon. I’m a bit dizzy after doing some shops to find a good present for my sister’s birthday (and i found something that made me smile and think of her, but of course i can’t disclose here what that is…), and i’m a bit puzzled how i managed to get shopping dizziness in a place with one street of shops. As i’m walking direction post office i notice a typical white surfer guy walking towards me from the opposite direction. I shift my imaginary walking path ever so slightly to the left, in order to pass by each other smoothly. Just before we pass each other, the guy stretches out his right arm, in a kind of waking-up-in-the-morning-and-needing-to-stretch-out motion. His elbow hits hard against my head.
I freeze on the spot; knocked-out not so much by the pain as by the bafflement. I turn around and mumble hey or wait or something. He turns around and says “You’d better watch out” and is ready to continue his stroll direction beach. I gather my breath and continue: “Wait, i’m sorry, but that really hurts, you…” Meanwhile he takes off his sun glasses and gives me one of these “oh really…” looks and interrupts: “So?!? You’d better watch out.” At this point i get angry. I move in his direction and start shouting: “No. You’d better watch out.” He backs off, puts his sunglasses on and continues walking down Pacific, dismissing the whole thing with a gesture of his arm. People around us continue to stroll in a laid-back californian style, and i walk away in anger. Sigh, here we are, once again angry at this place. Thinking about things Berna once said about the way in which people take up (public) space here, unhindered by any notion that you might be sharing that space with others. When i get home Giulia cracks up laughing about my angry self (and reminds me, in between the laughter, that these things also tend to happen in other parts of the world. hm, i have a vague memory of that, yes indeed, but i also have memories of places i’ve lived where, the moment you start screaming, other people intervene.) And MarÃa tells stories from her women’s self-defense course at the Nelson Centre; some of the stories are precisely about this kind of male arrogant taking up of all the space. We actually conclude that the guy must have been the same as in one of MarÃa’s stories. And now that i know how he looks like, i’m determined to beat him up next time i cross his path. There you go, if i became a meat eater in Santa Cruz, i could also become a guerilla fighter, beating up the bad guys. They better watch out.
Before coming home i freeze a second time, as i see the headlines of the local newspapers. During the weekend the chancellor of UCSC killed herself by throwing herself from the 42nd floor in San Francisco.