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<\/p>\nBerna drops by after the spa – “self\/body care” as an appropriate good-bye to santa cruz. We decide there are still more santa cruz activities to do. The boardwalk. After giulia convinces us we should do some serious make-up…<\/p>\n
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The Giant Dipper, one of these old wooden roller coaster from the beginning of the 20th century. We get ourselves in the line, all excited and laughing and talking about roller coaster experiences and all the things that (almost) went wrong. Some of the friends we’re with have grown up with roller coasters – there seem to be quite a bunch of them around – and these people are really dangerous. The ride is all bumpy, our bodies get shaken and pushed back, i can’t even really scream but just hold on to giulia. Berna gets out with her stomach upset, and i have a head-ache. i don’t really see the fun in this.<\/p>\n
So we decide to go dancing for a little while before Berna needs to go home and pack. The Dakota, the lesbian bar on Pacific Avenue. We need to explain again that giulia who arrived here recently and is not used to carry an ID around, forgot her ID at home. A (true) story which got us into the Red Room a bit earlier. Here we get a rude no for an answer. i argue that it was berna’s last night in Santa Cruz, after having lived here for 4 years, and that she just wanted to dance for half an hour in a place she used to come regularly. and that giulia really didn’t know. The doorwoman begins to resemble an aggressive pitt-bull. By the time i’m done explaining those two little facts, she insists we should dissappear from her sight immediately.<\/p>\n
i go into a super calm (provokingly calm, according to giu) yet persistent drive. she looks as if she’s ready to explode: her tall body is one tight muscle of rage, and she’s\u00c2\u00a0 leaning over me till her nose almost touches my forehead. she searching for that one spark to ignate the fight, the small movement or gesture that would give her an opportunity to beat me up. that’s how it looked from the outside, according to the friends, who basically wented to pull me away. but i felt how my body wanted to stay, keeping the ground, feeling untouchable, protected by layer of absolute zen. “surely there must be a solution. it’s our friend’s last night in this country, she’s been living here for four years, she regularly came to this place.” by then the woman is screaming (her breath in my face). she points to a sign at the door that said one had to be over 21 years old to enter. only with a valid ID. here i made a little mistake, in an attempt to create some complicity. “oh common on, that’s just a stupid american law.” guess what… the woman actually assumed the identity. “oh yes, well you know what, i’m just a stupid american.” (in a moment of instant wiseness, nobody of us commented.)<\/p>\n
the woman was on such a power trip. she yelled that we should get out of the sidewalk in front of the Dakota. definately a sensitive point to me (as sometimes sidewalks overhere suddenly stop because the piece of land where they obviously should continue is private property) so i couldn’t help insisting that this was a public space and that we were perfectly allowed to be in a public space as we were doing no harm. meanwhile giulia had found her international student card, but of course the bouncer wasn’t into letting us in anymore. her power trip got out of control “I’m the boss and i decide who gets in,” she yelled. and then she had it – she couldn’t make the tension into a fight, so she called the cops.
\na moment of discussing among ourselves what we wanted to do. it was berna’s very last night in town and we decided we didn’t really want to spend that time with the cops and the bouncer with a passion for power and violence. so we walked away, crossing the cops on their way to the Dakota. as we are talking, bettina told the story of how her German driver’s licence was not accepted at the Dakota on a number of occassions. the more we got our heads around it, the more it seemed to us that this was an immigration issue. which identification documents are accepted and which ones aren’t. by the end of our self-empowering brainstorm, we actually feel like discussing the matter with the cops, so we turn back, crossing the cops again, as they drive away from the Dakota. oh well, better to use the time to kiss and hug and say good-bye…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Berna drops by after the spa – “self\/body care” as an appropriate good-bye to santa cruz. We decide there are still more santa cruz activities to do. The boardwalk. After giulia convinces us we should do some serious make-up… The Giant Dipper, one of these old wooden roller coaster from the beginning of the 20th … Continue reading “boardwalk”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarah.constantvzw.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}