#skull bashing

we go to a parking lot. we get two shopping carts. we run full speed at each other pushing our carts and jump in and ram into each other, bashing our skulls. maybe we wear helmets maybe we don’t. who’s down?

I mean, c'mon! She bashed Tohma in the skull with a baseball bat!

This city is a breathing paradox: both cute and sinister, it reminds me of a kitten with a mean streak and unclipped claws. Imagine a most stunning swath of coastline dotted with a myriad of aged architecture from Victorian bungalows to Spanish style casitas, from pleasure piers with marquee lights to rickety wooden restaurants and roller coasters. Most structures are adorable until you get too close; then they are conspicuously dilapidated. It is difficult to discern which buildings are crack houses and which are just run down. The people, too, resemble the houses. Inhabitants look like haggard surfers and / or hippies, and it is impossible to tell who is crazy and homeless and who is just dirty and angry with ‘the man.’ Some like to yell and swear at pedestrians for no obvious reason. Others smile and say hello. It is quite curious that one cannot tell who is a good witch and who is a bad witch. Furthermore, everyone here must have purchased their clothes from the “Derelict” collection (featured in Zoolander, duh). It’s a hippie thing. Sleeping bags, seaweed, and seagulls punctuate a stunning stretch of sand, and that combination seems natural in this city. (These people probably wear that ineffective Tom’s of Maine deodorant, but in order to find out, one would need to get unappealingly close to them.) According to a local source, there is a serious heroin epidemic here. Unfortunately, where there are drugs there are psychotic episodes, often involving violence (or perception of impending violence like an invisible man with a machete), hallucinations (including but not limited to visions of God, the Devil and tiny angry Indians) and crazy talk (those mumblings about government conspiracy and extreme paranoia). Just last week in Santa Cruz, a simple conflict ended in a gruesome curb bashing, which is the kind of bizarre behavior that is reasonable if you have been hopped up for 8 days. Seriously, the perps told the victim to bite the curb and then kicked the back of his head so that his face and teeth were shattered against the concrete until he died. Even angry drunks don’t generally go that far. That kind of violence sounds like a junkie thing, but perhaps bath salts should be blamed as they have recently become the national scapegoat for unbelievable behavior. Skull bashing aside, this is a lovely city. Serene and picturesque, everything is beautiful if you don’t get too close.