A Barren Place: Santa Cruz Bookstore Replaced By Police Substation

Beggars. Drug addicts. Crazy methhead girl spitting on cops. Grungy trustafarian slackers with their blond dreads and their malnourished puppies asking me to pay for their beer by begging while they had daddy's credit card in their pocket. Drunks sleeping in between bouts of sharing their cardboard sign that asked me for my hard-earned money so they could get their next round of booze.


Good riddance, on all counts.

...............................revolt!revolt everywhere!

nice copwatch anti imperial.
not completely barren though, the cops brought some cute balloons.

the cops in santa cruz waste waaaaaaay too much taxpayer money on nothing.

I don't see anything in that video to suggest that people actually stopped hanging out on that corner due to the cops. No interviews. No people being asked to move along by the police. Nothing.

I wonder what time the video was shot. The people I saw were bundled up which would suggest early morning. If that is the case then that would explain the lack of people hanging out. Shops aren't open and there is no one to sell to or beg from. Most of the folks who hang out downtown don't get up until noonish.

Took a walk today and there was no van there. Good job scaring them off.

The time of the video is a good question to ask, I was down around 10:30 this mornig and the mall was still pretty dead.

The video was done at 10:30am Wednesday, May 11 2011. when the cubie slaves were busily doing... umn... hmmnnn...

What IS IT they do anyway? The Borders building is full of lawyers and internet media leeches.

Nevertheless, a reminder to them "Work Will Make You Free". But even these Dora-Mittelbau slaves of the Nazis actually MADE something tangible (V-2s in this case)

You might want to crank the paranoia down a notch, you sound kind of shrill.

If massa unchains me again tomorrow, and I can taste the sweet, sweet air of freedom and feel the beat of sunlight on my face as I escape the cube farm the powers the economy with my soul (kinda like the matrix, but without the cool robots), I 'll swing by and see if the Man parks his mobile bunker on Pacific and runs off all the well meaning street color.

My guess is that it will be too cold, too early and with too few people on the mall to make standing on the corner worthwhile.

Hi troll...

I could write a book about the cause and effect of a shitty over-priced shopping mall that uses college student labor, consistently NOT HIRING local youths, to sell their worthless crap to other college students, on a community barren of jobs that pay the rent for even a hovel while controlling the price of housing via UCSC's transient college students whose parents USED TO buy houses around here for the time their children were in school, but have been reduced to leasing sub-standard condo units for the same type of tax breaks and even MORE TRANSIENT cubie workers who can simply write off the exorbitant rents as a business expense 'cause they don't live anywhere near here.

Of COURSE there are people on the streets. There's no work here that pays the rent.

The video and my comments stand just as they are. If you don't like them, or believe they're somehow misleading, it's just tooo fucking bad. Make a counter-argument or simply STFU.

What is it that YOU do to be a productive member of the community? Or are you yet another one of the parasitic lowlife whiners here that can't understand why he can't just "HAVE" everything he/she wants?

Maybe you ought to quit your sniveling and complaining, and try learning how to do something that pays well.

Or go somewhere else, where all those "good" jobs are.

"I could write a book..." Go ahead, write it. When you do, try filling it with verifiable facts instead of your usual, rail-against-the-man drivel.

I'd also be interested in learning more about writing my rent off as a business expense. Do you have any facts to back up this claim? In my experience the only people writing their rents or mortgages off as a business expense are self-employed and also use their domiciles as places of business (such as child care providers, graphic/web designers, therapists, etc.). Give me one concrete example where employees are able to write off their rent as a business expense. I'm not looking for a hypothetical or theoretical example; cite an actual case of a "cubie" who is entitled to this benefit. Otherwise, you're just making empty claims.

Finally, who are you to be the judge of what is or isn't "worthless crap"? Isn't that what the marketplace is all about? If someone buys it, it has value. If they don't, it doesn't and the business eventually dies. Are business owners supposed to consult with you before they stock their shelves?

And the best you could do is call me a troll. I did try to mock your over the top style. Cube workers actually worse off then labor camp inmates? Whatever, but I doubt that rises to the level.

You give one data point and claim that it proves that the SCPD is running people off. I add another point removing the variable of the HQ, but with the same time and have the same result - nobody on the corner. At 3:30 today, it was much warmer and the traffic on Pacific was heavier. You had one person collecting signatures and two different people selling their wares. Which leads to the question of how many fucking hemp bracelets can a town of this size support? the same question goes to those guys doing the spray paint art as well.

Claiming that the EEEEvilll police van was the reason seems to be dishonest.

I look forward to reading some quantifiable information/data to back up your sketchy claim. It will be interesting to see you prove your propoganda.

"I could write a book about the cause and effect of a shitty over-priced shopping mall that uses college student labor, consistently NOT HIRING local youths."

For starters, I'll be intrigued to see how you prove that these shitty malls don't hire any of the 16,000 local Cabrillo College students.

Then, it will be interesting to see how you divine the difference between the 8-10% of UCSC kids that are local to the county vs. the others.

Bottom line? There are 31,000 kids going to UCSC and Cabrillo, and 20,000+ of them are local. Throw in the locals who commute to SJSU, and the total of local college kids probalby climbs another 1,000 or so.

So, bring it on wordsmith. Put up....or shut up. I'll say it in advance: I think you're full of hot air and no evidence.

The idea that a police sub-station would be parked in our downtown area and at several parks as a way to meet the public is nutty.
Just as nutty as the "Police Community Town Meeting" I attended a few weeks back when all public comment was filtered and
only the cops and severely biased community groups were allowed to talk. When one member of the community stood up to speak,
he was shouted down and told to be quite by the cops. Not exactly the community meeting one expected. This type of in your face
police showing is supposed to what,... make us feel safe? Or make us feel policed. I feel waaaay overly policed. I don't want to
see a cop sub-station downtown.. that is not what downtown is for. Downtown is a place for folks to meet and hangout and to share a
laugh, a meal, a beer, a movie or just sit and chat. But these days cops bothering anybody who looks scruffy is common place. I'm
starting to look a little scruffy myself now with beard and a little hair... should I fear going downtown? That is the message I'm getting.

Keep the police station at the police station.. keep the people in the town square where they belong.

I think the reason Mr. Raygun has made the video he has made is because he is seeing a very uncomfortable trend. And so do I.
We know that the cops "troll" this site and to them I say.. Protect and Serve: ME. Otherwise, stay out sight and out of mind.

If you stopped committing so much crime maybe we wouldn't need the police. Of course that's the real issue isn't it? Criminals want to commit crimes but can't while the police are there so they complain. Sure the city recently said they are hiring more cops BUT that was after a bunch of criminals ran around downtown smashing windows last year.

Only a troll would expect a decisive history of the way the business 'community' in conspiracy with the Fascist city government of Santa Cruz managed to turn a nice downtown street with plenty of local businesses and a resident, NOT transient community, into a CORPORATE shopping mall manned by college students over the last 20+ years.

And you sir, are an idiot. If you would like to go back and reread the thread, you'll notice that it was two other people that wanted to have you back up your claims. Personally, I don't care enough about your rantings one way or the other. However, you have learned well Robert's playbook. If you don't like some thing, they (or it) are nazi or fascists. Anyone that disagrees with you is a troll. You're not going to enlighten many minds that way.

Anyhoo, to continue to provide actual hard data to this conversation: No police van on the corner, but also no overcast, so it was much warmer today. At 10:30 this morning there was exactly one panhandler on the corner.

Previously, Razer said: "I could write a book about the cause and effect of a shitty over-priced shopping mall...

Now, he says:
"Only a troll would expect a decisive history of the way the business 'community' in conspiracy with the Fascist city government of Santa Cruz..."

No, only a troll would claim he could deliver such a decisive history in the first place.

As expected, a lot of hot air and hyperbole coming out of Razor....a bunch of name calling to sully the reputation of those who disagree with him....and not one iota of information or fact to back up his bombast.

I'll accept his silence as acknowledgment that he was blowing it out his you-know-what with his inane statement about malls not hiring locals.

Sigh... I guess I'll never get MY (snigger) picture published. The moderator remove the post.

I will reiterate:

The Jackass troll said: "No, only a troll would claim he could deliver such a decisive history in the first place."

Only a troll would claim to deliver such a history in a three minute video, which is what you and your JACKASS TROLL friends 'ragged' me about at the top.

But a histoiry of the destruction of the communty of downtown Santa Cruz and it's concurrent replacement with transient business people IS a book that could be written.

It would be categorized as a Horror Story, Non-Fiction.

YOU were the one who claimed he could write a book (""I could write a book about the cause and effect of a shitty over-priced shopping mall that uses college student labor, consistently NOT HIRING local youths."); all we asked for was some facts. None have been forthcoming, even after another poster exposed the statistical improbability of your claim. Likewise, you've not even attempted to prove your claim that "cubicle workers" were taking a tax deduction on their rents/mortgages as a business expense.

But hey, keep raging against the machine, man...no sense letting a little thing like facts keep a troll from a really good rant.