Hidden Knowledge

I want to tell you about Santa Cruz’ great unknown tourist attraction. The city government runs it, and a visit costs absolutely nothing.

There, you’ll go through a weapons check at a security gate (some guy on an intercom will ask "Got any guns?"); wander through a hidden complex of buildings that few have ever visited; walk in the shadow of vast, thundering machines; and gain secret knowledge about a topic that is forbidden in polite society.

I speak of the wastewater sewage treatment plant down by Neary Lagoon, a true wonder of the world without which this city could not exist. Call up Public Works and set a time -- for as few as two visitors -- and a series of jolly civil servants will show you movies and squire you around their poo-processing facility with every evidence of pride.

One of the great things about the tour is that the sewage guys are happy workers -- I swear, they love their work, or at least find it extremely amusing. Because they know what happens to your shit; and you don’t know, and don’t want to know. And I think they find that, well, kinda silly on your part.

I toured the place a few years ago with some student teachers; but I hadn’t thought of it for years until Brian came by last week in his big, shiny pickup.

Brian’s job was, for a reasonable price, to haul away the pile of crap in my back yard. A new pile accumulates annually -- I can’t control it -- and for the last couple of years Brian and his wife Marcy have been my designated pile o’ crap haulers. It’s a side business of theirs. This year, he proudly gave me their new business card -- “B&M Hauling.” I don’t know why, but something made me ask Brian about his day job.

“I work down at the sewage treatment plant,” he replied proudly. B&M. Right. Sewer worker humor if ever I saw it.

And I asked him if they still gave tours, and he said sure, absolutely, come on down. I admire our sewer workers, but in one way they have a very desirable job. There are so many different things to learn about processing sewage, so many different jobs to do and machines to run and fix, that they never stop learning and never get bored. Did you know:

• That they generate half the electricity needed to run the plant from the methane gas that rises off the crap?

• That your crap is digested by bacteria in what is essentially a huge, artificial stomach?

• That they monitor sewage flow constantly for poisonous substances that might “kill” the stomach, and force them to dump raw sewage has to go into the bay for weeks until they can regrow their bacteria colony? And that once poison is detected, “sewage detectives” trace it back to its source, one sewer main at a time?

• That much of your crap ends up in Kern County? Or that some of it may show up eventually in a retail product that people buy every day?

No? Then give it a shot. Bring the family, the church group, senior citizens, anyone. I guarantee you’ll never forget what you learn, and neither will your school-age children. (I also guarantee that they’ll shout “Gross! Gross!” every five minutes. That’s half the fun.)

I finally guarantee that a man with a mustache will tell you an gross story about cantaloupe seeds, if he’s on duty that day. Brian says he still tells it to everyone. And he seems to enjoys his work, doesn't he?


Anyway, just give them a call and set up an appointment. I dare you. And when you’ll leave, you can with all honesty declare: “I know my shit!”

Sewer worker humor.... it’s contagious.

Santa Cruz Wastewater Treatment Plant:
Phone: (831) 420-6050
Email: pw-wastewater-treatment-facility@ci.santa-cruz.ca.us
Web: http://www.ci.santa-cruz.ca.us/pw/wastewt/wastewt.html

They're Ba-a-ack!

It's move-in week-end up at the university, and the town is full of rambuctious eighteen-year-old waifs of both sexes -- and the parents who worry how their little numkins are going to get by without someone to nag them to study, dress themselves, and even wake up in the morning.

Incoming freshpersons are called "frosh," which sounds like some breed of tiny, newborn fish that has to swim out to sea for the first time without getting eaten by the hermit crabs and the blue heron. Which is a pretty accurate description of the first year of college life away from home. A fair number of frosh will soon scurry home to the ancestral tidepool because they can't keep their lives afloat even with the water wings that the university provides.

But most of them will do fine, or at least as fine as it gets at UC Santa Cruz. In fact, the first party of the school year is going on right now in the student house over my back fence. And "fine" is a pale description of how those young people seem to be feeling.

Yep, another school year is beginning. And as a dyed-in-the-wool townie, I extend a warm welcome to all the incoming frosh to their new home here in Surf City.

Yes. I really do. Truly. Forget, you frosh, everything you've heard about snotty townies who look down their nose at you for spewing your adolescence all over their nice clean streets. Forget what you've heard about gouging landlords who charge $2.5K a month for a house they wouldn't let their dogs live in (even though they won't let you have dogs).

And especially forget what you've heard about hypocritical faculty brahmins who want you to leave your cars back home in Santa Monica or wherever and take public transit in the name of limited growth and environmental quality, while they trundle up the hill to their cush jobs each day in heavier-than-lead Volvos that run on crude oil. One to a car. (Hi, Chancellor Blumenthal!)

No, never mind -- it's all true. I lie poorly. Here's the real scoop, frosh:

As you've dimly begun to realize, Santa Cruz is going to screw you over royally for the next four years. It'll take your money (and too much of it), underpay you at any job you take, shame you into being pee-cee so the rest of us don't have to (half the locals don't even recycle), and generally make you feel about as welcome as the beat-looking guys with "Will Work for Food" signs.

But all that doesn't change the fact that I, myself, the guy writing this column, am truly glad that you're here. Truly.

For one thing, UC students are an endless source of amusement. Yes, as new demi-adults out on your own for the first time you feel the need to assert your power and individuality, whether it be by drinking yourself stinking three times a week or protesting against some wrong that's being done to an Native American tribe none of us ever heard of, 1500 miles away from here.

And of course some students try to assert themselves by doing something outrageous to twist the locals' wigs. But I've gotta tell you: we the locals have seen it all.

When I lived in San Francisco, I used to think that San Franciscans were the most blasé people on earth. I knew a guy who rode public transit to the Financial District every day wearing a horned helmet, coyote pelts and aviator shades; and nobody ever batted an eye.

But San Franciscans have nothing on we Cruzados. We are all Barons of Blasé, Dukes and Duchesses of Deadpan, and Sultans of Sangfroid. For 30 years an endless stream of 18-year-olds have passed through town, many of them eager to prove that he, she, or it was the coolest and most outrageous thing on the face of the earth. There is nothing we haven't seen. Over and over and over again.

For your convenience, students, here's a list of some of wild and crazy things that other students have done over the last few years. No need for you to strain your brain to come up with "cool" ideas that have already been done to death (sometimes literally):

Walk around bare-breasted to protest the patriarchy. Women, going topless in public for purposes of protest is legal here. So sorry, no points. Although the topless dyke car wash on Mission Street was one of the slyest bits of political theater I've ever seen. And they washed a lot of cars, too. I also liked the woman who walked around in a meat bikini.

Hold an anti-war protest at the Lockheed missile plant in Bonny Doon. There are only a few guys left up there and nobody actually knows what they're doing. Why not volunteer for beach cleanup instead, or intern at our local underfunded elementary schools?

Storm the police station. Some of your predecessors did that back in '91 as a protest against the Gulf War. Just as they had the front door halfway busted down, somebody realized that cops have nothing to do with the U.S. military, and everybody went home.

Rob Costco at gunpoint. See, this way you can have the spending money you need without taking a part-time job that cuts into your free time for doing art. The students that tried this ended up with all the free time they could handle -- and free room and board, too! For years!

Fill a shopping cart with mutilated baby dolls and push it through the supermarket. Yeah, yeah. We all know a class project when we see one. Hope you got an "A." I mean, "a favorable narrative evaluation."

Get naked and. Get naked and have sex in public places. Get naked and steal a bicycle, then ride across campus until you collide with a car. Get naked with a bunch of friends and cover yourself with synthetic mud, then bound through downtown Santa Cruz together. Get naked and jump into a swimming pool from the top of a neighboring building. And miss. (PLEASE don't do that one again. In fact, don't jump off anything with your clothes ON.)

But if you think I'm here just to rag on students, you're wrong. As I said before, I really am glad to see you all back. You do a lot of good in this town. You volunteer for social causes -- most of which are not silly at all -- you get involved with beach cleanup and wildland restoration and conservation. I worked for a while at a nonprofit where a UCSC intern made a video about us that helped land a grant for $30,000. That was valuable.

And if we find you all sometimes a little fanatical and judgmental about your causes, not to mention generally obnoxious, well, that's just part of being young and idealistic. And young. And anyway we've got plenty of 48-year-olds around here who act the same way. Many of them are UCSC grads. Many of them are teaching your classes.

And there's one more reason I'm glad to see you: history. See, 35 years ago Santa Cruz was a much different place. In fact, it was a grim, self-satisfied community dominated by retirees and far-right-wing politics. Aside from the summer tourists, the town was dead and proud of it. The Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Party ruled the roost, and "social causes" meant the Lion's Club Crab Feed.

Then UC Santa Cruz showed up in the mid-60s, and things changed. Students and faculty came to town, and many of them settled and stayed here. They brought a new sensibility to the community. They took control of government away from the Chamber of Commerce boys, espoused social causes and fought mindless development.

Without the students who came to Santa Cruz, and stayed, we'd have a nuclear power plant in Davenport. We'd have suburban sprawl all the way up the north coast (and trust me, housing still wouldn't be affordable). These projects and others were killed in part through the work of the "progressives" that the university brought to Santa Cruz.

The university community also brought a market for art, music, bookstores, theatre, foreign films, festivals, and cultural events -- all the things that make the Cruz more than just another beach town with a roller coaster.

So, welcome, students! We locals like to bitch about you, and about the university in general. But without you and the university, this would not be a town that I, for one, would care to live in.

Party on! (Responsibly...)

Yucatan Brown

My drug of choice these days is neither illegal nor especially destructive. It is in some sense addictive, but no twelve-step groups nor locked-ward treatment centers exist to wean you off it.

Nevertheless, mercenary pushers hook children on it at an early age, almost always for life. Because once you've got a Mayan on your back, you'll never shake him off, not even if you're sitting in the Big Chair at the head of the executive board meeting.

I am of course speaking of chocolate.

In the creaky machine that is any large human organization under stress, chocolate is the grease that keeps the interlocking cogs from freezing solid and then flying to pieces with the strain. At least, it is these days.

Yeah, I know the stereotype: women eat chocolate at work to handle stress, not men. I call bullshit on that. Office chocolate is Manager Chow. The office administrator keeps a bowl of Hershey Kisses and Mini-Bars front and center for all to share; and sure, the female clerical help eats it. But just as often the male managers grab a handful to gobble in place of the lunch that they didn't have time to eat. Or to pump up the blood sugar and maintain focus through a two-hour budget meeting. They eat more chocolate than the women. In a stressful environment, your Jolly Ranchers just don't cut it.

I don't know why chocolate calms people down, or gives them focus, or keeps them sharp; it contains little caffeine, but there's a lot more to it than just the sugar. I do know that chocolate contains over 10,000 different chemical compound including some interesting fats that won't give you heart attacks and a rather potent muscle relaxant that also works -- in guys at least -- as a mild aphrodisiac. Trust me on that one.

Our office chocolate is pretty low-grade; we trade quality for quantity. When I buy for the communal bowl, I always buy Hershey Special Dark, because to me milk chocolate is barely chocolate at all. But that's still not great chocolate. It only does so much for me; I need the hard stuff, 70 percent cacao or greater.

So after a brusing day at work, I'll look at Rhumba, or Rhumba will look at me .... and we'll go out for a four-dollar cup of ultra-premium hot chocolate downtown. Hot chocolate as dark as volcanic dirt. Hot chocolate so thick you can chew it. Hot chocolate so very nearly bitter that your average teenager would spit it up. Hot chocolate so strong that it's psychoactive, that it makes everything..... feel.... better.

And so we recover from another day in the salt mines and gather strength for the next one. And our drug of choice won't burn our brains, drive us psychotic, or send us off to endless converstations abour our Higher Powers in drab church meeting rooms. It's even good for the heart.

Yucatan Brown. You just can't beat it.

The Business, As Usual

I'm pretty sure that nobody's reading this blog just yet. Too bad for you, because you're missing the breaking news: UC Santa Cruz will have a new chancellor very shortly. So say my buds up at the university.

Of course nobody but the selection committee knows who the Annointed One will be. But it's interesting that my sources will not rule out Acting Chancellor George Blumenthal as the big winner. The UC system almost never hires an interim chancellor as the permanent pick, but Blumenthal is well-liked by the faculty, and well-met with the public. As an astronomer he's something of a techie and so knows how to chat up big Silicon Valley donors and high-tech corporate sponsors. And when he really needs to wow 'em, he can always show them his Big Telescope.

Besides, the last UCSC chancellor that the Board of Regents picked from outside jumped off a building after a year in office. Blumenthal's been at UCSC 30 years and still seems sane. So the Regents could go with the safe bet. So what if he looks like an elongated version of Dilbert's Pointy-Haired Boss, with a mustache?

I heard a good story about Chancellor Blumenthal up on campus; don't know if it's true, but it's good:

Out on the West Side, which is what passes for a student neighborhood in Santa Cruz, residents were complaining about rowdy, all-night, alcohol-fueled student parties with hundreds of students that lasted all night. When the cops showed up, the kids wouldn't disperse quickly; they usually outnumbered the boys in blue 10 to 1.

So one weekend night Chancellor Blumenthal decided to do a patrol car ride-along with the cops on the Westside beat. In the course of the evening, they pulled up at a huge rowdy party, and the cops knocked on the door and went in As usual, the beered-up students refused to disperse.

Then Chancellor Blumenthal loomed in the door. Keep in mind that he's about seventeen feet tall, including the hair.

Everybody froze. "OMIGAWD! IT'S THE CHANCELLOR!" "HE"LL KICK US OUT OF SCHOOL!" "OUR PARENTS WILL FIND OUT!" "RUN! RUN!" That party house cleared in record time. Students stampeded out every door, vaulted the fences, and flushed themselves down the toilet, for I know. Such is the power of Chancellor Blumenthal. Mayor Reilley did her own Westside ride-along that same night, and cowed no students at all.

Blumenthal would be all right as chancellor, I suppose. But no matter who ends up in charge, UC Santa Cruz will continue to be the same creaky, semi-failed experiment in liberal education that we all know and mostly don't respect much.

The UC System only gets 20 percent of its budget from the government these days; at each campus, the chancellor's major job is to drum up money and support from private industry and big contributors; and to further the image of their campus as a Great Place to Send Your College Kid (and spend $40,000 doing it). Blumenthal's good at all those things; but the chancellor, whether it's Blumie or somebody else, as a rule doesn't much get involved in day-to-day operations. There isn't time. Which is to say, the inmates run the asylum. And not well.

Most universities are organizational nightmares, but UCSC takes disorganization to a whole new level. It has a system of colleges which overlays the usual structure of academic divisions and departments, and precedence is sometimes, uh, unclear. The place is full of independent little fiefdoms that can't be forced to cooperate with each other. They squabble endlessly. The administrative departments -- registrar, facilities, transportation and parking, planning and budget, IT, housing -- try to bring some order to it all, but they work at cross-purposes, too, and the politics can be intense. If that wasn't bad enough, the last chancellor brought in a whole additional layer of middle management, the assistant vice chancellors; the old chancellor is dead, but the AVCs are still there, making policy decisions without consulting anyone or doing meaningful research.

Here's what I can safely predict about UC Santa Cruz under the new chancellor: tuition will rise. Budgets will fall behind costs. There'll be a one or two new or improved engineering or biosciences programs, thanks to corporate sponsors who expect to get something in return for their generosity. But overall quality of education will not improve, and the campus will continue to turn out graduates who, after sixteen years of schooling, still don't know how to write well.

UCSC will continue to struggle -- and mostly fail -- to recruit top young academics, because instructor pay stinks compared to the local cost of living. Real wages for the staff will continue to sink as salaries lag behind inflation and health care costs rise. In response to complaints, campus administrators will spread their arms wide and swear, "We're doing the best we can." And they may be. But their best isn't very good -- and certainly not good enough.

In other words, business as usual.

Update, 9/19: Blumenthal is the new chancellor. The king is dead, long live the..... oh wait, he's not dead. He's still here. Well, long live him anyway, I guess.

Happy Labor Day

My employer keeps a few college students on the payroll part-time, all of them women. Contrary to popular prejudice, college students are patient, reliable, and good at detail work. Just be sure to hire women and keep a plentiful supply of free candy on hand. Works for us.

As I was packing up to leave the other day, Obsidia, the senior student, poked her head in my door and mumbled something through through her many lip piercings.

"What?"

"Do we, ah, have to work on Labor Day?" she asked, pumping up the volume for my decrepit ears.

"Absolutely not," I answered.

"Oh, SWEET," she replied with feeling. A happy worker, she snagged a Hershey Miniature from the communal candy bowl and headed back to her workstation.

Yes, it's come to this: a young person is pleasantly surprised that she doesn't have to work on Labor Day -- the day of rest appointed to honor all who labor behind plows or counters or machine tools or computer screens. For her friends working in restaurants or retail or hospitality -- where most young people get their jobs in this town -- this is just another day of minimum-wage-plus-75-cents hourly work with no benes.

When I was a kid, America pretty much shut down on Labor Day. Union labor never made up more than 25 or 30 percent of the workforce, but the unions were powerful and the standards that they set for their own employees carried over into much of the rest of the workforce. And of course the labor laws they fought for applied to everyone: the 40-hour week, the legal right to organize and strike, sick leave and benefits, paid vacation, occupational safety, a minimum wage, and more. Just about everybody took Labor Day off, and just about everybody went to a barbecue.

Since Dad was a union pipefitter, I spent more than one Labor Day at union barbecues at dusty public picnic grounds where beefy workers and their families munched chicken, drank Budweiser in cans, and Honored Labor.

Sometimes there was a speech by some official from the regional labor federation. Part of it always went like this:

"Remember: every right that workers have in America today had to be fought for, long and hard by union men like us! And if we don't stay strong and stay ready to fight again, they will try to take those rights away from us again!"

Think he was right? And with the unions a ghost of their former selves -- who'll fight this time?

Have a good Labor Day. Eat barbecue. Don't work.