One Year in Santa Cruz

Foreword#

This blog has so far been technical (I think). Maybe I originally wanted to keep it that way, but after spending roughly a year in Santa Cruz, I've accumulated enough complaints about daily life. I was like keep telling my friends about them, and apparently they now require their own post. So this is the first entry in a new "life" category, and I'll probably share more about my life.

To be clear, this is not meant to be an objective review Santa Cruz, nor an argument that nobody should live here. I know plenty of people love it, and I understand why. The weather is usually good, the ocean is right there, the redwoods are beautiful, the atmosphere is relaxed, ..., and there are many good things that are difficult to find elsewhere. If I were visiting for a weekend, I'd probably have very few complaints.

Unfortunately, I don't visit Santa Cruz for a weekend. I live here.

And after a year, I've become convinced that there's a huge difference between a place that is pleasant to visit and a place that makes everyday life pleasant. My problems with Santa Cruz are actually dull: old housing, no air conditioning, limited shopping, mediocre and expensive restaurants, traffic, parking, and the fact that buying proper Chinese groceries can require driving across the mountain. None of these is a disaster. The problem is having all of them at once, every day.

What made this quite noticeable is that I used not to live in a major city in the past four years. Before Santa Cruz, I spent my undergraduate life at Penn State, in State College, Pennsylvania — a small college town in the middle of nowhere. Of course the weather was terrible in winter, but it turned out to be no big deal at all. I paid about $900 a month for a spacious room in a brand-new townhouse. It was quiet, things were relatively affordable, and almost anywhere I needed to go was like within a 15-minute drive. State College certainly lacked things. I'm pretty sure when I lived there, it didn't even have a Chase or Bank of America branch.

But it had perhaps 80% of what I needed, and that 80% was close, cheap and easy.

Santa Cruz had taught me that 80% is actually pretty good.

Amenities & Prices#

My first impression of Santa Cruz was that much of the city looked dirty, chaotic, and run-down. There are parts of town where I regularly encounter homeless people smoking weed, weathered buildings, neglected streets, and infrastructure that seems to have been aging in place for decades.

The housing agrees that impression. It'd be inaccurate to say that everything here was built in 1950s, but the housing stock is really old: roughly half of the city's housing predates 1970, and around 70% predates 1980. And many of the rentals I've seen don't have air conditioning. In fact, places with air conditioning seem to be in the minority.

Most of the year, this is fine. Santa Cruz has an excellent climate. Then a heat wave arrives. Your bedroom reaches 30+°C (85+°F), the walls begin gently radiating yesterday's sunlight back toward you, and you discover that your only option is to figure out which public buildings have AC.

It's an interesting experience to pay Santa Cruz rent and still have to evacuate your bedroom, because the technology required to cool indoor air was apparently considered unnecessary when the house was built.

You might reasonably suggest finding a newer apartment — then this is where the thing becomes funny. Housing construction here has historically been constrained and politically controversial, while the existing housing stock is old and extraordinarily expensive. Just in case you don't know: Santa Cruz County has now spent four consecutive years at the top of one national ranking for the most expensive rental market in the U.S.¹.

So instead of choosing between cheap old housing and expensive new housing, you're choosing between different expensive and old housing :(

Asian Groceries?#

For most of my first year here, one of my simplest complaints was: there's no Asian grocery store. Good news: there's brand-new Japanese market opened nearby Capitola. Amusingly enough, its owners have described being frustrated by having to travel back toward Bay Area for authentic Japanese groceries² — the exact problem I'm complaining about.

I haven't visited there yet, but do I expect it'll be a little pricer than the large Japanese markets in San Jose, which is fair. That's actually not bad — we're making progress. But if I want a full-size Chinese supermarket — the sort of place where I can buy everything I'd routinely buy at 99 Ranch, H Mart, or a comparable Asian grocery store — I still have to go over the Santa Cruz Mountains.

Depending on where I shop, that can turn grocery shopping into roughly a 80-mile round trip. And that's why the grocery problem matters to me beyond groceries — it's evidence of a larger problem that a significant amount of the commercial infrastructure I want access to is not really in Santa Cruz. It's in the South Bay.

Need specialized Asian groceries?

Go over the hill.

Want significantly more restaurant choices?

Go over the hill.

Want an In-N-Out?

Yes, even that requires leaving Santa Cruz.

You know what? I have to remind myself Santa Cruz is in California. In-N-Out has locations throughout San Jose, Gilroy, Salinas, Seaside, and much of the rest of the state. Its absence here is a surprisingly effective symbol of the problem. Even some completely ordinary chains are missing, such as Popeyes, Dukin', Wendy's. The point is not that I really need them, but that when even fast-food chains look at your local market and say, "We'll see you in the next town," you start noticing a pattern. This is what makes Santa Cruz so different from State College in my mind.

State College was genuinely isolated and nobody pretend otherwise. Yet the town still contained most of the things I needed, and the things it lacked felt like a reasonable price to pay for living in central Pennsylvania.

Santa Cruz is physically attached to one of the richest metropolitan regions on Earth, but everyday life frequently requires driving there to access basic amenities. It feels like a suburb that forgot to build the suburban infrastructure, a small town that forgot the small-town prices, and a tourist destination that expects you to remain a tourist even after you changing your address.

The Restaurants#

Then there's food. Santa Cruz has several Mexican restaurants I really like. Beyond that, I find the selection much restricted — especially Chinese food. The fundamental problem is not only that they are expensive. Everything in coastal California is expensive; I do understand this.

The problem is paying expensive tourist town prices and then eating something that creates the immediate though: I could've made this at home for $4.

This is another thing I didn't appreciate about State College until I left. State College lacked many sophisticated options, but everyday food was affordable enough, basic chains existed, and almost everything was nearby.

Santa Cruz somehow combines the selection of a much smaller town with the price expectations of a very wealthy region.

Drive?#

Surely, the obvious solution to Santa Cruz lacking things is to drive somewhere else. Unfortunately, everyone else has got the same idea.

Highway 1 has well-known bottlenecks, and the road network around Santa Cruz has relatively few alternatives when something goes wrong. And the mountain routes like Highway 17 are even more obvious examples. A crash can turn your commute into an extended opportunity to think about redwood trees.

This produces a strange combination. Santa Cruz is not dense enough to provide the convenience of a major city, but driving is also unpleasant enough that you don't receive the convenience of low-density suburban life.

UCSC#

My lovely university occupies about 2,000 acres of forested hills, including 789 acres designated as protected natrual reserve³.

This sounds fantastic in promotional material — redwood forests, wildlife, ocean views, living labs. All true. But you need to go to work. The campus is spread accross a mountain. Building and facilities vary in age and quality. Food options are extremely limited. Getting around takes so much time.

And, parking is expensive. An annual staff/faculty/graduate student permit now costs $841.63, thanks to the price increase⁴. For $841.63, one might assume that I've purchased a parking space.

But this is incorrect. What I've purchased is a permission to look for one. In my experience, if I want a reliably easy time finding parking in the back of my office, I should arrive before roughly 8 a.m. or much later in the afternoon.

There's also used be a $5.25 daily "Scratcher" permit, which was eliminated this year. To be precise, TAPS didn't eliminate daily parking altogether; they replaced it with a $11 daily permit. Hilariously the official explanation was that $5.25 was "significant outdated and below the market value"⁴.

I don't know what to say.

Frictions#

None of these complaints is catastrophic. That is what makes the problem difficult to explain.

No AC? Annoying.

No full-size Chinese supermarket? Annoying.

Expensive mediocre restaurants? Annoying.

Parking competition? Annoying.

Old appliances? Annoying.

Traffic? Annoying.

Individually, every complaint sounds minor. But together, they become your life. You experience whether your bedroom is comfortable, whether buying groceries takes 20 minutes or 2 hours, whether you can find dinner without planning, whether you can park at work, whether your kitchen is clean, whether the lighting is good, and ultimately, whether something simple remains simple.

Tiny inconveniences repeated every day make you eventually stop feeling tiny. I didn't fully understand how much this was affecting me until I temporarily left.

Two Weeks in Philadelphia#

In July, I spent two weeks in Philly, and my productivity improved dramatically. Not to be a controlled experiment, my friend's very nice apartment where I was staying introduced several obvious variables: the building had panoramic floor-to-ceiling windows, quiet central air conditioning, new and clean appliances, good lighting, and everything worked (if not, someone will get it fixed immediately).

These sound like superficial details, and perhaps I'm simply picky, but I was surprised how much they affected my mood. I slept better, worked better, and generally had more energy.

What mattered just as much, though, was everything outside the apartment. There was a grocery store downstairs, downtown and major commercial areas were within walking distance, and restaurants were everywhere. If I needed something small, I could simply go outside and get it. I know that sounds completely ordinary, but sadly, after living in Santa Cruz it felt almost luxurious.

California has made me increasingly aware of the small transportation taxes embedded in everyday life. Anything even slightly specialized becomes a trip to San Jose, a rive over a mountain. Each chore costs a little time, planning, attention, and more importantly, gasoline (which has recently been a problem).

The restaurant situation made the contrast even more obvious. Philly gets genuinely good food from a wide range of cuisines, and a reasonable price. I could go somewhere relatively nice without necessarily spending an absurd amount, or get something cheap and filling when that was all I wanted. Northern California feels stranger in comparison. No to mention again that Santa Cruz has limited variety; the South Bay has much more, especially for Asian food, but I often find the relationship between price and quality disappointing. San Francisco seems to have excellent restaurants, but at an even higher price.

This seems to reflect a broader problem with the Bay Area. When the surrounding population is wealthy, restaurants and other services businesses know what the market can tolerate, so prices rise regardless of the quality. You often end up paying premium prices because the customers can afford premium prices, not because the product itself is particularly premium. The Bay Area is good at generating income, but much less consistently good at converting that income into comfort, unfortunately.

The trip made me realize that some of the things I had been dismissing such as walkable restaurants, clean and modern interiors, and air conditioning actually matter quite a lot to me. Daily life requires less effort with them, and that extra mental space seems to get a chance to show up in my work.

Coastal California#

After a year here, I think I understand the appeal of coastal California much better. Santa Cruz and many of the towns along the coast have a similar atmosphere: old wooden houses, narrow streets, aging infrastructure, lots of greenery, the ocean nearby, and a casual attitude toward how everything looks and functions. Nothing is especially polished, but that is partly the point Life feels relaxed, informal, and distinctly Californian.

As places to visit, I like them, as the most of the people would do. You walk around, look at the ocean, enjoy the weather, eat something, and leave. The slightly weathered buildings and unstructured streets even add character. The problem begins when Monday arrives and your vacation town is also your "permanent" address. Then "rustic" starts becoming "old," "relaxed" starts becoming "disorganized," and "local character" starts becoming "why is this appliance older than I am :P" Being close to nature is wonderful until getting groceries, going to work, or finding somewhere to park becomes a recurring problem.

This is obviously a matter of personal preference. The local culture feels unusually casual to me, with less emphasis on order, precision, and visual uniformity than I'm used to. Many of people clearly enjoy that atmosphere. I seem to prefer something more deliberate.

The interesting contrast is that the South Bay, despite being only on the other side of the mountains, barely feels like this version of California at all. Silicon Valley is much more orderly and much less carefree, but it has its own problem as we've discussed before: everyone seems busy working, making money, and trying to enjoy themselves within an environment that is extremely expensive without being proportionally pleasant. That's probably what bothers me most about the Bay Area. You can spend much more money on housing, food, and services without necessarily getting something correspondingly better.

Conclusion#

After a year in Santa Cruz, I'm at least much more aware of how much these trivial things matter to me. I used to think of housing quality, air conditioning, nearby groceries, decent restaurants, all the good things I keep taking about. These are nice to have, but hardly important enough to determine where I live. I feel like I no longer think that. None of them matters very much on its own, but together they determine how much friction there is in an ordinary day, and ordinary days are, unfortunately, most of life.

The good thing is that I don't need to solve this problem yet. I still have plenty of time before graduation, and until then Santa Cruz is where my work is. But maybe I'll move over the hill at some point.

For now, it's enough to know that Santa Cruz probably is not the kind of place I would choose to settle in long term. I can enjoy the ocean and tolerate the inconveniences for a while longer.