Santa Cruz Home and Garden
Santa Cruz have proven to be a good place for Field Trip fodder, even though I mainly came to visit my friend and long-time S Cruz resident, Autumn. I arrived here Thursday morning, and decided to search the web for good happenings about town. First, I discovered the Homeless Garden Project.
The Project was founded in 1990 with the aim of helping people who are homeless or formerly homeless transition into stable housing and work. The Project serves as a laison to many systems of help, as well as providing several job training programs. Participants not only learn to garden on their 2.5 acre CSA farm at Natural Bridges, but also help run two businesses: a flower shop and a plant nursery. Through this work, people can gain skills and experience for future job opportunities. What I like about this program is its emphasis on small business, local economy, and handcrafted/hand-propagated goods.
So, I went for a visit, and toodled a borrowed beach-crusier bicycle over to the Natural Bridges Farm. The peeps there were welcoming, and chatted with me a bit. The farm is always open to the public, for anyone who would like to take a stroll and check it out. No fences needed, it seems. I biked up and parked in their bike parking spot (made of old bike frames). I approached and introduced myself to a woman named Suzie, who told me more about the farm and the project.
When I told her that I was interested in local ecnomies, she began discussing the economic hardship their program is under. It’s not exactly a big money-maker, she said, and they’re in a catch-22 situation in which they cannot afford to hire a grant-writer. I wonder, though, if these programs would be easier to support if they were the norm rather than the exception— if nearly everyone in a community made <em>something </em>to add value and exchange with others.
I took a walk around and ended up chatting with a volunteer, Sam, for about 20 minutes. He continued his weeding down the crop row as we talked, and I periodically moved along to catch up with him. Sam is a Santa Cruz native, and studied…. economics! at UCSC. He is now preparing to work with the Peace Corps in Africa doing agricultural development. He said that the practice of slash-and-burn agriculture is a detriment to the environment there, and his job as a Peace Corps volunteer will be to educate farmers on more concentrated farming techniques that allow a high yield from a small area by nourishing the soil. Sam volunteers at the Homeless Garden Project to satisfy a request by the Peace Corps that he gain more experience in agriculture. He also said that he plans to get a Master’s in Alternative Energy following his Peace Corps time.
I asked him why he thought it was important to participate in community agriculture, and he cited the “dire situation of the Earth.” He believes that sometime in our generation, the planet will either go on a trajectory of depopulation, starvation, and desertification or a trajectory of renewing equilibrium. Sam is hopeful for the future because he believes that places like the Homeless Garden Project indicate that “there are people out there thinking these things.” It is a “manifestation of the recognition of a problem, and a sincere desire to change the course of history.” He believes the Homeless Project does indeed affect real change, but that the scale is not magnificent. “It’s less ‘save the world,’ and more small-scale community building.” He believes that the program’s main accomplishment is that it has significantly changed specific people’s lives by giving them activities that make their lives more meaningful as well as preparing them for a job. I agree that work that someone can feel ownership of and be proud of is the most important economic requirement we can hope for in this small-scale setting.
Santa Cruz Bike Church
The borrowed bicycle I was using in Santa Cruz needed some work, so I took it on down to the Bike Church in Downtown, a non-profit bicycle DIY repair shop and recyclery.
Anyone can come to the Bike Church and learn how to repair their contraption, with a requested contribution of $5/hour for the use of the bike stands and tools. Replacement parts are super-dee-duper cheap, and they even have ready-to-ride recycled bikes for sale also on the cheap. Memberships are also available for $20/month, $50/year, or $100/life. They hold biweekly meetings, which are open to the public, and operate via consensus of the volunteers.
The Bike Church is located in a lovely little enclave right next to SubRosa, an anarchist cafe, and the Computer Kitchen, a non-profit web development organization (a non-profit to serve non-profits). Arriving there Saturday afternoon, it was a lively place, with folks working together to solve bike issues (I saw a group of four people gathered around one person’s bike, discussing what might be the best way to fix it). Free cupcakes, hard-boiled eggs, and other snacks were sitting on the counter for anyone to take, and the man behind the counter, Tom, offered me the goodies a couple times. He said that he he works for a place where they have leftover food sometimes and he brings it on down.
Tom has been working with the Bike Church for 5-6 months as a volunteer. He expressed satisfaction that the Church is not around to “make a buck, but to help people,” and described the organization as “loose, trusting, and old-school.” Tom directed me to A.J., a volunteer mechanic. A.J., a.k.a. Arthur Lee Jones the 4th, has worked with the Bike Church for 1.5 years. He said that the Church is all-volunteer run, but that the mechanics can participate in a “clerkship” above and beyond their 3 shifts a week, which is paid $15/hr. The c lerkships involve accounting and outreach duties, among other clerical and side work for the Church.
I was surprised to learn how well they were doing economically as an organization. They have no problem paying their rent in the primo downtown location, and are even saving up money to purchase the space. Even more surprising is that they survive on donations and sales only, not at all on grants. In the world of non-profits, that’s practically unheard-of.
When asked the golden ‘hope question:’ What about the Bike Church gives you hope for the future?, A.J. said that he though they were making it possible for people to take control of their own transportation– people who, without the Bike Church, bicycling would not be possible. He said that a large proportion of their customers are ‘down on their luck.’ Their low-cost help teaches and empowers people to be able to take the maintenance of their bike into their own hands. I would interject here that this hands-on work may also be therapeutic to the folks coming in, giving them a sense of pride in their capabilities and ownership of their work.
The BC encourage utilitarian usage of bikes through the sale of new and used baskets, lights, and saddle-bags.He likes to think that the BC is reducing car traffic in Santa Cruz, but fears that most of the traffic is tourist-driven, who do not tend to visit the BC or bike in Santa Cruz at all. (Hey, A.J., maybe y’all could start a bike rental service?).
Santa Cruz’s Co-op Triad
I visited three cooperative houses in Santa Cruz: the Laurel Manor (a.k.a. Food Not Lawns House), Zami, and the Chavez House.
My friend, Alley, lives at the Laurel Manor in a hay-bale room that shares a wall with the building. Hay-bale construction is an interesting building alternative, and although tarps were needed to keep it rain-proof, it was a pretty cute and cozy room. Alley planned to insulate it with fabric and got a space heater to beat the winter cold. The house has gardens in the front and back and a large banner that reads “Food Not Lawns” hanging on the front with an email address and offer of help with at-home gardening.
I was invited over for their house dinner on Thursday. It was a plethora of make-your-own-taco fixin’s including guacamole, salsa, fresh bell peppers, and lettuce. Mostly organic and freshly made, yum! The meal was topped off by candied orange peels one of the house members made. The folks at the Laurel Manor certainly have the DIY drive, and seem that they are able to do it themselves easier in a group. Some say DIO— Do It Ourselves, in order to emphasize the importance of a community in self-sufficiency.
Alley also took me to the Chavez House, where I returned to do some interviews the next day, and Zami, where we saw a couple of bands play– the Ghostpuppets and Done Been Had. Nothing super-amazing to me, but it was nice to see some local artistry. Zami is the crustier, punkier of the Santa Cruz co-ops and sits at the bottom of Laurel St. There are two buildings on the property plus a municipal bus cum residence. Certainly a place for alternative lifestyles.
I walked up to the Chavez House to see if anyone would entertain me with an interview, and found someone sitting on the front porch with a book and a cigarette. I told him about my field trip, and he agreed to do an interview, putting down his book and offering me a cigarette. His name is Angelo and is a student at UCSC as a Feminist Studies major. His friend had introduced him to the folks at Chavez House, and he later moved in. The community-orientation of the house attracted him, but he felt that even in the apartments on campus he had lived on had a strong sense of community as well.
What he likes about the Chavez House is the diversity of people living there, and although most of the residents are students and have privilege that way, he believes they “care collectively” with projects like the house garden, concerns and actions in support of sustainability, and a sharing of ideas. Living in a co-op already says something about you, Angelo said, since you are choosing to live in such a community setting.
He described the 24 people living at Chavez as anarchist, feminist, and Marxist, but as no one unified -ist. Rather, they are all left/radical, but diverse in their specific views, and that is actually a strength of the community, because they are able to discuss their leanings and learn from each other. “It’s not a radical house, but the people here have radical ideas.”
Angelo hopes to attend graduate school in philosophy or another discipline outside of Feminist Studies, and would like to become a professor and teach. He feels that his studies have given him more of a “way of going about things” rather than specific world change. When I asked him if he thought we were going to hell in a handbasket, he said, “Well, we may or may not be, but I’m going to pretend that it’s not… Ideas need to change, but it’s not sufficient to only change when we [absolutely] need to.”
Angelo thinks that our problems with supplying organic food and mitigating the effects of oil use do not get solved within our current institutions. Radical change is needed, but will only come about through a period of total chaos. It’s not a change in policy that we need, but a radical change in thought. “How we use language, for example, needs to change. We need a new way of talking. I’m not sure how, exactly, but when I say ‘I’ and ‘you,’ ‘I’ radically separates me from you. It’s a way of separating, like the concept of the ‘subject’ in academia. We need to come up with a way of not doing that.” However, he remarks, there is always a flow, and always a next step in this “endless war.” There will always be a margin and marginal people. You can make change, but there will always be more.
Angelo hopes to move to a place of his own in order to attain more privacy than in the Chavez House, but wants to still board there, paying into their collective food and continuing to participate in communal meals and meetings.
After my interview with Angelo, he introduced me to a couple other Chavez people, Brandon and Alley. Brandon doesn’t formally live at the Chavez House, but uses their kitchen to cook Food Not Bombs meals (for the public), and dates Alley, who does room there.
Brandon is technically houseless, but is able to use resources at Chavez as the Food Not Bombs organizer and as a partner to Alley. He has been in Santa Cruz for a little over a year from Maryland. He asked the Chavez people if he could use their oven one day, and they said, “Sure. Why don’t you do Food Not Bombs? No one’s been doing that for a while,” so he took it over. He said that he didn’t want to be a ‘leech,’ but wanted to “give something back” to the people of Chavez. He’s also involved in Bike Polo (polo with bicycles) and travels to meetings in places like Tempe and San Francisco. “It’s fun to roll to another place where other people are doing the same thing.” This comment of his reminded me of my reasons for this trip.
I asked Alley about her experiences at Chavez, and she said she “wouldn’t live anywhere else.” She moved in last October after being introduced to the house through a resident she was dating at the time. She described a crazy time she had recently with a bicycle accident, her cat falling ill, and getting what the doctors thought was appendicitis. After the appendectomy, she was still experiencing pain, and had to take antibiotics for pelvic inflammatory disease.
During all of this, Alley said, she was happy– not happy all the time, but happy everyday. She believes this is due to the large supportive community around her at Chavez House. Some housemates actually saw her right after her bike accident, and picked her up. Other housemates are trained as a nurse and EMT, and offered their help during her medical travails. When her cat was sick, housemates helped to feed and take care of the pet. She was “overwhelmed with support.”
I said that it seems there are economic benefits to living at Chavez. She said, “Definitely. Most people here are students. We’re all learning different things and have so much to offer each other.” They not only share expenses and meals, but also exchange services and knowledge that you would otherwise have to rely on the money system for.
Alley is 19 and Brandon, 25. Alley is a student at Cabrillo Community College and hopes to transfer to UCSC or Cal in Ecology/Botany, and practice agricultural fieldwork. “Ecology is a map of how things can be naturally sustainable.” She stressed that sustainability needs to be accessible. Now, it’s expensive, but something like organic agriculture is actually cheaper for farmers in the long run. Alley wants to figure out ways to make sustainability easier.
Each house member pays $160/month in addition to their rent to cover utilities, co-op organization fees, and food. Chavez gets their food from a local grocer, The Staff of Life, and from farmer’s markets, but buys some organic items from Costco. “We are the people wanting [organic food] the most, and we can’t even feed ourselves.”
