Secret Walks: Downtown

On Saturday 9 October, my wife and I were feeling lazy, so we did one of the shortest walks from Secret Walks & Staircases in Santa Cruz, by Debbie Bulger and Richard Stover—the downtown loop.  The loop itself is only 1.5 miles, but we added 1.3 miles at each end, for a total of 4.1 miles.  We did not eat lunch on this walk, but I did have sorbet at Mission Hill Creamery.

Much of the interest of the downtown walk is the public art.  I took pictures of a lot of it, but only include a small sample in this post.  Because discovering the art is half the fun, I’m not revealing the locations (though most are pretty obvious just walking the length of Pacific with a few excursions out a block or two to the west).

A lot of the artwork is in the form of murals, which often are not viewable from directly in front. I played around with perspective transforms on several of the images, to see if I could get a more centered view—many of the views shown here are not possible in the unmodified world.  Some of the murals have also faded rather badly, and I used a little post-processing to restore them to closer to approximations of their original colors.

Dr. Miller’s house was a good coffeehouse for several years, but it has been closed for a while now. I think that there were plans to reopen it as a pizza or beer place, but the pandemic seems to have stopped (or delayed) that. Too bad, as they are one of the few places downtown that would have adequate outdoor seating.

Far West Fungi has a nice signboard.

Jazz Alley leads to a jazz club. That is not the official name of the street, though perhaps it should be.

One of the newest murals downtown.

The middle image here tells where the mural is located.

Surfin Bird is a rather different style from many of the murals downtown.

Another of the new sea-themed murals.

One of the best things about the pandemic has been the closing of a block of Pacific and turning it into a pedestrian area. Now if they would just prohibit amplified “music” on Pacific again, this part of downtown could be quite nice.

I’ve been collecting pictures of gates around town, because I need to replace the gate on my driveway that collapsed a couple of years ago, and I’m trying to identify a style that I like that is compatible with the architecture of my house.

This mosaic is at the entrance of a store that is currently not in use, but where I think something new will open this year. There are way too many vacant storefronts this year, and the property owners don’t seem to be dropping rents to attract businesses.

I only took photos of a few of the 3D artworks—most are not as impressive as the murals.

The Tom Scribner statue downtown is a famous one locally. One year for Halloween, my son dressed as the statue with clothes and bowler hat painted with bronze paint. He did not carry a musical saw, but his “goodie bag” did have the International Workers of the World logo on it (Scribner was famous as a labor activist and “wobbly”).

This sailboat is detail from a much larger mural.

Even some of the drains downtown are artwork.

A detail from a much larger mural, this faux window is particularly nice touch.

A bit more of the same mural.

Another of the new ocean-themed murals.

Part of very long mural.

This mural has faded badly, but I could restore some of the color digitally.

There is not a lot of tile work downtown, though it is generally more durable than murals.

Just a little off the downtown loop

The playground at London Nelson Community Center has been redone since my son played there—they no longer have sand and the hand-operated backhoes, but this dinosaur looks nice.

This mural was restored a few years ago and is looking well-maintained.

The theater entrance at the London Nelson Center is much nicer than portable trailers that more “modern” schools are using.

True story of what?