Santa Cruz Gay Pride

I wanted to share with you some images from the Santa Cruz Gay Pride Parade. This is probably the tenth time I've caught it completely on accident. I'll just be making my monthly pilgrimage to Santa Cruz for some shoe shopping and ZOOM! Dykes on Bikes go roaring by:


While it's smaller than the San Francisco parade, it has a lot of heart. I always end up crying happy tears because the parade makes me think that this is how I want the world to be: Everyone is open minded, colorful and having a ton of fun.

The Derby Girls made an appearance:
Probably the best part is when the librarians do a little dance with their carts:
Even Home Depot gets in on the action:
Aaaahhh Santa Cruz!

This was an especially happy parade because, about a month prior to this, there was another parade in Santa Cruz that went very badly. A few losers dressed in black jumped into the parade and smashed some windows; hurting the local, independently-owned businesses. Everything went well during this parade though!

Santa Cruz - Part Two

After Natural Bridges I went to Long Marine Laboratory. I'd never been there before and it's a pretty cool place. It must be hard to live in big sister Monterey Bay Aquarium's shadow though.

They do have some amazing displays.

Afterwards, I went to Downtown Santa Cruz (DSC).

Best. Bookstore. Ever.

DSC is Mecca for shoe lovers. Sockshop and Shoe Company should be considered a holy place.

DSC also has some great art spots. Pretty cool, huh?

After DSC I walked over to Neary Lagoon. Lagoon = Awesome

So, I had a busy day and didn't even see everything Santa Cruz has to offer. But I'll be back!

Santa Cruz - Part One

Santa Cruz is my homie. I spent many weekends of my childhood at the boardwalk, did my undergrad program at UC Santa Cruz and maxed out my credit cards downtown. In recent years I haven't been able to go as much but I had today off so I went to reconnect with my city.

I started with breakfast at Cafe Brasil with my friend Angela.

They serve the best feijoada EVER!!! Rice, beans, collard greens, sausage, oranges... Brazilian jambalaya!

Down the street is a community garden. Have I mentioned how much I love gardening? I'll come back in a couple of months and see how it's doing.

After breakfast I went to Natural Bridges State Beach.

Monarch butterflies live here in the winter but they're gone right now. It's still a beautiful walk though.

I wanted to get some pictures of the tidepools but the tide was too high. So I ended up going around a back way through a mobile home park for seniors. Let me tell you, if heaven was a mobile home park it would look like this.

Check out this pimped-out mobile home:

I finally got to the tide pools but the tide was still too high to get to see much. I want you all to know that I risked my life and fell on my tushie to get this picture.