Pubdate: Tue, 13 Aug 2002
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2002 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Section: National
Author: Evelyn Nieves

SANTA CRUZ, CITY OF COLORFUL STREET LIFE, RESOLVES TO BE SOMEWHAT LESS SO

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Aug. 11 -- Early in the morning -- well before the 
tourists started straggling out of their motel rooms or the teenage 
cliques, baby strollers, street clowns and musicians turned the streets 
into a summer Sunday's parade -- you could see the yellow-chalk messages on 
the sidewalks of downtown Pacific Avenue quite clearly.

"Illegal to Beg Here, Aug. 24th," read one. "Illegal for Musicians, Aug. 
24th," read the next. "Illegal to Spare Change Here, Aug. 24th," said another.

Mikhail Amartseff, the first musician of the day to set up shop, was 
sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk a few feet from chalked messages, 
tapping low, mournful heartbeats with his West African D'Jembe drum. In 
front of him, he placed a small wicker basket to collect change, and a sign 
made with black marker on scrap cardboard: "Street musicians need love, 
too. P.S. I am employed. Not getting paid until Friday."

"I want people to know I work, just like they do," said Mr. Amartseff, a 
29-year-old traveler who sleeps in a rented van. He recently found a job in 
construction "in case I can't be out here anymore," a good idea on his part.

Come Aug. 24, performers like Mr. Amartseff will not be able to sing for 
their supper on the streets of downtown Santa Cruz, a city where doing just 
that is a tradition as old as tie-dyed clothes.

The City Council, acting on relentless complaints from merchants, shoppers 
and others about the growing rowdiness of the downtown street life, has 
approved several ordinances that increase to 14 feet, from the current 6, 
the distance that panhandlers must stay from building entrances, kiosks, 
drinking fountains, telephones, midblock crosswalks and fences. That pretty 
much rules out anywhere on Pacific Avenue, the main drag. The rules also 
ban Frisbee playing; hacky sack, the game played by kicking a beanbag; and 
other sports.

But Santa Cruz is not like other cities -- Berkeley, nearly two hours 
north, is probably the closest to its political sensibilities -- and so the 
ordinances did not come easily. They took weeks of public meetings full of 
tortured soul-searching and debate about what it meant for Santa Cruz to 
clean up the streets that define it.

The streets of this seaside city have long been messy with humanity in all 
its forms. Counterculture youths drawn by Santa Cruz's famous, or infamous, 
tolerance have long haunted the benches and corners throughout downtown. 
The distinct scent of pot is as common as cigarette smoke in a Paris cafe. 
On one weekend, clowns with balloon animals, a folk trio with an accordion 
and ukuleles, a Spanish-guitar player and, yes, even a mime delighted 
passers-by. Creative ways to ask for change ("Dreaming of a hamburger," 
said one sign; "Expecting to expect a baby," said another) brought smiles 
and comments from the throngs on the streets.

What has prompted the outcry is a summer when the streets have proved too 
lively. A gang fight broke out at a popular body-piercing shop, where a 
gunman, shooting at an escaping van, wounded two people. Two weeks later, a 
tourist heeding nature's call pried open the jammed door of a Porta-Potty 
and found a 23-year-old man dead of a heroin overdose. A scorned panhandler 
stabbed a man leaving a downtown restaurant. Hacky-sack players have 
threatened and berated passers-by who inadvertently interrupt their games.

Merchants, reluctant to speak out in public for fear of harassment, have 
written the City Council to say that customers have complained that their 
children are being threatened by deranged street people or taunted as they 
try to negotiate past the throngs who load the streets with their possessions.

"Everyone says it's out of control," said the manager of one Pacific Avenue 
shop. Many of the youths are no problem at all, he said, but a few "have 
really scared people, because they curse at them, or urinate in front of 
them as a way to get in their faces."

In a few weeks, the people of Santa Cruz will know whether the new rules 
will make any difference, or too much of one. For musicians like Mr. 
Amartseff, who sits outside Peet's Coffee in the morning before taking his 
soft drumming to the boardwalk, the ordinances are a slap in the face.

"We're what gives Santa Cruz its mystique," he said, as he demonstrated how 
his drum makes high and low, "almost spiritual" sounds. 
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