We had stayed in a Super 8 motel (a motel! like, in the movies!), where the dire decor, free coffee served in polstyrene cups and a balcony vista point outside my bedroom door overlooking the main road all excited me very much (no sarcasm!). My only qualm was the fact that there was no coin-operated TV, which I had practically demanded as a pre-requisite for a motel stay 😦 
 
I was actually surprised how much I enjoyed the Boardwalk (me being of the “seen one boardwalk, seen ’em all” mentality), but its hard to walk through here and not feel the nostalgic charm suspended in the air, brushing past the old, worn, but lovingly maintained amusement park rides of a bygone era.

 Like with Monterey, we only stayed the one night so hadn’t too much time to take in our surroundings. By the time we had checked into the motel, settled into our room and gotten a short rest, it was already the early evening which meant that the Boardwalk had effectively shut up shop for the day. Disappointly, we found all the rides had closed and their attendants had mass migrated to a small diner in a corner of the Boardwalk, drinking beers, getting merry, and distinctly uninterested rolling out the red carpet for their distinguished guests.

Nonetheless, a pleasant stroll through this retro time portal was to be had.


The Boardwalk was full of vintage charm, with quirky, colourful little shacks, wobbly wooden rollercoasters, indoor arcades, and a cable car track running above. What with the eerie silence, conspicuous lack of human life, and creaky looking, old school attractions and rides, i couldn’t shake that niggly feeling that, when I least expected it, a flesh eating zombie would leap out from behind the Twinkie shack in an attempt to gorge on my face.

I let him go ahead so the zombies would get to him first.

When I wasn’t thinking about the fastest route to peg it out of there once the zombies had taken out Kieran and had begun to look for their next victim, I did feel like I had stepped back in time, and I lingered briefly on the idea of what it would have been like as a young whippersnapper in the dawning days of 20th Century America, back in the time of Prohibition. Everything around me (except for the Deep Fried Twinkie Shack – that probably didn’t exist back then) would have been the highest pinnacle of delight and entertainment. Imagine no Playstation. Dramatic Chipmunk had not yet debuted on Youtube. Angry Birds, a hundred years away from development.

Twinkies = Zombieland. If you saw the film..

 Times, and taste, have moved on  –  we find things entertaining today that in days gone by, would have been deemed vulgar and obscene. Experiencing a few minutes of the excessively violent Manhunt (luring a victim into an isolated area and hacking him to death with a claw hammer? Bonus points!) would have left many a 1900s-era child bewildered , frightened and emotionally scarred. 

Having said that, a seven foot wooden doll with buck teeth, wild ginger hair and tranny-esque eye shadow, emitting a witch like cackle on loopp and waving grossly disproportionate arms can only be defined as the scariest f*cking thing a child (or grown adult, ahem) could come across in a lifetime. 

Kiddies – meet Laffin’ Sal.

whatthef*ck?

And if you had REALLY masochistic qualities, feel free to click here to see Laffin’ Sal in ACTION. You can thank the good people of Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for the privilege, who shelled out the sum of $50,000 to bring ole Sal onto the Boardwalk and straight into your nightmares (she has no legs, so she probably dragged her torso there using those hideously elongated arms).

After we wandered along the beach-side promenade into ‘Neptune’s Kingdom’ – wherein lay a bunch of assorted arcade rides, machines and what-not.


I decided, rather strangely in hindsight, to invest a quarter into a miniature motorbike ride – the one which looks like a cast iron toy that bobs up and down in an attempt to recreate what it feels like to read you know, a real bike. I slotted the quarter in – there was no bobbing. I realised there had probably been no bobbing since the early 1900s. There was also no button to eject your quarter. Despite the fact that it was always going to be quite a crappy ride that I only invested in for novelty value, I really wanted that quarter back. Pah.

In an effort to avenge the lost value of my stolen quarter, I stuck another one into a palm-reader machine, which could allegedly tell my fortune if I placed my hand onto said mystical palm-reading area. It clunked and rattled about, and spat out a tiny scroll of paper which, when unfurled, read “here you go loser, read your own ‘f*cking fortune”. Ok, it didn’t say that but it might as well have said it, because it was just a drawing of a palm with lines and annotations. I would however, been much more amused if it had told me the former.

Anyway, two unmemorable quarters later, we had exhausted our entertainment options so bid Zombieland and Laffin’ Sal a fond farewell. 

Bye Bye Sal, Bye Bye.

Verdict on Santa Cruz – A relaxed, fun-loving atmosphere, with friendly residents*, a charming Boardwalk and bonus points for potential sightings of washboard-ab adorned surfers.
 
*sample size: receptionist at motel.