(Santa Cruz Boardwalk)

I love the summer–especially here in California. The hot, dry days. The cool, breezy nights. Driving down Sunset Blvd. from downtown all the way to the Pacific Ocean with a beautiful lady at your side. That’s what this time of year is all about. I wanted to write about my favorite summer, but it’s hard to choose just one. However, if I had to—it might have to be the summer of 1990. I was in college at UC Santa Cruz and instead of spending my vacation in L.A. or New York as I did in the past, I decided to stay in S.C. with my best bud/housemate Matt and it was probably THE MOST AWESOME THREE MONTHS OF MY LIFE!

First, we were lucky to find this great two-story Victorian duplex right across the bridge from the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and the beach. For just $350 a month/each, we lived in a house with our own rooms and a balcony that overlooked the ocean which was just a few steps away. Even back then, that was a steal. Matt was from Cupertino, which was over the hill near San Jose, so all his high school friends would come over and our place became summer party camp. There was always someone crashing in our living room (or if we were lucky, in our bedrooms)—luckily, we found this coffin that we used as a combination coffee table and guest bed. Neither of us were 21 yet and we were mostly broke (more on this later), but people would always come by with booze and pot, so there was a constant supply of Miller Genuine Draft, Jack Daniels and the finest sticky Northern California ganja to keep us in good spirits.

We were all music fanatics so we’d spend a lot of time playing music on the vintage record player we found in a thrift store or jamming. Matt bought an old bass, I had an old guitar and we taught ourselves enough chords to play serviceable Stones and U2 songs. Whatever extra money we had went to live music. I think 1990 was the year where I attended the most shows. According to my journal, I went to over 150 concerts that year—everything from Mr. Bungle at the Full Moon Saloon in San Francisco to Miles Davis at Stanford’s Frost Amphitheatre (played the whole concert with his back to the audience) to Paul McCartney at UC Berkeley’s Memorial Stadium.

During the summer, we must have headed into San Francisco almost every weekend to check out some musical act. Recently, I found some of the ticket stubs I saved from that summer:

As I mentioned above, we were mostly broke and spent the first part of our vacation searching for work with no luck. I think we even got rejected by McDonald’s. But this was a blessing in disguise—I don’t want to romanticize poverty, but there was something liberating about being young, penniless, but hanging out with your buddies who were all in the same situation. Aside from our beloved music, we really couldn’t spend money on anything else so we had to be creative.

We’d cook huge pots of spaghetti or chili that would last us all week. We’d all pile into my truck and head out to the beach or camping in the surrounding mountains or just take long drives up or down the coast and see what adventures we could get into. I had a bow and arrow set and we’d sit out on our balcony blasting Bad Brains or the B-52s and shoot arrows across the roofs of the unsuspecting cars heading for the Boardwalk.

And thank God we had the Santa Cruz Boardwalk. I don’t know if they still have this, but every Tuesday and Wednesday was 25-cent night. That meant all the rides plus the hot dogs and sodas were only 25 cents on those days. So we spent every Tuesday and Wednesday night at the Boardwalk where for two dollars we could get two hot dogs, a soda, ride the roller coaster twice and still have enough for video games. It was also a great place to just people-watch, especially the beautiful California girls with their skimpy summer clothing.

A few weeks into the summer, we both got jobs. Matt actually started working at the Boardwalk, which was great ‘cause now we could do what used to cost us 25 cents for free. I somehow lucked out and got my dream job as the assistant manager of Rainbow Records, a Bay Area record store chain. Not only was I being paid to be around music all day, but I had access to cheap/free CDs and concert tickets.

  (Downtown Santa Cruz)

This was after the 1989 earthquake which devastated most of downtown Santa Cruz so many of the businesses were temporarily located in makeshift tents or other non-traditional spaces. Rainbow Records was located inside the old Bank of America building along with three other businesses. I somehow talked myself into the job. Mikhal, the manager, ran the business alone but happened to be looking for someone to assist so he could take a vacation. He was about to give the job to another guy when I walked in. I told him there was no one else who knew more about music then me and if he gave me a test and I could get every question right, he should hire me. He agreed. And although I did get one out of the twenty-five music questions he asked me wrong (I didn’t know how Charlie Parker got his nickname “Bird”), he hired me.

Mikhal was a great boss and loved music as much as I did. He’d tell me stories about seeing U2 play their first San Francisco show—they only knew a few songs so had to play their full set twice to fill up the time, or the time a young girl band called the Go-Gos came to play at the Catalyst (a local club) and partying with them afterwards and doing coke off Jane Wiedlin’s cleavage. And after a week, Mikhal left for a two-week vacation with his son and entrusted me to run the store. I was the only employee. I was in heaven!

I got to play music all day and talk to some of the coolest and most knowledgeable customers. Even though we were a chain, we were in essence a small mom-and-pop operation, but people came to our store instead of the bigger outfit a few blocks away because Mikhal was passionate about music and loved his customers. I wanted to make sure to keep that reputation alive on my watch. Customers would ask for recommendations and I prided myself on finding the right music for each person. The best feeling would be when they’d come by later and tell me how much they loved the album I recommended.

I also loved coming to work every morning because one of the employees working at the antique store across from us in the same building was this really hot hippie chick—she was absolutely gorgeous! She was in her mid-20s, so much older than me, and only saw me as a goofy kid, but I always tried to play CDs that I thought she’d like because then she’d walk over and we’d talk about music. I still think there’s nothing sexier than a beautiful woman who knows her music.

Perhaps I am romanticizing the past, but I don’t have a single bad memory from that summer. I remember this one day when I was hanging out at the beach with my friends, watching the most amazing sunset and thinking, “man, I better try to remember this moment exactly as is because one day, I’ll look back and think how wonderful all this was.” I hope everyone reading this gets to experience a summer like that.

(Thanks to Michael H. for scanning my old ticket stubs for use in this piece)