Santa Cruz 35

Wallace Baine, Baine Street: The man who can save Santa Cruz

The news is bad these days, folks. Libraries, state parks, schools -- they're all facing existential crisis. The state government has become the most decrepit, ramshackle piece of machinery west of Flint, Mich. Polls show that nearly three quarters of Californians now subconsciously associate their Xanax prescription with seeing the name "Schwarzenegger" in print.

Here in Santa Cruz County, we could use a shot of economic adrenaline, and I've got just the thing. Much like what Clint Eastwood has done for Carmel and George Lucas has done for Marin, we need a big-ticket celebrity to move to town and embody the public image of our community -- and, we can only hope, forever eclipse the Umbrella Man as the town's symbol.

In the tourist mind, we're just one of a handful of "Santas" on the West Coast. Sure, we've gotten a bit of separation from our Santa sisters with great surfing and overcooked, Berkeley-by-the-beach lefty politics. But for too many visitors, Santa Cruz is merely Spanish for "Are we getting close to San Francisco yet?"

I don't like celebrity worship anymore than the next snooty, Pacifica-listening, organic-diet elitist. But just imagine how many people come to Carmel in the hopes of spotting Clint picking his teeth outside the Hog's Breath Inn. A big name would give the local economy a nice steroidal boost, you gotta admit.

And who could pull off this small miracle?

Jesse "The Body" Ventura.

I'll wait while you dislodge
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that piece of bagel out of your windpipe.

Yeah, it's a shock to the system. But Jesse's the best candidate out there, by far. Talk about "Keep Santa Cruz Weird": Ventura, a Navy SEAL turned professional wrestler turned state governor, leads the field in that subspecies of celebrity we can only call the semi-respectable crank. On one level, he's a mass-media show dog, Exhibit 1-A in the freak-show vacuity at the heart of America's bizarrely skewed Entertainment Empire. But, on the other hand, Ventura's one of those guys who's not afraid to speak his mind. In May, he went on a talk-show media blitz and the one quote everybody remembers from those appearances -- "Give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I'll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders" -- is enough to get him an annual parade in this town. And he's too slippery politically to stick in that Red State/Blue State nonsense. This dude's more Chartreuse State than anything else.

Wait, isn't he from Minnesota? Yeah, but they're tired of him, and he of them. Most politicians begin their careers as serious public servants only to become circus clowns later. Ventura took the opposite tack. The dude's more maverick than Maverick's.

But would he move here?

When asked about his current life, Ventura commented that he's been spending his days surfing in Mexico. Sounds like a pretty sweet life, the kind of life you'd never want to leave. But maybe Surfer magazine can do some convincing. Surfer just named Santa Cruz the nation's best surf town. Put that in your purely metaphorical pipe and smoke it, Jesse.

OK, so we're going to have to sweeten the pot a little. He'll need a house, preferably on West Cliff Drive, or in Pleasure Point. The city could make it easy for him to open up a little surf shop somewhere, nothing major, just a place where he could pontificate behind the cash register between swells. Maybe O'Neill could design a signature wetsuit with his name on it. A ride on the Boardwalk would be a very nice gesture as well.

And here's the crucial part. We'll have to give him his own beach.

I don't mean a private beach or a surf break for his own personal use. No, we'll need to name a public beach for him, a place where he can go out in the water -- perhaps with a distinctively colored board -- and all other surfers will defer to him on the waves. Sure, that'll take some big-time convincing, but even surfers worry about the economy.

Now, that's a nice package, something old cantankerous Jesse would have to seriously consider. In exchange, maybe he makes a few public appearances, cuts the ribbon on his new Boardwalk ride, hangs with some of the other eccentrics out front of the Coffee Roasting Company, does a long and provocative interview with the hack at the local paper that might lead to a book contract for said hack you never know.

But even if he does none of that, the word will get out that Jesse Ventura hangs out in Santa Cruz, and the rubbernecking tourists will come, with their dollars. And every commercial index in town will rise again, except Xanax prescriptions. That one will fall.

So, first we have to establish a back channel to Jesse down there in Baja. Then, we have to line up our goodies. It's time to move on this, Santa Cruz. Let the other Santa sisters sit passively by while the recession erodes their West Coast lives. We've got work to do.

I'll volunteer to be his driver on that first tour through town. I only ask nobody leave me alone with him. And, please, nobody give the man a waterboard.