Seeing the optical illusions it made possible, the property’s owners opened it as a tourist attraction in about 1940, telling tales of strange compass readings, etc. The main attraction is a small cabin that wound up tilted on the slope of a hill in 1939. Now feel the “gravitational anomaly” that has kept this roadside forest attraction going for decades. You’ve seen the yellow-and-black bumper stickers. Despite the pandemic, ambitious and distinctive restaurants have multiplied in recent years, including Copal (see below), Vim and Bad Animal, a restaurant-bar-bookshop hybrid that I hope to hit on the next trip. For good reason, the city carries a reputation as an artsy, woodsy, liberal enclave. If you find your way there, whether it’s summer or not, you’ll see that Santa Cruz is dominated by surfers, tech workers and students at UC Santa Cruz. I love the sight of its lights and scaffolding at night, and if you remember the 1987 movie “The Lost Boys,” you’ll recognize it as a hangout for a vampire gang led by Kiefer Sutherland. That amusement park might still be the city’s most widely recognized attraction. It has been attracting heat-fleeing visitors from inland California since at least 1907, when the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk opened. The thriving is no great surprise, really: Santa Cruz sits on a handsome perch at the northern edge of the Monterey Bay, neighbored by redwood forests. On a spring day in Santa Cruz, visitors have a perplexing opportunity: to see a city thriving and shrinking, all at once.
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