Before they'd even had a chance to get their sand-legs, the Bennies had to go back upstate, or to the city, or to Pennsylvania or wherever. We were the Chosen, the beach kids. It was our beach. If it was there for 10 years, as many as 230 million cars passed under that sign, a big chunk of them from San Jose and its suburbs. Turf-conscious high schoolers shout it from cars.
Annoyed surfers carve it into cliff walls.
Tense businessmen stuck in the summer-long traffic jam surrounding the corner of Seventh Avenue and Murray Street mutter it under their collective breath. Bob has given some thought to the subject, and he has worked it into something like a political position or a conspiracy theory. Meanwhile, our cool little funky, artistic town gets turned into a mini-Silicon Valley. Santa Cruzans do not, like snooty Parisians, have a reputation for hating everyone in Europe and the rest of the world outside their city. The citizens of Surf City are famously friendly, even to their cousins from over the hill.