09.02
Ahhh, Santa Cruz. Rolling surf, redwoods, banana slugs, a perceived happy land of radiant beings living the sunshiney dream of positive thinking. And, oh yeah, a massive heroin problem. Singletrack trails or track marks, let's have a little talk, shall we? Photo courtesy of Nita Rose Evans, City on a Hill Press
There was a meeting last night at the clubhouse in Harvey West park, where Park Superintendent Steve Hammack laid out a plan to build a 1.5 mile trail along the eastern side of Pogonip, linking town to the U-Conn trail leading up to the UCSC campus. Pogonip has a long and contentious history with regard to it’s place in the grander scheme of Santa Cruz town politics, and as such, any new trail proposal through there is likely to raise some hackles. Whether it be the fate of the Pogonip clubhouse, the master plan, the meaning of the phrase “green belt”, or the shifting face of political power in this community, there has been plenty of bareknuckle sparring over Pogonip for a good long time now.
The initial impetus for proposing trail is this: The corridor below the clubhouse, but above and parallel to the railroad tracks, between town and the Rincon fire road, has in the past few years become home to a bustling heroin trade. Following a fire in that region, probably sparked from an illegal camp, the entire area that is now known as “heroin hill” was closed to public access. It was closed because of public safety risk stemming from the following fun things: people with weapons selling heroin in the woods, people with weapons selling heroin camping in the woods, the fire risk associated with armed people camping in the woods and selling heroin, and the toxic hazards ranging from used needles to human feces that accompanied the wholesome family activities associated with selling heroin in the woods. Enforcement is difficult – the area is hilly, and there is no real access aside from some non-regulated unsanctioned trails that lead into the area from the railroad tracks below. The safety hazard became so acute that the park rangers were not willing to enter the area, unless accompanied by the police. The police were unwilling to enter the area unless they were called in. It had become a no-mans land.
How the area became a no-mans land is something we can get into later. For now, let’s just say that mandating a “hands off” no-access policy for green belt land right next to an urban envorinment with an ongoing drug enforcement problem is kind of asking for trouble. And in this case, the concept of “preserving environmental integrity” by restricting access has failed massively. There are tons, literally tons, of the kind of toxic wastes that require hazmat suits to clean up in there now.
Click here to take a look at MBOSC Mark Davidson’s scenic tour of the area…
Anyway, parks and rec came up with the idea to run a multi-use trail straight through heroin hill.
Say What?? Send innocent recreational citizens into a shooting gallery? Yes. It has been done before, in almost identical situations, and with measurable success. I-5 Colonnade in Seattle, Cameron park in Waco, TX, Highbridge Park in NYC, to name a few, in each instance taking a blighted urban environment that had become home to a blind lawlessness (hell, gangs were dumping bodies in Cameron Park…) purely out of disuse, abandonment and ultimately fear, and reinstating them as part of their respective communities again. Sketchy as it sounds to build a trail right through the selling floor of the Surenos, it is a tactic that has proven successful in the past.
So, new trail is proposed, it has the backing and blessing of the park rangers who are understaffed, the resounding endorsement of the police who want more access and more public eyeballs in the area, local residents who fear the heroin trade and the possibility of having their homes engulfed in flames when not being broken into, local fire agencies. Hikers want it, equestrians want it, mountain bikers want it, should be a slam dunk, right?
This is where the meeting stuck in my throat.
The very same people who enacted the original Pogonip master plan are still very much alive, and still very much in favor of maintaining a hands off attitude. They raised concerns that a trail would only increase access for people wanting to engage in illegal activities, they argued that a trail would be yet another encroachment of civilization into the dwindling wildland of Santa Cruz County, they claimed that the trail would be an intrusion, a needless expense, and an erosive problem. That peace and nature would be compromised. And some of them trotted out the old fear that mountain bike riders are renegade bogeymen who exist only to destroy the sense of peace in nature that all other good law abiding citizens (at least the ones who don’t own pets and have easy access to upper Pogonip from their nice hilltop houses near campus, or can easily drive to convenient parking lots in their planet saving hybrids) have a right to enjoy without interruption. Since the heroin trade isn’t being conducted on designated hiking trails further uphill, it’s not the kind of thing that intrudes into their idyll the same way those hellspawn mountain bikers do.
I love wild, untamed country. I love this town, mostly for the way it manages to dance between wild and urban and maintain a sense of balance. I also realize there are more than six billion people on the planet and that we have it lucky here. I realize that there must be compromise and that we don’t always get the winning hand. And for the most part, I came away from the meeting with a sense of optimism about this trail, and this town. But it wasn’t all group hugs, and what saddened me about the meeting can be summed up as follows:
1. Former mayors and councilpeople in this town who at one time would have been considered progressive and liberal in their politics are still very actively clinging to rhetoric that worked for fending off greed based expansion in the ’80s, but are trying to apply the same “not in my back yard” logic to a situation that is trying to better the quality of life for the people who live here. These former progressives have aged and become conservative, and don’t even seem to be aware of it.
2. Speaking of awareness, having seen what goes down in Pogonip firsthand, I can’t help but feel like there’s the three monkey tribute being played out by those in opposition to this plan – see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. “Evil shit is happening right under our noses, has been happening for years, and so long as it stays out of plain view, let’s just let it keep happening. So long as we don’t see it, and so long as it doesn’t spread uphill and encroach on our “nice” trails, we’ll just ignore it.” That is not very sound logic, and it stinks of a much greater rot that is eating at our community than just the heroin trade. “Just” the heroin trade. Fuck, I can’t believe I just wrote that.
3. The greater rot is being ignored. This trail proposal is a small slice of a much larger issue concerning the overall health of our community. Listening to the vehement opposition to the plan, I was struck by the number of people who apparently live in completely impenetrable bubbles. This is about community, our community, the whole of it. Choosing to ignore that, people decided to fixate on how much they hate bikes instead.
4. The Great Trojan Horse Conspiracy. Some of these people really do see mountain bike riders as wheeled locusts. Bringers of plague and doom. While this is definitely an opportunity for the mountain bike community to gain access to an area – in turn lessening the misery of wrestling cars on highway 9, negating the need to trespass on railroad property, allowing some greater loops away from the stink of traffic for people on bikes to move around the county, without encroaching at all on any of the existing trails that mountain bikes are currently prohibited from accessing – opponents of the plan are hung up on the horrifying spectacle that this potentially presents. More access for bikes. That is myopic and shameful.
These last two points sadden me most. In the eyes of these aging, formerly progressive, formerly concerned about general community health and welfare, formerly anti-pollution, formerly anti-traffic congestion, formerly into alternative transport, politically connected landmark figures, a multi-use trail that might get used by a certain percentage of local cyclists is a greater problem than rampant heroin trafficking.
Bikes. Worse than heroin. Someone should make a fucking t-shirt out of that one.
Here’s the local news take on it. Don’t forget to read the comments!
