Guerilla-drivein on Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz

This week the Drive-in relocated to downtown Pacific Avenue, and showed primarily short clips and subversive short films. The screen was a wall next to the largest downtown theater where many lined up to see the Simpsons, Bourne Ultimatum, and Ratatouille. People brought chairs and food and sat on two sides of the intersection at Cooper street. Sound was arranged by broadcasting on 97.5FM via a microradio transmitter set up across the street, and people brought radios to listen. This solved the problem of not being able to broadcast sound with a loud speaker in the location.
When the movie theater finally turned off its marquee, the light quality of the projection was actually quite good, and a diverse range of films was shown, including some local projects. Most of the passerbys received it all well and a number joined watching for a while. Because Cooper street was in the middle of the audience, it became clear during the viewing that there has been no apparent reduction in the number of SUVs on the road; one dark Yukon seemed to be circling the block.
This intersection has some significance in local politics. Some people in city government, and a local newspaper have been on a homeless campaign on Pacific Ave. which probably resulted from bad press after Halloween stabbings, and a sharp increase in visible homeless in the city center after the parks department started a policy of evicting many homeless in secluded camps. Many wealthy towns in the San jose/South bay area have almost entirely driven out their homeless populations, and Santa Cruz has a lot of people living in vans and wild park areas. The scene doesn't resemble San Francisco/Oakland/Berkeley where there are far more clearly mentally ill, and more urban panhandling. At the same time, poorer and rural towns such as Salinas and King City also have plenty of poor people who seem to be hanging out all day, and Santa Cruz's problems have never seemed that bad to anyone with this larger perspective. Anyway, police have been reacting to this pressure by citing people for violations on Pacific such as busking too long in one spot, feeding your pet bunny on the sidewalk, riding a bike the wrong direction on the stretch that is one-way to reach mid-block stores, etc.