Santa Cruz Boardwalk

My oh my oh my, it feels good to be back in California!  (not that I ever physically left, but the AZ series of landscapes is done for now)  This is the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and Pier.  There’s been a tourist spot in this location since 1865, and the amusement park itself has been open since 1907.  It was built deliberately to be the “Coney Island of the West”.  One of the highlights is the hand-carved merry-go-round, all 73 horses unique, done by the prolific and famous carousel carving genius, Charles I.D. Looff.  That is the grand circular Cocoanut Grove ballroom that you see just past the pier, which hosted many famous big bands of the 30s and 40s, but not the same Cocoanut Grove that had the fire that killed 500 people.  The Boardwalk is admission free, so take a stroll around the next time you visit Santa Cruz.  In 1925 on nearby Moore’s beach, a mysterious sea monster washed up,  here’s a photo:   The skull of the creature is now in the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.  Unfortunately not much info on this one.  There never is, drat.  I really should have put a train in this picture because the Santa Cruz, Big Trees and Pacific Railway runs right along the beach.  You can hop a train from Felton’s Roaring Camp and motor on  over the hills down to the beach in Santa Cruz.  It’s a scenic route, through gorgeous redwood forests with canyons and ocean views.  They just reopened this line a few years ago and I’ve yet to try it out.  The city itself used to be an official ‘nuclear free zone’ photos: forbidding all nuclear weapons, components of nuclear weapons, enriched uranium, or radioactive waste, you know, as you do.  (sorry about that, libertarians)  But in 2007, the city decided to take down their signs and become presumably, a ‘nuclear choice zone’  (good news, libertarians!)  

I make a comic about a guy from Santa Cruz.  He is a literal nuclear weapon.