The Editor's Back Fence

Myth-Busting 101: Street-Sitting Ban Does NOT Work for Santa Cruz Either

Friday October 12, 2012 - 10:46:00 AM
Mike O'Malley
Mike O'Malley
Mike O'Malley
Mike O'Malley

“Former Santa Cruz Mayor Rotkin said that in the eighteen years since the city passed its sit/lie law, business has generally seen an uptick. The businesses that flank Santa Cruz's main thoroughfare on Pacific Avenue are a robust mix of chains and smaller boutiques.’

So, who are you going to believe? What Express Music Editor Rachel Swan quotes a Santa Cruz lifer politician as claiming, instead of your own eyes? Has the ban on sitting on the street really worked in that city?

Last Monday night (a school holiday) we took five or six girls (they moved too fast to count), including our granddaughters, downtown in Santa Cruz for ice cream. Along the way we snapped a few pictures of just some of the sidewalk sitters who are still there in abundance, contrary to the ex-Mayor’s claims.

(Santa Cruz is awash in ex-Mayors, who serve only a one year term—the father of our granddaughters is one of them. Now there’s a Santa Cruz law that Berkeley should adopt!)

Another contradiction to Rotkin’s report—as we walked along we noticed to the kids’ distress that their favorite Mexican restaurant, Acapulco, where they’d been going all their lives, had shut down, abruptly and with no explanation, adding yet another empty storefront to the less-than-robust Pacific street mix.

Will Measure S fix downtown Berkeley? Not a prayer...