• Luz Scruz

• Luz Scruz

• Luz Scruz

• Luz Scruz

• Luz Scruz

• Luz Scruz

• Luz Scruz

• Luz Scruz

Musings on fate & fortune

of Luz Scruz, California

by

cbjazz@gmail.com

your name here

• Luz Scruz

• Luz Scruz

Landscapes seem to shape our thinking. All around the world, across very different cultures, wide-open plains inspire cattle ranchers to drive huge trucks very fast. And unforgiving oceans inspire seafaring fishing communities to expect lost ships to reappear, as high altitudes inspire mountain folk to lovingly tend their sheep and seem so happy to see you as a visitor. Desert and urban scapes make that rats as do people, that is to go around armed to the teeth, or to hide, or run around, frenzied, on their little wheels. So, it follows that the unstable, pyroclastic cliffs on which Luz Scruz was build, would suggest some particularly unstable thinking in the human mind. After all, these cliffs are forever slowly tipping this improbable settlement into the wide Pacific ocean.

The quaint seaside towne of Luz Scruz, CA, is a towne, not a town, for marketing reasons. Its history is firmly rooted in its proud origins as the over-the-hill destination of the 19th century Frisco booze and whores tourism trade. It flourished whenever the Frisco Vice Squads clamped down at home and survived the dry stretches by clear cutting trees, mining lime and making dynamite in the hills directly above it. Yet year-round population, thanks to the prolific prostitutes, outgrew it’s scanty flat flood-zones quickly, despite all the man-made flooding, avalanches, and general pestilence.

But residents got tired of the general sliding downhill and proposed a dam of multi-tiered hillside colleges and student housing in the woods to effectively slow boulders and mud. With this promise of security, big money could be attracted to build these very structures, plus a good many extra box stores around the Down-towne to provide the quality of low-pay, part-time employment that can string out a 4 or even 2-year education indefinitely.  Talking about hoisting yourself, by yanking your own bootstraps! Perhaps the charms of the working ladies was severely under-reported.

The Luz Scruz Mountain Goat College, the 2-year option, with its signature interminable central stairway, offers its ever popular Mental Health/ Nursing program and a variety of college bands. And there is the much-further-up-the-hill, and very much out of sight, UC Fog, the 4-year option. No one seems to remember what all the letters actually stand for. "University of California Forestry for Outstanding Ganga," comes to mind. Or: "Far Out, Got some more of that smoke,  bro, …..?" The major fields of study appear to be:  Mental health/Nursing for transfer students, and the ever popular all-American: “Various Ways of Asking for Money.”

In the meantime around Frisco, a hundred-some cities, named mostly after the trees no longer there, or the back of the mountains now obscured by the pollution, or beatified dead guys buried on the other side of the planet, had sprung up. And then they all merged into one huge, smog-covered urban expanse called the Bah Area. Its belching factories did create a hard-working workforce. When not working, these workers are possessed by an overwhelming urge to flee as fast as possible. And since the Luz Scruz coast is suitably endowed with rocky beaches that boast of truly treacherous surf, these workers only have to drive themselves over the hill as soon as released from the factories, so they can to rush like a torrent of suicidal lemmings to the water.

But unlike lemmings, most Bah-Areans are starved for attention.  A UC Fog graduate standing in the middle of the road waving a simple sign of “Gimmy Money” can have an immediate copy-cat effect a surprised Bah-Arean to abandon his precious wheel and start waving a sign of his own at the next intersection.

But it is the road-side offerings of real food and drink, that will make these workers get out of their cars and spend their hard-earned cash. The last line of defense to not waste precious wallets into the ocean, is a clever contraption called the Boardwalk. Here rides have been constructed specifically to simulate the many different ways of jumping of a cliff, but without any actual mass-drowning. Plus everyone can buy lots to eat, and then go home so they can do it all over next weekend.

So, there is employment in restaurants in Luz Scruz. But every waitperson gets inevitably replaced by a prettier waitperson, and thus every Luz Scruzer risks that (s)he will be no longer able to sustain her/his education habit. Suffice to say, that many of the more energetic locals are motivated to study how to individualize a more entertaining, and more auditory noticeable "Way to Ask For Money," particularly at restaurants. Or to put it in Luz Scruz lingo:

• When busking,
• you got to hustle in this bustle
• to rustle some case-bling,,
• and, don’t get muzzled
• in a tussle with the bossman
• for badly fake-book-ing…... 

The usual upper-class game of golf, played by the bosses of the Bah Area workers, far away from any Boardwalk, is masterfully parodied here with the Botched Cheese version: omitting all sticks and holes. and making the  balls so large and gaudy that they are easy to find after flinging them around the barn. Did I mention the strong drinks? Add to this: lots of karaoke jazz, and rock, “music” to liven-up your buzz. Everyone dances, or has a great time comparing who is the most broke.

A particularly popular instrument for this locale for auditory attention calling is a tiny guitarrilla, called the Ukulele. This is a non-threatening instrument for a worker, and the beloved favorite of the Proudly Retired, because, hey, no college is required.

On the other end of the spectrum, those who have plumbed the great depths of the actual study of “Music” at the lofty heights of UC Fog, can be found busking, in novel and intricate ways, playing a variety of very pricey instruments, to a happily masticating audience at the many down-towne eateries. For example: the Schtrudeling Bakery features a new line-up of fresh musicians noodling on their instruments every day. And those who fail to find pecuniary reward in this particular "Way of Asking for Money," will inevitable try teaching it, or study Mental Health/Nursing. Or they will end up with a nurse.

Once a generation, when economic despair sets in, the mountains intervene and resume  their age-old dance of musical chairs on the Pacific Rim. A lot of Luz Scruz will fall down, but when the dust clears, the pecking order, too, will have been shook up.  And there will be plenty of construction jobs to tighten all Luz Scruz for a while.

• Luz Scruz