Word: surf
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...February 2, 1959, Holly and his tourmates were on the eleventh night of their Winter Dance Party tour through the snow-covered Midwest. It was a Monday - a school night - but 1,100 teenagers crammed into Clear Lake, Iowa's Surf Ballroom for two sold out shows. They wore blue jeans and saddle shoes and screamed for 17-year-old Richie Valens, whose single "Donna" was about to go gold. Between sets, Holly solicited people to join him on the charter airplane he'd hired to fly to the next show in Moorhead, Minnesota. The musicians had been traveling...
...Santa Cruzans like Young, the small, 900-sq.-ft., free-admission museum - which is housed in an old lighthouse overlooking the world-famous Steamer Lane surf break, just up the coast from the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk - is much more than a repository for old photographs, torn wet suits and beaten-up longboards. It's a reminder that Santa Cruz was the first place surfing occurred in the continental United States, when, in 1885, three Hawaiian princes who were attending a nearby military school rode waves on redwood boards. In the ensuing years, Santa Cruz became headquarters for surfboard shapers...
...surf-museum campaign also inspired community support to save the other threatened properties. At a Jan. 13 meeting, the city council unanimously approved the various plans to keep them all open until June 30. But it also warned the community organizations, including Young's society, that they would have to keep raising money to keep the doors open longer than that...
Oddly enough, what the surf museum represents - the desire to remain a charming surf town - might be part of what's causing the city's financial wipeout. "In Santa Cruz, we're built out. Our community enjoys the luxury of being a quaint little seaside town," Shoemaker explains, but that means there's "not much opportunity to generate revenue." Tourism is the biggest industry, but that's not paying the bills, she says, especially with sales-tax dollars sliding during the recession. Projects that would have brought in more revenue, such as big-box stores, conference centers and hotels, have...
...knows for sure whether Santa Cruz will be able to remain a quaint surf town and still pay the bills. But there is hope, thanks to its population of hearty and headstrong surfers like Young. "When it gets bigger," he explained, "we just paddle harder...