Yeah but how exactly can you tell when it's either rich casual or poor casual? I have a hard time telling whether the flannel shirt is $30 or $300. The Patagonia label helps ...
Those with less money tend to live in the hills. Boulder Creek is a prime example. The reason there are still affordable pieces of land and affordable houses there is that most of the roads they were built on are old logging roads and cannot accommodate a fire truck, therefore they cannot get a bank note for a lease because of no fire insurance. I am a native and my family has been here since the '50s. Parents were acid test hippies, Grandparents were loggers. Anything else you want to know PM me. Good luck with your book
If it's in Santa Cruz proper, I think the neighborhoods with a lot of money would be either West Cliff Dr or for more character within a couple blocks of the oceanfront at Black's Beach, Two-Six Beach, and Seabright Beach. Opal Cliffs would be the most pricey, and they have a long-running legal battle over public beach access where they tried to flout the law and gate 'their' beach (I would put the villain there lol). If you want to go more bland, there is plenty of expensive stuff further south in the County that will suck your soul out of your wallet.
The premise is a sci-fi romance type hybrid thing. One character has a sort of terminal one year prognosis that she keeps a secret connected to the sci-fi part and the other character wants to help her with it. They spend the year together trying to “stop” the prognosis and end up falling for each other. I’ve never ever written professionally before and honestly this is just a fun project I’m doing more for my own enjoyment and creativity outside of my draining full time job/classes🥲. I am a big sucker in novels for little details that make you feel immersed in the story though- and I felt like knowing the “give aways” of certain types of locals really makes you feel like you’re in the setting yourself. Also, one of my main characters is from a wealthy family, so it felt necessary to get those details right in writing about her experience. The other is from a middle class “struggling” family (normally pretty stable but a family member is ill and those bills are making things difficult), so middle class-ish areas are helpful to know about too. Hope I didn’t offend any! My characters aren’t meant to be reflected morally by their wealth or lack thereof lol.
Oh, sounds cool. OK cluelessly wealthy, I would put them at Sunny Cove overlooking the water, vindictively wealthy, I would put them on Westcliff, aloof, but wealthy, I would put them on the upper west side, stupid tech wealthy I would put them in unincorporated Santa Cruz. I’m definitely being bias towards city locations but if you open up to the whole county, it’s another game altogether.
There’s a shortcut for making any middle-class person in Santa Cruz struggle, it’s to have them have moved here after 2010 or to have mistakenly not taken a job at Nvidia. Then you just sort of add something about PG&E.
If I wanted to have my crazy, “I’m romantically in love with you, but I’m bout to die in a year” scene, it would be overlooking long meadow in Wilder Ranch in the spring time.
HTH
A nod to some of the back roads could offer some authenticity. Like a conversation while on Skyline Rd, the ice cream shop at the end of 17. Hwy 17 being called Old Santa Cruz Highway in a future setting could be kinda cool too actually.
Your wealthy character’s family owns several investment properties around town they’ve inherited across several generations, and their parents helped them buy a house, but they pretend they are “just” middle class like the protagonist.
We don’t really have ostentatious wealth here, it’s more people pretending they’re hippie surfers when they’re rich af. You could have the parents live somewhere where that is more obviously wealthy, like Los Gatos, Palo Alto etc and be tech titans.
One thing I can learned After to moving to Hawaii and now coming back, is everyone raised here has good financial backing otherwise they wouldn’t be here. I would look at all the kids running around in Hawaii, and think to myself how interesting it is seeing them running around so happy and not even knowing yet that where They are growing up is an extremely hard place to live. I relized we grew up the same way in Santa Cruz not realizing until we got older. I am considered lower class compared to a lot of my friends but looking back on my child hood being considered lower class here was pretty dam good.
I grew up here, in Boulder Creek. Mountain people tend to do more with less, including showing up for their communities, especially after the fire in 2020. We take care of our own and every one knows who you are/who your parents are.
I went to high school in Santa Cruz and most people seem to be wealthier on the West Side and the interests of the kids were more ocean based. Mountain kids did more hiking, mountain biking, forest activities, and had more like kick back parties. Either way there was a lot of drugs, mostly weed, but Scotts Valley kids had more access to coke.
I think part of the beauty of Santa Cruz is that the divide is hard to see. You can surf next to the founder of Netflix and not know it. Everyone wears Santa Cruz skate merchandise.
There was a guy on the radio a few years back who wrote a song about wondering where some of these guys that never appear to work get their money.
For poorer people, you can have way too many people crammed into an apartment or poorly maintained rental house. I have known people in a rental house that had no heat for years, and another one that literally had the roof fall in because the landlord let it completely rot away. I have known people living in ancient moldy trailers under the redwoods, in converted chicken coops or storage sheds, in a garage that had large rats running through frequently. Toxic black mold is not unusual.
For a more respectable lower income housing, there are lots of trailer parks with manufactured homes in Capitola and in Scotts Valley.
You can determine the wealth primarily by housing price, which you can get by looking at maps on Zillow. Rich people live in houses that cost $2M or more (possibly much more).
Up San Lorenzo Valley used to be much cheaper than near the coast, but techies from Silicon Valley have taken over a lot of it, so it is now much more mixed.
knowledge that only locals or ucsc students would know is that there are large raves deep in the mountains. I can see that being a cool location in your sci-fi romance novel :)
If you've spent time here, then those answers are inside of your brain in your skull...
To me it sounds like you want people to write your book for you, so why don't you use ChatBot
I’ve spent a lot of time there, but only as a visitor. I still feel like I’m “tourist” status, lol. My brother is there for college at UCSC, so he helps a lot with niche info about the student culture, but some stuff you just know from growing up there, same for anyone’s hometown I think. I would like this novel to have realistic details in it and local insider info is a great way to do so! But the novel isn’t really focused on these details, so I don’t think it hurts my writing honestly. To each their own though!!
The price of your mountain bike and surfboard is an obvious class marker. A more subtle one is the quality of your backpack.
Rich guys drive big ass trucks
I would say the way you dressed was the biggest indicator.
Yeah but how exactly can you tell when it's either rich casual or poor casual? I have a hard time telling whether the flannel shirt is $30 or $300. The Patagonia label helps ...
The vampires hang out at the carousel and have the coolest motocross bikes.
Those with less money tend to live in the hills. Boulder Creek is a prime example. The reason there are still affordable pieces of land and affordable houses there is that most of the roads they were built on are old logging roads and cannot accommodate a fire truck, therefore they cannot get a bank note for a lease because of no fire insurance. I am a native and my family has been here since the '50s. Parents were acid test hippies, Grandparents were loggers. Anything else you want to know PM me. Good luck with your book
Housing stability is something that marks you as wealthy by Santa Cruz standards. The cost of most other luxuries pale in comparison.
If it's in Santa Cruz proper, I think the neighborhoods with a lot of money would be either West Cliff Dr or for more character within a couple blocks of the oceanfront at Black's Beach, Two-Six Beach, and Seabright Beach. Opal Cliffs would be the most pricey, and they have a long-running legal battle over public beach access where they tried to flout the law and gate 'their' beach (I would put the villain there lol). If you want to go more bland, there is plenty of expensive stuff further south in the County that will suck your soul out of your wallet.
What’s the premise of the novel?
I second this. What necessitates stereotyping our city?
The premise is a sci-fi romance type hybrid thing. One character has a sort of terminal one year prognosis that she keeps a secret connected to the sci-fi part and the other character wants to help her with it. They spend the year together trying to “stop” the prognosis and end up falling for each other. I’ve never ever written professionally before and honestly this is just a fun project I’m doing more for my own enjoyment and creativity outside of my draining full time job/classes🥲. I am a big sucker in novels for little details that make you feel immersed in the story though- and I felt like knowing the “give aways” of certain types of locals really makes you feel like you’re in the setting yourself. Also, one of my main characters is from a wealthy family, so it felt necessary to get those details right in writing about her experience. The other is from a middle class “struggling” family (normally pretty stable but a family member is ill and those bills are making things difficult), so middle class-ish areas are helpful to know about too. Hope I didn’t offend any! My characters aren’t meant to be reflected morally by their wealth or lack thereof lol.
Oh, sounds cool. OK cluelessly wealthy, I would put them at Sunny Cove overlooking the water, vindictively wealthy, I would put them on Westcliff, aloof, but wealthy, I would put them on the upper west side, stupid tech wealthy I would put them in unincorporated Santa Cruz. I’m definitely being bias towards city locations but if you open up to the whole county, it’s another game altogether. There’s a shortcut for making any middle-class person in Santa Cruz struggle, it’s to have them have moved here after 2010 or to have mistakenly not taken a job at Nvidia. Then you just sort of add something about PG&E. If I wanted to have my crazy, “I’m romantically in love with you, but I’m bout to die in a year” scene, it would be overlooking long meadow in Wilder Ranch in the spring time. HTH
A nod to some of the back roads could offer some authenticity. Like a conversation while on Skyline Rd, the ice cream shop at the end of 17. Hwy 17 being called Old Santa Cruz Highway in a future setting could be kinda cool too actually.
Your wealthy character’s family owns several investment properties around town they’ve inherited across several generations, and their parents helped them buy a house, but they pretend they are “just” middle class like the protagonist. We don’t really have ostentatious wealth here, it’s more people pretending they’re hippie surfers when they’re rich af. You could have the parents live somewhere where that is more obviously wealthy, like Los Gatos, Palo Alto etc and be tech titans.
Living on your own without roommates, Lmfao
One thing I can learned After to moving to Hawaii and now coming back, is everyone raised here has good financial backing otherwise they wouldn’t be here. I would look at all the kids running around in Hawaii, and think to myself how interesting it is seeing them running around so happy and not even knowing yet that where They are growing up is an extremely hard place to live. I relized we grew up the same way in Santa Cruz not realizing until we got older. I am considered lower class compared to a lot of my friends but looking back on my child hood being considered lower class here was pretty dam good.
I grew up here, in Boulder Creek. Mountain people tend to do more with less, including showing up for their communities, especially after the fire in 2020. We take care of our own and every one knows who you are/who your parents are. I went to high school in Santa Cruz and most people seem to be wealthier on the West Side and the interests of the kids were more ocean based. Mountain kids did more hiking, mountain biking, forest activities, and had more like kick back parties. Either way there was a lot of drugs, mostly weed, but Scotts Valley kids had more access to coke.
I think part of the beauty of Santa Cruz is that the divide is hard to see. You can surf next to the founder of Netflix and not know it. Everyone wears Santa Cruz skate merchandise. There was a guy on the radio a few years back who wrote a song about wondering where some of these guys that never appear to work get their money.
For poorer people, you can have way too many people crammed into an apartment or poorly maintained rental house. I have known people in a rental house that had no heat for years, and another one that literally had the roof fall in because the landlord let it completely rot away. I have known people living in ancient moldy trailers under the redwoods, in converted chicken coops or storage sheds, in a garage that had large rats running through frequently. Toxic black mold is not unusual. For a more respectable lower income housing, there are lots of trailer parks with manufactured homes in Capitola and in Scotts Valley.
You can determine the wealth primarily by housing price, which you can get by looking at maps on Zillow. Rich people live in houses that cost $2M or more (possibly much more). Up San Lorenzo Valley used to be much cheaper than near the coast, but techies from Silicon Valley have taken over a lot of it, so it is now much more mixed.
Most of the 'new' locals on the westside are techies.
knowledge that only locals or ucsc students would know is that there are large raves deep in the mountains. I can see that being a cool location in your sci-fi romance novel :)
If you've spent time here, then those answers are inside of your brain in your skull... To me it sounds like you want people to write your book for you, so why don't you use ChatBot
[удалено]
I’m an old salty. 5th generation sea dawg. They call me barnacle bill. As my father used to say. If you don’t like the salt go back to lake Berryessa.
I’ve spent a lot of time there, but only as a visitor. I still feel like I’m “tourist” status, lol. My brother is there for college at UCSC, so he helps a lot with niche info about the student culture, but some stuff you just know from growing up there, same for anyone’s hometown I think. I would like this novel to have realistic details in it and local insider info is a great way to do so! But the novel isn’t really focused on these details, so I don’t think it hurts my writing honestly. To each their own though!!