If you want to understand the politics of coastal California, look no further than the proposed La Bahia Hotel project in Santa Cruz.

You’ll be hearing a lot about the proposal as it heads to the state Coastal Commission for approval next month during the commission’s August meeting in Watsonville on Aug. 11, 12 and 13.

The La Bahia project has been much debated, and it’s a big deal in Santa Cruz. But beyond that, it’s an instructive tale about how awkward California’s political institutions really are.

Nostalgia is denial!" proclaims the smug pedant played by Michael Sheen in Woody Allen's terrific new movie, Midnight In Paris. He's poo-poohing the craving of protagonist Owen Wilson for the bygone era of Paris in the 1920s, a Mecca of creativity and artistic ferment idealized by Wilson's character, Gil, a Hollywood scriptwriter with a Pinocchio-like urge to become a "real" writer.

Does it count as "nostalgia" to crave something you've never actually experienced? Lots of people (especially those of us who write historical fiction, and the majority of those who read it) do feel sometimes like we were born in the wrong era. Who doesn't occasionally have a pang of yearning for some simpler past time when communication wasn't so instant, media wasn't quite so mass (or massive), and a person had time to, you know, sit and think once in a while?

I finally got around to sorting through a box of old electronics in my garage. Maybe you have one too, a purgatory for devices that have been replaced by the latest and greatest but seem too valuable to throw away. There they wait, unloved and trussed up in their own cords, like a geek’s version of Toy Story 3.

“I should probably keep this as a backup,” we think, blowing dust off a chirpy phone cradle modem. The box is full of sounds going extinct. Aren’t you going to miss that Windows 95 startup sound? Or dialing that rotary phone?: Zzzzik! Cla cla cla cla cla cla. Wait, is that a dot matrix printer? Those things sounded like bees trying to sting a live microphone to death.

My box had about fifty pounds of recording hardware that has since been replaced by cheap computer software that weighs nothing. Beneath that was a jumble of obsolete cables, and then, at the bottom, encased in a patterned plastic designed to vaguely remind a mostly blind person of wood, was my first answering machine. From the ’80s.

As we prepare to celebrate this year’s Gay Pride, now the largest annual political gathering in Santa Cruz County, it’s hard to believe that the first marches in the mid-1970s required security to protect the gutsy few out Santa Cruzans who walked down Pacific Avenue.

It was a different time locally and nationally.  Locally in the late 1970s, the University enrollment was at just over 5,000, Downtown Santa Cruz was dead after six, the Miss California Pageant would still call Santa Cruz home for another few years, and the Board of Supervisors and City Council had conservative majorities.

As we prepare to celebrate this year’s Gay Pride, now the largest annual political gathering in Santa Cruz County, it’s hard to believe that the first marches in the mid-1970s required security to protect the gutsy few out Santa Cruzans who walked down Pacific Avenue.

It was a different time locally and nationally.  Locally in the late 1970s, the university enrollment was at just over 5,000, Downtown Santa Cruz was dead after six, the Miss California Pageant would still call Santa Cruz home for another few years, and the board of supervisors and city council had conservative majorities.

This past winter was a big one for the flu; lots of people seemed to get hit who are usually resistant, including me. Fever, aching, fatigue, a cough ... it sucked, and I went through two rounds of it. Then a co-worker said she was starting to feel kind of sick, I started telling her what she should expect, and how much she should rest, and what she should take for it, and ... and then I recognized the look on her face, because it was one I’d been sporting myself.

What she wanted, and what I wanted when I was sick, was a little sympathy. But you don’t get that in this town, you get advice. In much of the world, it's accepted that bad things just happen sometimes, and we should give comfort to one another through the hard times and hope for better. But we're a problem-solving people. And in Santa Cruz, we’ve got more solutions to choose from than anywhere else.

When I was in grade school, my classmates came up with a game that we turned into a writing assigment: “The good news is ... (fill in the blank) and the bad news is .... (fill in the blank).” And it would go on like that for, oh, 500 words or so.

That seems a good model to follow when writing about Downtown Santa Cruz. Because the bad news is that a number of stores are closing or have closed on Pacific Avenue: the Vault, Borders, Velvet Underground, Bugaboo.

But the good news is that times are changing. Changing times mean new opportunities, and already there are a few new faces showing up along the avenue: Betty Burgers’ sit-down restaurant, Legs, Verve and Stripe.

Spring break. Here it comes. And whether you’re imagining Paula Prentiss in Where the Boys Are, or Tom Cruise in Losin’ It, there seems to be an overwhelming focus on the essential rites of the birds and the bees during this season. I hear you pagans, “Duh, it’s Beltane! Time to celebrate fertility!” Chicks and bunnies duly noted, thank you.

Here in Santa Cruz the phrase “Spring Break” is a double-edged sword. Maybe even triple-edged. Kids get a break from school: good edge. Visitors descend on our quiet burg: bad edge. Visitors stuff money in our local economy: good edge. They date our daughters and leave juice boxes on the beach: bad edge. They date our needy friends and leave large tips: good edge.

CNBC has been showing a promo video lately featuring the late Milton Friedman, the free-market, laissez-faire economist. Friedman was hardly your Santa Cruz kind of guy as he argued bookishly against government regulation and what he saw as unreasonable intrusion into free enterprise.

In the video, circa 1980, Friedman asks a question of host Phil Donahue that resonates today, while governments at all levels face grinding debt and the likelihood of cutbacks.

His question: “Is it true that political self-interest is somehow nobler than economic self-interest?”