Click on any photo to see a larger version of it.



A short drive from the bustling metropolis of San Francisco is a little seaside town that has been on my bucket list to visit since I walked into the Wheaton Grand Theater in Wheaton, IL back on the 31st of July of 1987.



On that hot summer night I pedaled my bike into downtown Wheaton to see a little movie with a star that wasn't listed in the credits.



That star was the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and the movie was  "The Lost Boys".



Ok if you haven't seen The Lost Boys I'll give you the Cliff Notes version.  Two kids move to a seaside California town with a seaside amusement park; portrayed brilliantly by the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.  In their new town they run into some teenage vampires.  Add a bunch of horror, action and some comedy and you have one of the best movies to come out of the 1980's. Being an 80's horror/action/comedy The Lost Boys is filled with some great lines "Death by stereo" after a bloodsucker is impaled into a jukebox and "My own brother a blood sucking vampire".  The movie is a classic.



Much of the action in the movie centers around the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and after walking from one length of this park to the other the filmmakers completely caught the essence of this place.  You get a mixture of families, freaky people, surfers and everything in between.  You have the sun on your face, the ocean breeze blowing past, the smells of garlic fries, the sounds of screams emanating from rides.  It is a wonderful sensory overload all while the Echo & The Bunnymen version of "People are Strange" from the Lost Boys Soundtrack rolled by in my head.  The experience was exactly what I had hoped for and I quickly fell in love with Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. 



Next


Copyright 1999 - 2024

Paul B. Drabek