Notes from 2007

We're wide open. The world is your oyster.

First, the details of this year's parade:

Meet at the Saturn Cafe parking lot, Pacific & Laurel
5pm Sunset on New Year's Eve
Parade will take off at 5:30pm
and end in a street party at Pacific & Cooper

Okay, now on to other things:

I'd like to invite you to help plan this year's downtown New Year's Eve celebration. Wanna help? It's a planning meeting & potluck. We are brainstorming this year's celebration, and there is all sorts of room and desire for music and politics, guerilla artists and art, intrigue and adventure.

This year we have even more ambitions plans that include a parade, street party, entertainment, and performers well into the night. We hope to attract musicians, street theater performers, puppet shows, square dancers, and circus acts to take over downtown for a whole evening of DIY adventure and entertainment.

And if you can't come to help plan, at least consider participating in the celebration on New Year's Eve. Not only a parade this year, but performances all over downtown.

I invite you to come Tuesday night 6pm

• Tuesday Dec 11th 6pm
• Tuesday Dec 18th 6pm
• Thursday Dec 27th 6pm

I'd love to help inspire a DIY New Year's Parade and street party this year. But mostly, I want an opportunity to work with other people who want to help make this happen.

Last year's street party was a fabulous end to the parade. What can we do this year even more ambitious? My dream, and I'll share it with you just because you asked, is that we turn Santa Cruz New Year's Eve into a fabulous do-it-yourself Festival! All night long, happenings! Music, dance, fireworks, parade, street party, performance, food, art! All free, all participatory, all do-it-yourself. Not just mere spectacle, but people expressing themselves and connecting with each other.

So I hope to serve as a spark to the powder keg, not as an institutional voice of some faceless entity or organization. In other words, I feel like the beauty of this thing is that you and I do it together.