SANTA CRUZ, CITY OF COLORFUL STREET LIFE, RESOLVES TO BE SOMEWHAT LESS SO

SANTA CRUZ, Calif., Aug. 11 -- Early in the morning -- well before the
tourists started straggling out of their motel rooms or the teenage
cliques, baby strollers, street clowns and musicians turned the streets
into a summer Sunday's parade -- you could see the yellow-chalk messages on
the sidewalks of downtown Pacific Avenue quite clearly.

"Illegal to Beg Here, Aug. 24th," read one. "Illegal for Musicians, Aug.
24th," read the next. "Illegal to Spare Change Here, Aug. 24th," said another.

Mikhail Amartseff, the first musician of the day to set up shop, was
sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk a few feet from chalked messages,
tapping low, mournful heartbeats with his West African D'Jembe drum. In
front of him, he placed a small wicker basket to collect change, and a sign
made with black marker on scrap cardboard: "Street musicians need love,
too. P.S. I am employed. Not getting paid until Friday."

"I want people to know I work, just like they do," said Mr. Amartseff, a
29-year-old traveler who sleeps in a rented van. He recently found a job in
construction "in case I can't be out here anymore," a good idea on his part.

Come Aug. 24, performers like Mr. Amartseff will not be able to sing for
their supper on the streets of downtown Santa Cruz, a city where doing just
that is a tradition as old as tie-dyed clothes.

The City Council, acting on relentless complaints from merchants, shoppers
and others about the growing rowdiness of the downtown street life, has
approved several ordinances that increase to 14 feet, from the current 6,
the distance that panhandlers must stay from building entrances, kiosks,
drinking fountains, telephones, midblock crosswalks and fences. That pretty
much rules out anywhere on Pacific Avenue, the main drag. The rules also
ban Frisbee playing; hacky sack, the game played by kicking a beanbag; and
other sports.

But Santa Cruz is not like other cities -- Berkeley, nearly two hours
north, is probably the closest to its political sensibilities -- and so the
ordinances did not come easily. They took weeks of public meetings full of
tortured soul-searching and debate about what it meant for Santa Cruz to
clean up the streets that define it.

The streets of this seaside city have long been messy with humanity in all
its forms. Counterculture youths drawn by Santa Cruz's famous, or infamous,
tolerance have long haunted the benches and corners throughout downtown.
The distinct scent of pot is as common as cigarette smoke in a Paris cafe.
On one weekend, clowns with balloon animals, a folk trio with an accordion
and ukuleles, a Spanish-guitar player and, yes, even a mime delighted
passers-by. Creative ways to ask for change ("Dreaming of a hamburger,"
said one sign; "Expecting to expect a baby," said another) brought smiles
and comments from the throngs on the streets.

What has prompted the outcry is a summer when the streets have proved too
lively. A gang fight broke out at a popular body-piercing shop, where a
gunman, shooting at an escaping van, wounded two people. Two weeks later, a
tourist heeding nature's call pried open the jammed door of a Porta-Potty
and found a 23-year-old man dead of a heroin overdose. A scorned panhandler
stabbed a man leaving a downtown restaurant. Hacky-sack players have
threatened and berated passers-by who inadvertently interrupt their games.

Merchants, reluctant to speak out in public for fear of harassment, have
written the City Council to say that customers have complained that their
children are being threatened by deranged street people or taunted as they
try to negotiate past the throngs who load the streets with their possessions.

"Everyone says it's out of control," said the manager of one Pacific Avenue
shop. Many of the youths are no problem at all, he said, but a few "have
really scared people, because they curse at them, or urinate in front of
them as a way to get in their faces."

In a few weeks, the people of Santa Cruz will know whether the new rules
will make any difference, or too much of one. For musicians like Mr.
Amartseff, who sits outside Peet's Coffee in the morning before taking his
soft drumming to the boardwalk, the ordinances are a slap in the face.

"We're what gives Santa Cruz its mystique," he said, as he demonstrated how
his drum makes high and low, "almost spiritual" sounds.