Pleasure Point, Santa Cruz: beaches, surf, and where to eat

Pleasure Point got its name during Prohibition. It started appearing on maps in the 1930s, back when a roadhouse out on East Cliff Drive ran as one of the busiest speakeasies in Santa Cruz — San Francisco bootleggers dropping liquor on the beach below the cliffs to haul up later, off-duty cops and tourists mixing upstairs. That building has been a farmhouse, a saloon, a grocery, and a surfer hangout in the years since, and the name has stuck to the whole neighborhood.

The other half of the neighborhood's story is the wetsuit. Jack O'Neill moved to Santa Cruz in 1959 and settled into a small green house on the cliff right here at Pleasure Point — the break in front of it is called Jack's. He is the man credited with making the wetsuit practical enough to change cold-water surfing, and the O'Neill shop is still up on 41st Avenue today. In a surf town, it is a bit of a landmark.

The East Side runs on coffee and you will not have to go far for it. Our own order of preference, all a short walk or a two-minute drive from the park around Portola and 41st: Firefly first, then Cat & Cloud and Coffeetopia close behind. If the donuts are calling, Dunlop Donuts makes the real thing. And Verve is worth knowing — its very first café opened on 41st Avenue in 2007 and helped put Santa Cruz on the specialty-coffee map.

For dinner, the local's spot is The Point Kitchen & Bar, about a five-minute walk over on Portola. It is a traditional chophouse — good steaks, an excellent chicken schnitzel, salads that hold their own — run well enough that the food and the service are reliable night after night. It is the one we point people to first.

A little farther, maybe fifteen minutes on foot, Lago di Como does Northern Italian in a room that is casual but still feels like going out. Reservations are the safe move, though a weekday walk-in usually works. And when you just want it easy, Cole's BBQ is three minutes down Portola for barbecue and burgers.

The thing that surprises people about the East Side is how many different beaches sit within a mile or two, each with its own character. There is genuinely something here for every kind of beach day.

Santa Mo's — Corcoran Lagoon Beach and the Santa Maria stretch beside it, off East Cliff at 21st — is the wide, easygoing one, with a lagoon sitting behind the sand. 26th Avenue is the quieter pocket the neighborhood slips into. Sunny Cove is small and pretty but it is a party beach on summer weekends, so go early or go elsewhere if you want calm. Moran Lake has the simplest setup of the bunch, with a free lot and restrooms right there. Pleasure Point and the Hook are where you go to watch the surf, on a rock shelf that opens into tide pools when the tide drops far enough. And Capitola, five minutes away by car, puts a whole village right down on the beach.

One honest word on those tide pools: they are only really worth it on a king tide or a minus tide, when the water pulls all the way off the reef. Any other day they are hit or miss, and Santa Mo's is probably your best shot at catching a few. Check a tide chart before you plan around them.

That is the neighborhood cut. For the full rundown — where bonfires are legal, where to park, which water is calm enough for small kids — see our guide to the best beaches in Santa Cruz.

The neighborhood's quiet surprise is Moran Lake. It is an easy walk just west of the Point — a small lake, a beach where it meets the ocean, and a eucalyptus grove that most people stroll right past. In fall and winter, that grove is a monarch butterfly overwintering site, one of the larger ones left in the county, where the butterflies cluster in the trees to wait out the cold months.

Their numbers rise and fall from year to year and have been low lately, so it is never a guarantee. But on a still, sunny winter afternoon, finding a cluster of them a few blocks from the surf is one of the genuinely surprising things you can do in Santa Cruz.

Two more things worth your time. The first is 41st Avenue, the neighborhood's main street, where the coffee, the surf shops, the restaurants, and the everyday shopping all line up — the kind of close-by errands you appreciate when you are living out of an RV for a week. It runs from Portola down to the water at the Hook.

The second is the light. The bluff along East Cliff looks out south over Monterey Bay, so the water catches sun for most of the day and the views stay open the whole walk. In the evening the sun drops out over the bay, and the cliff top is one of the best places in town to watch the day end. For more of what fills an afternoon or a rainy day around here, our things to do in Santa Cruz guide picks up where the neighborhood leaves off.

• It is all walkable. Coffee, dinner, the surf at the Hook, and the East Side coves are a walk from the park, not a drive. That is the reason to stay in the neighborhood rather than near it.
• The surf at The Hook and The Point is about a twelve-minute walk at a real pace, and the beach is nine. The park has no gate — you park once and set out on foot.
• Capitola is five minutes by car or roughly a ten-minute bike ride. The East Cliff path is a beautiful ride, but it does not connect all the way to Capitola — that last stretch is on the road.
• Tide pools need a minus or king tide to be worth the walk, and the monarchs at Moran Lake are a fall-and-winter thing that is never guaranteed. Enjoy either as a bonus, and do not build the whole day around it.