What I'll miss about Santa Clara
By Maggie Beidelman
I will miss the Oaxaqueño.
Among everything else I will miss about Santa Clara when I finally graduate and move away - waking up to live music at Cinco de Maples, palm trees, getting Benson burritos at 2 p.m. on a Saturday and still calling it "breakfast," the small community of 20-something nerds and scenesters and bros and chicks and intellectuals and free spirits all mixed together, seeing my boyfriend on stage in a hot pink dress for the Drag Show, mistaking second-story Dance Dance Revolution competitions for sensually-suggestive acts, midnight picnics in Mission Gardens, girls in short skirts and Uggs in 60-degree weather, boys who drink Muscle Milk like it's water, the first time I realized that I actually know nothing at all, the unique personal stories of professors, hearing the student orchestra practice from the open door of the music building, Graham Hall socials, the sound of screeching trains I thought were ghosts, the old haunted Nobili kitchen, the ARS, flat sidewalks for my roller blades, attending music department shows on any given day, drunk people, Mr. RLC, Frozos, picking the beautiful roses on campus, hiding behind a stove in a closet at a party that had just been crashed by the cops, all my friends within a one-mile radius, my entire face painted red at a basketball game after my friend failed to give me an Adam Morrisson mustache, walking home with the sunrise, midnight dorm dance parties, Thai Pepper's decorations, biking to Farm Fresh Produce on Homestead for my local produce, sand volleyball and Bailey's on St. Patty's Day, "The Vagina Monologues," Santa Clara bands' bar gigs, Supertonic!, runs to the San Jose Municipal Rose Garden, brick oven Bronco pizza, the close proximity to the Caltrain and its access to Palo Alto and San Francisco, the Saturday morning farmer's market three blocks away, the Highway 17 bus to Santa Cruz, yoga classes with Evelyn at Malley, Wednesday night meditation in St. Joseph's, intramural soccer games, the possibility of attending an opera and a frat party and a lecture all in one weekend, free food everywhere, freezing 10 p.m. astronomy labs on the roof of St. Joseph's, getting lost in the bookshelves of the late Orradre, studying abroad, Arab literature class, recording quirky quotes from my philosophy professor, serving breakfast with SCCAP at 6 a.m. on Saturday mornings, late nights in the art building's dark room struggling to develop blurry photos, 4 a.m. editing sessions in the newsroom, debating gender and race and class issues in literature courses, joining spontaneous acoustic guitar sing-alongs with my roommates, suicidal squirrels - among everything else, I will miss the Oaxaqueño.
Maggie Beidelman is the scene editor. This is her final issue.