Third Eye Blind performs at the Catalyst in downtown Santa Cruz, Calif.

The Catalyst is everything you ever wanted in a music venue, and now, with its very existence threatened, a small group of Santa Cruz residents are putting everything they’ve got into an eleventh hour pitch to save it. 

The electrostatic hum of the space is held over from its origin days at the dawn of the Summer of Love and is a reflection of the city itself: from the grungy Santa Cruz of the 1990s, when both lumberjack and vampire wannabes roamed the streets, to the noisy fallout of the Bay Area’s hardcore and punk scenes of the 2000s, fading as downtown started its own decline.

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The Catalyst greets visitors with both a sneer and a side of hope that it would always remain an unofficial epicenter of this slightly possessed oceanfront town’s paradise lost. But that certainty is seemingly about to come to an end. 

FILE: Rage Against the Machine performs at the Catalyst in Santa Cruz, Calif., 1992. 

Last July, the Catalyst quietly was put up for sale by the heirs of longtime owner Randall Kane, who was the face behind the music venue and welcomed seminal acts on their meteoric rise, from Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam and Nirvana to E-40 and Alanis Morissette. Nearly every notable name, from across musical genres, set foot in the Catalyst during its 1990s heyday. 

The building that hosts the venue was listed at just over $4.5 million, and it quietly sold to a Silicon Valley real estate investment group called GSH Ventures, which started the pre-application process last December to demolish the Catalyst and build “a 7-story mixed-use building with 64 residential condominium units” in its place. 

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Don't let Google decide who you trust.

Changing out the Catalyst for condos just isn’t something the majority of Santa Cruz wants, local artist Jay Brown told SFGATE. And so, he and friend Jeremy Stone recently decided to get together and do something about it — before it’s too late. 

The Breeders pose in front of a painted wall prior to their performance at the........

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