In Aptos, you can live off the grid in a shack built by itinerant loggers a century ago. You can set up shop in a 1960s beach cottage a few blocks from the sand. You can raise horses on acreage. You can look out of your living room and see the ocean.
Aptos is many things, but there is one thing it is not: urban. The locals like it this way. They understand that, should they tire of live blues at the Aptos Street Barbecue or a low-key French dinner at Cafe Sparrow, all of the big city sophistication they need is a short drive away, in Capitola or Santa Cruz.