Santa Barbara--Insights of a Former Native
Written: Sep 18 '00 (Updated Aug 21 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Gorgeous Setting, Laid-Back Town, Mild Climate, Everything is Close In
Cons: Limited Tourist Attractions, Expensive, Crowded Downtown
The Bottom Line: Santa Barbara is a wonderful destination for a relaxing vacation.
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| ericgoldman's Full Review: Santa Barbara |
I went to high school in Santa Barbara back in the early 80s. I offer up these perspectives as a former native who’s now a repeat tourist.
To understand Santa Barbara, you first need to understand its geography. The greater Santa Barbara region, about 200,000 people living in Santa Barbara, Goleta, Montecito, Carpinteria, Summerland, Isla Vista and Gaviota, lies in an east-west coastal plain running approximately 30 miles along the Southern California coast. The plain gives way sharply to a chain of mountains topping out roughly 4,000 feet high no more than 5 miles from the beach. These mountains cut off Santa Barbara from the rest of California except to the east, where about 20 miles of undeveloped coast separates Santa Barbara from the Ventura/Oxnard area. Offshore, Santa Barbara is lined by the Channel Islands about 20 miles away.
The geography makes Santa Barbara a beautiful place. Everywhere you go, you can see the wall of mountains with their yellow rock faces and green chaparral carpet. And you’re rarely far from ocean views, with the pretty Santa Barbara harbor in the foreground and the Channel Islands looming on the horizon. Finally, Santa Barbara has successfully applied architectural controls to keep a consistent Spanish architectural theme of red tile roofs and stucco walls, making the buildings very picturesque.
Santa Barbara’s growth has historically been limited by the coastal plain’s small size, the lack of expansion space caused by the wall of mountains, and the lack of water. Until recently, Santa Barbara was not hooked up to the state’s water system, meaning that Santa Barbara relied solely on rainwater. But like much of the Southern California coast, Santa Barbara is semi-arid. The lack of water has caused Santa Barbara’s population to be largely static over the past several decades.
Also because of the growth controls, Santa Barbara has a limited economic base. Most jobs are tied to UCSB, the oil industry (rigs are still visible in the Santa Barbara channel) and the tourist industry, with limited light industrial and white collar jobs. As a result, Santa Barbara exhibits the economic schism so common in tourist destinations; there is a segment of extremely wealthy people (including the Hollywood stars who have a second home in Montecito) and a large group of service workers who can barely afford to live there.
Santa Barbara is an enormously popular tourist destination, something that’s always puzzled me on some levels. While I love Santa Barbara, it lacks the “killer” tourist destinations you’ll find elsewhere.
The most noteworthy destination is the Santa Barbara Mission, a lovely building on a knoll with a view of the Santa Barbara channel. The Mission is adjacent to the city’s rose garden and some Chumash Indian ruins. While all of these points are mildly diverting, as a tourist I found them quickly boring. Santa Barbara’s Courthouse is another architectural gem but equally quick as a tourist destination.
Santa Barbara has art and society attractions you’d expect of a bigger community, including a good Museum of Natural History, a small Museum of Modern Art, a small zoo, and a fine botanical garden. All of these are worth visiting but none (on their own) are a sufficient impetus to visit Santa Barbara.
Santa Barbara has a great downtown and shopping district along State Street. Lower State Street used to be Skid Row but has been gentrified by college bars. Further up State Street, you’ll find tony, cutesy and kitschy stores. It’s not as posh or snooty as Rodeo Drive, El Paseo or Fifth Avenue, but most of State Street is targeted at the money crowd, not the surfer crowd. Nevertheless, Lisa and I enjoyed running around State Street and ultimately ran out of time to see it all on our last week-long trip. Beware—State Street is enormously popular on the weekends, and we encountered 20 minute long lines for the most popular snack places on a warm Saturday of the Labor Day weekend. Also, we had problems getting dinner on State Street after 9 p.m. during the week, and the street was shut down by 10 p.m. except for the college bars.
At its heart, Santa Barbara is a beach community, and there are many wonderful beaches offering a wide range of experiences. The beaches along Santa Barbara’s waterfront, such as West Beach, are very popular and crowded, with lots of pick-up volleyball games, rollerblading and people-watching. Other beaches, especially those east of Goleta, are less crowded but still wide. In all cases, watch out for tar on the beaches.
Santa Barbara has great hiking, but hikes come in only two varieties: flat beach walks or steep mountain climbs. Remember that Santa Barbara is semi-arid, so you’re going to find lots of chaparral, but many of the canyons have lovely year-round streams. For hiking info, check out www.santabarbarahikes.com. Be prepared for thigh-busting hikes into the mountains. Also, watch out for ticks, poison oak and rattlesnakes. A parking pass, euphemistically called an “Adventure Pass,” is required to park at most of these spots. The pass is $5 a day or $30 a year. Get one before heading to your destination—they are not sold on the spot.
Because of the limited attractions, as a tourist, you should approach Santa Barbara with the right frame of mind. Santa Barbara will quickly become boring if you’re constantly looking for thrills. But if you’re looking to chill out and just enjoy a fun but mellow beach community, Santa Barbara can be a wonderful place to visit and relax.
There are a number of day trips you can take from Santa Barbara, such as:
* Santa Ynez Valley. This bucolic valley, 45 minutes from Santa Barbara, has many wineries. It also has Solvang, a fully-themed but somewhat cheesy Scandinavian town, and the Nojoqui Falls, a nice 150 foot waterfall (barely a trickle in summer and fall).
* Ojai. Ojai is about 45 minutes from Santa Barbara and is noteworthy for being nestled in a valley surrounded by 5,000 foot scenic mountains. I was very disappointed when I went there in Summer 2000 to find that almost all vestiges of the New Age community were invisible.
* The Channel Islands. Santa Cruz Island is about 20 miles from Santa Barbara and dominates the southern view. Anacapa Island and Santa Rosa Island are also visible many days. The islands make a wonderful day trip or camping trip if you plan ahead. Read my review on Anacapa Island for more detail.
* San Luis Obispo is about 100 miles north of Santa Barbara through classic scenic Central Coast oak-and-scrub pastureland. San Luis has a number of attractions itself, and other highlights, such as Cambria and Hearst Castle, are another 45 minutes beyond.
Santa Barbara lodging has one common theme—expensive. Entry level is $100 a night. High rollers will love the San Ysidro Ranch, a Hollywood playground for those who spend money like water. We spent a couple pricey nights at the Four Seasons Biltmore, a historic and posh hotel right on the Montecito beach. We were upgraded to a nice and large cottage room, but few rooms have ocean views, and the facilities onsite were very limited (undersized pool and effectively no health equipment). Watch out for the 6 a.m. train.
If you like B&Bs, Santa Barbara has a huge variety of quality options. Most recently we stayed at the Simpson House Inn, which is the only B&B in North America awarded 5 diamonds by AAA. The Simpson House wasn’t cheap—$325/night mid-week—but they did provide lots of freebies (free movies; breakfast, afternoon snack and evening appetizers; free mini-bar; free use of bikes; etc.). Personally, I found the service a little oppressive (at breakfast, when I asked for water, the litany of questions came back: ice or no ice, lemon or no lemon?), but they sure did try hard. In 1996, we took a “bargain” vacation where we stayed at the Secret Garden, a centrally located B&B less posh than Simpson House but also only $125 a night.
Santa Barbara is known for high end restaurants such as Citronelle and for La Super Rica, its famous hole-in-the-wall taco stand on the working-class Milpas Street. I was impressed by the quality and variety of the vegetarian-oriented restaurants. The Follow Your Heart restaurant on Milpas has been replaced with a Wild Oats store, but we fell in love with the Natural Café on lower State. We also liked Sojourner Café on Canon Perdido, which was conveniently next door to Main Squeeze Café. In Goleta, the Good Earth is on Calle Real, and we heard that Natural Café is opening a restaurant there.
Traveling to Santa Barbara requires some thought. Santa Barbara has a municipal airport that is serviced by jets, but they are infrequent and expensive. Puddle jumpers also fly into the airport, but they are also expensive and a little scary. If you’re flying, your best bet is to fly into Burbank or LAX. LAX is 100 miles away, about 1 hour 45 minutes with no traffic. Of course, getting through LA can be a traffic nightmare. The drive from LAX takes you through tony West LA, to the suburban hell of the San Fernando Valley, to the suburban sprawl of Thousand Oaks, over the Camarillo Grade and into the Camarillo/Oxnard coastal plain, which used to be farmland into the 1980s but is now mostly power mall parking lots. Finally, there’s the lovely 20 mile stretch from Ventura through undeveloped coastline, just like the old days.
From the north, it takes about 5½ hours from San Francisco along the 101. You can save 20 minutes or so by taking the 154 through the Santa Ynez Valley and over the San Marcos Pass, with (on clear days) its jaw-dropping view of Santa Barbara and the islands beyond.
Unless you plan to confine yourself to the lower State Street area, a car is mandatory. Biking is possible downtown, but elsewhere you quickly encounter killer hills. The amazing thing about Santa Barbara is how close everything is. It feels like everything is just 10-15 minutes away. It’s incredible! Even more incredibly, Santa Barbara doesn’t suffer from the traffic that plagues so many other Southern California communities. Sure, you’ll encounter a little slowness between 5:00 and 5:30 in the afternoon…and then rush hour is over.
As a coastal community, Santa Barbara’s weather is temperate. Expect temperatures in the 50s and 60s during the winter and 70s and 80s during the summer. Rain is unlikely from mid-May to mid-October, but Santa Barbara gets lots of fog and marine haze, even in the summer. A typical late spring/summer day has overcast skies until noon giving way to warm afternoons and mild evenings.
As you can tell, I love Santa Barbara. Some day Lisa and I will probably retire here and enjoy the beautiful views, the weather, the college atmosphere, and the small-town convenience with international sophistication. But as a tourist destination, we’ve often exhausted the attractions and now spend our time relaxing and enjoying the Santa Barbara lifestyle and atmosphere. If you plan on doing little or nothing, so can you.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
ericgoldman
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Member: Eric Goldman
Location: Santa Clara, CA
Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 32 members
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