santa barbara, ca

i think you heard right. my friend who is moving to oakland has been living in SB for a couple of years and he HATES it. he says it's really beautiful and scenic and shit, but as for stuff to do/places to go etc. it really sucks ass. and nothting is open after 8pm.

i've never been, but i'd like to eat one of the super tacos, check out the beautiful-looking courthouse, and get a west-facing view from somewhere close to (or on) the water, preferably higher up. the natural history museum sounds like it could be interesting too.

I been to Santa Barbara a few times. The beach is nice and State St has its moments and there are couple of OK museums, but there is not much in the way of shopping or curiosity. There's plenty of places to drink and eat although some of them veer dangerously close to sports bar and/or "fake" fancy restuarant territory. It is not a good town for coffee, unfortunately. But then maybe you don't need coffee.

I've never been to the campus, maybe there's more of interest around there?

Oh, but I really like the buildings downtown - pretty!

You're not staying in the State Street Hotel, by any chance? That's where I usually stay. Cheap as hell and RIGHT next to the railway tracks! (the station is right outside)

My wife really likes The Coffee Cat which is East of downtown, but tbh I think we only liked this so much because there was nowhere else in SB that catered much to interior bookish coffee-drinkers like ourselves.

That said, if you want some peace and quiet to read a book and look at the ocean, I think it's a good choice. The last time we went this is what we wanted and we got it.

There's plenty of places to drink and eat although some of them veer dangerously close to sports bar and/or "fake" fancy restuarant territory.

that's what i found when i was last there. maybe if i do my research i'll discover something better.

You're not staying in the State Street Hotel, by any chance?

no sir.

this place probably isn't great or anything but looks moderately appealing - http://www.hotelvirginia.com/

same here? http://www.innbytheharbor.com/index.asp

i already have a hotel room. it ain't much (it ain't even cheap), but the vast majority of the hotel rooms in SB are sold out for the weekend!

(i checked out B&Bs too, but they all want a minimum 2-night stay.)

ok, maybe not the latter

(i'm just leaving myself notes here per usual)

super tacos

if you mean la super-rica, you're 8080

I was raised in Santa Barbara and live here for 3 more weeks before I move to Paris. It seems like a good tourist town, but I've never been completely sure what tourists *do* once they get here.

I've never been to the campus, maybe there's more of interest around there?

Not really.

i loved SB the couple times I went tho w/the sneaking suspicion that I could never afford to live there (and I live in manhattan so...)

la super-rica lives up to the hype. meat + tortilla + LOVE there's also a great upsclae italian rest called mollie's the owner is improbably from africa but the food fits in the scene, sunny and refreshing.

I really enjoyed the drive up there from LA, cruising along the coast checking out passing little beach towns like Carpenteria.

killer waves, some decent italian grub, good for weddings and a little day trip.

nobody works in this town, it's nuts.

ISLA VISTA: NEED TO WALK DOWN THE STREET WITH YOUR CUP UPSIDE DOWN

H-IV

LOL

what's the area where state street and de la vina merge together (near mackenzie park)? i like it -- it's understated, a little older/worn, with the sense that there's some money around but people aren't ostentatious about it. lots of independent businesses but there's a gelson's and a coffee bean and a trader joe's too if that's yer thing.

WAHT I MISS???

we have to go there next weekend for a wedding, hope we get time to check out what there is to check out (i've stopped by before, did the dead ass state st. thing at night, there's got to be more)

nope, that's it.

I go regularly because it is a quiet and pleasant place -- ideal for hotel, food, beer. It's also an easy jaunt from Pasadena. I regularly stay in an old redone motor court motel off the harbor beach. From there it's a nice backstreet walk to the State St. restaurants. There is also a very nice park on the mesa above the marina. You can relax there or walk down the cliff-side staircase to a narrow strip of beach. The zoo is another place to spend a couple hours. And the people I travel with often take an afternoon out to hit the local wineries, although it's not my bag.

Montecito is also there if you want to rub elbows with those who look down upon Santa Barbarians (HELLO AUNT SANDRA!).

I once caught a barracuda on the Santa Barbara pier.

what's the area where state street and de la vina merge together (near mackenzie park)? i like it -- it's understated, a little older/worn, with the sense that there's some money around but people aren't ostentatious about it. lots of independent businesses but there's a gelson's and a coffee bean and a trader joe's too if that's yer thing.

San Roque. I'm pretty sure people there are only wealthy due to property values...it's pretty suburban in character.

Xpost on the local wineries. Take the 154 over the mountains into the Solvang/Santa Ynez/Los Olivos area - the drive itself is GORGEOUS - and enjoy some tastings at some of the many winery tasting rooms. Personal favorites: Bridlewood, Zaca Mesa, and Cambria. Lots of good restaurants, too, and not just those featured in Sideways. It gets crowded on the weekends, because its a lot nicer than LA and a ton of people come up there for wine tours - lots of stretch limos, etc., trekking from one winery to another.

We just got back from a day up there yesterday, it was a good time. As for living in the area, I have no idea.

i still have never been to solvang. it's an itch i someday hope to scratch.

I found Solvang pretty boring, it takes about an hour to see everything there is to see.

SB would be a good place to retire if I had enough money, but even at my age I wouldn't want to live there.

(Go Gauchos!)

I had awesome Sushi in Santa Barbara.

Otherwise, I found it kind of like every other five-coffeeshop upscale town. But, you know, beach on one side, mountains on the other = hard to complain about.

Oh yeah, and skip Solvang. Totally pointless town.

Sushi place was called Arigato.

right south of santa babs is goleta home of legendary punk venue/ studios the living room!

Has anyone ever been to Ojai? That was one of the towns I wanted to hit but didn't have time. Sounded like it could either be awesome or just ridiculous.

goleta is west of SB

i went to SB for the 4th of july last year. it was fine. underwhelming.

sorry jimmy i was thinkin 101 directions

Sounds like you need directions 101.

OH!

can we ban hurting from ile too?

I've only been to Ojai once, to visit some family friends, but it is even more a place to live when you want a nothing-ever-happens life than SB. I think there is a "downtown" shopping / cafe area but I can't imagine it being worth the trip unless you lived in Ventura. Probably a good area to drive through, though.

x-post: It's "North" by 101 directions anyway.

i'd rather take the high road on this one xpost

alot of the high grade marijuana we get in so cal is grown in ojai

Has anyone ever been to Ojai? That was one of the towns I wanted to hit but didn't have time. Sounded like it could either be awesome or just ridiculous

Somewhat expensive tourist trap and celebrity hideaway along the lines of Julian only without the good apple pie. Back in the 1970s they used to advertise that they were the home of "TV's Six Million Dollar Man - Steve Austin"

The video for Green Day's "Wake Me Up When September Ends" was filmed there, which is about all you need to know

second trip to santa babs we returned to LA via Ojai, scenic winding drive through the hills to get there but sheesh what a boring town, kinda like nowheresville and a tourist trap at the same time. we had lunch at a hole-in-the-wall mexican place that looked promising yet the food resembled tacos you'd get in the midwest ca. 1970s.

good to know. what about santa paula/fillmore?

tell me about the dunes.

i am deeming this a central coast thread

theres a great board game shop in santa barbara run by a really enthusiastic austrian(?) dude, talking like $60-$80 games, expansion packs, you name it, but the guy is a mensch and will cut you a deal, i bought risk 2210 there and ive unpacked it a lot and it looks real pretty but ive never actually played it

yeah i bought my bro some crazy version of axis and allies there

re upthread, i love ojai but you don't go there for the town. i had a really nice time at the ojai retreat a few months ago, just staring out the window at the mountains, wandering the grounds, taking photos, "meditating" (if you like).

also suzanne's is quite good. we also tried feast bistro -- thumbs up on the food, thumbs down (in my one experience) on the flaky service.

but no, there's not much to "do" in ojai, and that's rather the point.

my photos:

http://flickr.com/photos/stockholm_cindy/sets/72157607455131904/

hey, the retreat looks nice, thanks

(btw, that's technically a Scrub-Jay - you don't get Blue Jays in CA)

SB's also where Jimmy Connors can get arrested.

the scrub jay is very cute:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Western_Scrub_Jay_holding_an_Acorn_at_Waterfront_Park_in_Portland,_OR.JPG

(btw, that's technically a Scrub-Jay - you don't get Blue Jays in CA)

Steller Jays represent!

http://www.birdsamore.com/_images/jay-stellers_350.jpg

cheap rooms taking sides: hotel state street private room with a shared bath (http://www.hotelstatestreet.net/) or a private en suite at http://www.sbhostel.com/ ? anyone stayed in the hostel?

I had a friend who did said it was one of the nicer hostels he's been in.

did, said

likely true

thankig u again for retreat, jody; have reserved

Was in a bar on state street tonight wondering to myself which students I hate more, Oxford or UCSB, and then I saw a guy wearing an Oxford 2006 Ski Trip hoodie. What a town.

UCSB students like to think that they go to the 'Harvard of party schools' - for the most part, they're the smartest of the kids in California who wanted to go to a party school.

Breaking news: I just went for a quick walk to the pier and back before I go to bed and saw my first dead body. Police and ambulance stood around a body on the floor in the bushes. Didn't look like a crime scene. : ( Very weird first few hours here.

Turns out this is a v. nice town, corpses and Oxbridge undergrads notwithstanding.

If you want Banana Republic and tattoos then State Street is for you.

Yup, sounds about right. My cousin went there.

I saw another dead person. I was on this train : (((((

http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci_11429916

when we are in santa barbara (or even just passing through between the bay and so cal) we stop at pierre lafond for breakfast.

http://www.pierrelafond.com/

I ate there. It was good!

p.s. http://lafd.blogspot.com/2009/01/woman-struck-by-amtrak-train-dies-in.html. What a trip.

that place looked nice but we went up the street to zia cafe

caek visits america, sees dead people

this is reminding me of when friend of mine had a french foreign exchange student in high school and after the semester was up he took a bus tour of the country - upon returning he told us abt how he witnessed a shooting like it was the most normal thing in the world because he was lol french and thought americans just shot each other all the time no big deal - of course none of us he was telling the story to had ever seen a shooting

my favourite eats over the weekend was whail tail deli: http://whale-tail-deli.com/default.aspx. cheap for sb, and hearty fare indeed.

xp, two dead people in four days has to be some kind of record, right. central california is perilous.

I was making a video on the train down from sb, planning to edit it into a sort of time lapse thing of socal, but i don't know if I will now, because it gets really weird with all the firemen and the not moving and the people crying on the edge of LA. I was in the one car outside the tunnel. I can see my window in those LAFD Flickr photos.

In Santa Barbara, little concern over rising body count

It may be picturesque, but this upscale village of red-tile roofs and stunning seascapes is sending a huge number of lost souls to the county morgue. Bodies show up on the beach, in parks, along railroad tracks and in the heart of the business district, steps from four-star restaurants and boutique hotels.

Sometimes it's murder. Usually it's a case of used-up bodies giving out under the swaying palms.

"We just had another one," Santa Barbara County social worker Ken Williams told me Thursday morning. "He was probably in his 50s and played steel guitar on State Street by the museum. They found his body yesterday."

That was No. 18 for the year, said Williams, the same number of homeless deaths the city saw in all of 2008.

Santa Monica, with roughly the same population as Santa Barbara, averaged about 14 homeless deaths a year between 2000 and 2007. Los Angeles averaged 170 a year over that same period, which sounds like a lot. But it's a far lower rate per capita than the one Santa Barbara has had the last two years.

Certainly my experience of that perilous coast.

it now snows ash in santa barbara on a regular basis

lol coming back to this town. how many dead people will i see this time?

got sunburn

seeing up in the air tonight, which feels like the santa barbara of this year's best picture contenders

got a phil collins song in my head now

caek's reports on the cityscape of Isla Vista will amuse.

haven't seen any oxford/cambridge varsity ski trip hoodies yet this time, although i did just see a canadian national polo team shirt (horse, not water). what a town.

have a blenders 4 me

also if yr driving to LA you can stop in carpenteria and have a burger @ The Spot. Julia Child used to eat there apparently and they had, at one point, the finest burger I had ever had

blenders rules
get blue-banana

fuck that noize. orange banana w spirulina

in an alternate universe blenders is national and jamba juice is regional. never underestimate a sugar bomb's ability to go national

sooooooooooo otm

also the owners of blenders were shot by richard avedon and the picture is hung in every blenders; you can tell that avedon was totally phoning it in

haha I know what picture you're talking about

it's so weak

yeah I had no idea it was supposed to be anything but a cutesy local photographer type thing

but yeah, I don't go to juice places anywhere outside of santa barbara. jamba juice is horrid. I imagine it's healthier than blenders, though...part of the reason why blenders drinks taste good is that they're practically ice cream.

is the cajun kitchen still around? serious good times there 15 years ago.

yeah it is w/ a buncha locations

i will be here from jan 12-25, let's party/see dead people.

Any given Saturday night in Isla Vista they'll be one and the same.

btw i am only briefly passing through LA on this trip now ned, but thanks for responding in the LA thread

pretty scared that I'm gonna die sometime in the jan 12-25 interval now. please pass over me santa barbara death angel caek. I will put the goat's blood on the door mantel, etc.

These days I'm giving a tour of the local "Fieri Hot Spots" for extra cash. The tour includes food from those places featured in Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives and ends with frosted tips at Aveda.

wait where was on ddd

Norton's, some fish n' chips place that was open for all of 1 year before Guy soiled it, and some Mexican place on upper state that I've never heard of.

There's enough good mexican food that I can believe it's good, though. I'm somewhat glad he didn't just go to super rica, even though it seems to fit the show perfectly.

yeah milpas makes a lot more sense than anything downtown

true. I live over by the bowl, so I am biased toward milpas.

including los agaves, the cheaper evil offspring of los arroyos

I was in sb like two weeks ago, state st is getting so depressing

it's shifting towards super super high end and super super low end stores at the same time

sorta a microcosm of america I guess

ha, that description is kind of true. but I learned from this thread that you grew up here, so a bit of hometown depression is natural. you should check out el cielito next time you're in town. it opened in la arcada and is the best new thing imo.

oh yeah I looked at it curiously

according to http://www.santabarbara.com/dining/best_of_sb/ , 2012's best korean restaurant in town is "New China"

chumash casino should have everything you want and more

haha unless you want a mojito

Tower of Power on Jan. 17 at the Chumash

caek should get funkifized

my favourite eats over the weekend was whail tail deli: http://whale-tail-deli.com/default.aspx. cheap for sb, and hearty fare indeed.

xp, two dead people in four days has to be some kind of record, right. central california is perilous.

― caek, Monday, January 12, 2009 11:25 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this place is gone, btw. you killed it too. ;_;

good thing i didn't get the job there i made the shortlist for last year.

is ucsbs astronomy good?

it's small for a UC astro dept (cf. UCSC, which is probably 5 times bigger?) so it has gaps because so few faculty, but it's very good

+ it has the kavli, which is a v big deal for theoretical physics

one sure does hear eddie vedder's into the wild ost regularly in this town

No deaths yet this time but still a couple of days to go

restaurant turnover seems fast. any good new places places to eat/drink walking distance of say state and castillo?

So you mean between state and Castillo? They are parallel I think. You mean on state by the Castillo exit off of 101?

Or maybe you meant Carrillo?

Or maybe you meant Carrillo?

otm

I like Cielito, which is nearby in 'La Arcada.' Arlington Tavern is a new place up state 3 blocks and to the left (toward chapala). I've not been there, but I've heard good things. Cadiz is a good new Mediterranean place down State a bit from Carrillo. Scarlett Begonia is good for breakfast/brunch. If you just want a beer and a burger type thing, a place called Eureka!Burger opened in the paseo nuevo mall area a bit down state st.

There's also the French Table on Anapamu by the courthouse

thanking you.

Still haven't found a bar I really like here. I was enjoying the press room until someone put kasabian on the juke box and then a television programme called 'the banter zone' was on the tv very loud. Elsie's is a bit crusty.

haha elsie's is very crusty. I liked it for awhile, but the last time there some biker dude was talking loudly about how the Newton Massacre was a grand plan from Obama to take his guns away

I'll be grabbing drinks with some photonics grad students on Friday to celebrate a guy in our group graduating and moving on to intel. Let me know if you wanna join up.

Hah yes Elsie's reminds me more of the uk way more than any of the pub style places. It's kind of like a perfect mixture of Austin TX and Bristol. Is 'crusty' a widely understood word here?

Unfortunately I have to be back in lol angeles on Friday.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npOGUD3g454

^pauly shore in encino man is my source for 'crusty' and 'cruster'

crusty = like crust punks?

the bartender at The Blue Agave looks like Scott Stapp btw. could be worth the walk.

lovely weather today

Yeah this rain is ridiculous. It keeps stopping for a bit, tricking me into going outside without my raincoat, and then starting again.

I get an email from the building manager whenever it's supposed to rain here along the lines of "weather models predict RAIN this weekend, please close your office windows and secure your bunkers from the RAIN"

santa barbarians also drive very slowly on the 101 in the rain, as if their 911 carreras would glide right off the highway because of a little rain

i did not pack for this

No deaths yet this time but still a couple of days to go

― caek, Thursday, January 24, 2013 5:01 AM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

saw a v serious looking bike accident today : (

That shit was LA unless you're playing me d00d

haha yes it was in echo park actually so it's not technically another SB fatality for me.

I tried to go to eureka burger on my last night btw but it was heaving via a live band in which the lead singer was wearing a trilby. I went instead to a place on state near velvet jones and the adult store, called sth like sana or para or rasa or something. Pretty good.

oh man. my apologies for nearly mraz-ing you. I wasn't aware that eureka burger had live music.

I've never been to the place you ended up. I've been meaning to check it out. I think it used to be a burger place called Momma Donna. Momma Donna had a peanut butter and bacon burger on the menu that was pretty good. But the turnaround has been very fast as both you and iatee have noted.

when you return to santa barbara, we should go surfing with kroemer or something btw

what is the place i ended up at called? it's not on gmaps. been trying to google it.

from your description of the location, I thought you were talking about: http://pacefoodanddrink.com/

yes that's it thanks

i'm jetlagged btw

it has kind of a strange menu. what did you end up trying? it has good reviews, but I remain skeptical.

that looks like a place that won't be there in 2 years

i only had desert, bread pudding. it was amazing. didn't like the beer selection. the staff were really nice.

xpost the turnover at that location has been swift. caek, you should've gotten the 24 oz PBR

and then you should have sauntered over to The Neighborhood and played beer pong on their PBR tables with more PBR

i actually should have yes. i suppose the location down there is a bit remote without being cutely tucked away.

I'm too old to drink anything but PBR. When I went out on Friday, I had 6 fat tires and felt awful the next day. That was at Dargan's, which I'm pretty sure is a legit irish pub just like the ones in ireland.

The photonics/materials UCSB grad students favor dargan's because it's apparently owned by an MOCVD grower

xpost. yeah, the 400 block seems to struggle. with the exception of Baja Sharkeez, which is a favorite of the undergraduates. Sharkeez has moved up state st. a couple of blocks now, though.

well shit

yeah. well this all happened in isla vista, which is a good 15 minutes on the 101 from santa barbara.

#califroniapedant

totally

thank you for explaining santa barbara to me kind sir.

anyway, shit

well shit

― wat is teh waht (s.clover), Saturday, May 24, 2014 6:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if you really want to get pedantic the airport is legally santa barbara so it's 2 mins away

or we could get on that county vs city tip

you wonder if this guy goes on a rampage if he went to uc riverside, like watching his videos being surrounded by beautiful happy people was not a minor issue

should have gone to ND. Parietal rules and everything.

Santa Barbara revive.

Anyone from ilx living here/visiting here lately?

Should I move to there.

do u like fleeing fires

For context, spouse and I are planning to relocate from DC to CA in the coming year or two. Given that I abhor DC summers and spouse abhors DC winters, a year is sounding better than two years but housing market situation blah blah blah it could take a minute.

We visited LA and I vetoed because I don't want to do that level of car culture. Also vetoed because we have a 1000 pound complication: a horse that will be coming with us. LA does not have any close-in horse housing that meets criteria.

So then we thought OK, we will do Bay Area. Horse will live in Castro Valley and we will live in Oakland. Decided that we would really prefer to be in SF than Oakland, making the commute to horse a real bitch.

Recently more discussions about what really mattered to us boiled down to this:

• Excellent weather year-round
• Neighborhoods where you can walk to decent food shopping (farmers' markets, etc.)
• Reasonable proximity (half-hour drive) to horse boarding with plenty of pasture (I want my guy to live on pasture with friends 24/7 and not be jailed in a 12x12 stall 23 hours a day). Access to great trail riding.
• Excellent weather year-round
• Nightlife (bars, clubs, live music, etc.) not important at this stage in life. A good bookstore or two would be nice, a coffee shop or two, handful of good restaurants will do the trick.
• Excellent weather year-round

I love cities but for day-to-day life, excellent weather year-round and lots of horse time and good farmers markets--these have become increasingly important.

xpost taking sides: fleeing fires vs. fleeing Mike Pence as a neighbor

Oh I forgot that proximity to airports is also important. SBA will be fine for domestic and for international we can schlep to LAX.

well i mean if you can afford it i can't talk ill against santa barbara anymore and have been considering doing the same, when our jobs go away and maybe a trailer and a swift death by rising sea levels would be nice.

SB does have those things u require. Keep an eye on the city land/county land boundaries for when the fire does come and you have to hope the state can get mobilized in time. Also if you do research on the previous decade of fire management you'll see the cutoff pattern of where they set the evac lines.

Have you looked at SLO-MORRO BAY-LOS OSOS? IDK what your employment situation is/how important being near a hub is but that whole area is pretty and has all that stuff too (except maybe bookstore; i haven't looked lately. Santa Barbara has Chaucer's still, bless it).

ALSO re: airport domestic flights get cancelled later in the day fairly regularly due to backups w/ ATC at other airports - there is a good chance you will miss a connection or etc. We stopped flying into SBA direct and instead airbus to LAX, which hasn't let me down and is very stress free (and sometimes they send you up/down to LAX via PCH which is a very happy experience).

Ah good tips, thanking u. I guess I really do need to educate myself on fire sitch--especially since horse will be in the hills and I will need to have an evac plan for him. Is downtownish SB safe enough, fire-wise? Ugh why do all of the good places shake, catch on fire, flood.

yeah downtown is fine. basically foothill is the drop dead fire line tho the last few years it's gotten hairy enough for the greater san roque area to get mandatory evac notices. then mud slides:))))))))

have you looked in santa ynez valley? like if you don't actually have to commute may as well stay in the valley with ur pony

Santa ynez valley too rural by a lot.

It is not easy to be a city-lover with a horse.

Should have been a horse cop or something.

Also spouse needs a jobbie and I doubt there is much of a demand for IT operations folks in santa ynez.

My jobbie will hopefully come with me (remote work), so less of a concern for me.

Ya very good - wasn’t sure of ur commute situation.

SLO-MORRO BAY-LOS OSOS

My m-i-l lives in SLO and I would say it's not generally walkable, so I think you'd end up with a fairly narrow range of (expensive) housing options. Also, the airport has added a few more routes recently, but it's pretty hard to get there in a reasonable amount of time from, say, the East Coast. My partner and I often end up flying to LAX and then driving 3 hrs to avoid needing to make multiple layovers. That said, as a result of its relative remoteness, it's pretty chill and feels less ~intense~ than other parts of CA

YMMV! I think slo is very walkable; certainly v bikeable

We visited LA and I vetoed because I don't want to do that level of car culture. Also vetoed because we have a 1000 pound complication: a horse that will be coming with us. LA does not have any close-in horse housing that meets criteria.

did you look at la cañada/flintridge, altadena and then points east along the northern edge of the SGV, i.e. toward the race track at santa anita? pasadena in particular is relatively walkable, has a meaningful downtown, etc. "affordable" is a stretch, but pasadena school district (which covers pasadena and altadena) is not good, so it's not crazy by socal standards. if you're willing to drive 30 minutes to the horse, then glendale and south pasadena (different city to pasadena proper) might also be relatively walkable options with famer's markets.

i do not know the area at all, but given you care about the weather ... san diego?

Who were the jackasses that freaked out when I suggested Carpinteria to you that one time? Haha. Suckit, whoever you were

That was xp to quincie

Ventura/Oxnard maybe, cheaper than SB though maybe not as cultured.

Had to go to Ventura the other week. Seemed sort of grim. All I saw was strip malls. Didn't have time to poke around though

There is a smallish "old town" area that looks nice. And horse boarding may be available in Santa Paula, which isn't far.

Ventura is pretty grim aesthetically compared to SB but then most places are but it’s also the worst house on the best block phenomenon. That said if ur gonna live there you might as well live in... idk Glendale or Westlake or Thousand Oaks or something.

I've lived here for 12 years, and I don't think we'll ever leave. Fire season has become more stressful, but we still are looking to buy a home in the next few years (below the 192 as Jimmy says). The best farmers' markets are downtown, and it may be hard to achieve short walking distance to those. You can certainly bike from the upper east, oak park, samarkand, mission, east san roque areas. You could also bike down from the mesa, which is a beautiful area but can feel a bit more isolated. We currently own a condo in the Oak Park area where we can easily walk to a Trader Joe's, a Gelson's, and a grocery outlet (lol but I promise this grocery outlet is a blessing compared to the Ralph's here before it). We could walk a bit further up to a whole foods and bristol farms. We also walk downtown sometimes, including to the farmers' market, but that is a 45 minute walk. Perhaps more of a quest than a walk. Anyway, I bet you'd love it here. We're part of an HOA with maybe 20 units. I know 5 of them house people that work in IT. There's a good number of IT/tech jobs in Goleta near UCSB. May be harder to find a job that won't involve a short commute on the 101. If the I-5 closes due to mudslide or snow, that commute will become 1 hour for the day. It's happened a handful of times since I've been here.

Btw the trip from LAX took us 6 hours around last christmas due to that same I-5 issue. All hotels along the 101 were booked. The LAX schlep can be really, really awful.

Pasadena/South Pasadena/Glendale are all entirely unknown to me--thanks for recs! 30 min drive to horse if fine; I currently have a 45 minute drive to him outside of DC rush hour. Rush hour is another story; I've mostly arranged my schedule so I don't have to do it.

I will also investigate Carpinteria, though the name cracks me up for some reason.

Land of the carpenters. The native Americans who lived there were known for their canoes

if that part of LA county is unknown then here's the full list of places i would check out: la cañada/flintridge, altadena, pasadena, south pasadena, glendale, eagle rock.

all are at varying places along the walkable/farmers market to proximity to horse country scale.

if you find stabling (is that a word?) near the 2 freeway then echo park and surrounding neighborhoods (los feliz, silver lake) might actually work out for you because even though they're in the city of LA's urban core echo park sits right at the end of the 2 (which is a pretty chill and short freeway by socal standards).

What's traffic like in SB and surrounds?

Carpinteria is much smaller than all of these other locations. I'd worry about the IT job scene there. The commute up the 101 to an IT job in SB is rough, but one could take a train.

Oh and caek yes, stabling is a word, but "boarding" is the usual term for housing. Google doesn't show me a ton in the altadena area, but I will look further.

We've been looking at houses for sale in SB and I basically want to move there tomorrow despite never having visited. We'll do a trip out later in year. Would probably rent the first year just to make sure we don't actually want to do SF.

the 101 is typically not jammed within SB. But you are stuck between mountains and ocean, so any issues will cause unavoidable traffic. Montecito is a bottleneck because the insanely rich people won't allow more than 2 lanes on the 101 there. So I wouldn't want to commute through montecito during rush hour and when school is in session. The other jam occurs where the 217 hits the 101 near the airport. All of the university and airport traffic uses the 217. If you can live and work btween turnpike and cabrillo, traffic shouldn't be a big part of your life.

OK that is super useful info. I think we'd try to live near downtown, but spouse may need to do goleta because IT jobbies. Pony can live up in the hills and will evacuate to the earl warren fairgrounds, this is already an established thing unfortunately.

If anyone wants to take a drive to check out San Marcos Stables, it looks great for me and pony.

did you look at la cañada/flintridge, altadena and then points east along the northern edge of the SGV, i.e. toward the race track at santa anita?

SGV represent! (at least two ILXors are out here) Some areas of Duarte, Monrovia, and Bradbury are horse-friendly plus you're somewhat close to the Gold Line into downtown.

I thought she wanted to be away from the megalopolis, but yeah, I'd pick Altadena if I had a horse.

Santa Barbara is great, though, and if I had a bit more money I might move there.

San Marcos Rd. is very popular with cyclists. I'd imagine your pony would be very happy there, and it'd be a good place to spend time yourself. If you end up looking outside of the city and closer to the pony, it's a very easy commute to Goleta tech jobs via cathedral oaks. You can avoid the 217 traffic this way. In general, I'd worry if santa barbara is enough of a city for a "city lover". The restaurant level won't be comparable to SF or LA. The Bowl is great for music, though. There are uncrowded beaches where you'll see dolphins.

Santa Barbara is great, though, and if I had a bit more money I might move there.

― nickn, Monday, July 6, 2020 2:00 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

it seems more appealing as more companies become remote-friendly and i don't expect to fly more than once or twice a year.

lol I am emailing our mortgage broker. This is making me nervous about waiting to move.

Hang on to your condo and rent it to us :)

We do plan to rent initially, just to make sure we don't pine for SF.

For our usual day-to-day activities and overall quality of life, I think SB would be great.

Pandemic living has definitely shifted us away from city folk shit and more toward home and outdoor shit. I think that will stick even post-pandemic.

Oh and I asked spouse, "is there a reason we haven't talked about San Diego" and he said "I think maybe it is a cultural wasteland?" but this may be entirely untrue, sorry SD. Pls proceed with an SB vs SD fite, that would be cool.

Santa Barbara isn’t exactly the Lincoln Center you know?

SD is full of cop and navy humpers

SB is too (basically reagan democrats) but they're tasteful about it

True, caek but ask me when I last went to the Kennedy Center, which is about 2 miles away.

Or a museum, of which DC has a billion.

I'm into diff stuff now, I go to bed at 10, I am a boring middle age person, oh well.

Sounds like you’d love San Diego!

For some reason I was under the impression that SD is pretty right-leaning, is that a fair assessment? And with a very suburban feel, but without having an anchoring downtown? IDK why I have a "meh" sense about SD. I haven't been there since I was like 5.

“Santa Barbara without the fire”

I think that’s all true relative to the LA basin but it’s moved left, and it’s left of a lot of the country. It also has sprawl which Santa Barbara doesn’t but the flipside of no sprawl in SB is “it’s a sliver of land that depends on a single freeway and it catches fire/gets covered in mud”. I also don’t know it well. It does have a ritzy farmers market loft living urban core IIUC.

the "outdoors" in SB i think is closer/more diverse than SD. YOMV on that. also, i suppose, your next major cultural centers from SD (in USA) are LA, Vegas and... PHX(?). Whereas I think you could say that with SB it's LA VEG and SF, with the stuff in between SB and SF being "better" than that between SD and PHX. Again, YOMV.

Also the weather is better than LA/SB.

I only hear bad bad things bout SD from friends who live there and are trying to move.

I'm also thinking San Luis Obispo, Monterey, or Santa Cruz, though I don't know the airport sitch there, or how close you want the big city to be.

My impression with SD is “not as bad as it used to be” along all axes, but that may not be good enough, it’s true.

i have never been but the way they talk about it, it seems like SD is the FL of CA but with people on meth setting fires.

re: San Luis Obispo, Monterey, or Santa Cruz. . . I think somewhat closer to a big city feels more comfortable to me? Would have to check out the tech job situation.

For pony purposes, those would be amazing I am sure.

SLO is a bit like charlottesville in that it has American University Downtown Feel that might as well be Bloomington, IN, which I kind of like tbh. Monterey is very beautiful, but that HBO show never shot Nicole Kidman walking by the oddly placed benihana, el torito, etc. San Diego has always felt strange to me. It is littered in smart scooters. La Jolla is very beautiful, though. Renting for awhile is a good idea. You can do weekend trips to all of these places and see for yourselves.

i got head hunted on linkedin for a tech job in SB for the first time recently.

Yes but are you skillz linux and lol fortran

Seems like developer jobs are everywhere, but spouse mostly does systems stuff. I think. I don't really understand what he does. Types into the black screen a lot. His dream job would be at an airport because he loves aviation.

And caek I don't exactly know where you are these days! LA? Do you get to marfa anymore?

Yes but are you skillz linux and lol fortran

― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Monday, July 6, 2020 5:09 PM (six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

in all seriousness if that's his resume then he should live in altadena and work at JPL. altadena is relatively cool weather (foothills) and cheap (terrible schools). most of the aerospace stuff is down by LAX which would be a rough commute from anywhere horse-friendly. there's more up the coast. spacex launches from vandenberg AFB.

hi! i used to live in the areas i am suggesting to you but i moved west (near culver city) because i could not handle the absolutely calamitous heat of the SGV, and it is ten degrees cooler on the west side. i haven't been to marfa for a couple of years because sprogs but i spent a bunch of time there since our paths crossed! i guess one of the nice things about LA is marfa is driveable with ~1 overnight and you can stop in ... phoenix on the way.

hi hi! Terrible schools are perfect for the non-sprogged. Are you sure altadena wouldn't be to hot for me? I am not a crazy texan like the spouse.

it might be! of course this is dry heat not texas heat. but yeah i generally find the SGV too hot. i think of pasadena as a special case because it has shade (due trees, legit tall buildings and blocks with no setbacks) and altadena as a special case because it also has trees and it's got a bit of a microclimate that's good for a few degrees of cooling due to the elavation.

Trade offs. For me - I'll take a higher temperature here in Sierra Madre (one city over from Altadena) than the traffic and concrete heat islands as you go further west.

yeah north of the 210 is lovely imo

I'm in the flatlands of Pasadena but I don't mind the heat (as long as it's dry). If you can buy a place in a canyon in Altadena that would likely be noticeably cooler.

Would a canyon place in Altadena be walkable to stuff, is my question. That is definitely still a requirement.

Altadena doesn't seem to have as many horse options as SB?

There will definitely be trade-offs regardless of where we land, this is most definitely true. At this point I'm happy to just pull the trigger and land somewhere in the SF-to-LA stretch before next summer! Getting across the country is the heavy lift, the rest will sort itself.

Would a canyon place in Altadena be walkable to stuff, is my question. That is definitely still a requirement.

That part of the world makes sense to me because it seems like it should have horse options but if it doesn’t in fact have horse options then lol.

Yeah horse options within like two hours of a major city are generally pretty scarce, unless you are OK with your horse having zero turnout. The LA Equestrian Center is a nice place to take your horse to a show, but horses who live there can, at most, spend like 45 minutes in a tiny "sun pen" as a break from their 12x12 stalls. This is akin to keeping a small elephant in a two-car garage.

My horse lives full time in a 5 acre pasture with his buddies. The only time he is in a stall is if I'm keeping him in for the vet or farrier or something for an hour or two.

Where do all the horses that race at Santa Anita live? The must be somewhere up there.

I know of one in Altadena. https://www.altadenastables.com/

True though, that if you find a place tucked into a canyon it's not gonna be walk-friendly to much else.

Race horses spend 23 hours a day in their stalls at the track. They don't get turned out unless they are on layup for a while, in which case they get shipped out to country livin'

Nickin I took a look at that place's website and was immediately put off by "parties and events!"

If you have 30 million dollars, Hope Ranch may be the best fit

Alas, I. . . don't

OK now here is a really interesting option: ucsb has a boarding stable on the west campus, run as a co-op, with a few spots for community boarders (most spots reserved for students and faculty). It's nothing fancy but RIDE ON THE BEACH and holy shit is it cheap. Like under 300 bucks a month (and a bunch of co-op work, which is fine by me). https://www.ucsbhorseboarders.com/

Turnout is probably not awesome, but I could be so close that I could go basically every day to let my guy out to run around, and get some california blonde co-ed to take care of him when I travel.

That is interesting. I didn't know about that. In many of those ocean shots on the website, there's a pretty tall cliff before you get down to the beach. But it's beautiful over there. There's a nice butterfly grove nearby as well.

Good birding, that. There is an owl family that lives in the eucalyptus

Oh hey I go to SB in two weeks. What must I not miss (other than the 5 horse boarding options I will be checking out)?

Things I like to do most: be in good weather, shop for foods, eat foods, gardens, hiking, foods. Bookstores, theater (not so much theater these days), coffee. Foods.

Also is Isla Vista all students/student housing or could a normal non-student person consider living there?

where ur horse boarding places

1. UCSB Boarding Stables, Isla Vista
2. San Marcos Stables, San Marcos Road foothills
3. Big Valley Ranch, als San Marcos Road (Pass?) foothills
4. In the Irons Farm in Goleta
5. Foxdale Farm, Alta Mesa
6. (I guess it is 6 not 5) Santa Barbara Stables, Montecito-ish

4-6 may be too fancy and A-circuit show oriented for me and my pony, but doesn't hurt to look I suppose

Nice! At the risk of stating the obvious, the mission is nice if you like gardens. The city hall has some nice gardens and you should climb the tower to get the lay of the land downtown. Otherwise I got nothing on your list.

chaucers is your local bookstore; idk what's open right now in terms of attractions.

wind caves:

https://www.hikespeak.com/trails/gaviota-wind-caves/

butterfly grove:

https://www.cityofgoleta.org/projects-programs/parks-open-space/goleta-butterfly-grove/

Thanks!

What should I eat?

Also what ilxors live in SB, I don't even really know. FAP?

Also is Isla Vista all students/student housing or could a normal non-student person consider living there?

it isn't all student housing -- some professors and families live there. Del Playa is an insane place filled with young people trying to figure their shit out, but things are a bit calmer on the other side of Camino Corto. and you have some good hiking/beaches right there. during the school year, it would probably be the most densely populated area you could choose, so I'd avoid it over virus concerns. Students will pack themselves 3 or 4 to a bedroom in those Del Playa houses. Campus is great for hanging out or walking. You won't find much great food in the area. I don't know. If you dig the energy of a younger crowd, I suppose it could be fun? Or maybe you mean the Goleta area surrounding Isla Vista? You are definitely not in a city at that point. It's not E.T. california suburb homogeneity bad, but you should check it out on your visit before signing a lease.

Will need a minute for food recs.

I think the far end of IV (away from campus) is mostly single-family houses, at least near the beach. Or was when I was in school there, decades ago.

Thanks!

What should I eat?

La Super Rica. Inevitably, someone will say that it's not worth the wait in line but just go at an off-hour.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/la-super-rica-taqueria-santa-barbara

Follow it up with ice cream at McConnells. They've been around since 1949 - it's my fave ice cream in the state.
https://www.yelp.com/biz/mcconnells-fine-ice-creams-santa-barbara

those are both good. No sauces on anything at La Super Rica. Everything has gravy on it. Even the salsas congeal if left in the fridge.

What should I get at La Super Rica? I am excited that Julia Child was a fan. Spouse is currently reading all about McConnells. We will probably end up there a lot!

Any bbq worth seeking out?

bbq is a weakness here. there was one chef good at bbq and the ventures kept closing. be warned that there's a lot of "santa maria style bbq" available which just means tri-tip. it's a great idea for making yourself, but i don't recommend paying for it at a restaurant.

i enjoy the tamals, enchiladas, and chile rellenos at super rica. these will usually be on the specials board and will be gravy'd up. they call it a "light cream sauce", but i swear it is gravy.

If La Super Rica's specials board has anything with chile verde on it, be sure to get it - even if it's just the onions/peppers plate with chile verde. We got their early once - maybe a half-hour before opening just as their purveyors were dropping of the day's produce and we were knocked out at the quality of the goods. Every onion, head of lettuce, tomato, etc. perfect. FWIW, Sonic Youth were also big fans of this place.

"Santa Maria style BBQ" was trademarked by the Santa Maria chamber of commerce. There's great butcher shops around town, just make your own.

For gardens I'd try to get into Lotusland in Montecito. It's expensive, and they may not be allowing visitors at all now, but really incredible.

Wilcox property too.

la super rica: ORDER EVERYTHING.

I think SLO is better for BBQ than SB

If u wanna go have a quest check out The Spot in Carp. Julia Child used to eat there so *shrug*

My family is really hard up on Palace Cafe (doing takeout rn). It’s kinda dumb but tasty

Lotusland is $50 per person, and it was worth it to us. You have to schedule a guided or unguided tour ahead of time, and they are only open wednesday to saturday or something. Beautiful garden with some great stories about the woman behind it all (if you get a guided tour).

(so seconding nickn there)

I think I went 15-20 years ago and I think it was $35, and that was a group rate. But it's worth it.

Seconding La Super Rica - anything on the menu is good but I would highlight the Chile Relleno and Queso with Chorizo. If you are into burgers the original Hamburger Habit (before they franchised) is in Goleta and it's good and charming.

You probably won't be able to experience the classic Santa Barbara restaurants in full due to Covid - Brophy Bros., Arnoldi's (bocce ball court in back, booths with curtains) and Joe's will most likely be offering only limited service or take out.

Cold Spring Tavern (approximately 25 minutes on highway 154 or the "San Marcos Pass") is open for lunch apparently. Absolutely worth the trip, you will see a different side of Santa Barbara County. One of my favorite places in the world.
https://www.coldspringtavern.com/

For the typical Southern California burrito as big as your leg experience check out Super Cuca's. I prefer the downtown / Micheltorena location, there is also one in Isla Vista that is very college-y if you're out that way.

guess "MFB" doesn't stand for "Mine's a FreeBird" after all

FreeBird's is just a groovier Chipotle to me, Cuca's is the realness.

all burrito-focused endeavors feel like 'groovier Chipotle' to me now. but freebird's, being on the main IV road to campus, tends to attract the drunkest young people shouting 'welcome to the thunderdome', etc. so I go there for the memories.

I spent an afternoon/evening in SB about four years ago. I book shopped at Chaucer's then had a delicious meal at Los Agaves on North Milpas. I dream of surfing Rincon someday.

Dream bigger: hire a zodiac to take you to Cojo Point in The Ranch.

https://i.imgur.com/GJmwRSp.jpg

Oh god yes, that too.

OK dumb SB question but do people generally have A/C? Heat?

I have a lot to learn about How to Live in Comfortable Climates.

Oh and what is the biting bug situation i.e. mosquitoes, ticks etc.

Heat is common as the winter nights can be chilly. A/C is less common, but it is useful. We have a single room unit for our kids' room for the summer months. We go to bed later and get by with a screen door and fan at night. We have good shade in the back, though. Some areas, particularly in Goleta, get more sun and probably need the A/C more. Second floor will need it more. It is cooler if you have an ocean breeze. Even cooler if you go into the water.

Biting bug situation is good. We have a creek behind us and never worry about mosquitos.

fleas are probably worse if you have carpet and a pet

there are more spiders than in places with winter, but it's not australia.

collardio, we had los agaves enchilada family dinner takeout tonight. they've opened more locations over the last 4 years. they also own a more upscale spot on cabrillo where the el torito used to be called flor de maiz. it is worth checking out if you're in town for another afternoon.

can get REALLY hot at night in summer if you don't sleep with the windows open/were traumatized by the night stalker

Growing up we made fun of people with AC. Heat was pretty standard - there can be those SF-like bitterly cold / humid winter mornings and evenings. If you live in the city of Santa Barbara you will be fine without AC.

SB is also prone to all of the typical California natural disasters - flooding, fires (and the accompanying dry / hot / windy "Santa Ana" conditions) and earthquakes were all a memorable part of my childhood.

Here are some of my favorite coffee/food spots. They aren't stone cold SB classics like La Super Rica. Most of them would be good things to take to the Mission Rose Garden, shoreline park, a strip of grass between cabrillo and the ocean, Lotusland, etc.

coffee: Dune, Handlebar, and Caje are all good options. Dune is probably the best value. Handlebar is more expensive but has better beans. Caje has the more "innovative" coffee drinks if you guys are into cutting edge lattes with flower ensembles (the beans are also good, no judgement here).
breakfast pastry: Bree'osh has great croissants, brioche, bostocks, and quiches. It is kind of the new Renaud's, which also has great breakfast pastry and is more of an SB classic.
breakfast/brunch: Malibu Farm at Miramar is good, mostly for the trip and side activities. Rosewood Miramar is a recently renovated hotel a little bit south of Santa Barbara. On your drive, you can check out the polo club grounds near the 101. After brunch, you can walk across a nice lawn, cross the train tracks, and walk down to the beach. Skip this recommendation if proximity to wealthy resort guests makes you uncomfortable.
lunch: The Blue Owl has good deli fare downtown. Metropulos has the same in the "Funk Zone", which is the fashionable 'industrial' area boxed by 101-garden st-cabrillo-state st. Street tacos at Lily's. Fancy tacos at Corazon or Flor de Maiz. Cubaneo has a good Cuban sandwich with benton's country ham. Zaytoon for Lebanese with nice outdoor seating. If you like uni, Santa Barbara is world famous for it, and some people grab some fresh at the harbor market and make a meal out of it.

I'd consider taking a lunch trip up the 101 and/or 154 to Santa Ynez. On top of roadtrip views, Industrial Eats in Buellton is my favorite place to eat in the larger area not including LA (it's a 45 minute drive to get out there). Everything is delicious. There's a nearby city called Solvang filled with jelly rolls, fudge, year-round christmas stores, and tchotchke shops. All that Sideways stuff. They have a dessert called aebleskiver, and like most of Solvang, it's not particularly good but its very existence is intriguing. The area is famously good for riding bicycles. There are wineries.

Great info, thanks!

Industrial Eats in Buellton is my favorite place to eat in the larger area

my favorite place in Buellton is that "secret"(?) back window in the gas station, which is probably closed down for now.

...which has a 1-star on Yelp and no mention of the secret window which is an absolute plus in today's world:

https://www.yelp.com/biz/76-buellton

...but has a solitary 5-star review on Facebook:

76 - Buellton, California | Facebook

Rating: 5 - ‎1 vote - ‎Price range: $$
76 - 631 Avenue of the Flags, Buellton, CA 93427 - Rated 5 based on 1 Review "THE BEST TRI-TIP SANDWICH ON THE MARKET #BEEF #LUNCH"

hmmmm, this feels like a trick. and if the upside is a tri-tip sandwich, I will play it safe.

maybe it has another name? it's pretty great.

is it tri-tip only?

excuse me, is it #BEEF #LUNCH only?

haha, sounds like a gloryhole or something but a buddy from SLO told me about it a few years back and I stop by every time I'm passing through.

I think it's sandwiches only but I'm trying to find a picture online or any reference of the counter/window/menu and have been unsuccessful so far. So much for "the information age/all digital everything"....

you are purposefully luring me to a location near north and south 101 exits with this hipster bait.

i'm digging deep:

OldJalamaMama May 15, 201710:16 PM

A good bbq tri tip sandwich for me, stuck here in the SYV, its the always dependable R Country Store in downtown Los Olivos- I think they bbq on both Saturday and Sunday. Crisp buttered roll with lots of sliced tri tip and a side of salsa- YUM. Not cheap and comes with a coke and chips.

The BEST comes from the oddest source in Buellton- on the top of the Avenue of Flags is a 76 Station and on Fridays they bbq tri tips out the back door and slice the tip on a slicer inside- stuff it inside a bun and serve it with a side of salsa- SOOOO GOOD.

ok, looks like I found something more official/detailed:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eagle-Energy-76-Buellton/107357666034922

tri-tip tacos/sandwiches
meatball subs
bbq pork sandwiches
chili dog
french dip
teriyaki beef
yogurt parfaits
etc.

if you click through to that FB link, you'll need to click again toward the top of the page to find the duplicate page that has all the pics/posts. I can't seem to brute force it.

the royal people bought a house here. cannot wait to see them in line at the tri-tip hole.

What royal people?

harry and meghan. they are out in the montecito wilderness, looking down on us, watching over us like oprah before them.

saying things like "the santa barbaran knows the tri tip is a cheaper cut of beef, undesirable to most, but the santa barbaran wants it anyway. what a curious people." Btw it is hot out here this weekend.

Which means a high of 85, but we are all freaking out about it.

oh I should have known it would be M&H. I wonder if they want to half-lease a pony for their (not?) royal spawn. I will share him for hmmm let's say $10,000 a month.

I will in all seriousness happily perform hard outdoor manual labor in 85 and not even complain.

It is 79 rn and feels cold when clouds cover the sun. I was checking out some ocean weather bc of this sweltering heatwave, and I now want to make a sequel to Twister called Waterspout.

It’s 106 in Pasadena right now and a mere 103 in Altadena so I retract my Altadena suggestion

we had Jerry Jones' yacht hanging out yesterday. starting to worry about this place.

Our latest plan is to live in H&M's servant quarters in exchange for pony rides.

Can do same for Jerry Jones but not sure how to get pony on a boat.

Where should I seek out meats to cook at home/airbnb? Also, how insane is the SB farmer's market on the weekends, and are there alternative places to for good produce?

- the weekend farmer's markets are good. It can be crowded, but I wouldn't skip them. The farmer's markets seem to be important to you, and you should see them for yourself. I love them, but I'd imagine there are better. The farmer's markets usually also have a small selection of meat/fish.
- There's a decent produce market on Milpas called Tri-County Produce.
- Shalhoob is the standard local butcher, but we don't buy much from there.
- You can get local black cod, halibut, rockfish, and uni at the SB Fish Market. There's also a small fish market with local stuff on the harbor on Saturdays from 7:30-11am.
- If you want to buy good produce and meats on any day and at one place (and don't mind paying more compared to Vons/Ralph's/etc.), I'd check out Lazy Acres on the Mesa. They have the best meat counter in a grocery store. A bigger store owned by the same company, Bristol Farms, is also opening on upper State next week. I believe these are common in LA, but I am excited to check it out and hope it's as good as Lazy Acres.
- I am not a Gelson's fan, but that's another probably fine grocery option, and it's next to Chaucer's.

Can do same for Jerry Jones but not sure how to get pony on a boat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpM8FjO4Vko

quincie, unfortunately you could be catching a minor heat wave along with some summer fire air quality issues.

I'm old enough to remember when fire season was when the Santa Anas picked up during Indian Summer... rather than just plain old summer.

That’s OK, I am pretty used to crap weather and air quality. I will comfort myself with tacos.

Oh and thanks to whoever made the Cold Spring Tavern (Grill?) rec; made a reservation for lunch next Fri since we’ll be heading out that way to visit a couple of barns.

That will be fun! Glad you're seeing the other side of the mountain. Haven't been in a long while. Would usually go in grad school for tri tip sandwiches and music on the weekends.

Oh hi it is not even 9am and we have hot coffee at handlebar, pastry at Renaud’s, now headed to farmers market, all the while wondering why we have wasted half our lives in the wrong coast.

Quite right.

awesome morning!

Drove around the stoodent slum of IV, cracking up all the while. Second coffee at Caje. Did a drive by of the barns in Galeta, now lunching at Super Cucas. Not bad for a Saturday morning, huh? Many thanks for recs, so helpful for getting a grip.

Any sushi recs? Any price point.

arigato is the old sb favorite, but i like oku better these days. They have outdoor seating on cabrillo.

lol @ poor college students, they probably eat low price point sushi and their horses come from disreputable breeders

I’ve been to teri a couple of times and liked it but I eat spicy salmon rolls and drink beer.

many good places for that experience

trip to farmacy followed by dinner from Corazon at the Public Market.

How are ppl here so skinny, is there like a widespread coke scene I don't know about

Also had a very promising visit to one of the two barns up the San Marcos Pass. We will go back again on Friday.

get any ceviche at corazon?

Yes! Delicious, some amazing dressing wanted to drink straight.

Ummmm so any thoughts on a realtor? We bought our current house sans the 6% but we don’t know the market here at all, plus apparently open houses are a thing of the past.

My financial advisor who helped with our purchase is a big fan of openlistings, which saves a lot of money. Redfin has the best UI but saves less money. We chickened our and went with a local realtor and she was very good and held our hands more which we needed because it was our first time and we had to move very fast on a specific house. I’m not sure if covid makes the argument for a local well paid expert stronger or weaker. And I’m not sure if the situation is different in SB. But generally speaking if you know what you’re doing and have spare time then I would at least look into openlistings and friends.

it's only right that this ends with quincie outbidding us on a house. we chose our realtor based on loving her as a person, which is probably the wrong thing to do for saving money. she is also responsive and knowledgeable, though. can ilxmail you if interested.

My ilxmail died long ago, does yours work?

no lol

Are you on the ilx slack

today I ate my 4th McConnells ice cream and toured a $2M 1br condo lolololol

hell yeah!

nice! Our realtor wasn't responding so I cooled on recommending her. But it turns out she is out of the country for awhile, so wouldn't be a great choice at the moment.

Our airbnb host recommended a guy, he seems fine. It ain’t exactly rocket science.

Narrowed it down to two horsey homes. Prob back in Sept/Oct to work on more logistics and eat more tacos.

And more ice cream. I adore the churros con leche! With hot fudge!

Didn’t make it to SY valley this trip; will hit it up next time around.

Agree that you will be fine with anyone that knows the area and you can handle dealing with. Think clients moving into sb are getting attention rn. Still we are looking at a home tomorrow. Would require some reno, but hopeful some jerk with a briefcase of cash won't win it to sell again in a month or rent.

Did I mention that the $2M one bedroom had a $700 monthly fee

I mean $900, not $700. If you have to ask. . .

just a little 108 grand per year for insurance and to keep those hedges looking nice

Just acknowledging that i was hungover this morning, did 9*12, and obv misplaced a decimal bc i was confused by the idea of 108 hundred.

Oops I am accidentally moving to Montecito to live in the guest suite of a 5M house lollll. I am the Kato Kaelin of Santa Barbara.

lol

montconcieto

3 month lease while we house hunt but hey, heated pool!

Say hi to Oprah.

that will be fun! I'd eat at Bettina every day. All of Montecito only really has this one Vons, though. It upsets me because it is just a Vons, but I swear this Vons is putting on airs.

I will be out in Goleta to see the pony pretty much every day, hoping this will offset the Montecito-ness.

What is the scoop on mission canyon?

Oh and apparently I will be living in Riviera, not Montecito. Is there really a difference i dunno

Mission Canyon is cool. I actually love the city and mountain views you get from those hills a bit closer to the Mission and away from the city. The Riviera is probably the most classic Santa Barbara spot. It's the densely packed hills overlooking the city and should be very awesome. Have you ever lived somewhere with high radon levels? If you buy a home in the hills, you might have to install a way to sink radon away from your foundation so that you don't reach unsafe levels inside. see https://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/Documents/Publications/Open-File-Reports/OFR_0-Radon-SantaBarbara-Map.pdf

when i first heard about the radon issue, i thought it was a prelude to being shown a trunk full of dreamcatchers and salt lamps. but it's real.

oh weird, wtf CA!

I doubt we will be in the hills long term. Hopefully Downtownish/Milpasish/North Stateish does not have radon problems
Or fire problems

not in santa barbara, but my house was tested prior to purchase and we were able to get the seller to install radon remediation with no drama at all

I admit that the word "remediation" strikes fear into my wallet.

Do I need any updates to my late 70s earthquake response training? Was living in Utah and we drilled to get under our desks for earthquakes. Or maybe it was nukes. Same technique for both. In the DC earthquake about 8 years ago everyone ran outside. Some took the elevators down to do so.

to the best of my recollection it cost the sellers like a little north of a thousand bucks, again TBC i'm in massachusetts and can only speak to my experience but radon is common here and i don't think it's usually a big deal. i see radon pipes like mine on tons of houses in our area.

also congrats on your move to santa barbara, it's a beautiful place!

when i first heard about the radon issue, i thought it was a prelude to being shown a trunk full of dreamcatchers and salt lamps. but it's real.

Yup. Lots of circumstantial contributions from the local oil and gas deposits. The tar pits in and around Carpinteria are worth checking out.

If you like hot springs there a couple that are fairly easy to get to, Big Caliente and Little Caliente. I went once but someone else drove, so I can't tell you how to get there.

The riviera is a bad day away from being burned down to milpas. It’s a minor miracle it hasn’t yet

did not mean to scare quincie with the radon stuff. as cad said, the fix is pretty inexpensive. nothing like a tall retaining wall of death that will ruin you forever.

Nah I'm not too put off by the radon thing. Far more manageable than retaining walls of death!

Pony will be living at Glen Annie Ranch. What's cool around there?

Can't wait to start my taco diet.

SB isn't a suburb, is it? Like, I'm not now an icky person who lives in the suburbs. More like a small city or something? I dunno I guess parts feel suburban, sans the crap commute into the city.

there's a surprisingly good taco place next to the batting cages on milpas. you just have to commit to a "triple play", so you get 3 for $9 with chips.

Chips seem like a weird thing to have alongside tacos, but I am game!

IMO california is all suburbs except sf near market street and dtla

It is true that most of the carnage from the thread on crazy real estate photos hails from CA.

Glen Annie is a cool area. there's a cheap but beautiful golf course. I wouldn't necessarily live over there. I would live close to cathedral/foothill so I could take it to Glen Annie. the area surrounded by Glen Annie rd, cathedral oaks, and the 101 is one of the most suburb feeling locations.

where's the crazy real estate thread shoot it into my veins

we can walk to restaurants, coffee, parks, grocery stores, etc. and i don't live in a target based condo development. i feel like it's a small city if you live in the small city.

yeah my idea of suburbs is very european i guess, but residential california is suburban by defintion imo.

quincie, i feel you'd enjoy upper east, oak park, laguna, downtown, and lower state areas if you don't want to feel too suburban. maybe lower riviera as well.

Oh we will definitely relocate from the the rich ppl mansion (I mean srsly google sixteenfiftyone sycamore cnyn rd and begin the rofls) to a small city area. Or hell maybe will stay in rich ppl guest suite forever, it's pretty cheap. And 400 square feet. Where both of us will be working full time.

But I mean I plan to take calls from the pool, let's be real.

Oh apparently I grossly overstimated the square feet. It's 225. Cozy!

haha wow. you will do well here if you can continue to value weather and lot size over square footage.

Oh shit that rental fell through. How do I shot furnished short term rental in uh 3 weeks?

I shot it! East Beach/Milpas. Another guest suite but for a normalish property not a Riviera mansion property. Guess I will have to settle for ocean instead of pool.

Walking distance to East Beach Tacos, are those good tacos?

that's the batting cage tacos! they are good. and it's fun to have a drink and do a terrible job attempting to hit home runs after.

should be a good spot. east beach tends to be less crowded. it's where most of the regular volleyball happens. the pavillion was under construction, but it may be done now? tri-county produce is a good little grocer. Habit Burger is good. You'll have solid mexican food up milpas along with the best trader joes. brand new Sprouts nearby. you can also walk cabrillo to the funk zone or ride bikes to butterfly beach and montecito.

you'll have many options for outdoor hanging. the thin strip of grass between the beach and cabrillo, the bird refuge, and the zoo is sort of like a nice park. convivo is maybe a bit expensive when you have so much cheap food nearby, but it's good. SB farmers market would also be an easy bike ride.

for somebody that prefers a small city feel, i'd consider this new spot an upgrade

Yeah if I had to move home again I’d try and get in around milpas

Yeah the location is definitely more our speed than up in the hills! Relieved to have something squared away, it was getting a little close for comfort. Our bikes will be in storage in DC until we buy, bet I can rent something or like steal one from an Isla Vista group house.

drove by east beach this morning, and the pavilion appears to be finished. the three months you're over there will be "rainy season", but there will be sunny days. temperature should never get too hot again, though. autumn in santa barbara feels like it lasts from now until spring. i absolutely love autumn, and this may be why i can't leave.

and why I am kicking myself that I have spent so much time in the swamp!

ok random question: is there an SB track with a good springy surface that the public can use? Like maybe at the high school?

I'm almost a year out from mega knee surgery and am finally *almost* to the point of being able to jog a bit, but the PT recommends a nice forgiving surface at first, not concrete or asphalt. Here in DC we can use the Sidwell Friends school track which is nice enough for presidents' kids, so good enough for me obv.

La Playa Stadium at SBCC is a very popular spot. It might be closed right now due to the pandemic.

UCSB also will have this, but I'm not sure if it's open to the public.

I've noticed some people like to jog on the beach, close to the water where the sand is firm.

All that. Also if you want to try a thing pedal to the butterfly refuge and x-country to the beach

DPHS has a tartan track but not sure if it's open to the public.

I will check those out, thanks.

Apparently spouse is ready to embrace small(er) town living and wants to go to high school football games on Friday nights (he can't help it he's from Texas). Which school should he root for? I'm gonna get down with Goleta.

San Marcos

Cate School in the hills above the Rincon. Both David Crosby (pulled the electrical breakers and cut off power to the entire school, stealing common area TV, etc.) & Stephen Malkmus (mushrooms) were both expelled from.

*pffft*

LOOK OUT SANTA BARBARA I AM COMING FOR YOU IN T MINUS 48 HOURS

What is good to eat in Goleta, I will be there a lot with pony at Glen Annie

you could get your first Freebird burrito? I don't understand the love for Super Cuca's, rare as it seems. Lilly's tacos will be cheap and just down the road (pork and beef variations >> chicken, so maybe avoid if you are a chicken taco person). Noodle City has good, cheap pho, broken rice (rec #22), and vermicelli (#41). The original Habit Burger is in downtown Goleta. I've heard good things about Neighbor Tim's BBQ (stay away from other BBQ). Decent local brewery nearby Tim's as well.

Tim's is a food truck next to brewery. you order online. looks like weekend hours might be dinner only.

I also like nikka ramen down calle real

I'M THE GOD OF GOLETA BABY

(sorry)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LzaHWkkKYk

In other moving to santa barbara news, any contractor recommendations or warnings? Plan to knock out a kitchen and bathroom reno post haste.

our experiences have been middling. I'd ask your realtor.

Can ya'll tell me about the rainy season? Is it even called that? When does it happen? What is it like? Disclosures report that our new SB street floods and to park the car up the hill (what hill, I don't even know) when it rains.

Why yes, I'm buying a house with "issues."

In better news, we had a different foundation inspector in yesterday and he did not see "major red flags," so I guess there is that.

winter is the "rainy season". It's the only time it rains all year. no storms, but the rain can be heavy. If drainage is poorly designed, it rains enough that water can collect. I'm not sure what is meant by "the street floods". Some streets are curved with "gutters" on the sides where water flows down. If a street floods, that implies it is at a local minimum elevation or something weird. Mission St is a bit like that.

worsst flooding is usually at the castillo 101 underpass

everyone generally happy about rain, as SB is peak beautiful when green and the lakes are full. Only bad when you have heavy rain after an off season wildfire that damages the soil.

I mean there are things meteorologists call storms in winter but yeah the weird thing about coastal Southern California weather is there is basically no lightning ever.

welcome, quincie and partner! Congrats on finding one of the best spots to live in this here world. Now please don't tell anyone.

Thank you! I will tell everyone back on the lesser coast that it is awful here and they should stay put :)

We drove around yesterday with stupid grins on our faces :)

I keep thinking "oh I hope I get to do X on this trip" and then remembering this is not trip--this is *home* now.

Gonna be hard to go back to work tomorrow when "home" feels like a vacation destination.

Oh and we got to see the house we bought yesterday, and we looooooooove it.

aaaaaaay

If ya'll see a tall brunette driving a white pickup with Massachusetts plates (a rental, natch), that's me. Wave me over!

Later, if ya'll see a tall brunette driving a beat-up 12-year-old gray camry with DC plates (our own jalopy, natch), that's me. Wave me over!

Even later (we close next month and will be under construction for at least a month after that), we would love to have ilxs near and far come hang in the garden.

quincie, feel free to complain about this 1 day of rain and drive so slowly on the 101.

Everyone at the barn was freaking out about "horses standing in mud OMG" and I'm like whatevs, my pony has been through so much worse!

We can't get over how awesome this place is.

Except for the DMV but hey, show me a DMV that doesn't suck.

(And it actually wasn't that bad, just not as superior as the weather, the food, the scenery, etc.)

Barnmate also advised "do NOT drive on the 101, stick to side roads!" and I'm like lady I have spun cars on black ice on Pittsburgh hills, I think I can handle the 101 today.

I felt the same way until I realised who I was sharing the roads with when driving in Southern California.

I can relate, but I also imagine LA is another level. xp happy to hear you are still enjoying it out here. we are still settling in after our big move 1 mile up the road. we recently learned that our crawl space smells awful!

I have become rather intimate with our crawl space myself, given that I can see it through the rotten subflooring.

What started as a kitchen/bath reno has turned into a complete gut reno of the whole house, which is currently down to studs and said rotten subflooring (which itself will be replaced along with. . . pretty much absolutely everything else).

Moving into Milpas rental #2 next week, will be there for an indeterminate amount of time.

Will see how SB permitting office compares to SB DMV.

ooo wow. We are also doing an extensive reno of a portion. Our subfloor might be ok, but we have to replace all posts and piers and pour some new perimeter foundation. And we also have to fix the terrible compost smell. The internet seems to think you do this by either improving ventilation or removing ventialtion entirely and adding moisture barrier. These two things are opposites so I'm worried it's all bad.

Remember the good old days when it was just about retaining walls? :)

We knew the reno situation could snowball once we started pulling things out. Once it was clear that the subfloors should be replaced, then it meant drywall had to come down, and once that was the walls were opened up, why not go ahead and vault the ceiling? And we knew we needed to replace the knob and tube electrical for safety--easier now that it is all exposed.

I have not yet started to wrap my head around stuff I'd like to do outside. Does CA even have a lottery? Need to get some more cash flow going. I guess there is always the Chumash casino.

But back to adventures on Milpas: we decided that we are in the hood, we will eat at each and every restaurant from top of the street to ocean.

Unfortunately, this includes a Jack In the Box and a Carl's Jr.

Plenty of good stuff to offset those, thankfully.

KFC and Winchell's!

There's 4 or so places I've not had yet. Always wondered about Cesar's.

Always wondered about seeing a Jewel concert between poker hands at the chumash as well.

We have done Winchell's and ruled it not as good as Eller's. Haven't tried Cesar's yet. Actually doing KFC tonight--it has been years and I do so grudgingly, but spouse is unreasonably excited.

There is also a Little Caesars to tackle. Haven't had that since the 80s I reckon.

Bossie's was great!

I seem to eat/drink coffee on East Haley a lot.

In fact I think I will walk over there now that the terrible, terrible weather has passed.

Oh and I have not done the hot dog place yet but am excited to make a custom corn dog out of hot italian sausage instead of dog.

Eller's is indeed better. Glad somebody is up for KFC. Maybe there's some joy in choosing sides? I enjoy Bossie's and hope they do well. That spot, an old dairy building that had a cow statue on the roof, has flipped a number of times. Bossie's seems to have possibly stuck? The Haley Corridor was starting to happen before the pandemic. Hopefully it will pick up where it left off afterward.

Spudnuts my dudes

I prefer to eat my doughnuts with a side of mashed potatoes

Fatal shooting in front of our place last night was. . . unexpected

I'd imagine so! I wondered if it was nearby your current spot and hoped it wasn't. Santa Barbara is not immune to the occasional act of violence, typically "gang related" as this is described. We had some occur very near to the place we rented on Anapamu years ago. Most of it seems to happen closer to downtown, so it's a trade-off between living closer to the city and being nearer to incidents of crime. But things have happened even near Santa Barbara Middle School, which seems to be one of the swankier areas in the hills on APS.

100% of the two deaths i've been present at are described earlier on this thread

https://www.macrotrends.net/cities/us/ca/santa-barbara/crime-rate-statistics#:~:text=Violent%20crimes%20are%20defined%20in,a%205.03%25%20decline%20from%202016.

violent crime rate seems to trend near that for the US or at least california. murder/homicide is generally lower by a factor of 4. let's not give the Trumpers more ammo based on anecdotes.

i don't actually think SB is dangerous haha (although my post is true!)

I think this means that you are dangerous!

in combination with santa barbara anyway

You could fall off a cliff and into the sea, or eaten by a mountain lion, or almost get swallowed by a whale. Things of that nature

celebrating laker fan might hit you with their car

One of the victims was literally in front of our door :(. Apparently there were three separate spots where shots were fired along Liberty (which is only a block long). We were at the barn; came back at ~6:30pm to a lot of police tape. Detectives stopped by a couple of times but we obviously did not have anything to offer.

Very sad, I like this neighborhood a lot and don't feel it is dangerous at all!

So this is the fire-y flip side of the paradise coin.

Pony evac'd to Earl Warren yesterday.

Fires aside, this place is awesome and we are so happy to live here. It's been a year this month! We still don't live in the house we bought on video lol.

Glad you've made it home -- the area, if not the house!

excited for the reservoirs, of course

less excited for the 8 mph average speed around town

Creeks v full

Ah I remember the tense December by Mission creek 2 years ago. Now I just have mid-foundation-construction worries.

Just noticed a gutter was broken and aiming water directly at exposed wood in the sub area.

I’m not in SB at the moment, but pretty sure my pony is knee deep in mud. Hopefully not the case at the house. The street was prone to major float-your-car-away flooding, but the city did a bunch of storm drain work on it over the summer, so hopefully all is well.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/Ubvaxowp8UpF6RUN6

just a horse in a yard very near to downtown

wow this place is kind of magical?

It can be!

Jean Baudrillard waxed eloquently about it in his book America.

I am here now, in my glass coffin surrounded by VCRs, obsessed with death.

I eat a burrito, a spooky mummy for beans, as a hummingbird probes for kniphofia's nectar like a pirate skeleton with a cutlass.

this place truly is hell

I mean it is warm today. The nerve of SB to go over 75 F!

Stevie D is srsly rocking the tank top and shorts and his presence increases the already high SB QOL by a notable margin.

In Baudrillard’s Santa Barbara “you always hear the same question: ‘What are you doing after the orgy?’ ”

OK Stevie and I have actually been discussing this, sort of, re: convos with SB coffee house baristas

people here are so distracted by "what will we do after the orgy?" and you have to wonder where that interest was at during the orgy itself.

https://dankbowlkitchen.com/

I will never eat here, and I will never understand how it remains open.

but i must admit, these are the dankest bowls i've ever seen

Looks like something I'd try. The name doesn't put me off, if that's your objection.

the food is bespoke hot pockets. the aesthetic is weed puns.

I suppose Rebelution, the restaurant, would thrive here

i've always wanted to build my own daddy

i am a free daddy absolutist

SEETHING that user quincie did not take me to the Dank Bowl Kitchen and instead took me to the amazing taqueria and the amazing beachside seafood spot etc

which ones!?

Is La Super-Rica still a must?

Yeah but then i think all those “classic” california institutions are great or at least super fun

I still enjoy it. They put a unique cream sauce on many items. We eat more Cuernavaca, Los Agaves, and Corazon though.

I only learned of Dank Bowl recently, from this thread, and am saving it as a Punishment Meal for S! Who inflicted my punishment meal for that parking ticket we got when I was all “no we don’t need to pay for parking here” at Reunion on East Beach: I have now eaten at the Santa Barbara Denny’s

Is La Super-Rica still a must?

The unique cream sauce is a marvel!!

we tend to get the rain we wanted all at once

I’m out of town and wondering if I should have left a flotation device for the pony!

SB Unified let school out early. Had to ford a few small rivers to pick up the kids. Partners says there are cars abandoned in flooded areas downtown.

All of Montecito is under an evacuation order.

yikes

That is a lot of rain on Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo coast #castorm #AtmosphericRiver in just past 24 hours #cawx pic.twitter.com/9ankUZAU5E

— Alex Tardy Skiwxman (@SanDiegoWCMwx) January 10, 2023

We're doing PCH from LA to SF in December (dream of mine). We did Big Sur to SF last year, so that will be a repeat.

We're going to make SB the first stop for two nights after LA. Thinking of staying right in town instead of in wine country. Are there any good hikes within a short drive of SB?

I was thinking of going SB > Hearst Castle. Is Hearst Castle worth doing? If so, where do you recommend staying near there if we are pushing on to Big Sur the next day?

Inspiration Point is the classic hike. Parking is on a residential street and can be annoying later in the day. With kids, it can be fun to pick up arroyo burro trail from Stevens Park or drive to Toro Canyon - both let you start with a play structure. You can take Arroyo Burro all the way up to Inspiration Point and more if you want a full day kind of thing. Rattlesnake Canyon has an enjoyable loop with some good views, and it can be quieter than IP.

We enjoyed Hearst Castle. I'm no expert on the area, but we stayed in Cambria at a hotel called El Colibri and it was small but nice. They had a path you could walk from the hotel to a pebbly shore.

PCH is currently closed for 50 miles south of Big Sur as several (9! iirc) large sections of the highway washed out over this winter between Big Sur and San Simeon. Hopefully it will be open by next winter but I'd put a contingency plan in place in the event of closures.

Old West Cinnamon rolls can be a fun stop at Pismo. A colleague loves the chowder at Splash Cafe also in Pismo.

Elephant seals by hearst castle. Pideras blancas trail to the lighthouse (inaccessible to civilians) is a nice walk

PCH is currently closed for 50 miles south of Big Sur as several (9! iirc) large sections of the highway washed out over this winter between Big Sur and San Simeon. Hopefully it will be open by next winter but I'd put a contingency plan in place in the event of closures.

Yes, I've seen that. Contingency is driving the 101 around, up, and down to Big Sur, which obviously is less scenic and much longer, but Big Sur will make up for it. I was hoping to hike Julia Pfeiffer and Partington Cove but it looks like one of the closures is between there and Big Sur, so we will see.

Sufjan, thanks for your feedback on HC and the other recommendations! I will check them out.

Wind caves @ gaviota is a quick hike if ur looking for something off the highway. Either bishop’s peak or madonna mtns in SLO (madonna is easier, bishop is more interesting)

If ur forced inland bc of road closures consider Pinnacles NP outside of soledad/hollister

Gaviota looks great, but park is closed. If it reopens before Dec, I think that might work.

Contingency is driving the 101 around...

I see your Southern Californian dialect is already dialed in 🤣

Is that a Southern California-only thing? Blame it on Hollywood.

It's the only place I've ever heard it. The 101, the 405, the 5, the 10 . . .

The mother of a friend of mine applies it to every roadway when she visits. The Pico, the Wilshire, the Olympic . . .

Well, NY has the LIE, the Northern State, etc. We just ignore the numbers and give everything names.

~1 min:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt-tG6ufH90

ok, lol

Any recent updates on the tri-tip bbq place in the back of the gas station in Buellton? Will they be open with food on a Monday? Information on the web is spotty at best.

I forgot to track that place down! TBH tri tip is not much of a driver for me—it ain’t no TX brisket or St. Louis ribs—but I did have some really excellent tri tip tacos from a food truck outside Figueroa Brewery in Los Olivos recently. FYI Industrial Eats in Buellton has been closed since the owner’s death last month, not sure on reopening status.

Almost went there today for a day trip (coffee, museum, books, dinner, etc?) but decided to wait for a less windy commute up the coast

Santa Barbara had not lost any charm after 3 years of living here, btw. Makes having to go back east (more like Deep South, ugh) to visit parents a drag.

My son and I visited UCSB last year; he was considering applying for grad school there. My question was, Why wouldn't you want to go to school there?

Looking forward to seeing SB and around. Will be there in about two weeks!

We arrived yesterday afternoon. The sunset sky last evening was incredible - electric blue sky clashing with fuchsia and reflecting rosy pink glow off the mountains. Very nice.

Wind caves @ gaviota is a quick hike if ur looking for something off the highway. Either bishop’s peak or madonna mtns in SLO (madonna is easier, bishop is more interesting)

― Its big ball chunky time (Jimmy The Mod Awaits The Return Of His Beloved), Tuesday, April 25, 2023 12:43 PM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Shout out to Jimmy the Mod for the Gaviota recommendation. We had the best short hike up to the wind caves yesterday morning. We didn’t see another soul the entire time.

Also, tri-tip sandwiches at the Eagle 76 in Buellton are available during the week and were amazing. BBQ sauce and salsa worked beautifully with the smoky meat. Top 5 sandwich experience.

Reclumbed Bishop in august it was very very fun

Also, tri-tip sandwiches at the Eagle 76 in Buellton are available during the week and were amazing. BBQ sauce and salsa worked beautifully with the smoky meat. Top 5 sandwich experience.

― il lavoro mi rovina la giornata (PBKR), Tuesday, December 5, 2023 7:28 AM (two hours ago)

Nice!

Is Pinnacles on your northward itinerary?

Pinnacles whips

PBKR should be the Dave Portnoy of gas station tri-tip sammies

We’re in Big Sur now so no Pinnacles, though we drove past the exit on 101 this morning. Also I wrenched my ankle at Partington Cove this afternoon. We will see how it feels tomorrow, but I’m like done hiking for the trip.

Pea Soup Andersen's closes for good on its 100th anniversary
https://www.sfgate.com/centralcoast/article/pea-soup-andersen-buellton-closed-18600570.php

never have I ever

Fucking bullshit

To be fair, it’s not any good.

"the signature pea soup quickly became a signature dish"

Itisamystery.jpeg

Some more info here: https://lompocrecord.com/news/local/pea-soup-andersens-in-buellton-shutters-doors-property-in-escrow-after-lengthy-buyer-process/article_fea28acc-0ce7-52f9-a9bf-acdf5c443d56.html

Looks like the building is a tear-down. Maintenance of a 100 year old building that sees heavy use is probably impossible to square on a restaurant budget.

"Guggia Jr., a Central Coast restaurateur, also purchased Pea Soup Andersen's Santa Nella in 2007, which is still operational. His company also owns AJ Spurs steakhouses, Shaw's Steakhouse in Santa Maria, Cracked Crab, The Pantry on Park, and Pappy's Diner."

Suppose serving bad soup and steaks of meat that are usually ground to the ancients is good busjness

Overheard in Santa Barbara:

9-year old(ish) son to 40-something dad: “(mumble mumble) SINGER?”

Dad: “best singer or my favorite singer?”

Son: BEST singer!

Dad: Dave Grohl!

no doubt overheard at the solstice parade, where the no undershirt vest wearing steampunkers reuse there goggled tophats each year

*their, I am no better

I’m at the Lark! I actually did solstice weekend over in the SYV.

Coming up on 5 years, god. A lot has happened, but pony and I still love it here!

OMG how is pony!? What’s he eating these days

Pony is fantastic. We won a ribbon at the last show and we are going camping soon! He eats alfalfa and anything else he can find to stuff in his yaw. Except celery—he’s not into that.

wait wait if you do an equinox weekend there and bring pony, it would be an equine equinox (SORRY!!! truly)

Not only that, he takes an arthritis medication called equioxx!