••• Have you seen the “pedlets” that the city installed on the block of State Street between Haley and Cota? The idea is that pedestrians walk on them so that restaurants can use the sidewalks for tables (and cyclists can ride rampant on the pavement). Does anyone believe this looks good? If I were considering opening a business on State Street, I’d think twice—this is half-assed urban planning that comes off low-rent and lame. We can argue all day whether or not to reopen State Street to cars—I’m in favor, with one-way traffic and a dedicated bike lane—but if the street is going to remain closed, the city has to commit to it and stop crapping it up like this. Moreover, this “solution” prioritizes restaurants over shops, whose potential patrons are now rather far away from their windows.
••• Habitat Home & Garden, which opened at the corner of State and Gutierrez in late 2019, announced that its Santa Barbara store will close in mid-October. Until then, expect “special pricing on floor models and in-store pieces.”
••• According to this Tuesday’s city council agenda, the Game Seeker game shop is likely to be opening at 920 State Street (Canon Perdido/Cabrillo), the city-owned building where the Santa Barbara International Film Festival is working on its multiplex. And that’s great news! But one wonders whether the city ever considered offering it to Cookie Plug, which was in the adjacent storefront at 918 State Street before the city terminated its lease last spring. (It’s reopening in Isla Vista.)
••• Musician Jack Johnson will be at the Arlington Theatre on November 6 for “back-to-back screenings of Thicker Than Water and The September Sessions,” followed by “an intimate Talk Story with filmmakers Jack Johnson, Chris Malloy and Emmett Malloy, followed by a live performance from Jack & Friends, including Hermanos Gutiérrez, G. Love, Adam Topol, Merlo Podlewski, Zach Gill, Todd Hannigan, Xocoyotzin Moraza, and Rob Machado.” The deadline to join the ticket lottery is tonight (Tuesday, September 30) at 7 p.m.
••• Opening October 5 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara: San Milano Drive, a solo exhibition by Santa Barbara’s own DJ Javier, with paintings, sculptures, murals, and graphic designs. Of special note: “San Milano Sari-Sari is a faux-storefront—shoppable and merchandised—featuring a community marketplace of local artists and creative friends, Javier’s personal brands, and a special collection of MCASB x DJ Javier collaborative merchandise including a new limited edition risograph* printed by Bird in Hand Press. A sari-sari is a traditional roadside snack stand that is ubiquitous to the landscape of the Philippines. […] And a free public reception will be held Sunday, October 5, from 12–4 p.m. with dance performances and a pop-up market place in front of the museum on the Arts Terrace at Paseo Nuevo. Featured vendors include: El Sitio, Creaminal, Glamor Portraits by Cher, Cafe Ortega, and Canto Vision.” Photo by Will Adler, courtesy Santa Barbara Magazine. (*From Wikipedia: “Risograph is a brand of digital duplicators manufactured by the Riso Kagaku Corporation. Released in Japan in 1980, it is designed mainly for high-volume photocopying and printing.”)
••• Indie Beauty Collective salon has opened 11 W. De La Guerra Street, inside Paseo Nuevo.
••• Candle Bar 111 is moving to the front tasting room space in the former Lafond Winery building at Yanonali Street and Gray Avenue. “The offerings will be similar,” says founder Lindsay Gould, “but I’ve learned a lot in this first year, we’ll be doing three to four pouring times a day versus six, but more seats per class. I’ll soon be expanding our vessel options and we’re switching over our seasonal fragrances to welcome in fall/winter. We now have a separate retail area (which makes private events more approachable since we won’t always have to close to shoppers). We’ll also have more retail/gifting options and lots of local collaborations for unique and creative events staring in October.” The shop expects to debut this weekend.
••• 27 Miles and Heritage Goods & Supply have opened their Coast Village Road shops. “We’ll be having a grand opening Oct 16 through 18 from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. each night,” says 27 Miles’s Ernie Vallorano. “We’ll serve wine and cheese and we will have our team of tailors from Italy taking measurements for made to measure orders.”
••• A documentary called Wild Rescue, about the Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network, screens October 5 at the Granada Theatre. It features “the dramatic rescues, rehabilitations, and releases of wildlife in crisis—many of which unfolded just minutes from downtown Santa Barbara.” Tickets.
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wake up SB!!! Recall the leaders making these horrific decisions on State Street. Enough is enough! Bring the cars back or make the promenade sitting for SB. Whoever came up with this idea should be fired!
The pedlets are pathetic in every way. Emblematic of so much wrong with how our city is run. They come out to around $600 a foot which absolutely boggles the mind. I hadn’t thought of the angle of how they disadvantage retail, but you’re absolutely correct. What a joke.
Hey Santa Barbara,
You can move the sidewalk all you want. The issue is retail left due to your inability to keep State Street clean and safe. How about you fix that.
The pedlets they installed look no better than if a child created a public walkway using legos.
They are cheap, tacky and it’s become absurd that State Street is not just shut down to cars but now apparently isn’t even fully accessible to pedestrians.
Junky, tacky, crappy State Street no longer a great street.
For the $500,000 they spent on this prefab stuff they could have put in two rows of planters all the way up the street to delineate walking and biking paths.
We really shouldn’t fault the city for deploying funds for what are ultimately cheap tests. That being said, the test results are in and the pedlets suck.
This is a tragedy of the commons issue. Downtown is nobody’s actual neighborhood, so we’re all just pontificating about what should/shouldn’t exist “over there”. How about allowing real people to live on and around State St. and let them tell us what they need. That’s when we’ll start demanding clean, safe streets, and the kind of businesses that make up a real place – grocery, pharmacy, inexpensive bites.
Housing on State St. would make a lot of sense. It’d also make sense to do what other decent cities do: keep the street and sidewalks clean, and install alive plants.
I agree. They’re putting the cart before the horse. Let’s build the housing now. I’m very pro density downtown. It’s remarkable what a ghost town it often feels like. Let’s get more people living down there, then figure things out. Not sure if you saw but HLC is already giving the Paseo Nuevo developers sh*t about height which is necessary to achieve the margins that justify redevelopment. The building proposed is beautiful and HLC needs to chill about height on State Street.
Cart before the horse is spot on. In order for their Grand Promenade vision to be even close to viable we need a few thousand more housing units downtown. “If we build it they will come [hopefully]” is no way to manage a city.
State Street is looking funkier and junkier. Whoever is in charge needs to be fired. Besides the
lack of a sophisticated vision, State Street doesn’t feel safe. – it’s become an attraction for low end tourist and gang violence, and that’s the truth.
Would someone please explain what benefits would be achieved by returning vehicles to State St? Traffic flow is being quite adequately handled by Chapala and Anacapa Streets. Conversely, the absence of motorized vehicles with associated noise and exhaust pollution makes State Street a more pleasant place to shop, stroll, and sit at a sidewalk cafe.
I agree.
Who shops and strolls on State Street anymore? It used to be the heart of the city – tourists, visitors, residents first stop!
Why hasn’t the entire area of residents been given a VOTE???
Experiment with no cars on streets that aren’t crucial to tourism, entertainment and shopping.
Chapala is an ugly, confusing street. Anacapa feels like bumper cars. State Street had all the energy and excitement and was the focal point of Solstice, Fiesta, Halloween, all parades, celebrations, Christmas, The Film festival, etc.
We need a VOTE by ALL the people on this.
This isn’t just a Santa Barbara thing, it’s pretty widespread. Department stores are closing everywhere and retail has changed dramatically because of the ease of ordering online. Don’t think that’s going to change-my kids buy everything online and that’s just today’s reality. State street (at least lower part) is for visitors and 20 somethings. I’m fine with keeping it closed. Parking has always been in the garages off of state so cruising up and down state street doesn’t seem important or necessary.
But cruising State street is FUN. In a car or like I have, a truck. . .
Unfortunately, no one listed any benefit of opening State St. to traffic other than it is fun to drive their truck up and down State.
As a proponent of that, it would be helpful if Eric would respond.
Oh Donald. . . really? State street is in fact, a street. And it’s our downtown commercial district. Please show me any town of our size that has closed their downtown commercial area to vehicles. And things have improved. Don’t say Pearl street in Boulder. Boulder, CO, is about 25 miles from the edge of metro Denver, while SB is a good 100 miles from metro LA. You think auto emissions are a reason to keep the street closed to autos?? We have the strictest SMOG tests in the nation. So you are saying it’s only smelly cars and trucks that will return to State? Huh. I work primarily in the Funk Zone and Waterfront. Both have a mix of cars, bikes, e-bikes, pedestrians, pedestrians with children, runners, trucks (me) and many outdoor dining next to streets, with a few IN the streets. Guess what? It works. In fact, look at the parking lot between Shoreline Cafe and the harbor. There are no bike lanes or sidewalks. People like me drive slow, like I used to do on State street. Oh, what about parades? I like all of the parades on State street rather than the alternatives. And the Christmas Parade is gone, anyone that like the street closed must hate Christmas. . .
Dan:
So still not one benefit to opening State St. to cars other than you can’t cruise up and down the street in your truck. The Solstice parade works just fine on Santa Barbara St, as could the Christmas parade. The Fiesta horse parade actually works better on Cabrillo.
As to the funk zone, it’s a lively evening and weekend venue because it has lots of outdoor space within the blocks that is separated from the traffic by sidewalks and sometimes tree lawns, and parked cars. Examples: the Lark and neighboring places, the Nook etc., Figuera Mountain Brewpub. None with outdoor space next to traffic.
There are some similar places along State [Habit, La Arcada, Paseo Nuevo] with such outdoor space, but not the empty stores lining the Sate St sidewalks.
Donald
Are you agreeing with me? I see the distance between the moving cars/trucks and outdoor seating at The Lark, Lucky Penny, Validation Ale, Fig Mtn. Brewery, Rincon Brewery, Tamar/Dart Coffee, & Mony’s (Mony’s also has a Parklett), is about the same as State street establishments. Except State has no trucks or cars, just racing motor-cycles. And I did give you a few reasons. But here’s a bigger one. Since Covid started in 2020 the city has spent $250k on planters and overhead lights. A $800,000 study to chart a future of the street, and formed the State Street Advisory Committee. An additional $250k for more improvements, $50k for painting “bike” lanes, and recently $680k for the Pedletts in one block of State street. The big benefit that I see is this, the city should stop spending money on this street and open it to trucks (heart emoji). . . . and cars.
Can we get the BEST city manager we can find? There is no reason why we can’t do this.
The city manager works under city council, they make the decisions, city manager executes them. We need a better city council, preferably ones that understand a budget, finance, cost/benefit analysis, and long-term implications of their policies rather than legislating the will of the loudest group – with no concern over the long-term implications – because they mostly prioritize reelection and their own political careers.
I think you have it reversed. The city administrator, Kelly McAdoo runs the city. The mayor and council members report to her. And I agree we need better council members.
I’m traveling the coast of Spain at the moment and SB needs to learn from them.
There is high density housing above busy businesses and a huge difference is the cities are kept CLEAN AND SAFE!
The pedestrian friendly streets in the city centers are THRIVING! Yes, some streets allow traffic, however, most traffic is directed to the surrounding area. (For State street, a trolley system should be in place to allow people to travel easily from the wharf to upper State St., there’s plenty of parking in lots and on the street off State St.).
It can be done SB, it isn’t rocket science.
Bring cars back to State Street!!! Exactly as it was before! Trolley! Parades!!! It’s a ghostown now! Why can’t we VOTE on it? – Born and raised in Santa Barbara.
PS Make downtown parking free or cheap!