The Picklr Opens This Weekend

••• An art-and-antiques shop called Pippin opens May 7 at La Arcada Plaza, across from the turtle fountain. According to the press release, we can expect “French and Italian furnishings, vintage original art, contemporary objects, jewelry, and specialty gifts.” Founder Carly Pippin “spent over a decade working at the Smithsonian’s National Museums of Asian Art in Washington D.C. and the Getty in Los Angeles.”

••• The Picklr, the indoor pickleball facility at Fairview Center in Goleta, opens this Saturday, May 2. “The state-of-the-art complex will feature seven professional-grade courts, including two official championship-sized courts. Additional amenities will include a warm-up and cooldown room with TRX and light fitness equipment, showers, lockers, a community lounge/meeting room, Wingfield AI training systems, ball machines, dink wall/court, and a pro shop. All seven courts will be finished with the same proprietary outdoor surfacing used by both The Professional Pickleball Association and the Major League Pickleball Tours, along with acoustically engineered, sound-dampening systems to enhance the indoor playing experience.”

••• The city of Santa Barbara is hosting an in-person meeting on May 6 at the Santa Barbara Public Library’s Faulkner Gallery to discuss its Safe Streets for All Action Plan, which I fear involves more of the kind of “improvements” inflicted upon Sola Street, Alisos Street, and others.

The City identified ten streets to prioritize analyzing and designing for traffic safety for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists:

1. Bath Street | Alamar Avenue to Mission Street
2. Canon Perdido Street | State to Milpas Streets
3. Calle Real | Pueblo Street to Hitchcock with anticipated extension to La Cumbre Road
4. Castillo Street | Mission to Micheltorena Streets
5. Chapala Street | Alamar Avenue to Mission Street
6. De La Vina Street | Mission to Micheltorena Streets
7. Las Positas Road | State Street to Calle Real with anticipated connection to Modoc Road
8. Nopal Street | Cota to Quinientos Streets
9. Olive Street | Micheltorena to Carrillo Streets
10. State Street | Highway 154 to Sola Street

••• The website for Casa Iglesia, the 37-room vacation rental–style lodgings in the former Christian Church of Santa Barbara at 1915 Chapala Street (Pedregosa/Mission), says the property will open this month (but workers were still fussing with it as of yesterday). The reviews on the site are presumably placeholders—and a good reminder never to trust reviews unless they’re via a third-party source.

••• Thanks to the readers who alerted me to the performance review I recently got on Reddit. While I don’t mind criticism, I don’t seek it out, so I took a pass—especially after my husband informed that I’ve been labeled part of the “Montecito gerontocracy.” I smell a T-shirt opportunity!

••• T. pointed out that Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Thomas R. Adams is on the ballot, even though the Commission on Judicial Performance publicly admonished him in late 2024, at which point, reported KEYT, Adams “told the oversight group that ‘he was retiring, that his last day on the bench had already passed, and that he would not be returning to the bench’ [….] Judge Adams did not retire and returned to the bench.” He appears to be running unopposed. UPDATE: I was mistaken; attorney Luis Esparza is running against Adams. His name is on the sample ballot, but he appears not to have submitted a statement for the voter information guide.

••• Ojai artist Christopher Noxon has an exhibit featuring “round paintings, some that revolve, painted spheres, and so-called ‘Sonic Blossoms'” at the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation in Ojai (May 8 through 25).

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