Siteline | The Westmontish Region of Montecito

If the residential area southwest of Westmont College has a name, I don’t want to know. I prefer to call it Westmontish, which has a welcome British ring to it, especially if you pronounce it some way (Wesmunish?) other than how it looks. There are two main components: the Chelham Way/Paso Robles Drive part that looks like a big-headed dog, and the Westmont Road part that looks like a pot-bellied human with a chin hair. Welcome to my world!

I started with the dog, parking at the intersection of Chelham Way and Paso Robles Drive. The stub poking into the Chelham Way loop is Cloydon Circle, notable for a cute contemporary that my husband and I looked into renting once, the wide cul-de-sac with an island, and—something you rarely see—a house with twin garages flanking the front door.

Back on Chelham Way, the vintage cars—just hanging out in the open air—were impressive.

And there are some winning hedge arches—the winningest being this deep one neatly framing an archway in the house.

A hedge arch in progress! It’s like “The Creation of Adam.”

The day was sunny, and I was in a mood to match, which may be why I found so many of the homes on Chelham Way totally charming. As is generally the case, the mix of styles makes everything better. Despite my efforts to crop out the garbage bins, you will notice that I once again did one of these walks on Marborg’s collection day.

Speak of the devil.

One of the houses at the northern end of the loop has a fascinating layout, with a bridge connecting the garage and the house, and guest parking on a lower level. On the other side, paths meander through the ravine.

As for this one, I can’t recall a home so enshrouded by trees.

Thanks to the hilliness, the houses are often at different levels. While walking by 740 Chelham Way, I was envious of how the structure is so far removed from the street, and the lot is over an acre, which is large for the area. But it bumps up against Westmont’s Physical Plant A, Physical Plant B, and Lovik Field.

Quirky touches catch the eye, such as a street number hanging from a tree…

…and a mailbox with a mohawk made of tools. It gives good shadow.

You don’t encounter a through-the-wall air conditioner on the front of a house very often. And I wasn’t sure what purpose the garage’s awning serves. Covered parking because the garage is dedicated to storage?

Is this S an homage to the anchor plates used for structural reinforcement?

The eternal question regarding pink flamingoes: ironic or not?

The cairns next to a gate at the northern end of the loop had me thinking the path might be long and/or confusing, but it was short, straight, and narrow. Bravo to the Davidsons for allowing the passageway to exist; next time, however, that they or anyone else plans on getting a sign made, feel free to run it by me for free copy editing. (This is assuming that there’s more than one Davidson and that the property is not owned by someone who calls him- or herself “the Davidson.”)

The path leads to a grubby part of Westmont. Or perhaps it’s a portal to 2020.

Paso Robles Drive and its offshoots feel like Chelham Way redux, except this time the vintage car was hidden and the winningest hedge wasn’t quite as dramatic.

The housing stock is just as delightfully varied.

In 2023, the city told me that a “dead end” sign means there’s a dead end, while a “no outlet” sign indicates that the street is connected to another street that’s a dead end. So the sign on Stoddard Lane, the petite street at the east end of Paso Robles, should really say “dead end,” unless there’s a private lane back there that someone considers a street or the county plays by different rules.

I’m not really a Christmas guy, but I’m confident that the character on the left—who appears to have laid waste to Santa and his friends—is not the Grinch. Are there two green Christmas monsters? UPDATE: “That’s the abominable snowman from the classic Rudolph cartoon,” commented Jonny. Moreover, says T., his name is Bumble (the Abominable Snowmonster of the North) and he’s supposed to be blue, not green—which explains why I couldn’t find him by googling “green Yeti” and “green Christmas monster.”

I think there was more than one nipple-like moment in the pavement on Paso Robles, but I didn’t feel like going back to confirm it. Two seems appropriate.

This Little Free Library comes with a miniature bench and, inside, a copy of Judith Krantz’s Scruples. As per the back cover, it’s “the novel that created publishing history, the first—and widely acknowledged to be the very best—novel ever written about the staggeringly luxurious life of a Beverly Hills boutique and the people who work in it.” I had recently been talking to someone about how novels like this—and the work of Sidney Sheldon, Jackie Collins, Shirley Conran, et al—shaped, or possibly warped, our worldviews.

As much as I love walking, I drove to part 2. Being a pedestrian on that stretch of Sycamore Canyon Road held little appeal. Westmont Road is distinguished by the two circular medians at either end of Circle Drive.

Circle Drive had me feeling déjà vu…

…and marveling once again at the architectural mix.

More Christmas carnage.

And another Little Free Library. I should’ve grabbed Die Geheimnisse von Pittsburgh, the German edition of Michael Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, just because. As for the sentiment that “every child is an artist,” well, I mean, sure. As long as they’re made to understand at some point that talent eventually becomes part of the equation.

Gotta be extra careful around the slow ones.

I had never driven up Westmont Road, so I had no idea that there’s a park just south of the loop. According to a plaque, it’s the Alyssa Smelley Memorial Park, named for a woman who died in 2006. There are houses right up on it because the park and the houses are part of a Westmont faculty-housing development called Las Barrancas. And the drawing on the backboard, which may not be legible even if you blow it up, is by two girls celebrating the likes and dislikes of a dog (?) named Poogie.

Across the street is a trail, so I took it.

From what I could tell, it leads to three places on the Westmont campus: a prayer labyrinth, Thorrington Athletic Field, and Russell Carr Field.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that Westmont has a back entrance—it would almost have to, for evacuation reasons. The road comes out in Las Barrancas, which feels like an HOA, with community mailboxes and a uniformly landscaped strip next to the sidewalk. (Digression: I had no idea what to call that, so I looked it up. According to the New York Times dialect quiz—worth taking—it has many names! And people on Reddit said that folks in the Akron, Ohio, area call it the devil’s strip, which is fascinating but might be problematic in Westmont.) There are 41 homes in Las Barrancas; 14 were destroyed (and subsequently rebuilt) in the 2008 Tea Fire.

The HOA vibe ends once you leave the loop. Which cupola came first?

The hilliness cuts both ways.

As for this garage door—or former garage door, I should say—someone appears to really miss the Netherlands.

Once I got back in my car, I realized I had forgotten about Dawlish Place—I was focused on ice cream—so I went back to the “dog” part of Westmontish. Dawlish Place is a cul-de-sac extending from the front paws. A half-hidden sign on Chelham Way weirdly neglects to mention that the traffic from the two streets to the right doesn’t stop, either. Anyway, I was feeling a little like Dawlish Place wasn’t worth delaying my ice cream when I came upon a stunning stone pine and a groovy 1974 house at the end.