Santa Barbara, Santa Maria or San Luis Obispo? (Bakersfield, Santa Monica: relocation, houses)

[LDDiamondGirl]

Are you in a Deep Trance? You'll love it up here in SLO, then......but all kidding aside........I don't know how old you are, but I was in Santa Barbara for the first time in '80. I always liked the area because it was planned by the rich, for the rich....Charlie Chaplin included.... when he started the film studio there for a bit and created the Upper East Side neighborhood with it's stately homes. It is a community with PRIDE. It's still a beautiful and desirable neighborhood today. Anyone would give their proverbial "eye teeth" to be able to live there. Schools are good, walk to everything, relatively safe, clean, beautiful. And when there is good planning in a city, with beautification standards in the town and the parks, it is always going to reflect that way into the future as long as it is carefully maintained. The bone structure is there. The flowers, the clean streets, the beautiful old buildings so carefully maintained. City planning codes that are ENFORCED.....so people can't come in and Trash the neighborhoods with their commercial vehicles, and trucks and signs. That, sir, is what I appreciate about Santa Barbara. But by no means is the entire city this way. In fact, San Roque looks like just another San Fernando Valley to me, and very middle class, and a drive around the Mesa will reveal a very blue collar part of town complete with families with 3 pick ups in the drive and a pit bull behind a chain linked fence. Michael Douglas will be found nowhere here. So I don't know how anyone can say all of Santa Barbara is so full of "only the rich and the celebrities." How are those other people making it? Now you say SLO is paradise. But I don't think so by my standards. It is a working class town, and certainly not one that was planned by the rich, for the rich. The Mission is disgusting here. Many of the businesses and residences look tired and thread-bare. I have been in restaurants where I have actually heard people remarking on the bad sanitary conditions in the area, and really, the downtown looks very much like a college town, not a well-heeled downtown. So, that is why it is much, much cheaper to live in SLO than Santa Barbara. SLO does not attract the same kind of person as does SB, and money has not as much to do with it as one would think. After all, there IS plenty of money in SLO. But it is alot of money from Fresno and Bakersfield (no offenses meant here). There are just a lot of second residences here and the vacation home people are not dumping lots of money into the community, I can assure you. Also,
SLO is a rural designation and so there is a shortage of Doctors here. Rural designations reimburse the least to doctors for their services. Hey, if you had multiple 6 figure debt after school and starting out as a dr. would YOU go to a place where they pay you the least. (You'll probably say yes, if your one of those hippie anti-materialism eco-nazi types). No offense. SLO has only 96 primary care physicians in a town that should have 150 minimum.. Just try to find a doctor here. None of the good ones are taking any new patients. And There are really no jobs. There is no corp. funding here, and there never will be. The people don't want any corporations here....nope, no Nordstroms, and No golf courses, No Ritz Carlton, nothing to draw any money here whatsoever. No, the people in SLO, when they decide to allow something in, want another Costo....or Home Depot....or discount store. No, they just want the cows and the mountains. And that is what I mean about good planning. So no jobs here anywhere in the near future that I can see. This will never be Santa Barbara, so all of those people crying about SLO becoming "just another Santa Barbara" can rest easy. I think SLO is already well on it's way to being a retirement community for the workers who cash out from L.A. or up north, and bring their money from their home sales here along with their pensions, a vacation destination for the Fresno/Bakersfield crowd, and a fun college town for the young. And I hope not too many people need medical attention.

[fairweathergolfer]

Okay. So I know this is a little off the current subject, but is there a Lowe's or a Home Depot in Santa Barbara? Also, how bad is the traffic there. When I have been there traffic at rush hour and even otherwise has been very backed up. Is there a predictability about it? How is it during a general weekday in 'off' commute hours?

[enlightenme]

Originally Posted by fairweathergolfer

Okay. So I know this is a little off the current subject, but is there a Lowe's or a Home Depot in Santa Barbara? Also, how bad is the traffic there. When I have been there traffic at rush hour and even otherwise has been very backed up. Is there a predictability about it? How is it during a general weekday in 'off' commute hours?

There is a Home Depot in Goleta. There are very few big box stores in Santa Barbara and most of that kind of shopping is in Goleta. Parking is a nightmare in Santa Barbara when you are trying to run quick errands. The traffic is bad every morning and evening from Carpinteria to Santa Barbara and on many weekends. Going north from SB usually isn't a problem. I worked for a large company in SB and many of my co-workers commuted from Ventura or Oxnard to work which is only 30-40 miles, but it wore on everyone after a while because of the traffic going south. You hit pockets of it near Milpas Exit where it bottlenecks from 3 lanes to two, again in Montecito, again in Carpinteria, sometimes near La Conchita and then it usually clears up past there into Ventura. If there is accident or a storm, forget about it! The problem is there really isn't any way south but HWY 101 unless you go out of your way. I was born in SB and lived there off and on for the last 30 years. I also lived in a few neighboring communities and drove to LA for a few years to work, so I feel like I know the area pretty well. I can still see the great beauty and fun things about SB, but I personally felt living there wasn't all that easy at times. And to Deeptrance - there is a gang problem in Santa Barbara. It isn't like LA, but you see it if you step out of where the rich people and tourists go. I could't believe all of the graffiti I would see driving down side streets, dumped couches, mattresses, baby carriages, etc. I also think the news tried to downplay SB's problems to not taint their image. A large majority of the public schools perform poorly too. I lived in SB in the early 90's and came back 10 years later (I was living in Ventura at the time and just doing the touristy stuff in SB) and I couldn't believe how different it felt. I think some of it was also me growing up and trying to make a life there as a middle-class adult.

[deeptrance]

Originally Posted by LDDiamondGirl

Are you in a Deep Trance?

It's a type of music. You can just call me "DT" for short .

Originally Posted by LDDiamondGirl

...Santa Barbara...was planned by the rich, for the rich....the Upper East Side neighborhood with it's stately homes....

You like that, I don't, hence our difference of opinions. I grew up on the upper east side --- born on Mission Street (well, Cottage Hospital, but the house was at Mission and Anacapa) and spent most of my childhood on east Pedregosa and then Mission Canyon Road. Today the Mission Canyon property would be worth a cool 3 million, and yet we sold it for something like 150K! Nobody in my family, nobody on the planet, envisioned the price increases that were coming. Truly stunning! My great-uncle was a well-known photographer in the area who owned the Glendessary estate, a 4-story uniquely designed old building at the intersection of Glendessary and Mission Canyon. But enough "names of places" dropping .

Originally Posted by LDDiamondGirl

...San Roque looks like just another San Fernando Valley to me...

Amen to that! I loathe San Roque, except for the central part of it where there's some nice architecture and large trees. But most of SR is landscaped with rocks and plastic, it's bizarre.

Originally Posted by LDDiamondGirl

...I don't know how anyone can say all of Santa Barbara is so full of "only the rich and the celebrities." How are those other people making it?

Relatively speaking, there is virtually NO place that is dominated by celebrities and the rich. But Montecito is about as concentrated as it gets, and if you want to meet Rob Lowe just go for a jog in the morning along East Beach. But don't bother him, that's the rule in SB. I've seen Michael Douglas all over town, we used the same hair stylist, he has hung out with friends of mine. The list could go on forever, I'm just giving a couple examples. My nephew lives around the corner from Oprah's massive estate in the middle of Montecito. My mom lives in the retirement center where Julia Childs died recently. We saw her in a sushi restaurant a couple years ago and she looked awful. Poor thing, I used to love her show. I've recently hung out on the beach chatting about high school stories with a couple of actors who I went to school with at SBHS, but I don't want to name them for the sake of their privacy. The point is, you can spend a single day in SB and see these folks all over the place, but you're absolutely right that they're not hanging out on the Mesa, the west side, San Roque, or Goleta.

Originally Posted by LDDiamondGirl

Now you say SLO is paradise. But I don't think so by my standards. It is a working class town, and certainly not one that was planned by the rich, for the rich.

See, you just confirmed why I would like it more than SB!

[deeptrance]

Originally Posted by enlightenme

There are very few big box stores in Santa Barbara and most of that kind of shopping is in Goleta.

True, what little there is of it is WAY out in west Goleta in that one big box center. But there's no Target or many other stores that you might expect. You have to pop down the 101 to Ventura/Oxnard and then you'll find everything. People in the SB area are highly resistant to change and especially to big developments that change the character of the place. I was part of that movement as a kid and at the age of 11 I gave my first testimony before the city council in protest against a massive proposed development that would have turned the hillsides west of Goleta into another Montecito. I even recall the name of the developer, Jules Berman. The land he had his eye on is now mostly under strict ag and nature preserve zoning so it's not likely to be developed in the foreseeable future.

Originally Posted by enlightenme

The traffic is bad every morning and evening from Carpinteria to Santa Barbara and on many weekends.

I never use the freeway at peak traffic times, there are quite a few back roads that aren't exactly fast but at least they're scenic and you can feel more relaxed than you would feel if you're parked on a freeway. Cathedral Oaks, Foothill, Stanwood, East Valley --- you can go from one end of the metro area to the other on this chain of roads close to the mountains and avoid the crowds. But yeah, the traffic is bad. The city streets drive me crazy because they are so crowded with pedestrians and people not knowing which way they're going, so it's kind of dangerous and you have to be extremely cautious driving around certain parts of downtown lest you feel a speed bump that turns out to have been a human.

Originally Posted by enlightenme

And to Deeptrance - there is a gang problem in Santa Barbara... I could't believe all of the graffiti I would see driving down side streets, dumped couches, mattresses, baby carriages, etc. I also think the news tried to downplay SB's problems to not taint their image. A large majority of the public schools perform poorly too.

This goes back to something mentioned by LDDiamond, that working people have to live somewhere and there's no way an area can be all rich and famous. So true. Sure, there's a mass migration every day of Mexican laborers from Oxnard to Montecito and SB, but there's also a lot of them who have jammed big families or multiple families into small apartments and houses on the lower west and east sides of town. I'm quite familiar with that scene. Gang problem? I guess I just don't see graffiti as evidence of much of anything, since there's no town in America that doesn't have a ton of it. I've worked with gangster-looking Latino teens in an at-risk youth program and I was surprised by how sweet most of them were. The tough outer image is just fashion, it's not an indicator that they're going to sell crack to your kids or mow you down in a drive-by .

[LDDiamondGirl]

You know, EnlightenMe makes a very good point about gangs etc.
There are gangs in the rich Hood, too. In fact, all one has to do is go back to when they were young and think about how they looked back then. I'm a baby boomer, so I remember very well the dirty clothes, the long hair, the dirty fingernails, the bandanas and paisley bedspreads wrapped around you for a dress....we looked like Charles Manson's gang.....lest we forget. We left for college looking like the Kennedys and returned looking like Nick Nolte in Down and Out in Beverly Hills. Our parents were scared to death of hippies...they wouldn't even talk to them. You have to admit, if your kids looked like that today, and their eyeballs were completely Red, and glassed over, and they were high on brownies all the time and acting like misanthropes, ....well, come on. But yes, that was fashion, too. Today lots of those people live in gorgeous homes, drive a Mercedes and have a Trophy wife. Of course, to completely preserve the sixties, (clothes, hair and all) the others moved to Cambria and Morro Bay. Just kidding (but not really....I just don't want to offend anyone, but hey the truth hurts). I lived in a beautiful upper class West L.A. area for a while and my neighbor got assaulted on her front steps coming home with groceries at 5 p.m. It was a fast-cash-for-a-weekend-high robbery. The guy knocked her down, grocery bags and all, grabbed her keys and took her purse. He wasn't a gang member. He was a middle aged, caucasion alcoholic/drug addict who was married with a couple kids and was just out of jail on probation for one too many DUI's and some petty theft.

It's a jungle out there. My mom used to say this about men.......(affectionately).....Pick your Poison. But I think this saying would be appropriate when choosing a neighborhood. If it's paradise, then everyone wants to be there, so there's going to be all of the above.....traffic, crime and criminals, gripes, the haves and the have-nots fighting like the Hatfields and the McCoys, taxes, infrastructure power plays, the ecology SS who are disguised as missionaries, but just as much on power/control trips and irrational a good part of the time. Great posts on here....enjoy these opinions and what they bring to the table.

[grimstuff]

And There are really no jobs. There is no corp. funding here, and there never will be. The people don't want any corporations here....nope, no Nordstroms, and No golf courses, No Ritz Carlton, nothing to draw any money here whatsoever.

LDDiamondGirl,
First you mention "no jobs in SLO." Then you mention how there is no Nordstroms, golf courses, etc. Think about it. What kind of jobs do those places provide? I'm sorry to break it to you, but a job at Nordstroms is not much different from a job at Gottschalks or Mervyns. The same goes for the golf course. Those would fall in the retail/commercial and tourism industries which both provide low-paying jobs. These are jobs which we don't need any more of in thic county. Also, they fall in the "non-basic" category, where non-basic means taking local money - i.e. not exporting anything whether it be a product or a service. (AG is basic, but the jobs are the lowest paying of any industry).

SLO County is dominated by two industries: tourism (includes hotels, tourist-oriented retail outlets, restaurants, etc.) and agriculture. Both historically provide very low paying jobs. In fact, most new jobs in SLO County will be in these two industries, and the average pay for them will be $10/hr, or $20,000 a year. The median income is $63,400 per year, so you can see how these jobs (provided by the industries you suggested) would certainly not solve the jobs-housing imbalance. Even the current median income cannot afford home-ownership in SLO County. SLO County is actually the 25th most unaffordable place to live in the US (out of 3140 counties total).

[LDDiamondGirl]

You are one lucky guy to have grown up in the Upper East of SB. Do you realize that you have lived the American Dream? I hope you appreciate it. Must be tough to see the changes, but that's how it is all over the country in the beautiful places. Well, wherever you are now....I hope you're happy. That's all most of us on this site are looking for....a little corner of the world that fits. Just call me Goldilocks....I'm still searching.

[LDDiamondGirl]

Interesting Moniker, Mr. Grim.........My post was obviously confusing. I was remarking on the lack of corporations or industry in SLO to provide jobs and the disinterest to promote business in a town that has no jobs to continue life support. My views on Home Depot and Costco were concerns about aesthetics. These stores are ugly blights. To choose to approve these stores but think a Golf course or 5 star hotel is a blight on the land is nonsensical. And you can't tell me that these stores are providing six figure incomes for the workers?? And, if the town relies on tourism, which it does, just as you said, just tell me.......how many cheap sea shell shops can there be in one town? If you have Quality Inns, you have tourists who buy T-shirts and sea shells and eat sandwiches and pizzas. If you have a 5 store hotel or golf resort and you have money flowing in to the local economy. This is no news. But that money drives right through SLO without stopping. It's on it's way to the north, or up to Ventana or the Post Ranch Inn at Big Sur. I read recently a letter to the editor about saving an old, smokey and smelly saloon in Cambria rather than replacing it with yet "another" yuppie bistro with $20 Arugula salads. Cambria is a tourist town with lots of empty and abandoned businesses. What kind of thinking is this if you make most of your money on tourism? Kind of, well, stupid, in my estimation. But this is an argument that is moot when proposed to the average wage earners, because unless you own a business you'd not be empathetic at all to this. You would rather save the saloon so you could have a place to get drunk on Fridays after you get your paycheck.

[outaPA]

I very much appreciate your candidness, DiamondGirl. I will be relocating and the SLO area was on my list because of all the good hype. From your experiences, I know I would feel the same way as you after awhile. So thank you.