Fearless Travel

If you’ve never been there, the strip of land upon which Santa Barbara (the city) lies is a bare five or so miles wide. Bounded by ocean to the south and mountains to the north, there is very little room to expand. Santa Barbara used to be much bigger. In 2004, a small section of Santa Barbara broke away and formed its own city, called “Goleta” which is a Spanish word for a type of small sailing vessel used for fishing.

Goleta is the “rural” part of the city where avocado and lemon groves are almost as numerous as houses. Houses in Goleta go for about $1 million for a small, three bedroom/two bath ranch style house. Most of the people who live in this particular little strip are either long-time residents whose family migratedtherein the 1960’s (or earlier) or they are wealthier people who use the area as a “bedroom” community.

Oddly enough, Goleta is looked down upon by residents of Santa Barbara (the city) as if it were a slum. I was standing in the post office one day and a woman ahead of me was opening a PO box account. The clerk asked her if she wanted a Goleta or Santa Barbara address to which the woman exclaimed (loudly) “Dear God! Santa Barbara, of course!”

Of course, while Santa Barbarans (they like to call themselves “Santa Barbarians” - aren’t they cute) look down their nose at Goletans, they in turn are looked down upon by the residents of Montecito. For those of you unfamiliar with the area; that’s where Oprah lives. Oh, and John Cleese. And Mick Fleetwood. And so on and so forth. I was watching a debate in the city council of Montecito where a woman distinguished herself as being a Montecitan by repeating the name of the street she lived on and included the block number - seems SB and Montecito share the street.

Ah, elitism at its very worst. Here’s the facts about the solid string of houses, roads, and businesses which make up Goleta/Santa Barbara/Montecito:

They have almost exactly the same weather (being no more than 30 miles from downtown Goleta to downtown Montecito). They all are within 5 miles (usually less) of the beach. The houses all cost well over $1 million (and upwards of hundreds of millions).  They are filled with the same kinds of people - rich snobs and down-to-earth people who’d give you the shirt off their backs (it’s usually warm enough that you don’tneed a shirt anyway). And the cost of gasoline, groceries, and clothes cost exactly the same in all three.

So, the question left, of course, is who do Goletans look down upon? Pretty much everyone else int he United States

Still, if you’d like to visit, it is a wonderful place to see (and promptly leave).

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