••• From the Independent: “Old Town Goleta Sees Slipping Sales After Changing Its Stripes [….] Report Shows Sales Activity Drop Following Controversial Restriping Project.” I’m glad I’m not an editor at the paper, or I might have tried to untangle the lead paragraph: “Goleta’s attempts to rein in traffic along Hollister Avenue in Old Town by reducing the number of lanes resulted in 121 inquiries to Public Works, in what is likely the most controversial project to affect the driving public in the city’s historic town center. A report delivered to the City Council on Tuesday evening showed that sales activity had dropped much further than in other parts of the city, county, and state. While traffic delays were about 23 seconds, the safety project had seen traffic speeds decrease and bicycle and pedestrian use increase.”
••• As usual, Santa Barbara Magazine‘s annual home-and-garden issue includes a couple of lovely properties, including artist Olivia Joffrey’s Lower Riviera bungalow, a handsome reinvention of a 2002 house in Toro Canyon, and a bright, airy beach house on Sand Point Road in Carpinteria.
••• “Rodney Harvey Chow died peacefully on March 11 at the age of 95. He was a celebrity at the Santa Barbara Farmer’s Market, known for his fuji apples and other produce, for long friendly conversations at his booth, and for authoring his books American as Apple Pie and Stories of the Good Old Days.” —Independent
••• An Edhat reader noticed that the concrete divider in the newly expanded section of Highway 101 is crumbling.
••• “Goleta Planning to Host Drone Show for Fourth of July.” —Noozhawk
••• “Fired Channel Islands Workers Are Reinstated [.…] Six Employees Brought Back After Court Order Saves 1,000 National Park Service Jobs.” —Independent
••• “Amid all the tumult surrounding major cuts proposed by the Trump administration targeting the National Weather Service and its parent agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, are a couple of properties NOAA currently leases from the City of Santa Barbara. Should these leases be terminated as proposed, the NOAA offices at 113 Harbor Way—a 452-square-foot space rented by the agency since 1997—will be open for new tenants as of May 31, 2026. Likewise for the 2,160-square-foot slip in Marina 4-B that NOAA has leased from City Hall to berth its 65-foot research vessel, the Shearwater, since 2008.” —Independent
••• According to a very Edhat post about the ways that Santa Barbara is “nicely different,” Santa Barbara Airport has a phone you can use to make free local calls.
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What I find interesting about the re-striping is that “sales tax from businesses like restaurants, hotels, food, drugs, building, and construction were up 3-7 percent in Old Town”
It’s literally just the auto dealerships and shops struggling.
Nice that the SB Airport has a phone for the occasional traveller without their own. Now if only they had a water dispenser with half decent and cold water!