••• Cruise ships appear to be coming back, judging from a Harbor Commission agenda item noticed by an Edhat reader: “After two years of cancelled visits, the Waterfront Department currently has 24 cruise ship calls on the schedule for this spring. The first call of the season is March 16, 2022.” Why bother with the safety protocols—requiring that staff and volunteers wear masks, the dopey hand-sanitizing stations, etc.—if the passengers are just going to go hobnob at State Street bars and restaurants?
••• The Independent has a package of stories about the oil industry’s future in Santa Barbara. Of special note is this one: “Eight oil platforms off the Santa Barbara coast are set to be decommissioned in the next 10 years [….] Plugging the wells and removing the oil infrastructure at the platforms were an agreed-upon part of the leases, and the public gets to comment on the next phase, in which the fate of the platform structures and the pipelines and cables that connect them to shore is determined.”
••• The city is considering returning the block of Victoria between State and Chapala to two-way traffic, along with “a location in the Funk Zone that would need changes” (which I assume is Helena between Cabrillo and Mason, which got made one-way purely for the benefit of Bluewater Grill). —KEYT
••• First the Hotel Californian, then the Hotel Indigo, now the Kimpton Goodland Goleta hotel has sold. The buyer is AWH Partners: “AWH’s wholly-owned hotel management company, Spire Hospitality, is currently transitioning management of the Goodland Goleta and has begun a rebranding process of the hotel. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.” —from a press release on Yahoo Finance
••• “At 194 [bird] species seen, the Santa Barbara count was the lowest it has been for several decades. We usually come in with well over 200 species.” —Independent
••• According to a press release on Edhat, Mayweather Boxing + Fitness will open soon.
••• This sure ought to give the city pause. No car should be able to get there.
A PROMENADE CRASH Tuesday morning in Santa Barbara leads to the arrest of the driver of a small car that witnesses reportedly saw driving through parklets and patios on State Street and then do a reckless spinning turn. This was near Figueroa. The street is closed to cars. pic.twitter.com/dcmaZsI7pC
— John Palminteri (@JohnPalminteri) January 18, 2022
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