••• A belated addition to the Shop-Local Gift Guide: classic L.L. Bean merch (including a miniature version of the iconic tote) at Mate Gallery.
••• Hallelujah! The northbound carpool* lane between Santa Monica Road in Carpinteria and Sheffield Drive in Montecito opens today; the southbound carpool lane will follow the third week of January. (*At least one passenger required 6-9 a.m. and 3-6 p.m.) UPDATE: If you’re alone, you want to stay in the right lane, because the left lane gums up when the carpool lane is forced to merge before the Sheffield exit.
••• I spotted this while hiking the Romero Canyon Trail: “Those are used for surveys via helicopter,” explained Ashlee Mayfield of the Montecito Trails Foundation. “They have them out at More Mesa as well.”
••• Construction is starting on the Santa Claus Lane Streetscape Improvements Project, which involves “increased coastal access parking, providing an authorized pedestrian at-grade crossing of Union Pacific Railroad facilities onto Santa Claus Lane Beach and coastal resources, traffic calming measures, landscaping, stormwater control measures, continuous sidewalk along beach-side of Santa Claus Lane, providing a permanent restroom facility, and increased multi-modal transportation through the coastal corridor between the City of Carpinteria and the Community of Summerland.” The work is expected to be done sometime in mid-2025. UPDATE: I added a rendering.
••• While my husband and his mom go off on a big trip this winter, I’m thinking of exploring somewhere on my own. But where? I want somewhere I can drive to, and probably a city, since that tends to work better for solo travel, so I landed on Phoenix. I know very little about it, so if you have suggestions, I’m all ears—and I’m generally interested in the kind of stuff that makes a place feel unique. Email me at [email protected].
••• After I posted about the botanical garden under construction at the San Ysidro Ranch, A. sent over photos of a brochure from the 1980s (or at least that’s my guess, based on the hairstyles). While some of it—the threat of force-feeding, e.g.—hasn’t aged all that well, it’s an amusing read and a reminder of when the property was considerably more down to earth.
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That SY Ranch brochure is a golden time piece.
I’ll miss the funky, old school california feel of Santa Claus Lane
I worked at SYR in the late ’80’s and I recognize some of those people. The woman at the tennis court drove a white ’59 Cadillac with the huge fins with a license plate that said, “BCK2FUTR.”
I’m pretty sure one of those guys is Ed Galsterer, current GM of the Santa Barbara Inn.
I loved working at SYR- I was hired when Gerard Thompson was Chef- giving it to Chef David Adjey when he took a job at a exclusive game ranch. Good times- 1999 to 2002