Family Friendly Isla Vista

Thanks for pointing out that Isla Vista has great parks. Cheers to the IVRPD! However, Isla Vista is a horrible place to live. Developers got their hands on it before anyone could make a community out of it. In addition, the residents often disrespect the beach and ocean. Isla Vista most closely resembles a shanty-town in a developing country.

Oh, horsefeathers. IV is a great place to live. It is nothing like a shanty town in a developing country; there are parts of downtown SB that are indistinguishable from IV.

Actually, every June many of the apartments in IV get refurbished; kind of amazing to watch the full-employment act for small contractors underway in late June. That ain't the way of a shanty town.

Sewage is handled extremely well by the GWSD, once the IVSD. Nothing like a third-world shanty town.

IV residents are by and large incredibly nice. OK, on Friday and Saturday nights it gets a bit wild, but it is on a par with State Street.

As for the ocean and beach, and trash on the streets, the big theme is actually how many people clean it up. The main difference between IV and say, East Beach is a *way bigger* population density withing 1/4 of the beach in IV, and no City staff to pick up. The volunteerism in IV dwarfs that on the downtown SB beaches.

Our family has lived in IV for 25 years and raised four children here. It has been an interesting and in many wonderful place for a family. We live at the far west end, away from the party zone, but a block from the gorgeous blufftop and stairs down to the beach. The kids used to walk to IV School down a path that follows the eucalyptus trees, down a wooded ravine, past the red barn, the horses in their stables and into the schoolyard -- totally bucolic!

For several years our family and neighbor families with kids would go for evening walks across the bluff and down to the beach by the slough, parents talking, children climbing on fallen trees, digging in the sand, running all over. (This was before the "magic forest" was "privatized" by the Coal Oil Point overseer.) As they became teens their social lives were largely outside of IV, except for the last one. He gravitated towards the forbidden pleasures of IV from about 8th grade and got quite an alternative education from his many friends among the college students, the homeless guys who obligingly buy booze for kids, some friends in the Latino neighborhood, and others he came across.

Isla Vista in the summertime or during winter and spring break is heaven. There are few cars or people around and it is a little shabby resort town, though "downtown IV" (is that an oxymoron?) is becoming rather upscale. The beaches are fabulous during low low tides (coming up in December! - check the tide charts for the lowest dates and times and walk out over a hundred yards on the rocks that are normally unseen - all kinds of life to be seen).

There are some great places to eat in IV besides Freebirds and Woodstocks. The Bagel Bakery, Silvergreen's, well, I won't list them all but come for lunch one day and walk around for 10 minutes, you'll find whatever you want at a reasonable price.

And the parks are truly delightful. Look at a map here: http://www.ivparks.org/map/map.html and visit #3, 22 and 25. Walk down to the beach at the corner of Del Playa Dr and Camino Majorca, walk out to Sands / Coal Oil Point / Devereux and watch the surfers, visit the (not really endangered) snowy plovers, continue walking to Bacara if you time it right with tides.

There is always a power struggle between UCSB, the long-time residents of IV, the County, the IV Recreation and Park District, and other interests. Usually the conflict lies dormant but can flare up whenever somebody is trying to develop or change something.

I couldn't see myself in a typical Goleta neighborhood and western IV has been an excellent blend of beachside beauty, convenience, lively culture and interesting and often caring and helpful neighbors. It is not for the fussy or faint of heart, however.

Isla Vista is unreasonably ugly and designed just as poorly as one of the sprawling Goleta suburbs.

Moretrailsplease, take stroll down Pardall now in the moonlight... it is pretty nice, actually.

Sure, there are some ugly spots. Santa Barbara has some quite ugly spots a few blocks on either side of State Street too... apartment jungles just like IV.

The bluffs and beaches of IV are *great*... one of the few places on land to watch the whale migration each year. And the access to the Devereux reserve, UCSB bluffs, and Ellwood is exceptional.

IV was laid out in 1925-1927. It is the oldest non-ag subdivision in the Goleta area. When it got zoning in the early 1950's, the initial County architectural requirements were as strict as downtown Santa Barbara. Developers' money greased County palms and did away with the strict requirements.

But comparing it to a third-world shanty is just plain wrong and ignorant. Neglecting the high level of volunteerism that cleans up regularly and also after wacked-out events like Halloween and Floatopia is also dopey.

Pardall: "Third world" is an ignorant label for you to use. In addition, it's a matter of opinion whether a place is beautiful, or ugly. To my mind, Isla Vista is a bleak and dirty landscape.

You're right about the bluffs, beach, and ocean access. However, this is not Isla Vista. It is nature. It doesn't give a darn about Isla Vista.

isla vista does house one of the best food co-ops in the entire country, as is said by the many travelers who frequent the little shop via word of mouth from co-op supporters far and wide.
as for iv being a bleak and dirty landscape, perhaps you, moretrailsplease, need to spend some time wandering around our town... aside from the unique people that abound, isla vista is still ripe with the passion and fervor that transported this tiny area into legend in 1970... and i'd also say that "dirty" is only in the eye of one who can't behold that some of the most beautiful things come in packages that look a little bit more disheveled and lived in than convention may consider.

Well, who knows what weird and distorted ideas reside in your mind, moretrailspease.

The physical reality is that Pardall is now fairly nice. The blufftop parks are quite nice, particularly those with improvements... the stone benches and pingpong tables, the swinging lazy susan...

It is also mostly nature that makes Santa Barbara and Montecito nice. Many of the buildings themselves remind me of mortuaries... lifeless and nearly dead (and backdrops for the newly wed). IV has real life going on, real young people who aren't yet numbed and overcome by greed. Sure, they are a bit messy sometimes, but they also clean the place up.

OK, `developing country' instead of `third world'. Whatever. You brought it up first, and it is extremely ignorant and absurd for you to compare Isla Vista to a favela or a colonia.

IV is one of the greatest places in the world, and I'm glad that not everybody appreciates it..