It’s My Third Stint in Santa Barbara. This Time, I’m Making it My Kids’ Hometown

We Pay a High Price to Live in Santa Barbara — Here’s Why

The good life at Butterfly Beach | Photo: Dana Anderson

This time last year, I started telling friends and acquaintances that my husband and I were moving from Seattle to Santa Barbara with our young kids.

A lot of them asked, “Why would you move to California?” I’d say, “We’re not moving to California. We’re moving to Santa Barbara.”

We arrived at the start of the school year, enrolling our 5-year-old son in TK and our 3-year-old daughter in preschool. This is the third time I’ve lived here, and this time, I’m making it my hometown.

My first stint in “the Santa Barbara–Goleta area,” as my 5-year-old calls it for unknown reasons, was as a UCSB student. The first week of freshman year, I fell off a skateboard and woke up with a concussion at Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital. It was all uphill from there.

It was four years of house parties on Trigo, first dinner at Silvergreens and second dinner at Freebirds, Sands, walks around the lagoon, hiking Seven Falls, Bill’s Bus to Indochine, and weeknights working in the Daily Nexus office under Storke Tower. It was four years of sharing bedrooms with best friends because rent was so expensive, attempting to surf but realizing I’m meant to be a swimmer and beach-walker. It was Sublime at beach bonfires, Sundowner Special at Beachside, and that time we went camping at Jalama and forgot the sleeping bags (but remembered the 30 packs of Keystone Light).

My second stint in Santa Barbara was in my mid-twenties. It was brunch at El Paseo and cheeseburgers at Intermezzo. It was weekends at Butterfly Beach followed by margaritas across the street; pre-work hikes at Rattlesnake Canyon; the Land Shark for twentysomething birthday parties; and chips and guac at Los Arroyos, Los Agaves, and sometimes, head hung in shame, at the Chipotle on State Street. It was drinks at Corks ’n’ Crowns with the same group that forgot to bring sleeping bags on our college camping trip, and jumping into the waves at Hendry’s the next day because the bigger the body of water, the better the hangover cure. It was playing sunset tennis at Santa Barbara High, listening to the strains of James Taylor playing the Santa Barbara Bowl.

My third stint, the one I’m on now — this one’s my favorite. Living in Santa Barbara is a family vacation that’s interrupted by work. It’s building sandcastles at Campus Point and collecting shells at Hendry’s, playgrounds in January, walks to and from elementary school every day of the year. It’s playdates at the Botanic Garden and Stevens Park, fishing off the pier at Goleta Beach, swimming at the Leta pool, and taking the kids for hot cocoa in Solvang when the temperature drops below 55. It’s nature walks with the kids at Ellwood Butterfly Preserve with the college camping group and their kids.

It’s walking on the sand during lunch breaks, and the eight-minute drive to the most beautiful airport in the world. It’s Mt. Fuji stir-fry at Natural Café. It’s McConnell’s, which my son loves for the circular red couch and the ice cream, in that order. It’s that almost everything you need in life is between Fairview and Los Positas, and everything else is between Winchester Canyon and San Ysidro Road. It’s driving down Cathedral Oaks past the lemon groves with the windows down. It’s running into half the people you know in town, plus Josh Brolin, at Saturday soccer games at Girsh Park.

The other morning, I told my kids we were heading to the beach after breakfast. My daughter ran to gather her sand buckets and Elsa life jacket. My son groaned and said he’d rather stay home and watch Spider-Man. Four hours later, I told them it was time to pack up their toys and leave Butterfly Beach. After splashing around in the waves, eating snacks under the umbrella, and forcing mom to dunk her head in the freezing February ocean, the kids were in the middle of digging a giant hole where the waves met the sand. My son looked at me and said, “Please let us stay. I love the beach. You were right.” He sure knows how to get an extra 20 minutes.

Enjoying life in Santa Barbara at Hendry’s Beach | Photo: Dana Anderson

Of course there are problems here. There are big problems, like wildfire risk and ultra-expensive housing. There are high state income taxes — worth it. I’d pay more. (Just kidding, whoever sets income taxes.) There are small problems, like the Albertsons on Calle Real and the bizarre parking situation in Old Town Goleta. There are first-world problems, like feeling guilty when the weather is perfect but you’re watching The Bachelor with the blinds shut, and the lack of a Nordstrom in town. There are the universal work and parenting problems. But somehow a 3-year-old’s whining about not wanting to brush her teeth is more manageable when you can open the back door, send her to the trampoline, and smell that Santa Barbara air, breathing in salt and sun and just a hint of tar.

I work as a writer for Redfin, reporting on housing-market trends. Much has been made of more people moving out of major California metros than into them: The state is too expensive, it’s too liberal, it’s too vulnerable to climate risk, why live there when you could buy a house three times the size for half the price somewhere else. It’s not for everyone. It is for me, though.

When I meet new people, usually fellow parents, they’ll ask: “So, what brought you to Santa Barbara?” I’ll lift my arm and gesture it in a half circle, the universal signal for “Look at all this.” Sometimes my hand will be pointing at the small waves crashing onto East Beach behind the playground, and sometimes the ocean view from the zoo’s giraffe exhibit. The other person will smile and say, “I know.”