C’mon, Get Happy

For Ali Brieske, Santa Barbara is her happy place. “I don’t know any other place like this. It’s the mountains, the ocean; it has the weather; it has everything,” says Brieske when reflecting on her hometown. But when the operations coordinator returned in 2021 after 15 years away, she found that finding her happy hour place was a little bit more challenging. So she took it upon herself to compile a list of the best ones around town.  

As with so many other great businesses before her, Ali’s List began as a Google spreadsheet. In July 2022, Brieske shared on the Facebook group Support Santa Barbara Biz that she’d collected more than 100 happy hours from small businesses around Carpinteria, Summerland, Montecito, Santa Barbara, and Goleta. 

From there, the thing took off. Anonymous little forest animals bombarded the spreadsheet, enough so that just a year later Ali and her husband, Jeremy Brieske, took the time to build a dedicated website (it helped that Jeremy has a background in web design). It was shared among mom text exchanges, local Facebook groups, Nextdoor, and even discussed on the playground. “People seem very involved in supporting everything Santa Barbara,” she says.

Ali’s List is wonderfully easy to navigate, categorizing happy hours by location, day of the week, time, and rating. There’s even a map if you want to zoom in and find a few happy hours near one another to maximum ground coverage. 

These days, both Ali and Jeremy maintain happy hour details weekly, ensuring nothing is out of date or no longer relevant. It’s the reason she got into this business in the first place — the Santa Barbara native found nowhere that had up-to-date lists she could rely on, so she makes a point of never letting any change slip by her. It’s not easy for someone to keep up with restaurants that rarely post offerings online, share specials on their social accounts, or even have the resources to maintain an online presence. But it’s something that has earned her a loyal following — fans of the list appreciate how accurate it’s remained over the years.

There’s no scientific method for keeping tabs on all the happy hours and how things shift (although I bet she wishes there was), but she does her due diligence to maintain the website, social presence, and weekly duty of attending happy hours around town to ensure everything is presented as accurately as possible to each visitor. “This city is … big enough to [maintain] it, but small enough where it’s manageable,” she adds. “It’s an effort, but it’s worth it for Santa Barbara.” 

The Ali’s List Instagram account, which has 1,200 followers and counting, gets tips from friends and strangers alike. Ali regularly receives tips on new specials, changed time frames, or closures. She often receives texts from friends around town (returning to your hometown has its perks) who send images of sandwich boards or handwritten menus that are treated like gold. She’s even had diners tell her to check the list out, which always inspires a laugh when she tells them she’s Ali.  

The Black Sheep | Photos: Ingrid Bostrom

Of course, the big question to ask from the happy hour expert is about her favorite happy hours right now. But, she’s hard to pin down. Lure, Gala, Black Sheep, Something’s Fishy and more are on her recent list of adventures. If the place has a happy hour, you can bet Ali and Jeremy have been there. As her website says, “If your idea of happiness consists of a good hour or two (or three) of reasonably priced drinks and appetizers while basking in the glow of a pink sunset, you’ve found the right spot.” I think everyone in Santa Barbara can agree that that place is definitely one defining happiness.

Her happiness also means supporting local restaurants. While her monthly visitor count is up 35 percent year-over-year and repeat visitors are her bread and butter, she doesn’t want to earn a profit from the little guys just trying to stay in business. “It’s a great way for businesses or local restaurants and bars to get promotion,” she says. “What we found is that they just don’t have time to do it all.” Not that Ali and Jeremy, who both maintain full-time jobs in addition to updating the website weekly (and visiting happy hours on the weekend), do either. Still, the couple couldn’t imagine going door-to-door asking money-conscious restaurants for advertising fees. They could also never imagine charging the user. So the newest plan has been to monetize in other ways. 

Instead of offering pay-to-play profiles vis-à-vis Yelp, Ali partnered with her longtime friend and graphic designer Kate Caughey to launch the first ever Ali’s List merchandise. The iconic Santa Barbara coastline can be found on magnets, stickers, and tote bags — available to purchase online, via Etsy, or at Jules by the Sea uptown. There is so much more to come for this entrepreneur who loves her city — from new listicles, to more merch locations — we can all expect to see more of Ali’s List in the future. Especially if you’re one to frequent happy hours.

Reach out to Ali on Instagram at @alislist.ca if you want your restaurant or business to be featured. She’d love to have you join the growing list of 150+ restaurants and bars already on the site.