Saying Goodbye to Santa Rosa Dorm

My parents moved me into UCSB’s Santa Rosa dorm in the fall of 1995, a couple weeks after I’d turned 18. My hair was bleached blonde, I was still skinny, and I rode a skateboard everywhere, bloody elbows and all. 

It was room 2137, overlooking the eucalyptus-shaded parking lot, where my BMX would soon be stolen, then recovered, and ultimately smashed. I met my roommate that day, who was from the town of Tiburon, across the Golden Gate from San Francisco. He proceeded to never wash his clothes, instead piling them up in a musty mound until each quarter ended, the smell growing ever more putrid by the week. But I am kind, so I brought him with me everywhere, and he earned the nickname “Booger,” becoming a steady fixture in the years to come whether I liked it or not.  

My friend from our San Jose high school moved onto the same floor that first day, so I went to check out his room — great view of the psychology building! — after my parents left. His roommate hadn’t arrived yet, so he suggested we smoke some weed. I thought that was risky, but that didn’t stop us.

We mosied downstairs, where an entire wing had little cutouts of the African continent on their doors. My buddy didn’t understand why until a Black guy walked out of one room, to which my stoned friend said, basically to his face, “Ohhhh, I get it!” 

I was mortified, only to be more shocked when my friend tried to defend himself, like a dumb white boy. (I suddenly understood that he was a liability to go anywhere with, and later had to yank him out of countless unnecessary brawls.) And the offended Black guy was the RA of the wing, no less, who angrily taught us a lesson. He eventually became our friend, and tragically died in a car crash a few years later.  

We settled in, befriending dudes and chicks from Oceanside to Tahoe, realizing that “hella” was a NorCal tell and that the SoCal Spiccoli accent wasn’t just from the movies. There was tons of booze via fake IDs and shoulder taps and purple kush from Humboldt and muscle relaxers from Tijuana and all sorts of other drugs, distributed profitably through the dorms with efficiency and ease. Our walls were covered with black light posters, and we became pros at lining the doors with towels to keep the dank plumes inside. 

We smoked packs of Winstons on the back stairs looking out toward the lagoon, and regularly passed out in other people’s rooms, often to find pen marks on our faces. A French-American friend of mine from S.F. turned me back into a steak-eater by grilling filet mignon at the picnic tables behind the College of Creative Studies, very possibly the most impactful moment in what’s become a food-focused career. 

We smuggled kegs of Red Nectar and Natty Ice in through windows, and adventured down to Goleta Beach to climb in the trees whenever our heads were full of fungal and acidic stars. We were almost certainly on the world’s cutting edge when it came to bongs and cannabis consumption techniques. There were trips to Disneyland during Halloween, undersupplied camping missions to the dead end roads of our mountains, power drives to the slopes of South Lake.  

Another high school buddy and I started a hip-hop radio show, “The Sick Mix at 6 at 5:30.” We did it mostly on vinyl, but the cassette recordings may still be the best playlists we’ve ever made. Only our dormmates could hear the music, because we were on the KCSB training ground called KJUC (“K-Juice!”), which only broadcasted through the campus’ electrical wiring. We still managed to attract the occasional request caller.

We hooked up while drunk (how else?), waged epic battles of ping pong in the rec room, and got fat on bottomless buffets at the Ortega and De la Guerra dining commons. Sometimes, on weekends, we’d even trudge across campus to the Carrillo dining room, where they made fresh waffles. 

We spent all of our weekends, and plenty of weekdays, in Isla Vista, keeping our cups turned down in between keggers and concerts from jam bands that are still playing today. We constantly convinced cops we weren’t holding, and once, on the corner of Del Playa and Camino del Sur, hundreds of us threw our collective “Rollies in the sky” at Biggie’s request. It was the quintessential college movie scene, and I wasn’t too drunk to remember it.  

We also, occasionally, studied, though it wasn’t until my sophomore year that I realized school was much easier if I actually went to class and read the material. Numerous friends battling organic chemistry and physics changed majors or dropped out. I chose anthropology, which was fascinating and, it turned out, super easy. And I still use it everyday, having to constantly deal with you humans. 

There was tons of Bob Marley, Grateful Dead, and Sublime, plus a healthy showering of punk, ska, rap, techno, and classic rock. My young musical mind was blown many times, from the Allman Brothers’ Eat a Peach to The Score by the Fugees, which our East Coast college–attending buddy brought on a tape before it had hit California. We listened to it on loop from the Santa Rosa dorm down to Rosarito Beach, where we found — and, for some dumbass reason, brought home across the border — the brownest weed ever in a motel ceiling lamp.  

Amidst the haze and hormones, we made some of the best friends of our lives. I am still in touch with many of them, and a few are as close to me as brothers and sisters. 

These are but one resident’s memories of Santa Rosa, which housed more than 30,000 students since it was built in 1955. Think of how many other chapters were written there, possibly your own. The dorm was knocked down without much fanfare in June, to be replaced by a presumably more efficient dorm with four times as much capacity. 

No one will argue against that. The nondescript building wasn’t pretty or charming or even all that memorable on its own. But it served as a laboratory for friendship to countless people like me, and a launchpad for the rest of our lives. I will remember it fondly. 

Tip your next forty to that.