There is a reason people who live on Santa Barbara’s Eastside feel such a strong connection to it.
It’s the way Milpas Street connects the beach to the Bowl. It’s the smell of tortillas at theswapmeet at Santa Barbara High School on Saturday mornings. It’s the neighborhood restaurants where families have been eating for decades. It’s the murals. The music. The small-business owners who know their customers by name.
It’s what Beatriz Molina, a longtime Eastside resident and community leader, recalled: “As a youth, I lived on Nopal Street, attending Our Lady of Guadalupe Elementary and Preschool … I remember so many cultural events: ferias at Ortega Park, parades on Milpas Street, and dances with live music for young adults and families. It was a time when our heritage was celebrated and honored.”
Or as longtime Eastside resident and Vecinos del Eastside founding member Mary Robles shared: “The Eastside has the capacity to be strong. It is built on a foundation of family, faith, neighbors, and business knowledge. Many successful businesses thrive here. Leo’s Plumbing is still on Haley after five generations. Viors Bread opened on Olive Street in the 1940s. This family business still exists as Tino’s Italian Market. Every high schooler has eaten a torpedo sandwich from Tino’s.”
The Eastside has always centered on cultural celebration filled with food, music, classic cars, art, youth sports, and local puestecitos that bring our community together and keep our local economy thriving. It is our responsibility to preserve that culture by keeping it alive.
The Vecinos del Eastside network is putting that vision into practice. For Nancy Avoce, executive director of the Santa Barbara County Action Network (SBCAN), the idea for this kind of network began with a simple conversation among Eastside neighbors. “We found ourselves talking about what things used to be like on the Eastside, how neighbors grew up and grew old together, where front porches and backyards were everyday gathering places. There was this feeling of looking out for one another because people knew each other. It made us wonder what it would take to bring some of that back.”
The Vecinos del Eastside’s current work, shaped by the priorities of residents and local business owners, includes rebuilding the sense of community that comes from knowing your neighbors, increasing visibility for local businesses, amplifying its history of community for new generations and families, and helping our longtime families, who are the heartbeat of this community, remain in the neighborhood.
Santa Barbara Eastside City Councilmember, Wendy Santamaria, has been an active member of the Vecinos del Eastside network and has worked with local businesses and Eastside residents to identify areas in need of investment. This budget cycle, Councilmember Santamaria supported the allocation of more than $500,000 in funding to invest in critical Eastside infrastructure — better sidewalks, lighting in dark pockets in our neighborhoods, a more pedestrian-friendly way for families to reach East Beach, and a revitalized and cleaner Milpas corridor.
We’re just getting started. And the best part is that every Eastside resident can have a say in how we spend these funds.
As Councilmember Santamaria said, “There’s quite a need for investments in basic infrastructure on the Eastside. Our sidewalks need to be fixed, Milpas Street deserves the same consistency in care as the rest of our city, and it’s up to us to ensure our tax dollars go to fix these issues. These are the people’s tax dollars — I want to hear directly from our residents on how they want these funds to be prioritized.”
Do you call the Eastside your home? Fill out this survey (English–Spanish) and express what matters most to you. Share with other Eastside residents and join the Vecinos del Eastside network to be a part of helping build a stronger Eastside!
Let’s work together toward an Eastside community that belongs to the people who live, work, create, and invest here, and help create an economy we can look at with orgullo.
That is how we move forward with corazón.
