Dear America,

In my life hitherto fore, I had driven through Santa Barbara just once. It was a long road trip from my home in Iowa to school at Stanford in 2019; looking back, I can’t believe that I never got off the highway to see the city. Mission Santa Barbara was founded in 1786 by the Basque missionary Fermin Lasuen.

Its buildings look like they might have when Spanish missionaries first built them. Some are actually that old, like the mission. Others have been built in that style with amazing fidelity over the intervening centuries. Santa Barbara is, I think, the purest essence of the Golden State (admittedly not because of actual gold, which was discovered in the far north of the state).

Two passenger trains run through Santa Barbara’s modest Amtrak station: the Coast Starlight, which makes its way from Seattle to Los Angeles over two days; and the Pacific Surfliner, which goes from San Luis Obispo to San Diego in one

California is a land of vagrants, dreamers, and retirees. Some of the “vagrants” are rich, some of the “retirees” are 20-somethings, and some of the dreamers are senior citizens. And of course, there are vagrant-vagrants, and retired-retirees. Over coffee under the palms of State Street, I enjoyed conversation with a couple in the retired-retiree camp.

In the sunny garden of Jeannine’s restaurant near the beach, I enjoyed lobster Benedict with new friends (surfers & dreamers). As it turns out, February is a perfect time of year in Santa Barbara. May and June, I learned, are defined by the annual arrival of the marine layer, the great wall of fog that lingers on the coast until July, when high summer begins.

I’m sending this letter to you, America, as the marine layer arrives. Please think of my friends in Santa Barbara as they face the fog. 

California is a land of vagrants, dreamers, and retirees. Some of the “vagrants” are rich, some of the “retirees” are 20-somethings, and some of the dreamers are senior citizens. And of course, there are vagrant-vagrants, and retired-retirees.

The road from Santa Barbara to Ojai runs through arid hills; if not for the big cars and shaggy American flavor of the roadside, one might mistake it for some Mediterranean locale. After climbing 750 feet above the sea, one enters the Ojai valley, fifteen miles inland, where orange groves and winding neighborhoods fill the hillsides. 

The weather in Ojai is so perfect that even the books live outside. I mean that seriously. Bart’s Books is an open-air bookshop in downtown Ojai. I bought a bag of books at Bart’s. In my travels across America, I have a bad habit of buying too many books, but the truth is that I packed light for this particular trip and had room. And the light peeking through the bookshelves told me that I had to buy at least a few. In Ojai there are fine establishments selling sourdough and $8 ice-cream scoops (I had Ojai orange, if you’re wondering). 

From Ojai, it was time for me to return to San Francisco. So, on Sunday afternoon, we drove back to the Santa Barbara airport for my flight back to San Francisco. Its white walls were blinding under the California sun, like the great pyramids must have been thousands of years ago, before losing their limestone. Maybe someday, this too will be a ruin, but not yet. More or less everybody flying from Santa Barbara to San Francisco is “rich” by global and even American standards. 

Houses in Santa Barbara cost millions of dollars. Rent isn’t cheap. But in California, only a few are rich compared to everyone else in California. And here was a large group of “not rich enough,” watching private jets through the window, about to suffer the indignity of cramming onto a 737 for a 38-minute, $500 flight back to San Francisco, where work awaits. That, in a scene, is California.

I want to leave you with an image from my first evening in Santa Barbara, walking down toward the ocean and out onto the pier of Stearns Wharf. As I walked, the scents on the wind changed. First, salt and brine, then marijuana (which is unavoidable in California these days) and back to salt and brine. Every few minutes, car tires rolling over wooden slats interrupted the quiet. I made it out to the end of the pier, where couples spoke quietly, and gaggles of teenagers spoke loudly. 

I sat with my thoughts for a few moments. And then it was time to head back. Where the pier meets the coast, I began to hear the sounds of the still-alive streets — the wine pouring, the guitars ringing. Behind me were the oil rigs, sentinels on the dark sea; and ahead of me, the pale lights of houses on a far hill above the coast.

Love,
Maxwell