The Western Front
A Visit to Santa Barbara, CA

By Keith Lubeley
March 25, 2007

“I should get more sun,” I told myself as I flattened my towel on the sand of Butterfly Beach in Santa Barbara. Katherine had fallen asleep, as I soon would too, lapping up bright sunlight on a warm March afternoon.

When we left New York two days before, it was below freezing and there was a thick layer of ice cemented to the floor of my foyer, the product of a leaky radiator above. I was glad to be in the sun, blissful even, and to some extent this surprised me. The cold has always been my preferred element, ever since I went away to boarding school in northern Michigan. At first, its appeal was simple boast value. To brag that you’d survived a Michigan winter and even liked it—even the days when the high was seven degrees and your breath froze in the air—seemed to impress people. But eventually I realized I did like the winter, and it was not only because I disliked the summer. For one thing, the cold dignified the summer’s unclad masses, and this satisfied my inner curmudgeon. Whereas summer permits, and even demands, all manner of unpleasant under-dressing—all those tank-tops and cutoffs—winter imposes a sort of bundled-up decorum. Some people simply weren’t meant to wear shorts, but there’s no one who can’t wear a coat. Moreover, winter promises quiet and introspection. Everything is dead and defused. When the temperature plunges, so does the crime rate. In the heat, the city loses its mind. When it’s cold, we can all think again.

Nevertheless, I could not deny there was something beguiling about this warm California afternoon. The heat was dry and did not oppress like it does out east, and falling asleep in the sun did not signify the same unwilling surrender that passing out in one’s un-air-conditioned apartment does. When we found a spot on the sand, I took my shirt off and decided to burn. In New York, a few days ago, we had worn two pairs of socks and struggled to extract our Metrocards with a pair of mittened hands. The wind had been bitter there but here it was sweet and even fragrant and it swept some of the moisture from the sea to the beach and beyond, mussing the hair of the girls in bikinis and settling demurely in the hills.

“I’m so happy to be here,” I told Katherine, unprompted.

On the esplenade above the beach, the Biltmore Four Seasons Hotel commanded a serene view of the sea and, in the distance, the Channel Islands. It was there, a few hours earlier, that I had received my first professional massage, in an upstairs room on a red-tiled Spanish terrace. The masseuse, a gregarious Mexican woman with thick forearms, asked me what I did. After a moment, I realized she meant for a living, so I stretched the notion and replied, “I’m an actor and a writer.”

“How wonderful!” she cooed excitedly. “I love working on creative types. I have many clients like you.”

Earlier in the day, Katherine and I had driven through Montecito and the Santa Barbara hills, where every house seemed to have a gate and a pool. “Michael Douglas lives over there,” I was told as we cruised past a massive iron fence. I had as much in common with this masseuse’s “creative” clientele as I did with the doyennes of the Upper East Side, but I decided not to disabuse her. When she informed me she would be taking a vacation in Italy soon, I casually told her I’d been there too, which happens to be true.

“You’ll love it,” I said, closing my eyes as she kneaded my calf muscles.

“Yes,” I thought serenely, “I am rich and famous and I live in the sun.”

I’ve always favored the image of the artist hunched over a typewriter in his cold and dark apartment on a bitter winter night. It seemed painful enough to be authentic. It amazed me with what swiftness my mini-vacation in Santa Barbara had reconfigured my desires. Suddenly the appeal of urban decadence seemed silly and superficial; odd, in that I previously would have used those two derogations to dismiss California.

Highway 101, Santa Barbara, CA

But there was a sense of make-believe about my visit west and this seems fitting. Just as people have always come to New York to remake themselves, people go to California to indulge a fantasy as well. Dreams of Hollywood and palm trees abound, but even California’s early history is shrouded in fantastic myth. Its very name is said to have come from a sixteenth-century romance novel, Las Sergas de Espladián by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. In the novel, the “island” of California is described as a “Paraiso Terrenal” (Earthly Paradise), where a “Queen Califa” rules over a brawny population of black Amazon women. The misconception of California as an island was quickly dispelled by Hernan Cortés when he sent an emissary up the Gulf to the mouth of the Colorado River in 1539. Nevertheless, the idea of the island lived on, and in the 1600s, California was commonly depicted on maps as being separate from the rest of America.

Could this have been wishful thinking? The appeal of an island paradise dies hard and it is difficult to part with a fantasy. In any event, California has always propagated its own myth, from the Gold Rush to Hollywood, and even the palm trees we associate so strongly with the place were imported from the Canary Islands.

On Saturday Katherine's parents took us to see Yo-Yo Ma perform with his Silk Road Project at the Arlington Theatre, a whimsical old movie house downtown. Afterwards we headed down to Joe’s Café (opened 1928) on State Street. It was a little before midnight and the place was surprisingly lively. In fact, most of State Street had a nighttime vitality that I wasn’t expecting. The crowd was pretty homogenously white and upper-middle-class, sure, but at least there was a crowd. We were seated at the bar and Katherine asked me if I could ever imagine living in California, something that I had actually been asking myself as I let my mind wander during the concert. I told her yes, an answer that, even as recently as a few weeks ago, would have surprised me.

“Yes,” I said, “I could live here.”

Of course, I’m not exactly sure what I meant by “here.” The four days we had spent in Santa Barbara were a little indulgent and I would not expect (or want) to live in such an exclusive enclave, among the millionaire “creative types” who drink OJ on their terraces and brunch at the Biltmore. I would not be living in Santa Barbara, and I had no illusions—or regrets—about that. But the sun is pervasive and the beach is open to all and I can see myself there, where I couldn’t have before. More importantly, just an hour to the south they make movies, and that, of course, would be the real draw.

I’m back in the city now, though. When we returned, it immediately started snowing again and I was pleased with my hat and my scarf. In New York, when it snows, the most difficult thing is negotiating an intersection. The snow turns into dirty brown slush pretty quickly here and it piles high at curb breaks where your options are either to leap a soupy pond of nastiness or gingerly plunge your foot in and risk damp socks. My dad bought me a pair of hiking boots a few years ago that are perfectly suited for plunging. They’re sturdy and waterproof and when I’m walking in them I feel like a human SUV: I’m taller and more aloof and I feel invincible. Californians have their cars and their highways. New Yorkers have their feet. And for now, I’m happy tromping through the slush and braving the weather, watching my tan fade and dreaming of sunshine.