Feeling Montecito
Santa Barbara's noir enclave for the ultra-ultra is still accessible as a place to ride out the end times—sorta
Three years ago this spring, I was driving south to San Diego for a very dumb work conference for a very bad company, the ultimate unnecessary road trip, and marker of Before Times luck and privilege.
Early on that morning, I decided I would stop and do a run somewhere, either in Malibu Canyon, where I did an annual trail race near the places where they filmed M*A*S*H and Westworld, or the hills above Montecito.
The latter won if only because I’d recently read about the trails which shot straight out of the ocean and extended back into the San Ysidro mountains for hundreds of miles, fronted only by the West’s most notable ungated/gated community home to yoni egg empress Gwyneth Paltrow, lovely in real life Drew Barrymore, and everyone’s favorite litigious sociopath next door who sold his estate to a private equity goon then bought a “smaller” manse down the road slash-sexy-sax-player Rob Lowe.
I decided on a run known as the Canyon Trail Loop, a four-mile, 2,000-foot climb that connects the Cold and Hot Springs Canyons, a favorite of day hikers and the soon-to-be engaged.
The trail was easy, fun, and had plenty of I-wonder-who-lives-there feels as the main trail winds up alongside a seasonal creek on the right and tiny hillside enclaves on the left. I later found out Beau Bridges resides in one of those places in my star maps reflection of the scramble and immediately thought of how he’s like one of three people to ever play a professional football player who actually resembles a professional football player.
The trials were lovely if not detoured in parts (more on that in a second). The run wound its way up across Hot Spring Creek and towards the McMenemy and Saddle Rock Trails which brushed along a few ridges where it doesn’t take much squinting to pretend you’re the last person on earth—a rare privilege in even more rarified air.
But my time suspended in midair was quickly evaporating, so I wound it back down the hill. Had I continued, the path would’ve taken me right to the hot springs themselves.
In all, by the time I was back down to my car parked on one of the side streets called Riven Rock Road, I was refreshed and a ton happier for the experience.
But reality checked me as soon as I made my way through the quiet neighborhoods to the sound of giant chainsaws and the beep-in-reverse echo of heavy machinery greeted me.
I was floored by the number of graders and scrapers and cherry pickers and bulldozers. I hadn’t seen so many clear-cut scars in a place that was mostly obscured by dense overgrowth and imposing fortress gates since I visited the World Trade Center footprint for the first time as they were scraping away an unfillable hole in the middle of a city.
It hadn’t occurred to me until that point that it wasn’t just wanton development, but those spots being graded and readied for the building were taken out by the mudslides just months before in January. Beyond the slight detours, while up on the trail, the vegetation seemed to be plentiful, and there were no signs of the disruption of climate change-caused disaster, killing twenty, including several children, and destroying 65 homes in the early hours of a Tuesday morning.
Montecito, also home to very nice crooner Ariana Grande, very bad toxic boss Ellen DeGeneres, and you don’t have to like her but know that she did more with her young-and-black-thrown-away life than you would in one hundred lifetimes Oprah-and now Prince Harry and Meghan Markle who recently announced they’ll bring a second child into whatever this version of the world is from their a 14,500-square-foot home known as “Chateau at Riven Rock” (I probably accidentally parked in front of it and they got to witness me coughing and spitting and wheezing post-run, sorry guys :/
And while most of the sleeping giant estates that dot the hillside or are obscured from the street are placed perfectly in a perfectly protected enclave that is a very literal mountain-meets-ocean noir paradise; with overcrowding, no chain stores or restaurants, not even sidewalks to be found; and plenty of secrets hidden behind those gates—there is something sinister brewing beneath the Montecito veneer.
Maybe that’s all spots that succumb to extreme wealth. There’s a whole you-don’t-belong-quit-trespassing vibe, even on the public trails, that makes your hair on your arms stand up a little. It’s palpable but also not totally paranoid. After all, what Montecito residents want, they get.
The area went from new West frontier paradise to lithe but quiet playground of Chaplin-era Hollywood, to oligarch-protected (the Duke and Duchess of Sussex bought their estate from Sergey Grishin, a Russian billionaire “investor and developer”) lean not just conservative but end-times Calvinist. There is also a fearful if not realistic look at climate change that made friendly environs for the firestorm that took out the nearby forests to make way for the mud to come down.
Residents know that Mother Nature can throttle them at any time, and, among their chief concerns is that water will become scarce over the next few decades—which is why Montecito in a “lemme just get my checkbook and take care of this” moment had a bake sale and paid for half of the $72 million desalination plant in Santa Barbara. The deal includes they get first dibs on the water for at least the next half-century.
Running above Montecito means the homes disappear. Most are already camouflaged. It’s not like being in Brentwood, or Newport Beach, or Hillsborough, where the wealth is in your face. It’s hidden there. Montecito is for a certain level of someone who wants to simply disappear or not be recognized among the fauna. Maybe that’ll keep the whole thing going for another few decades, or perhaps it means when it goes, the rest of us will be so busy trying to fight for our own lives—we won’t even notice.
They probably prefer it that way.
Here we go, under $2 mil. A tiny 1915 cottage on an almost 6,000-foot lot. Grab about a half dozen of your favorite families in your “pod” and extend your existence with teamwork. Think about it—during this time of the misinformation death cult and death-championing greed—this is your perfect end times #highendprepgoals. To hunker down near them—not to be not one of them but among them—is just the right kind of chaos: