Neighborhoods & Towns
The Funk Zone, the Mesa, the Riviera, Montecito, Summerland, Carpinteria and Goleta.
The Funk Zone, block by block
Between the railroad and the beach, a few blocks of old fish sheds and warehouses turned into tasting rooms, studios and painted walls. Here is how to walk them, and what they used to be.
Life on the Mesa
West of the harbor the land rises into a flat-topped plateau of bungalows, cliffs and cypress. The Mesa is where Santa Barbara lives, walks the dog and watches the sun drop into the channel.
Montecito without the gossip
Behind the hedges east of Santa Barbara lies a community of old estates, two small villages, great gardens and a beach that faces the sunset, and a town still marked by one terrible winter night.
Also in Neighborhoods & Towns
Lotusland, by reservation
An opera singer spent four decades turning a Montecito estate into a garden of cacti, cycads, blue foliage and theatre. Seeing it takes planning, and the planning is worth it.
Carpinteria, the world's safest beach
Twelve miles east of Santa Barbara, a small beach town with a gentle shore, a colony of harbor seals, tar on the rocks and a main street that runs straight into the sand.
Which part of town is for you?
Santa Barbara is small, but its neighborhoods are very different places to wake up in. Ten of them, compared for walking, beaches, quiet and families.