The Westside · Santa Barbara

Over the hill, in the middle of it all.

Between the Mesa and downtown, and changing fast. This is the Westside the way I'd explain it to a friend.

The Westside sits on the other side of the Mesa's hill, in the lowlands between the Mesa and downtown, and its whole argument is position: a little closer to town, an easy reach to everything, and still a quick pop over to the beach. It's one of the city's oldest and most tightly woven neighborhoods, bungalows and early cottages on streets that fill in densely toward the heart, and its daily life runs along San Andres and Micheltorena, taquerias, markets, cafes, the murals at Bohnett Park. Some streets, especially climbing away from the flats, get spectacular mountain views that surprise people who've never driven them.

Street by street.

No neighborhood in Santa Barbara varies more block to block than the Westside, and that's the single most useful thing to know about it. Quiet pockets with big views sit within minutes of dense blocks near the freeway edge, where the 101 and the train tracks draw the northern border and make themselves heard on the closest streets. Demand and prices have climbed here as fast as anywhere in the city, and the neighborhood is visibly changing year over year. All of which means the Westside rewards specificity: the right street here is a genuinely great buy, and knowing which street is which is the whole game.

How it got this way.

In 1850 this was open grazing land turning marshy toward the beach, and longhorn cattle landed at Stearns Wharf were once driven straight across it to the corrals. The street names are the best history lesson in town: San Andres, San Pascual, Chino, and Gillespie were laid out side by side deliberately as a memorial to the Mexican American War, San Andres honoring General Andres Pico himself. For a stretch of the early century the Westside even had a polo field to rival Montecito's, on the flat ground near San Andres and Victoria. It has always been a working neighborhood with more history per block than places twice its price.

The honest part.

Density is the trade. The heart of the Westside is the most tightly packed part of the city, parking and elbow room run accordingly, and the blocks nearest the freeway carry its sound, worth standing on a street at different hours before you commit to it. The change cutting through the neighborhood is real too, and it cuts both ways: rising prices reward owners and squeeze newcomers, and the character is evolving fast. What doesn't change is the position. Few places let you be this close to downtown, the Mesa, and the water at once, and that's why the pressure is here.