Isla Vista: History and Hope
To me, Isla Vista is more than the scene of a bloody crime. It’s where I came of age. By remembering its history, we can help it to heal.
Mass shootings are apparently a tragic fact of life in modern America, and a fact of life that these days seem to pop up with increasing regularity. As we all did, I gasped in horror after the sickening parade of bloodbaths across the United States: the shooting of Gabby Giffords and many others in Arizona a few years back, the killings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the senseless gore of Newtown, Connecticut.
Every one of these shootings has its own twisted way of making you feel like you were there. Hear about some lunatic who opens fire in a school or a theater, and you can’t help but picture yourself in that setting.
That’s how it was for me in previous shootings: I imagined I was there, and was sympathetic, but an inevitable distance remained. Then it happened again, except this time it was different. Last Saturday, when the headline “Six killed in Isla Vista mass shooting” popped up on my computer screen, I was physically thousands of miles away. But in my mind, I was right back in Isla Vista: the seaside air, the modest but lovable apartments, the streets lined with beach cruiser bikes. Streets that were now covered with blood.
I lived in Isla Vista between 2004 and 2008, along with many fellow UCSB students. For part of that time, I lived in an apartment on El Embarcadero. If I had still been living there, I would have been jolted into a state of panic last Friday by the sound of gunfire — part of the killer’s rampage happened half a block away.
Isla Vista is going through a tough time. Just a couple of months ago, the town made national news when a street party for Spring break turned violent, injuring students and police officers. And now, the town has been rocked by a mass shooting.
Is there something deeply wrong with this place, something that somehow tugs at the dark corners of people’s souls and propels them down a path of violence and despair? After these high profile incidents, mainstream media viewers might be inclined to say yes, and if I had not lived there myself, I might jump on the bandwagon. In the past week, the name “Isla Vista” has become synonymous with death, as well as sexism.
But to me, Isla Vista means something different. It means coming of age. It means stepping out, learning new things. And yes, it means doing crazy stuff your parents would never allow you to do back home; stuff that, when concentrated into one square mile patch of land, does give it a raucous and dangerous reputation. It’s easy to think ill of decadent and dangerous Isla Vista, but neither I nor the thousands of UCSB alums and former IV residents would be who we are today without it.
The tributes I have seen online so far have been moving, and though I’m too far away at this point to go in person, I wanted to do something for the town to which I gave four years— four memorable, life-changing, occasionally intoxicated years — of my young adult existence, and that gave me so much in return.
What follows is a short history of the town of Isla Vista, California: the town itself, as well as my own personal experiences there, and a few thoughts on the current tragedy. At this time it may be tempting to think of the town in a negative light, and truth be told, the history of the place is not always rosy. But if rowdy mobs and rogue shooters are part of the town’s past and present, so too are community groups, funky local characters and customs, and traditions that make this place what it is. By remembering the city’s past and understanding its present, we can move forward from this terrible tragedy toward a better future.
1 — B.C. (Before the College)
A Chumash burial ground , a Spanish mission, the rural home of a familiy of Irish immigrants, and finally, a military base: Isla Vista’s former occupants were as diverse and varied as its current ones.
The first human settlers of modern-day Isla Vista had no idea that the pristine stretch of coastline they were moving to would later become the scrappy seaside enclave it is today. The earliest known residents were the Chumash, who occupied the entire coast from Malibu to San Luis Obispo.
Though not as fond of surfing as Isla Vista’s modern occupants, the Chumash were adept at building ocean-worthy vessels. In addition to the coast, they occupied the channel islands of San Miguel and Santa Cruz, which would later give Isla Vista its name. The land near Isla Vista was relatively important to the Chumash; the neighboring lagoon was the site of several sacred Chumash cemeteries. In a gesture that symbolizes Anglo-European attitudes toward the Chumash, that site is now a sewage processing plant.
Then came the Spanish, who claimed California as part of New Spain shortly after Cortez conquered the Aztecs. The famous explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo was the first European to make contact with the Chumash in the 1500s. Unfortunately for Cabrillo, he died while visiting the area near Santa Barbara, and was buried by his crew on nearby San Miguel island. Despite this, the Spanish were completely uninterested in building any settlements in California until the arrival of Junipero Serra in the late 1700s.
Isla Vista fell under the control of the Santa Barbara mission, which later in the 1830s was handed off to the Mexicans as Mexico won independence from Spain. During this time, Isla Vista, along with Santa Barbara (and really, the rest of coastal California) became a popular destination for immigrants from the newly formed United States, particularly New England, as Captain Ahab types found out that they could still go whaling from the shores of California without having to endure freezing temperatures when they got back.
Though many New Englanders began buying up land in the Santa Barbara area, the land that would become Isla Vista was acquired by an Irish immigrant, Nicholas A. Den. Den seemed not to be affected significantly by the Mexican-American War that turned over California to American control, but his death set off a controversial land transfer controversy. When he died in 1869, his heirs were still minors, and California oligarch William Hollister thought it would be a good idea to illegally “buy” the newly inherited land that Den’s sons had inherited.
Despite having been given Spanish names (Augusto and Alfonso), the fighting Irish blood was strong in the young Dens; they hired a powerful San Francisco lawyer to successfully fight Hollister in court. Their lawyer ended up taking a large chunk of the land as a legal fee, but the two young Irish/Mexican/American lads ended up with the areas of land that would become UC Santa Barbara and Isla Vista. They planted a long row of eucalyptus trees to mark the border between their two properties, which is still in place today, separating the university from the town.
In the early 1900s, Santa Barbara grew as a tourist destination and minor transit hub for the Southern Pacific railroad. The Dens’ land became more valuable, and Alfonso Den decided to sell off his land to developers. It was at this point that the area became known as “Isla Vista”. The land was subdivided into a street grid, and a few residences were built as vacation homes, though much land remained undeveloped as the development lacked running water and electricity.
Then World War Two happened. The first and only attack on the US mainland during the war occurred when a Japanese sub launched a missile that exploded along the coast near Isla Vista. No one was hurt, but the Marine Corps decided to take over control of Isla Vista, the future UCSB campus (at that time, still an undeveloped lagoon), and another lagoon to the north, which they filled in to build an airstrip that would later become the Santa Barbara Airport.
After the war, the Corps had little use for their wartime base at Isla Vista. The town went back to civilian control, but no one knew what to do with the former barracks and other structures built by the military. Eventually, a deal was brokered between them and a local college that had recently become part of the growing University of California system and was looking for a bigger campus. Military structures were converted to classrooms, new structures were added, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, opened its doors for the first time in 1954. As a local urban legend holds, the Marines made school officials pledge to never dig underneath the lagoon that remains on UCSB property.
2 — Burning Down the Bank
Isla Vista’s early years as a college town culminated with the chaos of the spring of 1970. It was a tense and dangerous phase for the town, but a phase that ended in an iconic moment for the peace movement.
The new university would bring new students, and those students would need somewhere to live. In the 1950s, a battle ensued between the few Isla Vista locals and powerful real estate interests, keenly aware of the area’s potential for student-oriented development run by absentee landlords. The developers won, effectively setting in place the future of modern Isla Vista.
By this time the power and water supply issues that had plagued earlier developments had been resolved with the opening of a new reservoir along the Santa Ynez River. New constructions of two and three-story apartments sprang up all across Isla Vista, particularly near the campus, along with a few restaurants, bars, and bookstores to serve the student populace. Obviously, the fact that Isla Vista was right on the beach made living there a plus for young college students.
The sixties arrived, and Isla Vista became a natural magnet for the decade’s prevailing spirit of peace, love, and mind altering substances. The town was a favorite of shaggy hippies hitchhiking between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and quickly gained an underground reputation as a place to trip out. It received a couple of famous psychedelic visitors; Andy Warhol’s companion Edie Sedgwick spent a year in town in the company of a meth-headed collective, and Jim Morrison penned “The Crystal Ship” after dropping acid and staring at an oil rig off the IV coast. Needless to say, the non-famous student population was quite lively as well. UCSB alum George Thurlow recalls his time in IV during the late 60s and early 70s, where, among other things, he “learned how to work a pool heater to create a midnight hot tub filled with naked graduate students”.
The stirring climax of IV’s hippie phase came in early 1970. The mood at the time was tense. The Vietnam War had reached its peak, and the memories of the 1968 Democratic convention and other riots were fresh in people’s minds. In addition, UCSB students were generally disgruntled with what they perceived to be authoritarian leadership at the school. Additionally, a recent oil spill in Santa Barbara had locals fired up over environmental issues (side note: on this particular issue, Isla Vistans and others from the Santa Barbara area have been quite successful, repelling efforts by major oil companies to build rigs off of IV. To this day, experts calculate that millions of barrels of crude remain untapped offshore, occasionally bubbling up in the form of sticky, clothes-ruining tar).
In February of that year, William Kunstler, lawyer for the “Chicago seven”, gave a speech at Harder Stadium, just north of the boundary between UCSB and Isla Vista. One student, returning from the event, was violently beaten and arrested by local police for carrying an open bottle of wine.
Then, all hell broke loose. Students, already fired up by Kunstler’s revolutionary speech, assembled at a local park. Anger was first directed at local police; students hurled rocks and other objects at them. Then, the mob marched to the local Bank of America branch a block away. They broke in, looting the bank and eventually setting it on fire.
In response to student actions, California’s then-governor Ronald Reagan declared a state of emergency in Isla Vista. A 7:30PM curfew was enacted, National Guard agents and LAPD SWAT teams were called in to enforce the curfew, and 300 students were arrested. The curfew continued for months and the bank was transferred to a temporary location. Campus life became tense for the rest of the school year; the famed radical Jerry Rubin attempted to make a speech on campus in April, which was blocked by university administrators. Reagan responded to this event by saying, “If there’s going to be a bloodbath, let it be now.” .
Tensions boiled over once again as news broke that 17 people had been indicted for the bank burning, including one man who was in jail when the February 25 burning took place. Police presence was amped up in anticipation of violence. On June 10, students responded with a peaceful protest, staged at Perfect Park (ironically, one of the sites of the recent shooting). Students stayed in the park after 7:30 in protest of the curfew, and were met with tear gas attacks and brutal police treatment. However, their protest ultimately prompted Reagan to lift the curfew.
1970 was a transformative year for IV. Some felt it had left a deep scar on the town; one Isla Vista resident at the time remarked, “Before the riots it was this cute little town, nice cinemas, new bookstores, more like a Santa Cruz or something, and after it was … burned out. It just destroyed the town.” But it also had a positive effect, helping to create some of the town’s biggest institutions, like the Isla Vista Free Clinic and the Isla Vista Food Co-Op.
3 — The Rise of the Bro
“The same Reagan who had cracked down on IV protesters would assume the US presidency a decade later and proclaim that ‘It’s morning in America,’ which translated to ‘It’s time to stop thinking about peace and start thinking about tax cuts.’ That attitude trickled down, if you will, to Isla Vista.”
George Thurlow, the IV resident who was holding nude pool parties there in the 60s, later remarked on his former home town: “Isla Vista has gone through booming development, ugly riots, invisible demographic changes, and a long history of special reports and studies, mostly long forgotten and ignored. Little seems to change, other than the names of Pardall Road restaurants and the style of bicycles that clog its few main arteries.”
Isla Vista’s status as a minor landmark during the revolutionary 60s and early 70s helped to keep its street cred going for another couple of decades or so. But hippie-ism eventually began to fade. The same Reagan who had cracked down on IV protesters would assume the US presidency a decade later and proclaim that “It’s morning in America,” which translated to “It’s time to stop thinking about peace and start thinking about tax cuts.” That attitude trickled down, if you will, to Isla Vista. Though a nominal level of revolution remained, the town became little more than a standard-issue college town with a good surf break.
One clear example of the decline of activist IV is the town’s efforts during the 70s and 80s to incorporate. Shortly after the 1970 riots, activists around town pushed for an incorporated IV. Broad community support pushed the incorporation effort all the way to the Local Area Formation Committee (LAFCO), but the committee killed the plan in a 4-to-1 vote. Similar efforts were made in 1975 and 1985, and they were shot down both times by the same committee. Later, in 2001, affluent citizens in nearby Goleta (north of Isla Vista) successfully incorporated, explicitly leaving Isla Vista out of the plan. Isla Vista residents were unable to fight back and include themselves in the plan. (side note: this was an issue I felt strongly about at the time. In 2007 I even wrote an op-ed in the Daily Nexus in favor of incorporating IV. Needless to say, nothing happened.)
The decline of IV hippieism is also symbolized by another locally famous event: the founding of Kinko’s Copy in the town. Kinko’s was founded by Paul Orfalea, whose nickname “kinko” referred to his shaggy hair. Orfalea was a young kid with an idea: provide copies to local students in IV in the early 70s. His idea morphed into a worldwide chain. By the early 2000s, no Kinko’s centers existed in IV — the hippie copy kid had sold out. Later, the chain was absorbed by FedEx.
Though the revolutionary thinking died down, the party scene remained. In the early 90s, the town’s Halloween festival became well known. To combat this, county authorities established the Isla Vista Foot Patrol, a well funded police unit that, contrary to its title, keeps a large fleet of cars, motorcycles, and even employs horses during large celebrations.
The hippie culture slowly began to morph into a less easy-going “bro” culture; though a laid back surf vibe remained to a certain extent (lest we forget, Jack Johnson went to UCSB), the town became more and more focused on the crass hook-up centric party scene. As a symbol of the town’s immaturity, residents at one point moved to rename one of the town’s parks “Dog Shit Park”. IV residents also gained a reputation for burning couches in June instead of moving them or disposing of them properly.
Geographic stratifications began to widen. Most residents were students; the more well off among them generally found digs on the coastal Del Playa drive, a three-block stretch of homes perched dramatically on a bluff overlooking the ocean. Housing became progressively more beat away from the ocean. In the northernmost blocks, homes were less likely to be populated by students and more likely to house working class immigrant families, as Isla Vista was and still is one of the few places in the super-rich Santa Barbara area where they can afford to live.
Nevertheless, some positive changes did happen. Despite citizen activists’ failure to incorporate IV as a city, they managed to get the county to establish the Isla Vista Recreation and Park District, which oversees the town’s parks and green spaces.
In addition, the town is one of the few places in all of Southern California where transportation is dominated by the bicycle, thanks to bike lanes on the UCSB campus, students cruise back and forth. On the streets of IV, bikes almost always outnumber cars.
What does the future of IV hold? An answer to that question can probably be found at the southern end of Embarcadero del Norte. There, a massive four-story complex called “The Loop” towers above Perfect Park (part of which was named “People’s Park” to honor the 1970 demonstrations). This complex was envisioned by developers as a way to turn IV from a “student slum” into a “vibrant community”.
The new building is handsomely painted and comes equipped with several environmental features, including a built-in garden. It also comes with a hefty price tag, a fitting symbol for increasingly unaffordable costs of higher education in California, and the rest of the country.
4 — Mr. Reed Goes to Isla Vista
Horse manure stains and jello shots during Halloween, smoking spliffs on a Del Playa balcony, listening to 20th century classical music. As a typical IV resident, it comes with the territory.
When I arrived in Isla Vista, it was the fall of 2004. I didn’t know it at the time, but this would be the place where I did some of the most idiotic things in my life, and later learn why doing so was a bad idea. In other words, it would be where I grew up.
I moved in to a dorm complex owned by the university, but located on a chunk of land on the other side of Isla Vista and culturally much more closely connected to the town than the university. The complex consisted of two ten-story high rises that looked like grim Soviet collectivized housing (see the above photo). It was named Francisco Torres, or FT for short. Upper classmen took to referring to the complex as “fuck towers”, which they would periodically shout at us as they drove by. And by periodically, I mean every five minutes or so, sometimes more when you were trying to sleep. This became such an issue that administrators renamed the complex the year after I left.
Move-in day was on a Tuesday, and once we all got settled, the floor RA gathered us together to tell us a few ground rules. Her name was Caitlin, a sophomore. She was super chill, which is probably a necessity for being an RA. After that was over, a group of people called out to me. “Hey Drew, we’re going into Isla Vista. There’s a party on Estero. Wanna come?”
I went. It was in a house that wasn’t exactly luxurious. We knocked on the flimsy wooden gate, and since there were enough girls in our group, the guy at the door let us in (standard IV protocol). Inside a guy was serving beer from a keg. I ended up drinking four Dixie cups worth of it. It wasn’t particularly good beer, but I didn’t mind.
I started talking with a girl from my floor. She wasn’t that good looking, but very nice. She was from Albany, in Northern California. She was a huge Oakland As fan. She told me about life in her old high school, the best part of which was apparently skipping class to go to an As game.
It was the first time I had ever been drunk. In high school, I was a band nerd and never touched alcohol. In college, I made up for lost time. As I left the party, I was struck by the fact that the street seemed shakier than usual. I can’t remember for sure, but I’m pretty sure at one point I blurted out, “Why is everything so wobbly?”
It was also the first time I had beer goggles. I didn’t end up doing anything with my new friend, other than giving her a long hug before going to bed. She would probably tell her friends later how awkward I was. When I regained coherence, I came to the conclusion that it was probably a good thing we only hugged, nothing more.
Since I have no intention of running for political office at any point in my life, I’ll tell you another IV story. It was early November, two months after I moved in. IV was just recovering from Halloween, a time which for me had been a combination of avoiding horse manure while riding my bike, being carded by dorm attendants at the doors of FT (they wouldn’t let non-residents in), and doing jello shots at house parties. I went out with some of my new friends to a little get-together on Del Playa. When we got to the apartment complex, the owners invited us upstairs. The entrance to the complex was through a second floor balcony, right above the crashing waves.
It wasn’t that cold, so we stayed outside. One of the guys at the house brought out a joint. I didn’t want to look like a nerd and freak out, but inside, part of me that still hadn’t gotten over the “reefer madness” style drug education they gave me in elementary school was thinking that by smoking it, I might die. Eventually, one guy passed me the joint. I smoked it. I didn’t die.
It was the first time I had smoked marijuana. The guys started talking about their intoxicated run-ins with the law. Some of them had been arrested for public intoxication, open alcohol containers, marijuana possession. One guy said, “This one time a cop pulled me over and I was totallay smashed. I tried to say, ‘Good afternoon, officer,’ but it came out as, ‘Good afternoon, ossifer.’ Then I was really fucked!” I had never had to deal with the cops in my life. I just nodded to what they said, trying to look like I knew what I was doing. The weed never kicked in. Only later would I learn how much I could and couldn’t smoke. I never saw those people again.
But not all of my life experiences in IV have to do with substance abuse. My sophomore year, I moved out of the dorms and into IV proper, onto an apartment a half a block away from Del Playa. The apartment overlooked the street, and on weekends, drunken throngs would pass by, keeping me and my roommates up.
I found new friends that were more my style. Sometimes, I would invite them over to hang out and talk about music. I bought a halfway decent sound system from a thrift store and hooked it up. I would listen to a mixture of free jazz and indie rock.
I was studying music at the time. At the school’s music library, I discovered a bunch of composers whose music has stuck with me: György Ligeti, Olivier Messiaen, Karlheinz Stockhausen. At the time, all music was on CD, or in some cases, vinyl, but the music on CD could be ripped onto a laptop and taken home. It’s music that could best be described as “difficult”. But I loved it. Sometimes I would listen to all of the Turangalila Symphony and then go sit on a bench above the ocean waves. It was as much of a trip as anything I ever ended up smoking while I was there.
My new friends also loved strange music like this. Sometimes we would go to someone’s house and drink a few beers and chat, other times we’d have coffee on a Friday night in the center of IV and talk about music. Ultimately, my friends were all like the music we listened to: difficult to understand, but rewarding once you finally figured them out.
I could go on. So many things happened to me in Isla Vista, and a lot of them are too embarrassing to talk about here. Sometimes I would run into the ugly side of the town: guys who would chew you out if you tried to get in to their party without girls in your group, people who would randomly insult you while you rode to class, that sort of thing. I imagine the experience is much worse for women, as this current sad turn of events seems to indicate.
There were even a few foreboding signs of the trouble to come. In the wake of the shooting, news media sources have been quick to point out the 2001 rampage by a UCSB student in IV, injuring 13. When I was in IV in 2006, a mass killing happened nearby, though not in IV; a woman went crazy and killed former employees at a Goleta post office. Also, the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings happened while I was in IV, for which students organized candlelight vigils on campus.
But there are plenty of things to be proud of: local traditions like movies at the Isla Vista Theater, concerts that would be held in Isla Vista’s parks, restaurants, coffee shops. During my time there, the good citizens of Isla Vista were quite fond of a certain homeless guy known simply as “Pirate”, whose back story is quite complicated, but has now become a fixture in IV.
One of my fondest memories is watching soccer games. When the UCSB team made it to the finals in 2004, we stormed the field and picked up the goal. We took it as far as the entrance to the stadium before the cops showed up and made us drop it. But it sure as hell was fun.
Another fond memory for me is when I first learned about the bank burning of 1970 and the events that followed. In February 2005, the 35th anniversary of the burning, there was a screening of the documentary Don’t Bank on America, made shortly after the events took place. It made me feel like I was living in a place with history, a good feeling to have, even if I only agreed with some of that history. After the screening, a former IV resident sold giant novelty checks that had been printed at the time to protest the bank. I bought one. It still hangs from my wall.
All of this may seem like trivial, run-of-the-mill college town stuff. But for me it was special. Sure there was debauchery, but it had a point. It turned into something that was meaningful, that helped me to live a better life, that became part of who I am.
5 — Tragedy
“Even if mainstream sources aren’t asking this question openly, I sense that many may be thinking it, so to clear the air, I’ll blurt it out: Is Isla Vista’s rowdy bro culture partly to blame? When thrust upon a mentally ill, disturbed individual, did it make him think that he ‘deserved’ to have his pick of eligible women?”
Last Friday, tragedy struck. I don’t want to get too bogged down with the specifics, you’ve probably already heard about them somewhere else. Nor do I want to dignify the killer with too long an analysis. But there are a few things I have to say.
Mass shootings are so scary because we can’t help but picture ourselves as being caught in them. But when a mass shooting happens in a place you know and love, when the deadpan descriptions of the killer’s path — turned right at Embarcadero Norte, left at Trigo, then onto Del Playa, etc. — are streets you’ve walked back and forth on for four years, when the bullets break window panes at cafes you’ve eaten at more times you can count, it adds another whole dimension of shock. I can only imagine that this is how people in Newtown felt after their town was thrust into the spotlight by an act of terror.
At this point, the killer’s actions have been interpreted by the mainstream press as an act of sexism. And this interpretation is probably correct, given his explicitly anti-woman manifesto of “retribution”, which basically boils down to “if you don’t sleep with me, I get to kill you.” I don’t want to say too much about the killer specifically, but I will say this: as a guy, I too have been frustrated by rejection. As have all men — yes, all men — even the biggest self-proclaimed players out there. Being rejected by women is part of being a man. Going on a psychopathic rampage is not.
So far, the media has been relatively responsible in not putting too much of the blame on Isla Vista itself — a pleasant surprise, for an industry that usually thrives on unfounded, scandalous suppositions. But even if mainstream sources aren’t asking this question openly, I sense that many may be thinking it, so to clear the air, I’ll blurt it out: Is Isla Vista’s rowdy bro culture partly to blame? When thrust upon a mentally ill, disturbed individual, did it make him think that he “deserved” to have his pick of eligible women?
After living so much of my life in IV, my answer can only be “no”. But it is a “no” that is a lot more reluctant than I would like to admit. As commentators have pointed out after this event, sexual abuse by a small group of men is invisible to all others. There was a lot going on in IV that I must not have been aware of. But some of it I was. During my freshman year, I overheard a girl on my floor reveal that a guy on the floor had used somewhat dubious methods to pressure her into sex, which she didn’t want to have. Another female friend of mine was abused at a frat party and wrote about the experience in the Daily Nexus, the UCSB student paper. There were more questionable “bro and ho” parties in Isla Vista than I could count during my time there.
The issues of where legitimate sexuality ends and sexism begins, as well as how much a local culture is to blame for malicious acts, are infinitely nuanced, and even thousands of books the length of the killer’s manifesto couldn’t settle them for good. But there’s one thing we need to keep in mind when thinking them through. It’s tempting in trying moments like these to see only the negative aspects, to look at #YesAllWomen posts and lose all hope, but we must remember that they are part of a larger whole with many positive aspects as well.
In Isla Vista, a horrible killer emerged, and some might speculate that the entire town is a breeding ground for deranged, sexist murderers. To a limited extent, this is true, and steps need to be taken to correct the problem. But overall, the irreplaceable moments experienced by thousands of Isla Vista residents — our experiences — say otherwise.
Yes, it is true that sexual abuse is an issue in IV, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t also a place where respectful, even enjoyable sex (in these weighty debates, it’s easy to forget that that’s what sex is supposed to be about anyway), sex that is edgy enough to be exciting without anything traumatic, can be had in town.
Though there is still a bro culture, many women have emerged from their time there without being sexually assaulted — and even with a few fun sex stories to tell their closest friends about. There are even a few guys who have come out of IV as “true gentlemen”, not in the sense that this crazed killer seems to imply, but in the sense that sane human beings take it to mean. I’d like to think I’m one of those few guys.
It’s easy to think of IV’s problems as the problems of a renegade college town, that don’t apply once you get your degree. But those problems don’t go away in the so-called real world. One of the reasons I felt compelled to write this longish history of the town and my experiences there is to humanize the place, to bring home the point that it isn’t a place where tragic events can be written off as the products of a sick culture that aren’t relevant elsewhere. It is a town of human beings, just as human as you and I, with all of the beauty and terror that being human implies. The positive flip side of this is that solutions that work in IV will work in the rest of the world too.
Recognizing this is a start, but it’s not enough. There’s nothing I, or anyone, could say to the families of the victims that would bring them back. All we can do is move forward with plans that will minimize the probability of such tragic and startlingly frequent events, while still maintaining the free society we cherish. Doing so will be difficult. But, for the sake of the victims, for the sake of my beloved Isla Vista, we must try.
6 — Hope
The spirit of the 1970 peaceful protests lives on in the current residents of Isla Vista. Maybe — just maybe — this will be the moment we turn a corner on gun violence and sexual assault.
The last time I was in Isla Vista was last January. I was driving up the coast with my brother to visit family. I talked him into stopping in Isla Vista to eat lunch. It was a gray winter day, but it was a Friday, so people were in a good mood. A few people were out on the Frisbee golf course, and others were preparing beer pong tables in front of their apartment complexes. Good old Isla Vista.
We walked through the downtown area, stopping at the food co-op to pick up some weird fruit drink that was supposed to be healthy. I popped for an Isla Vista Food Co-op mug. I almost ended up buying the Isla Vista board game too, knowing full well that I would never play it. Nostalgia.
We passed by the landmarks, old and new. The giant new apartment building on Embarcadero del Norte, and another new one on Pardall. The streets lined with bicycles, some with surfboards hanging from large side hooks, even on this frigid (by Southern California standards) winter day. The businesses that had closed down since I lived there — alas, the Isla Vista Bookstore has shut down, and the old video rental store has too, put out of business by the internet.
We made our way to Del Playa, stopping at Pelican Park to eat our homemade sandwiches and sip our newly purchased juice. The park boasts a concrete ping pong table, artfully decorated with seashells and colored sand. It was still there — thankfully, the internet hasn’t put public ping pong tables out of business. I had played ping pong there a few times when I was living in IV, and seeing it now made me wish I had brought a ping pong ball and paddles.
Before heading back out, we walked down the rickety wooden staircase to the beach. Despite the cloud cover, and the fact that the beach was covered with seaweed washed on shore by the waves, it was a beautiful moment. It had been six years since the last time I lived in Isla Vista, but there on the beach below Del Playa, it felt like I had never left.
After the killings, when I think back to that moment on the beach, it makes me sadder than anything else I’ve heard during these events. These six people should have been able to graduate, and then come back a few years later and get all sappy about the place, like I did.
They’ll never come back to Isla Vista. And, as scary as it is to say, I may never be able to go back there either. Life is full of surprises, some pleasant, others not. Some deaths are the product of the rampages of madmen, others the product of mundane horrors like traffic accidents or rare diseases. One of the lessons I’ve taken from this incident, other than that we ought to try to fix our broken system, is to be glad I’m alive today because tomorrow I might not be. If I die a tragic death, I hope I will inspire others to feel the same.
To me, observing the situation from afar, the reactions of the IV residents and UCSB faculty have overall been inspiring. There were a few ugly incidents; one guy was arrested for firing a gun in IV shortly after the event (thankfully, he didn’t hit anyone). As with other mass murderers, a few disturbed individuals set up a fan page for the killer on Facebook. Facebook wisely shut the page down.
But the outpouring of community solidarity has been uplifting. The photos of the candlelight vigils and rallies on and off campus brought a tear to my eye. I couldn’t be there, for obvious reasons, but online I read all of the articles in the local papers: the Daily Nexus, the weekly Santa Barbara Independent, the Santa Barbara News-Press. In particular, the editorials at the Nexus have been touching. An English professor writes of her love for the community, and manages to do so in a way that is not overly sappy but palatable in a Pharrel Williams sort of way. A student responds eloquently to cynical Facebook comments saying that this rampage was bound to happen because of the craven IV party scene. Maybe six years from now, she will be back in IV reminiscing about the place, as I was.
It’s hard not to be sad about the Isla Vista shootings. But watching the community response gives me hope. Hope, after watching Richard Martinez become the leader of a movement that demands “not one more” senseless shooting, addressing the underlying issues and challenging the flawed “good guy with a gun” mentality. Hope, when I look at the UCSB rallies and am left with the feeling that the abusive bros are the minority, and people like me, whose participation in the mindless party scene made their real friendships and interests all the more meaningful, are the majority. Hope, when I think of how Isla Vista responded to another self-inflicted tragedy, in February of 1970, with a resonant message of peace the following June. Isla Vista has drifted from its hippie era idealism, but when I watch the showings of community love and support, there’s no doubt in my mind that the spirit of 1970 is still alive.
I have a vision. Someday, when I’m much older than I already am, I will return to Isla Vista once again, and take another walk to the beach. The town will be pretty much the same physically, though maybe they will have built a few more luxury eco-apartments, like The Loop. But the town will be different in spirit. It will be recognized as a place where our country, our society, turned a corner on gun violence and sexual abuse. It will be a beacon of peace, the way it was in June of 1970.
I’m not naïve enough to believe that there’s any certainty, or even any strong likelihood, that this will happen. But I’m optimistic enough to believe that it might.
Thanks once again to the Medium collection Human Parts, whose amazing editor Steph Georgopulos has been kind enough to edit out all the typos in my back-breakingly long articles (so far anyway — this piece may be a bit too long even for her*) and has done a great job maintaining an impressive collection. Thanks to the photo sources in this article, some of which I couldn’t list above, including: Scott Bentzel, The Daily Nexus — twice, UCSB Housing and Residential Services, Russia Today, and SFGate. All other images are public domain or were taken by me. Thanks to the anonymous editors of the Isla Vista Wikipedia article, you guys did a good enough job sourcing your stuff so that I believe what you say. Thanks to Carmen Lodise, whose Isla Vista: A Citizen’s History was another invaluable source of information for this piece (to hear some of his thoughts after the current tragedy, see this article). And of course, a heartfelt thanks to everyone who lives in Isla Vista, or who has ever lived there.
One more note: Check out this piece of music written by Andrew Manos, a UCSB composition student, to honor the victims of the shooting. Reminds me of when I was still in town. And be sure to send your local representative a “Not One More” postcard. Find out more here.
*Update: she did. Steph, you’re a champ. Also, I have one last IV thing I want to share: the “paddle-out” surf memorial. Wonderful tribute in classic Isla Vista style.
