Specter of Mass Shootings Casts Pall over State Street Parades

UNMASTICATED, BUT PROBABLY TRUE:  “And then there’s always Armageddon,” my next-door neighbor chuckled as he turned to go back into his house. Spring was still warming up on its way to summer. We’d just enjoyed one of those impromptu street gatherings that magically happen. There were five of us. At issue was what to do with the antique desk in the back of his truck. Admittedly, it was a great desk. But nobody wanted it. 

During our deliberations, all of life’s mysteries and absurdities were explored. Eyeballs got rolled, shoulders shrugged. Everyone and everything, we agreed, was stupid. Excepting, of course, ourselves. In my Solomon-like wisdom, I suggested the desk be put out by the side of the road in front of my place. Someone had done just that with a beat-up old ironing board in the morning. When I got home, the ironing board was gone.

They call that guerrilla recycling. Or, in the words of city planners, adaptive reuse.

There’s much talk of adaptive reuse these days. It’s frequently cited as the answer to what ails State Street and downtown Santa Barbara. Translated, it means converting all the empty retail spaces and vacant office buildings into housing. If people already live downtown, we won’t have to work so hard to bring them there. I’m all for it, one million percent. But it’s a lot harder to do than just waving some magic wand. 

State building codes, it turns out, are designed to protect occupants from falling concrete in case of earthquakes. The knuckleheads at City Hall — and I use that term advisably and with affection — cannot simply wish those codes away. 

Here’s another silver-bullet solution: Bring cars back to State Street. 

To steal a line from jazz bassist Charles Mingus, the past ain’t what it used to be. Years before the onslaught of COVID and the creation of our so-called Pedestrian Promenade, Independent writers were reporting — ad nauseam — abouthigh vacancy rates on State Street and the decline of retail shopping. I mention this because there was a plot afoot recently, hatched by councilmembers Oscar Gutierrez and Eric Friedman, for councilmembers to consider returning cars to State Street. Although Friedman would have second thoughts and new City Administrator Kelly McAdoo would push back smartly, the timing seemed suspicious. 

Such a proposal would have totally deep-sixed any bright ideas coming from the much-maligned and eminently malignable State Street Advisory Committee, which has spent the better part of two-and-a-half years and $1 million trying to conjure a workable future for downtown Santa Barbara. 

That committee — made up of 17 certified big brains and movers and shakers — is scheduled to unveil its final grand plans for downtown on June 26. I am told that all the high-ranking City Hall administrators — Public Works, Community Development, Public Safety — are all more or less on board. That means there will be plenty for all of us to like and to hate. A lot of babies, I am told, will get cut in half. 

The State Street promenade, I am told, will be shrink-wrapped down to four or five blocks, which makes sense. As for what to do about cars and bikes, I am told the recommendation is that cars will be allowed back in some limited fashion for a limited portion of the street while bike riders will be told to get off and walk their steeds for that four- or five-block stretch. 

As far as parades go — another key flashpoint issue — the murmurings I’m hearing are disquieting in the extreme, reflecting the extent to which paranoia over mass shootings will forever now intrude into all aspects of city planning. 

I am hearing competing accounts. In one, the cops don’t want any parades back on State Street at all — not Solstice, not the Christmas parade, and not Fiesta — because they offer too inviting a target: large populations packed in tight with lots of high buildings where those intent on mass mayhem could fire off a few hundred rounds. In another variant, the cops are more concerned about Fiesta, in part because of all of the above with the addition of all that highly spook-able horseflesh. 

Full disclosure: I haven’t asked the cops yet to find out. 

I think the lesson of history is that angry young men with too much hate in their hearts will find a way to kill as many people as inhumanely possible whether or not parades are allowed as long as the means of mass destruction remain so readily available. But if law enforcement did not lie awake at night in a cold sweat worrying about such things, they’d be guilty of extreme negligence.

As far as cars and bikes, history has demonstrated that cars failed to save State Street while they had the chance, and bikes — in the four years the promenade has been in place — have failed to bring it back to life. Look at the 400 block, where cars have never been banned. The 99 Cents Only store, one of the few genuinely utilitarian shops in all of downtown, just went out of business. Maybe the landlord can now fill that space with a bowling alley, which is what he originally wanted. I am told he opted for the 99 Cents store as a finger in the eye of City Hall after all the grief he reportedly experienced trying to get the bowling alley approved. 

Fixing State Street is like putting the genie back in the bottle after you drank the contents and threw the bottle out the window. It ain’t easy. But it beats the alternative. Like my neighbor noted, “There’s always Armageddon.”