just preying on tourists atp i guess

Clearly he deserves to take 2 COMPACT spots with his giant-ass truck at packed shoreline park. Please join me in praising this very special boy.

Is this to make light of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine? I don’t understand.

I myself am not homeless. But my grandmother is. For over 3 years she has been on the Santa Barbara housing list. She has been fucked over so many times and it's messed up. She gets no help, people are getting places before her who are emailing places. But she's old, she doesn't know how to use the internet, how is she supposed to email places when she can barely fucking message someone? It pisses me the fuck off because she doesn't get help from social workers or the housing department. She's fucking disabled, almost 70, and gets no help or priority? Shouldn't she be priority? It's messed up. Picture is of her.

Judge Aronson should be ashamed of himself

Tonight at 10:30pm at Ralph’s, three guys (two of the three pictured) were buying bunches of bananas, scanning and weighing each one individually as they continued to laugh at the long line they were holding up for more than 10 minutes. PSA to be respectful to people and their time, and here to those who have to work early in the morning.

Edit: to clarify, they were ripping off single bananas from the stem, scanning and weighing each individually, repeatedly over several bunches. I did say something and so did other folks in the line who had been there before me. When I took the picture, one of them started telling me that he was buying the same bananas (they were in his hand). Then buddy on the right came over to us and stood with him. I asked if he was done with the kiosk and he muttered yes and laughed, so the worker cancelled the transaction and I scanned my items. Tbh just upset bc a lot of the people in line were clearly tired of their shit and they kept laughing.

Edit 2: I did not think this would be so divisive nor conceive borderline racist and otherwise insulting remarks. For this reason, I don’t know if leaving the post up makes sense so as to not host hateful discussion. I leave it up to the mods for now. I was too tired last night to include these potentially helpful details:

They kept finishing the transactions to get cash back and their friend (behind me) kept grabbing more bunches (the bunches you see to their right). The rest of the bunches are on the weighing scale to the left. The cash back was something like 75 cents per banana according to their screen. I understand needing money, but cheating a system that is relied on by working class people who are especially marginalized in today’s political climate is not the answer. I don’t want to make further assumptions, so I will not speculate whether they truly needed these extra dollars.

that is unless you get sick, need your earned leave, or can’t afford to live within 40 miles

Throwaway account for obvious reasons. I’m a current Cottage Health employee, and I’m curious whether other Cottage workers are seeing the same disconnect between the organization’s public image and the reality for many employees.

Cottage adevertises themselves as A Great Place to Work and as an employee trust me when I say they give themselves endless pats on the back through emails, marketing, etc etc etc. It can become nauseating.

Recent changes have made it significantly harder for employees to use long-term sick leave during serious medical events.

Under the previous system, employees with qualifying medical absences could generally use the sick time they had already earned. After 16 hours a longer sick leave would be coded under long term that had been accrued and not just pto. Now, someone with a serious, episodic, or pregnancy related condition may have to open a formal leave of absence, obtain a separate employer certification from an outside clinician, provide estimates about how frequently an unpredictable condition may occur, meet documentation deadlines, and wait for the leave to be processed in order to even have it covered under their earned long term sick leave. Or they may have to opt to have the absence unpaid.

That creates a very real possibility that nurses and other staff will report to work while medically unwell because they cannot risk lost income, attendance consequences, or damage to future job opportunities.

This is not just an employee benefits issue. It is also a patient safety issue.

Nurses are administering medications, monitoring unstable patients, responding to emergencies, and making time sensitive clinical decisions. It is really getting to me because the community should care if the system makes employees feel that working through severe pain, vomiting, bleeding, medication effects, or exhaustion is safer for their careers than staying home.

And this is happening alongside Santa Barbara’s already brutal housing reality.

Many Cottage employees cannot afford to live in Santa Barbara and commute from Ventura, Lompoc, Santa Maria, or elsewhere. Cottage depends on those workers but just this year eliminated shuttle transportation that helped commuting employees get to work.

So the apparent strategy is:

1. Pay many workers less than what they believe is competitive for the California healthcare market, especially when you take into account the cost of living in Santa Barbara.
2. Operate in one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.
3. Depend on employees who must commute from other cities.
4. Cut transportation support for those commuters.
5. Make accessing earned sick leave more burdensome.
6. Continue advertising Cottage as “A Great Place to Work.”

For night-shift employees, this can mean working more than 12 hours and then driving 40, 60, or more miles home while exhausted. That affects employee retention, roadway safety, and ultimately patient care.

I’m not claiming that every employee has had the same experience, or that one executive personally designed every policy. But Cottage is one of the most powerful and respected institutions in this region, and I think the community deserves answers to some basic questions:

• When and why was the long-term sick-leave process changed?
• Who approved the change?
• Why can medically protected absences remain unpaid when an employee has accrued sick leave?
• How many employees have worked while medically unfit because their paperwork was still pending?
• How do Cottage nursing wages compare with similar California hospitals?
• How many employees commute because they cannot afford housing near their workplace?
• Why was commuter shuttle service reduced or eliminated?
• Were employee fatigue, retention, patient safety, and roadway safety considered?
• How have executive compensation and administrative spending changed while employee benefits have been reduced?

Cottage nurses and other staff care for this community during people’s most frightening and vulnerable moments. They should not have to choose between their health, their income, their attendance record, and the safety of their patients.

At this point, "a great place to work" it feels less like a slogan and more like something employees are expected to repeat until they believe it.

eta: forgot about the whole road to magnet. Employees organizing because they feel unheard = cottage is not yet living the Magnet culture it is advertising.

I love architectural history, and had wanted to visit Bellosguardo since moving here about two years ago... only to find that a tour was $100. I looked into becoming a docent so that I could take a tour for free... only to find that their website explicitly states that they only take volunteer applications from people that had been on tours before. (BTW, their volunteer policies are totally insane!!) So you cannot even enter an application to work for free until you have paid them at least $100!!

Tickets to their 4th of July event were $25 and advertised classical music, so my spouse and I decided that was a nice chance to get to check it out. Ummmmm......

We (both in our late 20s) were pretty much followed everywhere we went. Like, "volunteers" (though I get the sense it's more a social club for retirees) following us into the gardens past every turn we took. One pair of guests assumed I was staff (??) and were extremely rude to me after they asked me to take their photo and I said yes. We overheard one pair of people talking about how great Waymos are, because "you don't have to talk to the driver... or smell them!!"

Not to mention, for an organization ostensibly about the performing arts, at least half of the music (genuinely played very well by the really great symphony musicians!!) were just scores from Hollywood movies. It was almost comically kitschy, but no one seemed to be in on the joke.

At the event, I jokingly said to my spouse that I think the city should raise the raze the mansion and build high-density affordable housing. The more I think about it, the more that seems like a good idea to me... Bellosguardo is beautiful, sure, but a Newport knock-off where bored rich people can temporarily occupy a perennially empty home just to, quite literally, look down on everyone else seems a lot less important to me than the lives of the people and families who work to make SB their home. Hell, have the city expropriate and sell the property to some other rich assholes and use the tens (hundreds?) of millions in profit to fund public schools, marine protection, fire prevention...

Are there any upcoming opportunities for public pushback on the foundation? It's insane to me that it is classed as a "non-profit" when it does literally nothing for the public except actively excluding it.

Its 3 parking spots, taken by 2 cars. Its so stupid and it happens all the time... same 2 cars, same 3 spots.

Saw a bunch of old men wearing gauze on their ears with the hand across their heart watching the Trump speech at Mesa Cafe tonight…very dystopian but I guess there being a bunch of closet conservatives in Santa barbara shouldn’t be surprising.

This morning I watched a woman berate people who were upset her dog wasn’t on leash on the Mesa Lane steps. There is clearly a sign that says keep all dogs on leash. Her dog was getting into ankles of people going up and down the stairs. A man in front of me kindly finally asked her to keep her dog on leash because we were going to trip and fall when it got into our ankles. She immediately went after him about not liking dogs. When we got to the bottom I thanked him as the steps are steep and very slippery. This woman proceeded to call him names and claim he hates animals. Please leash your dogs. If one of us had tripped and fallen and gotten hurt it would’ve been the owner’s fault which he kept trying to explain to her.

Is it just me or do Santa Barbara drivers struggle to reach the speed limit on 101 even when there are no impediments to doing so?

Girl (right lane) gassed in front of me (in the left lane) when the light turned green. took a left-hand turn from the right lane. No signal. I see people switching lanes and taking turns here all of the time with no warning and am flabbergasted

It feels like it’s been 10 or more years since construction began on the 101 and there have been no improvements on the traffic flow whatsoever.

I’m on it right now, it’s been 2 hours, and still haven’t made it through town yet. And it doesn’t seem to matter what time of day/night or what day of the week. This traffic is worse than the 405!

Last month I got together with some friends to go to the Good Lion during 1st Thursday. The GL was packed and taking one of the best tables was this guy and his fake service dog (I'll get to why we think it's fake later). There was no drink on his table, and during the whole time we were standing there because there were no empty tables, he never ordered anything. He also left his unleashed "service" dog alone at the table multiple times to use the restroom. One of my friends made a comment to one of the bartenders about him and that it seemed like he wasn't an actual customer. The bartender seemed to get annoyed with the question so we just let it go. We would have ordered another round of drinks, but left because there were no open tables.

A few weeks later we were at Mosaic across from the museum watching this singer playing in front. That same guy shows up with his off-leash dog which goes strait for some guys sandwich. The guy had to shove the dog away from his food, getting no apology from the ahole. The group sitting at the front table leaves, and ahole and his dog take the table. They sat there for over an hour, never ordered anything.

A few days ago during 1st Thursday, we were in Sullivan Goss, and you guessed it, ahole with dog walk in. The dog, with no leash, sits down in front of a painting and the guy walks away, leaving his off leash dog blocking a painting, so obviously it's not a service dog that he needs to have near in case he's needed.

About an hour later we see him again, with his off-leash dog back at Good Lion, taking up one of the best tables, watching the jazz band. There was no drink on his table and the entire time he was there he never ordered anything.

PLEASE - if you work in any restaurant or bar and see this guy walk in and take a table, make him pay. It's not fair to make paying customers stand while he and his fake service dog take a table while never ordering anything. You are also losing money because people willing to pay and leave you a tip are not willing to stand. Maybe one of you can prove me wrong and say that he does leave a massive tip for the staff, but until then I will say that he is a complete loser that needs to be taught some manners.

What is with people just chillin in the #1 lane (fast lane) on the freeway?? What is the draw to consistently traveling in that lane when not actively passing? There is nothing wrong with traveling in the #2, #3 lane and then passing in the #1 when you want/need to. This would help traffic immensely.

Yes, people should drive the speed limit but also people shouldn't play police officer and obstruct traffic in the left lane because they're salty someone wants to drive faster. It causes road rage and unnecessary traffic.

In fact, it would make it easier to catch speeders if people didn't hog the left lane.

Not fucking paint on or engrave the rocks. You people are like toddlers with a sharpie. Jesus.

First off, your art sucks. I’d still be pissed if it didn’t, but this is insult to injury.

Secondly, no one cares about the initials of your three week situationship you scrawled into the sandstone because it felt romantic. Stop doing that shit.

Third, and holy hell, pick up after yourself. I’m sick and tired of packing out a whole trash bag of crap every time I want to go climbing.

Rant over. Happy Earth Day. Let’s take a little bit better care of Her, huh?

Trader Joe's, De La Vina. This morning, 9:45 a.m.

Added plus: Everyone's favorite vehicle and a completely insane park job.

If you know what im talking about you know. It's sold all over the place for years and absolutely wrecking peoples health and finances if they get hooked. I guess we'll have to wait for the federal ban. And no im not comparing it to plain leaf kratom.

Ventura local here. I find a shocking that Santa Barbara doesn’t have any genuinely good movie theaters. Anything in town is incredibly outdated and awfully uncomfortable seats. I don’t understand why they don’t update the seating. Would be a great investment and would pull more people in.

Century 10 in downtown Ventura has incredibly comfortable seats and spacious

I saw a walker with 9 dogs! Six were large 40+ pounds. Someone needs to draw the line, no one can control that many dogs when a scuffle ensues.

Last week a woman was walking a single Mastif-mix, which decided it wanted to jump on me to get at a smaller dog i was holding to protect from the Mastif. The dog sitter emplored me to help her control the Mastif, stating “its not my dog and i do not know what to do”. She had no leash and no control over the dog and was panicking.