Blog 17: Isla Vista

So here we have it a decade of confusion that had begun with some good intentions.  Reject materialism.  Live off the earth.  Love one another.  Hate one another.  Some things don't change.   I was a girl from the Mid-West, moved to a small town in North San Diego County, raised as a Catholic.  Now what was I going to do with all of this.  Much of the time I just tried to tread water. 

IslaVista was a pretty cool place, though often a contradiction.  From freshly made juice to protests and bank burning you had it all.   I lived with my two friends that were going to UCSB.  Me?  Well, I was still attending Santa Barbara Community College.  For a while I cleaned houses to make a little extra money.  My dad helped me with the rent, but there wasn't much spending cash.  In addition I worked at the Fairgrounds too.    Although I don't exactly remember exactly what the job was that I was hired to do, I believe  it had to do with concessions. Other jobs were hit and miss.  I was also able to make a little extra money,  developing symbols for a math book my boyfriend's stepmother was writing. 

Isla Vista had all the intrigue and excitement of a college town.  Night time was party central, but we seldom worried about our safety at night.  A roommate was dating someone at a local fraternity and one night, his entire fraternity ran through our apartment. They literally went in one door and out the other.  I think I stopped counting at 50.  The beach was a short distance from our apartment and we took full advantage of that. 

The burning of the Bank of America that represented materialism and decay became the icon some student demonstrators were set to destroy.

Turn on the evening news.  Name calling isn't a new thing.  Sound familiar?  People generally go about their business to take care of themselves and their family.  Injustice often remains in the shadows, until an incident brings it to our attention.  A need for balance or fairness becomes a  stabilizing  and motivational force.   Once the cry for justice is heard and we have been saturated with the anger and the coverage that erupts, the outrage fades and becomes somewhat muted again until the next time.   

The Bank of America was totally destroyed.  I recall a billboard someone paid for after the bank burned with an check image (seen below),illustrating  that very event.

Meanwhile, people struggled to get back to normal. Now, much like the consequences of riots in these current times, burning businesses is not instrument of change and affects the community it serves.

A town by the beach, what could be better.   There was a great little taco shop I would frequent with Barney, our dog.  That was until he had stolen too many tacos from the customers.  We were advised by managment  that such antics were bad for business. 

The bank check image to the right is an eerie reminder of the ugliness that was just becoming too familiar.   So bank burning, oil spilling, war, civil unrest, women's rights, we still try to find that balance, now adding climate change. 

We enjoyed some good and crazy times on  6515 Sabado Tarde, where we lived.   While looking for pictures of the apartment, I found an article of an arrest that was made at the same location in 2015.  How things change.  Gang members.  That was just a year after the mass murder in 2014 that encompassed parts of Sabado Tarde, when Elliot Rodgers committed the heinous act of killing 7 and wounding 13. 

So what is normal, and what is the normal we want to go back to?  Must be that normal that only exists in the warped crevices  of our memory. Things continue to wear the label "crazy, illogical and unpredictable and maybe unfathomable ."

The old saying:  Crime doesn't pay. Perhaps not, but it  charges interest.  

So, I would be at this location for a year and it was pretty sad saying good-bye.  I was about to make one of the biggest mistakes in my life, and get married at 20.  

Soon though, I would be headed to San Diego to finish my degree, and I did.  

The above images were borrowed from the Independent Newspaper.