January 17, 2005 - Postcards From the Ed

Santa Barbara is certainly more than just a whistle stop on the tourist train. The train stops here without a signal. We have t-shirt shops, souvenirs, and postcards. You can rent pedal cars, take a ride in the tour bus that turns into a boat, and go on whale watching cruises.  Some say that the economy is changing a bit – going from supporting tourist to just supporting all the millionaires that live here, but those two really go hand in hand don’t they?

Over the weekend, the dedicated staff of edhat.com played dressed up.  We dressed up in our tourist clothes and went out on the town. No, we didn’t don a mullet and an OC t-shirt like the guy sitting at Aldo’s in the sidewalk seating section yesterday.  Our tourist costumes consist of clothes that don’t say Edhat on them.  Usually, in our relentless pursuit of branding, we are head-to-waist (hat and shirt) in Edhat attire.  And by the way, our efforts seem to be paying off … doesn’t it seem like everyone in Santa Barbara these days is wearing the color of Ed? However, since Edhat is still only a local phenomenon, our gear (or lack thereof) is a surefire way to distinguish the locals from the tourists.

Our pretend tourist goal was to buy some postcards to mail to everyone back at our pretend home.  We would write to the folks about how great Santa Barbara is, how much fun we’re having, and of course, express those “wish you were here” sentiments - whether true or not.

We went to Longs, Walgreen’s, Enlightened Sights, and a couple of t-shirt shops on State Street.  At all those places, the postcards were displayed neatly on round, rotating racks.  There were some generic California post cards.  You know the ones – girls in bikinis playing golf, babies at the beach, etc. Most of the post cards, however, had something to do with this area.  For our daily contest, we were looking for specific locations, so we screened out the generic cards. These generic cards have pictures of beaches or whatever, and on the back, they just have the general place name – Santa Barbara, Goleta, Carpinteria, Montecito, and IV.

By the way, it must be a little upsetting to the people of Goleta that the only postcard representing the Good Land is one showing the Fairview off-ramp sign from the 101.

The cards we bought which contained specific location details on the back were; the Mission, the Courthouse, Stearns Wharf, the Dolphin Statue, the Harbor, State Street, Chase Palm Park, the Courthouse Mural, the Courthouse Fountain, Anisq’Oyo Park in Isla Vista, La Arcada, the Fig Tree, and the beaches: Butterfly, East, West, and Leadbetter.  The bike path alone Cabrillo Blvd. also has its own postcard, however there was no mention of the 1299 palm trees that grow along side it.

Check out our postcard slideshow.

There were seventeen postcards in all. On a whim, we put a stamp on them, wrote, “The weather is beautiful … wish you were here” and the URL of this article on the back and mailed them off to 17 of our elected officials. We’ll see what happens.

Fastrav19, GinaF, ChinlesMom, LaughHearty, and Dyan each guessed 17 in the daily contest. The dedicted Edhat dog was asked to select the winner. As she sat patiently, five Milk Bone fragments were assigned names and placed at an equal distance in a circle around her. On the command, “OK” she quickly chose ChinlesMom as the winner of the 2005 Santa Barbara Axxess Card.  Winning an Edhat contest – now that’s something to write home about.

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