Local Stories by Local People
updated: Feb 26, 2013, 3:51 PM

By Edhat Subscriber

Comments in order of when they were received | (reverse order)

COMMENT 378941	2013-02-26 03:58 PM
This thread is going to be fun to read in about 2 hours.
COMMENT 378942	2013-02-26 03:58 PM
Bummer
SHAKEY	2013-02-26 04:01 PM
And they are all going to dump in our waters..Were all gonna get that flu they get but at least the city is going to get more money..No one cares as long as it isn't in their back yard.
COMMENT 378946	2013-02-26 04:04 PM
They really cheapen this city - I'm with 942, BUMMER!
COMMENT 378950	2013-02-26 04:13 PM
SB being sent out to the street corner to service cruise ships. Got any skimpy clothes and cheap perfume for poor old St. Barbara? Make um wear a condom.
COMMENT 378951	2013-02-26 04:13 PM
100,000 tourists "cheapen" our city? You've got a screw loose.
COMMENT 378952P	2013-02-26 04:15 PM
950 - totally! Maybe we'll all have to start "dressing the part" so the cruisers get the full experience! Disney Barbara....
COMMENT 378953	2013-02-26 04:17 PM
I think it's great!
COMMENT 378954	2013-02-26 04:19 PM
Everyone in SB knows we cater to all the bums and all the knife and gun wielding homies, not people with money to spend and do productive things in life. How dare those ships come here.
COMMENT 378955	2013-02-26 04:20 PM
If you don't want to live in a city that is beautiful enough to attract tourists I'm sure there are more affordable options out there. Maybe this will keep some our new chain stores in business. Just wash your hands and I think you should be safe. Don't think they will be dumping sewage close enough to be a bigger problem than what's already coming down our creeks and is exacerbated by the homeless.
COMMENT 378956	2013-02-26 04:23 PM
YAY! More poopy in our channel.
COMMENT 378958	2013-02-26 04:26 PM
Editor: Title is mis-leading. To dock a ship means it would be tied up to a dock or pier. These will be anchoring off the coast & small boats will bring passengers ashore.
COMMENT 378970	2013-02-26 04:51 PM
955....right on! After all we our a world renown tourist town. The tourists that come here enjoy their time here.They show appreciation & respect for our community, spend their money at our shops & restaurants. Tourists are not the ones defacing our lovely town with grafitti, relieving themselves on our city streets, buildings and parks, dealing drugs, starting fights or harrasing people for money as they walk our downtown streets! Tourists ...we love them...bring them on!!!
COMMENT 378971	2013-02-26 04:51 PM
We'll have our own Concordia tilted over at the end of the breakwater! And someone can start a fumigation business near the launch ramp for the touristas off of those oh-so-clean-as-a-Crystal floating sewage pontoons. Homeland Security will be busy arresting kurious kayakers, sunburnt pillsbury dough boys will decorate our beaches - red, white and...well 2 out of 3 anyway. Business will be booming, the City will be raking it in, what's not to like?! Oh yeah, your view may be ruined temporarily, and the Concordia thing. And who doesn't want some monogrammed floating feces for a souvenir? Oh, silly me those things could never ever happen! It says so on the brochure, right here, see?
SMAC6590	2013-02-26 04:59 PM
I just hope none of them has to be towed here.
COMMENT 378978	2013-02-26 05:06 PM
Using an uncommon event as a reason why we shouldn't do something is a terrible argument, 971. Do you drive cars? Fly? Walk down the street? Handle raw food? You could get hit, the plane could crash, you could fall and break your neck, or you could get salmonella! But those things could never happen, because I'm sure that you are a safe, responsible person who only talks in hypothetical arguments because they have no salient point to make. :)
COMMENT 378979P	2013-02-26 05:06 PM
I would welcome 600 or 200 visitors for one day than handle the same amount of cars visiting for a weekend.
COMMENT 378980	2013-02-26 05:08 PM
Brilliant 378971. Perhaps we should shut down the airport too because we don't want to have all those planes crashing around us.
COMMENT 378987	2013-02-26 05:22 PM
Gotta love the edhat xenophobia. I'm at a loss to understand how people can be upset that they live in a city so beautiful that people want to visit it for a brief moment and pay a ton of money to do it. And they're doing it in a way that has no impact on traffic, parking, short-term rentals, etc. They come in, dump a ton of money, and leave after dinner. And these aren't poor people or even the bottom end of the cruise industry. Princess, Crystal, and Celebrity are respectable lines that charge premium rates. The people who cruise those lines have money and like nice things. They go to nice places and buy nice things then they leave. What else could Santa Barbarians possibly want in tourists??? If you don't like tourists, don't live in a nice city. Trade your Santa Barbara home for a thousand acres in Montana and nobody will ever bother you again.
COMMENT 378988	2013-02-26 05:23 PM
Too bad these tourist are mostly interested in sight seeing. The floating cities they arrived on offer all the merchandice they need at lower prices. They just look around and leave their poop behind.
COMMENT 378992	2013-02-26 05:28 PM
@988 I doubt the cruise ship offers all the merchandise they need at lower prices.. have you ever been to an airport? Prices are jacked up in places where there is no competition, like on a cruise ship.
DANOO7	2013-02-26 05:32 PM
I like that they are here for one day, and they drop their poop more that five miles out.
COMMENT 378995	2013-02-26 05:34 PM
Wouldn't it be funny if they all showed up at once?
ROGER DODGER	2013-02-26 05:47 PM
Baby Ruth candy bars for the swimmers!
COMMENT 379001	2013-02-26 05:50 PM
It's ironic that the same people who so adamantly shout that we should "support our local businesses" get so turned off by other people coming here to help support our local businesses. Odd......
COMMENT 379003P	2013-02-26 05:57 PM
Tourists love to buy souvenirs, SB logo'd T's, hats, sweats, etc... Someone might get rich of of those. As for the 168,000 gallons of crap they generate per day (yikes) I sure hope that does not get dumped in our channel. Not sure how I feel about all this new interest in our town.
COMMENT 379004	2013-02-26 05:57 PM
8995.... OMG, you thought kinda the same thing I did except I was hoping they DON'T show up on the same day. LOL
COMMENT 379006	2013-02-26 05:59 PM
That's another thing I remember growing up here in the 70's. There weren't any cruise ships! I guess they have their place in the demise of the Santa Barbara lifestyle formula. Sure come on in and vomit your thousands of tourists on to our shores so they can mix in with the other thousands of tourists that drive and fly in. Imagine a day with no out of town collage students, no tourists, half the homeless, half the illegal aliens, and that's how Santa Barbara was when I was growing up. On a busy weekend that number of people might be a quarter, or more, of the population. Come on Santa Barbara, you need to show a little more leg to get more customers.
COMMENT 379007P	2013-02-26 06:00 PM
Why do we hate tourists again? Because they leave their poop in our sewage system? Other folks in town just leave it on the grass, along with bottles and cigarette butts. Because they pay handsomely for the privilege of spending money in our restaurants and shops? Other folks just get drunk and laugh at us and demand money. Have any of you critics ever taken a cruise? If so, do you destroy the port of call? No. You spend money and go home. Sorry. I just don't get it.
COMMENT 379012P	2013-02-26 06:13 PM
As long as they keep all the filth & disease on the ships & out of our town, no problem
COMMENT 379017P	2013-02-26 06:21 PM
Suddenly people are worried about filth and disease? Have you seen our downtown lately? Especially the 600 block of State?
COMMENT 379020P	2013-02-26 06:22 PM
Wow, this thread sounds like an argument in Congress; nobody will acknowledge even an ounce of truth in the other side's argument. Feeling a lot like Craigslist here...
COMMENT 379024	2013-02-26 06:31 PM
Any one interested in this topic needs to go find the recent article by Loretta Redd who lays out the case for the Disneyfication of the waterfront. SB isn't Cabo. Great read, Google it, a local publication not the Sound.
COMMENT 379025P	2013-02-26 06:33 PM
020P You must be new here...
COMMENT 379026	2013-02-26 06:33 PM
More, here http://bit.ly/13lR5MC and here http://bit.ly/13lR5MC . Stop this from happening and write Hothkiss!~
COMMENT 379039	2013-02-26 07:13 PM
I think the visits are good, but 22 is a lot! Way more then the reports average of 6 to 7.
COMMENT 379041	2013-02-26 07:26 PM
hope they enjoy all the bums and young tyrants polluting our once great town.
COMMENT 379058P	2013-02-26 08:12 PM
SallyC, most people don't care.
COMMENT 379059	2013-02-26 08:13 PM
Maybe a few homeless will stowaway and find themselves in Acapulco.
COMMENT 379080	2013-02-26 08:50 PM
Funny how an article about tourism in Santa Barbara spurns talk mostly about poop and homeless.
COMMENT 379083	2013-02-26 08:53 PM
Yeah it will be great until the first incident of a tourist from a cruise ship gets shanked visiting Milpas Street, then no more cruise ships.
COMMENT 379090P	2013-02-26 09:28 PM
I know if I were on a cruise that stopped here in "Beautiful Santa Barbara. The American Riviera" and all that other sweet talk about how wonderful Santa Barbara is and see what is lining our waterfront and under the palm trees, and just a little further they can be treated by the homeless who will accost them and ask for money, or wander into an area where the far too prevalent gunshots are now being exchanged, or perhaps a stabbing or two. Think they might think it is all staged like the train robbery at Knott's Berry Farm? How far in to do they actually go? Wouldn't it only be to the places within walking distance? I wouldn't think that it would be too far even with cab rides. And, remember that we all poop.
COMMENT 379093	2013-02-26 09:36 PM
"Far too prevalent gunshots" Welcome to America.
ROGER DODGER	2013-02-26 09:45 PM
Has anyone stepped on a turd latley walking down State street at lunch time?
COMMENT 379097P	2013-02-26 09:58 PM
T-shirt businesses will thrive. The arts and crafts show will thrive on days other than the weekend. The red tram buses will thrive. That funny duck boat will thrive. Restaurants along the beach will thrive. Taxicabs will thrive. The City will make an effort to keep aggressive homeless people at bay. A few more part time jobs will materialize. What's not to like?
COMMENT 379116P	2013-02-27 06:31 AM
In a time when the economy is down, this is great news for Santa Barbara. Having about 60,000 more potential tourists is great news.
COMMENT 379137	2013-02-27 07:39 AM
I'm going to set up a lemonade stand.
COMMENT 379146	2013-02-27 07:56 AM
Have you ever been to a established cruise ship port? Yikes
COMMENT 379155	2013-02-27 08:13 AM
Each time I read the responses to a cruise ship docking here in Santa Barbara, a provincial town that refuses to grow, I feel depressed. Comments that vary from the ludicrous and hilarious to the pathetic.
EL BARBARENO	2013-02-27 08:18 AM
Cruise ships and tourists (no matter how they get here) are the best thing for SB. They are low impact, require little or nothing from the city/county and just about everything they do from their first sip of coffee to their last sip of wine dumps money into the economy.
COMMENT 379178	2013-02-27 08:43 AM
Can they announce the days so I can stay the hell away from downtown and make sure I don't plan on riding my bike? Santa Barbara drivers are bad enough, but tourists are always an unpredictable bunch.
COMMENT 379245	2013-02-27 10:01 AM
@178- You'll know bc there will be a giant ship floating a mile off shore... or you can just stay at home indefinitely.
COMMENT 379253	2013-02-27 10:13 AM
Some people seem to think they are the only ones entitled to live and travel on the roads in this town. For heaven's sake let's live and let live and grow up!
COMMENT 379332	2013-02-27 11:51 AM
Can all the complainers please pack up and leave. Ahhh lovin SB and all the tourist dollars.
COMMENT 379461	2013-02-27 02:19 PM
They will all be pumping their bilge near by.
COMMENT 379523	2013-02-27 04:02 PM
Can someone *please* post the Coast Guard regulation for pump-outs? As I recall, for pleasure vessels, it was 12 miles. Cruise ships probably have stricter regulation. So the argument about poop is moot
COMMENT 379541	2013-02-27 04:25 PM
At first, I thought, "oh boy, Ensenada here we come" (ick - have you ever been there???) but now I'm thinking of a business I can create to cash in on all the, um, cash these tourists will be bringing ashore!
COMMENT 379752	2013-02-28 07:23 AM
I heard the average boat tourist drops over $200/pp. This is great for SB and the local businesses we care so much about.
COMMENT 379829P	2013-02-28 11:28 AM
If commenters have better and realistic ideas about how to increase the local economy then by all means please enlighten us. It's a difficult situation and tourism is one of the incredible things SB has to offer.
COMMENT 379908	2013-02-28 03:21 PM
Is that really true, that they are allowed to dump their sewage directly into the ocean? In my naive head, I thought they would hold it until they tied up in port and then would pump it to a wastewater plant. That reminds me of the toilets on Amtrak that they would dump in a deserted stretch of track. Disgusting. I went on a cruise ship to Alaska and now I'm sorry I did. But I figured that the way things were going, the glaciers might not be around that long.
COMMENT 379911	2013-02-28 03:30 PM
Dumping bodily waste in the immensity of the ocean is not really that big of a deal. Fish poop, after all. That wastewater plant you hoped they dumped their business in probably pollutes the ocean more.
COMMENT 379915	2013-02-28 03:35 PM
I don't think you have to be anti-tourist or irrational to think this is a bit excessive. 020p - I'm in agreement with you. It's nearly impossible to have a conversation here where people take on ideas that might be different than theirs or come into a discussion with their minds open. It's sad since we all live here and most of are here reading and posting because we love it here. But when it comes to bettering the living conditions for all of us or really topical issues, nobody wants to do anything but rant and rave about things, seemingly. Ah, well. More human waste in the harbor matches what some people think of their own city if it means more $ coming in.
COMMENT 380068P	2013-03-01 06:47 AM
9908, no cruise ships do not dump their sewage directly into the ocean. As a member of the industry I can assure you that all of the sewage is treated up to standard before it is disbursed far out at sea while the ship is moving spreading out the treated gray water. The standard is as high if not higher than land based treatment plants.

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