Anonymous
Source: Chamber of Commerce
The Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce is announcing the official reopening of the State Street Visitors Center located at 120 State Street, Ste F, adjacent to the Hotel Californian. The centrally located center welcomes visitors year-round and helps distribute information and promote regional businesses and attractions.
The center will provide guests with traditional services including area maps, recommendations for local restaurants, key landmarks and tours, as well as offering a wide selection of locally made artisanal retail items and hotel information. In addition, the center will educate guests on how to enjoy Santa Barbara safely by explaining the County enforced protocols, encouraging everyone to wear a mask and distributing safety information.
The center has a variety of safety information to provide its guests and will be modeling best practices. Several safety enhancements have been implemented to protect staff and visitors. Plexiglass barriers were installed at the counter and decals are affixed to the floor, guiding the flow of traffic and keeping patrons at least 6-feet apart. When inside the store, guests should be prepared to keep a safe social distance and only touch merchandise with the intention of purchasing. While there is a limit to how many people can enter the center at a time, staff is also hosting a table outside to distribute information and offer free masks and sanitizer to maximize outreach and encourage a safe and smart Santa Barbara experience.
“We are happy to see Visitors slowly coming back to our region,” said Kristen Miller, President & CEO of the Santa Barbara South Coast Chamber of Commerce. “We are here to provide much-needed information on what’s open and what visitors need to do to keep us all safe.”
The center’s modified hours are Monday through Sunday, noon-5 p.m. The State Street Visitor Center is a partnership between the Chamber of Commerce and Visit Santa Barbara. The second Santa Barbara Visitor Center located at 1 Garden Street, is still temporarily closed.
What kind of denial are we in? Some of these ritualistic ‘protections’ are as valid as wearing religious charms. Any excuse to make a buck it seems. Catering to visitors from high infection areas is absurd. Shut things down, reduce/stop travel, end discretionary exposure to others, keep to the rules about masks and distance.
1:58 Some people actually have to work for a living to earn money, it doesn’t grow on trees like some here seem to think. Losing their businesses and every penny they have and possibly ending up homeless would be a LOT worse than getting a illness with a 99% recovery rate. I’d rather have covid for a week than a lifetime of debt and depression.
6:05 pm: Your willingness to get COVID-19 is fine. Your willingness to expose others to the disease is not acceptable. While you may survive the virus, others you infect will die. Nice balance.
Great. Let’s encourage everyone from throughout the united states to come to Santa Barbara to share the virus. Fun!
Awesome – that building will be the next epicenter.
The other night while picking up to-go dinner and supporting local, I overheard 2 separate families visiting from Florida and Texas. Real excited that we’re pandering to out of state travelers, LA visitors are bad enough as it is.
REAL LOCAL: You say tourists are being lured to Santa Barbara “from Southern California.” Just a reminder, Santa Barbara is IN Southern California.
CHICO: It would be nice if they could ditch this whole “central coast” business once and for all, but as long as three of our four local TV stations are located in the SM/SLO area that isn’t going to happen. They seem to be doing all they can to get people to think SB is part of Central California, to which they’re more oriented. But yeah, I get what you’re saying. I guess you could say I’m anti semantic.
Come on people. This kind of useless propaganda by the useless CoC is necessary in order for the city to keep every one of its full time, salaried and fully benefited employees on payroll while they lose roughly $8m a month in lost tax revenue. Without even an trickle of tourist dollars, the city would have to lay off people who make $150k a year for filling out forms and filing some filings…. We cant have that! There can be no reductions in spending. There can be no changes in management. There can be no layoffs, no furloughs, just reduction in services and of course, the new excuse, “sorry things are _____ due to Covid19″… Basically: The public employee unions have told Murillo that she will not get their support if she does her job and acts in the interest of the city and its people. So, like the wet-noodle she is, she punts. Isnt it amazing that our city cares so much about the people, the citizens and tax payers who actually live here? Arent we lucky to have Murillo and Casey spending every last penny and driving us further into debt and austerity? We are so lucky to have them. Viva la party!
No, Santa Barbara is in the Central Coast region: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Coast_(California)
Hard to know if those pushing for more lockdown and more restrictions are public employees who don’t worry where their next paycheck is coming from. No way we can know, but best to evaluate this is a distinct possibility when there is a clear political taint to their “shut-down forever or we will all die and shame on you” litany of consistent responses. Clearly the political taint is obvious when some try deflect blame to the federal level, when public health responsibility operates at the state and local level.
BZZT! WRONG! For tourist purposes, probably to disassociate itself from LA, Santa Barbara may SAY it’s “Central Coast,” but it’s actually a part of Southern California. As proof, we are served by Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas Co., and the Automobile Club of Southern California. We were never referred to as “the central coast” until the Santa Maria-based TV stations started calling us that a few decades ago to make viewers think SB was part of their community, ostensibly to attract advertisers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_California
CHICO: The “central coast” also includes Ventura County, if one can believe the Wiki entry, yet I’ve never heard Ventura referred to as that. The only, reason I object to “central coast” is that it’s misleading. But in any event, you can’t say that people are lured to SB “from Southern California” since we’re a PART of Southern California. You could say that tourists are being lured here “from other parts” of SoCal, but that isn’t what the comment I was initially replying to said.
The City of Santa Barbara just gave Visit Santa Barbara a $1.3M contract to lure tourists from Southern California to Santa Barbara. Advertising in pandemic is not what we need. What we need are real leaders that say no to idiotic things like this. What we need are real leaders that make the hard decision to shut down so we can flatten the curve. But more than that, what we need is a real leader that’s going to work with multiple states to shut down at the same time to break the curve. Too bad we have who we have in the White House. we’re becoming a third world country under his leadership. This virus will continue to rage as long as he’s in office. If you want to tell the current leadership of Santa Barbara what you’d like them to do you should email them @ SBCityCouncil@SantaBarbaraCA.Gov