Well, the end of baseball’s regular season is upon us, and the best team in baseball — the defending world champion Los Angeles Dodgers — is actually the second-best team in baseball. And they only have themselves to blame.
Rather than controlling their own destiny, the Dodgers have been chasing the San Francisco giants almost the entire year, hoping and praying that the boys in garish orange and black will hit the skids like they usually do.
But the giants have refused, instead going on an extraordinary five month-run of almost flawless baseball while the Dodgers have bumbled their way to still one of their best years in franchise history.
As the immortal Ricky Bobby said so eloquently, however: “If you ain’t first, you’re last.”
The Dodgers — trailing by two games with only three to play — actually won’t finish last, but it sure feels that way when a team with such phenomenally impressive inconsistency is forced into a one-game sudden death just to get into the playoffs proper. Against the giants.
You can’t count them out, but I don’t know of many Dodger fans who feel like they can count on them. After three decades of futility, we’ll only accept one thing now: Victory.
Noozhawk’s consistency has continued apace this past week, with a solid lineup of in-depth local news coverage fueling an audience of 112,815 readers, according to our Google Analytics.
What follows is my own take on your Top 5 stories of the week, as determined by those analytics. I’m committed to five articles each time, but the top dozen were pretty much neck and neck in readership, which is great to see — for our readers and our reporters.
It’s tediously tiresome to say, but this is my opinion column and not a news story, and I’m writing it in my capacity as Noozhawk’s publisher, which is as much a civic position as it is a journalistic one.
If that’s still not clear enough, my email address is at the bottom. You know how to find me.
1. Atlas V Rocket Launches with Landsat 9 Satellite at Vandenberg Space Force Base
An Atlas V rocket blasted off from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Sept. 27, carrying a powerful Landsat 9 remote-sensing satellite into orbit. Unfortunately, a heavy marine layer spoiled the view for Santa Barbara County’s avid rocket watchers.
The launch was Vandenberg’s 2,000th, and the mission continued the Landsat program’s 50-year legacy of capturing vital, multispectral images of the Earth for NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey.
As our Janene Scully reported, the United Launch Alliance rocket thundered away from Space Launch Complex-3 on South Base at 11:12 a.m.
About 80 minutes later, ground controllers confirmed that the satellite had arrived in polar orbit and had made signal contact with its base. Four CubeSat nanosatellites were also released after hitching a ride on the rocket.
History, nostalgia and pride were in abundance for the launch and the lead-up to it.
Lompoc and VSFB hosted several days of community events to mark Landsat’s 50th anniversary. Janene contributed a terrific review of the Landsat program, its ties to the the county and its connections to the old Santa Barbara Research Center.
The Atlas V rocket itself was adorned with a dedication to the late Tom Heter II, the retired Vandenberg launch operations director for Lockheed Martin Corp. who died in 2019.
Heter, a longtime Lompoc resident, also worked on the Titan and Atlas rocket programs, and was the husband of Roberta Heter, a retired Lompoc High School principal and former county school board member.
In a classy touch, the Heters’ son, ULA employee Thomas Heter III, served as launch director for the latest mission.
2. Eerie Orange Skies in Santa Barbara County Caused by Wildfires in Southern Sierra
Santa Barbara County residents are used to June gloom. And smoky skies. On Sept. 24 we woke up to both, and it was weird. It’s also not June, but that’s another story.
Fortunately for us, there was no wildfire to go with the coppery-overcast sight we saw.
Mike Wofford of the National Weather Service in Oxnard told our Jade Martinez-Pogue that the smoke was from wildfires burning in the southern Sierra Nevada northeast of Bakersfield.
“It’s all pretty high-level smoke, about 10,000-15,000 feet up, so it’s not really affecting us at the surface, but it is making the sky look milky and orange,” he said.
“The winds at that altitude are coming northeast, so that’s why the smoke is reaching Santa Barbara County.”
Lyz Bantilan, spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District, said the “very hazy-looking” sky didn’t appear to have any ground-level impacts on air quality locally.
The smoke had mostly cleared out by the next day, which left us with the stubborn marine layer that has been dampening our outlook over the last couple of weeks.
3. Coroner Investigating Death of UC Santa Barbara Student at Residence Hall in Isla Vista
A UC Santa Barbara student was found dead in his Isla Vista dorm room the morning of Sept. 26, and the Santa Barbara County Coroner’s Bureau is investigating the cause.
As our Tom Bolton first reported, UCSB police and emergency personnel were dispatched at 9:45 a.m. to the Santa Catalina residence hall, at 6850 El Colegio Road.
Police Sgt. Dan Wilson said the male student was found unresponsive in his room at the dorm, which is still referred to by longtime locals as Francisco Torres, its former name.
Wilson said police and paramedics undertook lifesaving efforts, but the student was declared dead.
The student’s name has not yet been released.
UCSB’s fall quarter started Sept. 23, and Wilson said most students had just moved into their dorms.
“It was very tragic for the family and everyone in the community,” he said.
4. New State Law Forces Cities to Confront Big Changes in Housing Density
Elections have consequences.
Like the rest of the state, Santa Barbara County voted overwhelmingly to keep Gov. Gavin Newsom from being booted out in the Sept. 14 recall election. Two days later, he repaid the favor by signing state Senate Bills 9 and 10, which promise to forever change the character of many residential neighborhoods in … Santa Barbara County.
The bills were introduced with the worthy intent of relieving California’s chronic housing crisis. Whether they’ll ever put a dent in that shortage — and at what cost to our communities — is seriously debatable.
Our Josh Molina took a closer look at SB 9, the most controversial of the two new laws, which take effect Jan. 1. The measure eliminates single-family zoning, allowing property owners to split their lots in two and build up to two units of housing on each — without local design review or consideration of things like the higher-density impacts on water usage, roads, sewer, police, fire …
SB 9 also was brazenly promoted by its proponents as a way to create more affordable housing. Curiously, the text of the law fails to include any such affordability requirement. Must have been an oversight.
As an interesting aside, none of our three local legislators voted for or against this crap sandwich. State Sen. Monique Limón, D-Santa Barbara, and Assemblymen Steve Bennett, D-Ventura, and Jordan Cunningham, R-San Luis Obispo, were all “absent” for the votes.
City of Santa Barbara officials are looking for more clarity on the law before they can plot a definitive path forward.
“There are varying opinions on the likely effects of SB 9, and its potential use in the city are unknown at this time,” principal planner Dan Gullett told Josh.
“We will be looking at it closer as we prepare our General Plan Housing Element update, which will need to be adopted in early 2023.”
Although cities throughout the state, many of them along the coast, are exploring legal challenges to the law, Santa Barbara is not one of them.
“We are not anticipating challenging,” Gullett said.
5. Santa Barbara Business Leaders Eye Former St. Mary’s Seminary Site for Homeless Project
Taking matters into their own hands, some Santa Barbara civic leaders are raising money to buy the former St. Mary’s Seminary in the foothills above Mission Canyon. They plan to turn the 35-acre property into housing for the homeless and those with mental illness.
As our Josh Molina first reported, local businessman Dick Berti has put up a $450,000 down payment to send the site at 1964 Las Canoas Road into a 45-day escrow.
Berti, Jaeger Partners principal Jason Jaeger, and several other business and community leaders are now embarking on an ambitious plan to raise the $14.2 million needed to close the deal.
“This is a great opportunity for the community to get together to address mental illness,” Jaeger told Josh. “We are going to have the right people there to address homelessness in Santa Barbara.”
Tranquil and sprawling, the site includes housing for 120 to 200 beds, a commercial kitchen and cafeteria, meeting rooms, staff living quarters and a gymnasium.
Over the years, the seminary was also used as a student retreat destination and a religious training center. In another life, many of my former colleagues — including Noozhawks Tom Bolton, Barry Punzal, Mark Patton and the late Dave Loveton — and I used to go up there after work to play pickup basketball.
Berti and Jaeger say they hope to raise funds from city, county and state sources, and Berti said his investment is aimed at buying time for the campaign. If the deal doesn’t go through, he gets his money back.
“I am just frustrated and I thought I would try,” said Berti, who has been a fierce critic of the City of Santa Barbara’s inertia with the downtown vagrancy problem.
“If you think about something, and do nothing, you lose. If you think about something and you do it, you win.”
He said his group just wants to develop a program to get people off the streets and into an environment with sufficient supportive services.
“They can’t be put in apartment buildings, little hotels or little houses,” he said. “There’s nothing that can be done for them there.
“There has to be programs on site to occupy their time and give them something to do.”
A few years ago, the property owner proposed transforming the place into a substance abuse treatment center, but those plans were abandoned in the face of neighborhood opposition. I can’t imagine the neighbors being any more supportive of this project.
On paper, the property is perfect — but for the fact that it’s way up a narrow, windy road with no sidewalks and far from the nearest bus service. It’s also squarely in high-fire danger territory, and has had several close calls just within the last 13 years.
But let’s see where this goes. The scope of the challenge is broad and long-lasting, yet something needs to happen.
I think a better option is over in the Santa Barbara County complex near the County Jail off Calle Real, but St. Mary’s is worth at least exploring over the next month or so.
• • •
Last Year on Noozhawk
What was our most-read story this time last year? Searchers Locate Small Aircraft That Crashed into Ocean Off Goleta.
• • •
Americans Held Hostage: Day 31
It’s now been 31 days since the United States stranded Americans, including dozens of California residents, in Afghanistan.
• • •
Bill Macfadyen’s Story of the Week
Who knew? Covid-19 Masks Are Contributing to the Burden of Water Pollution.
• • •
Best of Bill’s Instagram
Does a government that makes the rules abide by the rules? Here’s your sign, in my Instagram feed.
• • •
Watch It
One of my nieces is getting married this weekend so I’m pregaming the wedding.
(Holderness Family Vlogs video)
• • •
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— Bill Macfadyen is Noozhawk’s founder and publisher. Contact him at wmacfadyen@noozhawk.com, follow him on Instagram: @bill.macfadyen, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.
