Off to the races: A Wet Wednesday sailboat race provides a backdrop for swimmers competing in the Nite Moves Summer Sunset Series off Santa Barbara’s Leadbetter Beach. 
Stuart Goldfarb radiates the spirit of “namaste” as he prepares for a Leadbetter Beach Park yoga class. 
UC Santa Barbara graduate student Connor Love gets airborne at Skater’s Point on the Santa Barbara waterfront. 
Kelly Adams of Santa Barbara takes a ride on her wing-foil off Leadbetter Beach. 
Ananda Dalidd, 65, of Goleta, plays a “friendly” with his grandson, Davin Clapinski, in Chase Palm Park. 
Dwight Murphy Park has hosted the competitive play of the Central Coast Soccer League on Sundays since 1963. 
The East Beach volleyball courts have hosted many of the game’s all-time greats, and remain busy. 
Stearns Wharf is a popular fishing spot. 
Leana Orsua, right, looks over the handcrafted clay earrings from Tristin Mentri at the Sunday Arts and Crafts Show at Chase Palm Park. 
Quiana Foley of Santa Barbara sneaks up behind her son, Eros Hartley, at the Sunday SB Rollers meetup at Santa Barbara City College’s Lot 3. 
Terrance Brown, organizer of SB Rollers, which gathers on Sundays at Santa Barbara City College’s Lot 3, gets ready to show some moves. 
The view from a sailboat called Sassy, taking part in the Santa Barbara Yacht Club’s weekly Wet Wednesday races. 
After a spirited Wet Wednesday ride, some of Sassy’s crew relaxes. From left, Christian Geitner; skipper Clark Bowdle and his daughter, Kelly Bowdle; and at right, William Schoenfeld offers the photographer an M.Special. 
Swimmers head for the water during one of the weekly Reef & Run competitions at East Beach. 
Enjoying a lazy afternoon under the canopy of Mexican fan palms at Chase Palm Park. 
A young lad controls his kite at East Beach.
[Noozhawk’s note: This is the introduction to a series of articles on the myriad of recreational activities along the Santa Barbara waterfront. Click here for the complete series index.]
Every week, sometimes twice, Stuart Goldfarb drives up from his home in Camarillo for a yoga class at Santa Barbara’s Leadbetter Beach Park.
There are surely yoga classes nearer to Camarillo. But there’s an “essence” here that he shared with Adrienne, his wife of 51 years, who died last year after a long illness, during which time Goldfarb was a 24/7 caregiver.
Her death left him devastated — mentally, emotionally, physically, financially.
“I miss her,” he said. “The Bee Gees had a song, ‘How Do You Mend a Broken Heart?’ You don’t. But you get on with life.”
Michael Lewis’ long-running Leadbetter yoga class is helping restore Goldfarb, a prominent Los Angeles-area criminal defense attorney. He likes the way Lewis teaches.
“Yoga’s been a great help,” he said. “My head cleared.”
And in this place.
“We used to come here,” he said. “We loved Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara has an energy and an essence that other places don’t have.”
• • •
When it comes to their stunning waterfront, many Santa Barbarans don’t just sit back and enjoy the view. Instead they engage it.
Swimmers, runners, cyclers, sailers, skaters, volleyball players, dancers and many more bring the postcard to life on any given day.
This series will explore the various recreational activities offered at sites along the waterfront along Cabrillo Boulevard and part of Shoreline Drive, from where Leadbetter Beach tucks into the Mesa cliffs, to where East Beach ends at the base of Bellosguardo, known by locals as the hilltop Clark estate.
Those few miles encompass fitness communities and individuals testing and bettering themselves, having fun, bonding, learning lifelong skills.
And a closer look reveals compelling personal stories on how life-enhancing that Santa Barbara “energy and essence,” to use Goldfarb’s phrase, can be.
That’s been magnified as California tentatively came out of COVID-19 restrictions this summer. The joy, appreciation and participation seem amped up a few notches.
• • •
Susan Dickinson is the co-president of Friends of Los Baños del Mar Pool, a support organization for the city’s historic seaside Olympic-size pool built as a New Deal project in 1939.
“This is one of the most beautiful pools in the world,” she said. She’s been a regular since she was a college student in 1979.
“I finished up at UCSB and never left,” she said. “The usual story.”
As she prepared recently for a Masters Swimming workout, she recounted how Los Baños pool helped her cope during the pandemic. After an initial closure the pool reopened in May 2020 with stringent distancing protocols, frequent disinfectant cleaning and several other safety measures.
“Through the pandemic (the pool) was what saved me,” Dickinson said. “I have my own business working with seniors. I’m a senior advocate and I’m in and out of facilities, advocating for older people.
“This was a safe place for me. I felt like I could be here and relax a little bit.”
• • •
During the pandemic summer of 2020, the city Parks & Recreation Department worked to keep programming and facilities up as well as they could, even expanding summer youth camps as best they could, with all due distancing, providing outlets for kids.
Parks and Rec manages the beaches and waterfront parks from East Beach to Leadbetter — and past that to the creek next to Arroyo Burro Beach County Park.
“During the pandemic, we had a growth in camp participation,” said Rich Hanna, recreation manager for Parks and Rec. “We were one of the only service providers during the pandemic for last summer. So camps were extremely busy and popular, and that’s continued this year.”
Youth camps from volleyball at East Beach to skateboarding at Skater’s Point to surfing at Leadbetter, and much else in-between, have been busy this summer, to say nothing of the popular Junior Lifeguards program at East Beach, which engages nearly a thousand young people.
“And in addition to that, when all the indoor fitness places closed, we kind of morphed our outdoor fitness permit program and we saw a huge increase in people moving outdoors to do outdoor fitness,” Hanna said.
There is also an effort not to over-program — to leave plenty of space for impromptu play and relaxation.
“There’s always a balance between how much do you program and how much do you make available for the community to access it and use it the way they want to,” Hanna said. “And I feel we do that year over year.”
Chase Palm Park, which stretches from near State Street to South Calle Cesar Chavez on both sides of East Cabrillo Boulevard, has fields that are for unstructured use, including soccer and rugby games or just hanging out with friends and family amid the iconic curtains of tall Mexican fan palms.
There are park structures, such as the old Carousel building, that are available for rental.
Further east, at the Cabrillo Ball Field bordered by the distinctive Chromatic Gate, outdoor fitness equipment has been installed, “an addition that helps keep positive uses strong,” Hanna said.
• • •
The pandemic took a huge toll on Terrance Brown’s personal training business that he’d built up since coming to town nine years ago.
“I was in a dark place,” the 32-year-old former college football running back said.
He called his mother back home in Miami and told her what a grown adult dreads saying — “‘I may have to come back (home).’
“So I was just losing it. She goes, ‘Why don’t you just try skating?’”
As in, the old-fashioned four-wheel roller skates thought to be passé, to lift his spirits.
“I said, ‘I don’t think that’s my cup of tea.’ She started telling me her stories, of her and her girlfriends going to the skating rink with their big Afros, synchronizing these dance moves. I’m like, ‘OK, it sounds interesting.’”
Fast-forward through two lessons at Ventura’s Skating Plus in March 2020, and then applying a lot of hard work to his athletic ability, and now Brown supervises SB Rollers, a free activity he’s created on Sundays at Santa Barbara City College’s west parking lot, across from Shoreline Beach Café.
“There are so many styles with roller skates,” Brown said.
Learning that, and sharing it with others, has been transformative for him. Meanwhile, he’s building his fitness business back up again.
“I found myself at 32,” Brown said. “I’m happy here. Skating has done it. I’ve just been searching for that thing, and I think skating’s that thing. Better late than never.”
That way of personal recovery from the pandemic “allowed me to see something good and therapeutic, and also for the community, too. So not only it helped me, I got a chance to share it, too.”
• • •
The Cabrillo waterfront as the recreational hub we know is a work in progress going back to the 1800s.
Santa Barbara historian and author Neal Graffy, in his excellent book Santa Barbara: Then and Now, opens with a section called “The Waterfront” that traces that development with information and many old and new photographs and illustrations.
“Since the first human took residence here some 15,000 years ago, one thing has remained constant — the waterfront has been the lifeblood for Santa Barbara,” that section begins.
The City of Santa Barbara, in its suite of websites, also has much historical information and photos on the waterfront. Historical researcher Hattie Beresford, in her columns for the weekly Montecito Journal, is another strong source.
Historical context enhances the present. In 1927, philanthropist David Gray donated the Cabrillo Pavilion to the city “as a gift to the people of Santa Barbara” to be preserved for public use, according to the city’s Pavilion history web page.
Now that Pavilion is nearing the end of a $20 million renovation, with a new restaurant called Reunion Kitchen scheduled to open in September. Fitness facilities with showers and locker rooms are open, and “we’re already renting the upstairs for events and weddings and all of those things,” Hanna said.
Many decades of work has made the Santa Barbara waterfront a work of art on a stunning natural canvas, where the city’s energy and essence play out.
— Noozhawk correspondent Dennis Moran can be reached at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
