Ventura's Downtown Harvest Days is a month-long fall experience bringing seasonal flavor, family-friendly fun and festive moments throughout the area.
Ventura's Downtown Harvest Days is a month-long fall experience bringing seasonal flavor, family-friendly fun and festive moments throughout the area. Credit: Dylan Mancuso photo

On a recent walk along Main Street in Ventura, I discovered the city had set up an entire fall theme across several blocks called Downtown Harvest Days.

Among the features I saw were hay bale couches, a pumpkin patch, plenty of places for photo shoots, bowling and ring toss games, and many other excellent attractions.

Ventura's Downtown Harvest Days features plenty of social media-worthy photo-op locations, even the candy corny kind.
Ventura’s Downtown Harvest Days features plenty of social media-worthy photo-op locations, even the candy corny kind. Credit: Dylan Mancuso photo

The cost of most of this involved the hay bales and pumpkins, both relatively cheap items, yet it electrified the streets.

Restaurants were fully booked and busy at 8 p.m., and retail stores were staying open due to the amount of people in the street.

It was amazing to see, but it left me frustrated at the lack of action our City of Santa Barbara has been taking with hosting activations and celebrating the holidays.

Nobody is saying, “Wow, let’s go see what Santa Barbara is doing for the holidays.” What they’re saying is let’s see the pumpkin patch in downtown Ventura, or the Christmas light show and holiday village in Solvang.

Daniel Ramirez, operations and initiatives director of the Downtown Santa Barbara Improvement Association, and the rest of the DSBIA team have done a good job at starting activations, both with a car show as well as upcoming youth soccer games.

It is also amazing to hear we will be having the Christmas parade back on State Street after a six-year absence, although I can’t help but think there is more that can be done.

Santa Barbara needs a reason for people to come to our town for the holidays, a reason to bring their families to Santa Barbara and not these other communities.

We should be working on setting up a downtown holiday market that runs Friday to Sunday. There are a number of locations we could set this up in, and with all of the amazing float builders in our community it may be possible to help offset the cost with volunteers.

We should be hosting different public holiday-themed workshops during the same time period, and have coordinated public music performances.

All of this, and a little bit of marketing, could see a big change in our fourth-quarter revenues and overall public opinion of Santa Barbara.

People won’t just be coming here because they haven’t been in a while. They will be coming to see the next amazing activity Santa Barbara has to offer.

Dylan Mancuso is an entrepreneur and founder of Cuso’s Bikes and Cuso’s Creamery. His experiences as a small business owner and resident have shaped his interest in local business, downtown development and the issues affecting Santa Barbara’s future. The opinions expressed are his own.