Santa Barbara Know-it-All: A Guide to Everything That Matters, a newly released travel guide by local resident Michael Cervin, seems to have it all: Take-away tidbits for both tourists and locals alike, plus readable, well-researched histories for Santa Barbara and several other cities and towns.
Cervin, a longtime resident of Santa Barbara with his wife and two cats, is a prolific writer of wine, food and travel for his own blogs and publications as diverse as Forbes Travel Guides, The Hollywood Reporter, The Robb Report, Decanter, Whiskey Reviewer, Wine & Spirits and many more. He’s also a professional wine judge.
In addition, Cervin has authored several previous books, among them Our World of Water: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Earth’s Most Critical Resource, Blunted by Lunacy (short stories) and Spotlight: Cambria and San Simeon.
The latest book introduces Cervin as having personally vetted everything he includes in Know-it-All: “He’s eaten at each restaurant, stayed at each hotel, gone scuba diving at the Channel Islands, paragliding over Santa Barbara, run along the beaches and overturned each proverbial rock so you can discover exactly what makes Santa Barbara, you know, Santa Barbara.”
And the book is written with Cervin’s wry and witty sense of humor, which makes it fun to read.
Take this, on the history of Santa Barbara: “Technically, Santa Barbara, which was incorporated as a city in August 1850, is older than the state of California, which was admitted to the Union in September 1850. Okay, so it’s just a month, but it does define the attitude of Santa Barbara — we are the center of the universe, thank you very much.”
Or this, under the subtitle, The Mystery of History: “The Chumash people (pronounced “shoe-mash”) were here for thousands of years, and then the Spanish ruled the region for several hundred years, and then Mexico kicked out Spain and took over, and then American know-how knew how to root out Mexico. So here we are now: An American town with Spanish-style architecture, lots of Mexican residents, and an Indian casino. That sounds about right.”
And there are the minutiae that only a long-time resident and detail-focused journalist might include. Personally, I have resided in Santa Barbara city and surrounding county since 1989 and also am a working journalist, but had not a clue about the Arroyo Honda hiking trail or the Frog Wall.
Cervin writes in a clear voice: for lodging, he writes: “Do we really need to explain this? We divide this into three categories: ‘I’m on a Budget,’ ‘Life Is Pretty Good,’ and ‘I Just Won the Lottery.’ Enough said.”
To that end, Cervin rates hotels that range from lower budget (Harbor House Inn, Hotel Santa Barbara) to those for lottery winners (Belmond El Encanto or the Ritz-Carlton Bacara) and includes details about each site.
He divides restaurants as those more likely to be frequented by tourists to those preferred by locals, and includes pertinent details on bakeries, bars, coffee houses and more.
While Santa Barbara is the focus of his book, Cervin gives the same treatment to Carpinteria, Summerland, Montecito, Solvang and the Santa Ynez and Santa Maria valleys. For the latter regions, he includes information about wine tasting, a given when one writes about this county.
Curious about how select Santa Barbara streets got their names? Cervin offers the answers. He also shares parking hints and information about local TV stations and news sources.
At the end is “STUFF YOU NEED to KNOW,” all of it clever details for any travelers to our region, especially international visitors: What to do during an earthquake, rules against jaywalking, reminding people not to feed wildlife, and more.
At the end, readers can test their Santa Barbara County knowledge with a 25-question quiz. I only got a handful correct; obviously I need to get out more!
— Laurie Jervis blogs about wine at www.centralcoastwinepress.com, tweets at @lauriejervis and can be reached via winecountrywriter@gmail.com. The opinions expressed are her own.