Chocolatier Michael Orlando didn’t find a golden ticket inside his bar of chocolate. Instead, he received a much less-pleasant paper surprise: a removal notice from the City of Santa Barbara to take down his outdoor dining parklet.

The worst part? The city gave him only 12 days notice, with one of those days being Christmas Day.

“It is disrespectful,” Orlando said. “I have been here for 14 years. I have never caused any problems with the city.”

Orlando is the owner of Twenty-Four Blackirds handmade artisan chocolates at 428 E. Haley St. He was among business owners ordered to remove their parklets by Jan. 1, or the city would remove them and bill the owner.

Orlando spent Christmas Day removing the parklet — just him and a couple of screw guns, until his girlfriend and another business owner gave him a hand at the end of the day.

“It ruined my Christmas week,” Orlando said.

The city voted on Oct. 18 and again on Dec. 4 to remove the outdoor dining parklets on streets that have two lanes going in the same direction, and on Coast Village Road. The move is part of a new direction the city is headed, three years after the COVID-19 pandemic, when the city allowed outdoor dining for businesses to serve customers.

Now, the city wants outdoor dining to be protected by K-rail concrete and has banished other parklets entirely. Those allowed to continue parklets must go through a formal approval process.

Orland said he heard some other business received an extension to Jan. 8. He called and emailed the city, but he said he didn’t receive a call back. So, he turned to social media.

“Come through and say hi as we dismantle the parklet today! We have some truffles and hot chocolate to share …,” he wrote, followed by an expletive directed at the city and four middle-finger emojis.

Sean Sepulvefa, the operating partner/manager for cocktail bar Lab Social, 414 E. Haley St., said he, too, was surprised by the timing of the removal notice.

“The city gave us 12 days notice to remove during the busy season,” Sepulvefa told Noozhawk. “I’ll be removing mine next week as the time constraints were too much for me to dismantle in such short notice.”

Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse said crews aren’t going to be enforcing removal this week.

“The city traffic engineer’s recommendation was that parklets on streets with two lanes of traffic in the same direction should have no parklets,” Mayor Randy Rowse said. “Despite the prolonged debate about the status of right-of-way parklets on one-lane streets, the date of 12/31/23 for two-lane boulevards has been in place for quite some time. I do not believe that any city personnel will be out citing violations on New Year’s Day.”

Orlando, the owner of Twenty-Four Blackbirds, said he took down his parklet Christmas Day because he is headed to Italy with his girlfriend. He still has 2,000 pounds of wood and lumber at the back of his property that need disposal.

He said the past few days he’s been “a zombie.”

“It ruined what was potentially one of my busiest weeks when I should have been focused on customers and stocking the shelves,” Orlando said.