UC Santa Barbara students have taken to social media to criticize Poppin, a party-promoting platform that made its way to Isla Vista for Deltopia. 

Poppin, a startup from the Bay Area, is an app where potential party hosts can advertise their events, and people can find parties.

For Deltopia weekend — the unsanctioned street party the first weekend of UCSB’s spring quarter — Poppin announced a Deltopia Music Festival, where a $35 ticket would grant access to four houses that promised different genres of music, security, hot dogs and water.

Many students were unhappy with the attempted monetization of a long-standing Isla Vista tradition.  

Isla Vista isn’t new to acting as a host for tech startups. In recent years, startups such as Snag, Duffl and PopPay have been introduced and become integral parts of the community. Poppin is the newest to this trend, but its meddling with Deltopia has rubbed many people the wrong way.

In the weeks leading up to this year’s Deltopia weekend, many students expressed their anger with the hefty price tag that came with attending Poppin-sponsored events. That prompted Poppin to release a statement about the pricing on its Instagram account.

“We’re charging tickets because we are ensuring partygoers have a safe and secure location to party during Deltopia. We’re also making sure the houses hosting on Deltopia are accommodated for their hosting and not left damaged or trashed,” Poppin said in a statement.

Many houses along Del Playa Drive were throwing parties during Deltopia last weekend, with the majority opting not to use the Poppin organization.

“I wouldn’t use Poppin for parties because I only like to throw parties for friends, plus the price tag for $35 per person is outrageous,” Del Playa resident Sawhard Maharjan said.  “We charged for our friends’ people that they brought, but that was to cover our bouncer’s pay and as an investment for future parties.”

Poppin advertised some of the well-known party houses along Del Playa without confirmation from all the residents involved.

Del Playa resident Kimberly Najera said she wasn’t aware of her unit being involved in the original Poppin advertisement. 

The apartment building, being a notorious party hotspot unofficially named “Slut Castle,” was ultimately taken off the advertisement because of the deck being in poor condition following the rain this past quarter. 

“I didn’t even know Poppin was throwing it at my house,” Najera said.

The “Ganja House,” another apartment building on the ocean side of Del Playa Drive that frequently hosts parties, was one of the primary locations for Poppin’s festival, with a party in the parking lot adjacent to the street. 

David Pham, a UCSB student and member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, also hosted a party at the apartment building. Crowds leaked into the street trying to enter both parties.

“I heard Poppin was trying to monopolize Deltopia, and I heard a lot of people say they weren’t fans,” Pham said. “My buddy said that one of their parties got shut down; not big fans of them because they charged a lot of money.”

Pham and his fraternity chose not to use Poppin at their party and deemed it to be a success.

“Deltopia this year had so many more people than previous years. I’ve been here since 2017 and haven’t seen it this crowded since then,” Pham said. 

Despite the strong opposition, Poppin still managed to throw parties along Del Playa with large numbers of people in attendance. 

Deltopia draws its roots from an event dubbed Floatopia that began in 2004. It was a word-of-mouth event where partygoers would use inner tubes, rafts and other flotation devices to create large chains where people would drink and move around from raft to raft in the ocean.

Many others packed in on Isla Vista’s beaches, continuing the party.

In 2009, Floatopia drew a crowd of an estimated 12,000 people, compared with a few hundred attendees in early years. The increase in popularity was partly thanks to the rise of Facebook, where a lot of informal event organizing took place.

The crowds, trash and intoxicated people on the area’s beaches prompted Santa Barbara County to close Isla Vista’s beaches on that weekend each year, which pushed the party to the streets. 

“It just got too big for its own good,” said a UCSB graduate student who completed her undergraduate degree in 2009. She asked Noozhawk not to share her name because of her position at the university. “I know there were people falling off cliffs at house parties. There were a lot of alcohol-poisoning incidents. The beach was completely trashed.”

Deltopia gained increasing popularity over the years as more people — including out-of-town students — flocked to Isla Vista to take part. In 2014, riots broke out in the streets of Isla Vista during Deltopia weekend, which led to more than 100 arrests and many hospitalizations. 

Despite noise ordinances and increased police presence since the 2014 riots, Deltpoia has remained a popular UCSB tradition and a ripe opportunity for monetization.

“I don’t like it,” the graduate student said. “Companies from the outside, be it event management or real estate, really try to take advantage of students. And so, this thing that was supposed to be a student-run community event and experience, they’re now trying to monetize that.”

Jacob Davis and Garret Harcourt are Noozhawk contributing writers and UC Santa Barbara students.