St. Nick May Be Evicted From Santa Claus Lane
Only 95 shopping days until Christmas and no one is looking very jolly on Santa Claus Lane. Just south of Santa Barbara, the highway into town is marked by a bygone era’s marketing brainstorm: a 25-foot-high, 10,000-pound, chicken wire-and-plaster Santa Claus.
It’s not that the summer retail season was slow--though, let’s face it, St. Nick has never been a super-duper draw before Labor Day. No, it goes deeper than that. The very identity of this half-mile commercial strip is at stake, with Santa, as always, on center stage.
A lot of people, including the new owner of the faded, dirt-streaked icon just off U.S. 101, think Santa’s days are done. They say it’s time to retire the inapt--and possibly dangerous--rooftop statue and turn the block of shops and eateries into what it should have been all along: a charming seaside village.
“The area has struggled for quite a while--for more than years, for decades,” said Steven Kent, who three years ago shelled out $1.4 million to buy a number of stores, including Santa’s Candy Kitchen and the statue soaring above it. “The North Pole theme . . . is just not viable, economically. Santa-related businesses fail down here, one after another.”
Not only that, he said, but one good temblor could send Santa--ersatz chimney and all--pitching off the candy store roof, a risk Kent prefers not to take. If there were any way to do it, he’d have the thing hauled away immediately. So far, though, Kent has run into community opposition and historic-preservation restrictions.
Many regard the bespectacled Santa--who appears to salute the streaming highway traffic--as a charming bit of Americana. Longtime locals say their own childhood Christmas memories are tied up with the statue.
Tear it down? What kind of Grinch would do that?
“It’s Santa Claus Lane! I mean, come on!” said Liz Boyer, 22. “I like it. I like Christmas.”
Though it lies within the Carpinteria postal district, Santa Claus Lane is on unincorporated land under the jurisdiction of Santa Barbara County. According to county planners, the legal issue rests on whether Santa is merely a highway sign or something more substantial--a structure. If it were determined to be just a sign, Kent could remove it with little difficulty, said county planner Heather Baker.
It has been interpreted, however, as a structure--one of historic importance, to boot--and ultimately may require a vote by county supervisors as well as the California Coastal Commission, Baker said.
Humbug, Kent responds. Sign or structure, he thinks the matter should involve nothing more complicated than a building permit. Kent has filed a lawsuit. Hearings loom, either in court or the county building, and the whole mess could take another year or more to settle.
The fight fills newspaper columns and is debated on local radio and television stations. Activists point out that Santa has been part of the landscape for more than 50 years. The statue--and Santa Claus Lane itself--are examples of classic Americana, a style of roadside architecture and marketing captured by artist Norman Rockwell.
A man named Patrick McKeon was responsible. His family bought the roadside property from a lima bean farmer in 1948. A juice stand stood there, a place with only five stools, and McKeon dreamed up a way to play off the region’s “Santa” towns--Santa Barbara, Santa Paula, Santa Ynez and Santa Monica. He called the little juice stand Santa Claus.
Supposedly, a motorist stopped one day, broke and out of gas, and offered to construct a Santa on the roof for $500. It got built and was wired with a loudspeaker that blared, “Welcome to Santa Claus!”
People came. A toy store was opened later and a refrigerated “North Pole” installed, frosted with ice. Then came a playground and a kiddie train. Then a novelty shop and a cafe, Santa’s Kitchen, featuring a 20-foot-high rooftop Frosty the Snowman. A wishing well went in. A candy shop. A bar known as the Reindeer Room.
At a postal substation, you could mail letters canceled with Santa’s face and Santa Claus, California.
Today, only the candy shop and Toyland still evoke Christmas. The snowman, the train--they’re gone. Although a gift shop does sell mini-Santas, other stores offer fine wines, gourmet coffees, antiques, wetsuits and surfboards.
The street has been neglected for a while, concedes Pete Gioia, the longtime owner of Toyland. But taking that final step to eliminate St. Nick is tantamount in some minds to--what else?--killing Santa Claus. It’s such a charged issue that many merchants are reluctant to voice an opinion.
Gioia’s stance is typical: “I’m kind of neutral.”
Cricket Wilson can see the back of Santa’s unwashed head from the leafy courtyard of the Garden Market, a gourmet shop and eatery that she leases from Kent. She wonders how many people see Santa from the highway and choose to keep on going.
“Probably as many people who’ve been attracted by it have been deterred by it,” she said. “To me, the statue isn’t Santa Claus. But I have softened my view as people have come in and said, ‘Oh, I hope they don’t take down Santa.’ ”
The most vociferous of those have established a Web site to save the Santa statue. The e-mails run from nostalgic to vitriolic. “I can’t begin to understand how we [would] allow such wanton destruction. . . . It brings tears to my eyes. . . . A visit to Santa Claus Lane fills my heart with joy. . . . His incongruous visage popping up to drivers on the sunny Central Coast is a year-round reminder of past innocence and good will toward others. . . . Please please please don’t do this!!!!!”
On a picnic table outside the Padaro Beach Grill, three young women debate the question. Liz Boyer raves about Santa’s nice smile, how she enjoys seeing it from the highway.
Her friends are incredulous.
“It should go, for sure,” insists Carolann Kowalski, 22, of Santa Barbara. “It’s ugly. The paint’s coming off.”
Susie Lenny, 35, of Santa Barbara, doesn’t see the statue’s historical value, nor does she think government should tell the property owner what to do. To her the real question is how this hooded monstrosity came to be here in the first place.
“Santa Claus?” she said, laughing. On a California beach? “What’s the point?”
