Photo by Fotome on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons.

As a child, I remember my father pulling my sister and me in a red wagon down State Street, Santa Barbara’s main road. We sat facing one another, both holding a pillow with a frayed embroidered cat on the front. Maggie talked ceaselessly while I sat and watched her, lovingly stroking my ersatz pet. No one on the sidewalk seemed to think twice at the sight of a rickety wagon filled with two children in mismatched clothes (the product of choosing our own attire), towed by a striking man, whistling as he briskly moved along. We cut through tree-lined neighborhoods every day slowly approaching downtown. First, a Catholic elementary school appeared then, a large park with homeless people napping under trees and finally, small office buildings, local shops, restaurants and plazas all adorned with Santa Barbara’s signature red tile roofs.

Amongst countless other memories, I can’t help but focus on this one ordinary activity with singular concentration. While it is only natural to have an intense fascination for the past, I am certain my interest in this particular moment — as is true with most recollections– has as much to do with where it took place as it does with the people involved. Often referred to as the “American Riviera,” Santa Barbara is impossibly beautiful, sandwiched between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Though the small city has a similar climate to communities farther south, it has always maintained a culture different from the superficial California depicted on shows like “The OC” and “Laguna Beach”. Steeped in local tradition, the city-wide celebration of summer solstice and an annual street painting festival both come to mind. I could not have asked for a more ideal place to grow up.

Despite the pleasant associations I continue to make with my hometown, returning to Santa Barbara these past two summers, walking the same path my father took us down countless times, I have felt strangely and unexpectedly out of place. Of course any college student will tell you that two years away from home has altered them –whether knowingly or not– from who they once were. Regardless, I can’t help but admit that Santa Barbara has changed too. My street, once quiet on weekdays but for the occasional pedestrian is now nearly always busy, lined with cars trying to get to the 101 or tourists navigating their way to the Santa Barbara Mission. Downtown, once filled with local cafes and shops now has such unreasonably expensive rents the vast majority of stores are high-end corporate chains, blasting billboard 100 hits from their speakers with freshly scrubbed teenagers waiting at the door to greet you. Perhaps worst of all, is the now constant barrage of wealthy tourists filling the sidewalk with the scent of their overpriced perfume, looking down on locals dressed in flip flops and shorts. Who would have thought that in but a few years such transformation was possible? Amidst the sea of designer jeans and $100,000 cars the sight of a man pulling his two daughters down the sidewalk in a wagon would now be horribly out of place.

From a broad perspective, there is nothing surprising about the metamorphosis of a sleepy beach community to an extension of southern California’s infamous materialism. I can only imagine what my grandparents mourn when returning to the now unrecognizable places where they grew up. Yearly, dozens of small American towns disappear, fading in the shadows of Wal-Marts and real estate developments. Yet, I foolishly thought Santa Barbara would somehow escape this trend. Now, more than ever, it is an international tourist destination. But, watching visitors walk by, I can’t help but think how unfortunate it is they missed out on the place I knew as a child: The place my father lived in and loved for thirty-five years before finally relenting and moving to Maui in 2006, despite having always told me Santa Barbara was the most beautiful place in the world and he would never, ever leave. An acoustic singer, songwriter and guitarist, the lyrics of one of his songs off a 1992 CD boldly, and now incorrectly, proclaim, “Roll on California, the Republic is wide and high, you’re my final destination, I will be here when I die.” In the days when wagon rides downtown were regular occasions, it seemed as if this romanticized California would always be an unchanging and irreplaceable part of my life. Yet now, like my father, I am unsure if it will ever again be the home I always thought I would return to.