page_title: Isla Vista, California
section_title: 1960s and 1970s
hierarchical_section_title: Isla Vista, California / History / 1960s and 1970s
caption_attribution_description: Aerial photo of the Goleta area, Santa Barbara County, California — from offshore. From the left: Ellwood area, Coal Oil Point and Devereux Slough area, Isla Vista and UCSB to Campus Point, Santa Barbara Airport behind Isla Vista and UCSB with residential Goleta up into the hillside beyond and downtown Goleta at the left edge directly beyond UCSB near Hwy.101 at the base of the hills, and on the shoreline beyond Campus Point is More Mesa. At the bottom left corner offshore is Oil Platform Holly. Santa Ynez Mountains are in backround.
context_page_description: Isla Vista is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Santa Barbara County, California in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the CDP had a population of 23,096. The majority of residents are college students at nearby University of California, Santa Barbara or at Santa Barbara City College. The beachside community lies on a flat plateau about 30 feet in elevation, separated from the beach by a bluff.
  Isla Vista enjoys a Mediterranean climate and often has slightly less precipitation than either Santa Barbara or the adjacent community of Goleta. Isla Vista is located on a south-facing portion of the Santa Barbara County coast, between Coal Oil Point and Campus Point in view of the Channel Islands. During El Niño years, precipitation in Isla Vista can be excessive and potentially dangerous. Some homes and apartments built on the south side of Del Playa Drive, most popular with students due to their direct ocean views, are in danger of collapse, since they are built on quickly-eroding bluffs thirty to sixty feet above the Pacific Ocean. Recent erosion has exposed foundation supports in several of the properties closest to the university campus, UCSB.
context_section_description: By the early 1960s, older students became frustrated with the curfews and entry restrictions in the dormitories, and drove demand for unregulated apartments in Isla Vista. Very aggressive developers built apartments to meet the demand, and successfully lobbied County Supervisors to drive down the requirements for parking places associated with the apartments, and to further drive up the density of dwelling units. At the same time, efforts to unify the owners of commercially zoned property around the Embarcadero Loop failed, leaving issues of coordinated business development and parking for commercial customers unresolved.
  By 1967, Isla Vista had hundreds of cheaply constructed multiple dwelling units, and a commercial center that included physician and dental offices, jewelers, insurance and financial offices, as well as eclectic bookstores and an art-house movie theater. Trees and landscaping had not grown to appreciable heights, giving the town a barren look, and trash collected in empty lots. About that time the youth culture or counterculture ramped up, and Isla Vista became a natural waystation for youth who were hitchhiking up and down the coast of California.
  Richard Brautigan did his first reading of Trout Fishing in America in Isla Vista in October 1967, at the Unicorn Book Shop. The Unicorn Book Shop and its affiliated Press were patronized by Ken Maytag, an heir of the Maytag family of washing machine and beer fame; the Press published a number of noted poets. However, the surrounding Santa Barbara community was uncomfortable with the flotsam and jetsam of the counterculture who were pausing in Isla Vista, and at about the same time the District Attorney raided the art-house movie theater, the Magic Lantern, while it showed a movie containing full frontal nudity. The operators were charged with obscenity, lost financing, and then lost their business. County Sheriffs Deputies were uncomfortable with the open marijuana use and drug dealing on the streets, and tensions grew. It is local folklore that Jim Morrison of The Doors wrote the song "The Crystal Ship" one night while on an acid trip on Sands Beach, watching the bright lights on the oil platform Holly a few miles off the southwest tip of Isla Vista.
  In 1969, Edie Sedgwick, companion to Andy Warhol, lived in Isla Vista, in part because of a community of methamphetamine users in Isla Vista at that time. Sedgwick's brother lived on Fortuna Road; her family lived on a ranch near Santa Ynez, which is now part of the University of California Natural Reserve System. She met Lance Loud, the young gay man depicted in the PBS series An American Family, on the beach at the foot of El Embarcadero. Loud, already a correspondent of Warhol's, was ogling fraternity boys playing volleyball when he saw Sedgwick walking her dog and recognized her. Two years later, Sedgwick attended a fashion show at the Santa Barbara Art Museum filmed by An American Family, then returned home and accidentally overdosed on barbiturates. She is buried in Ballard, California near Solvang.
  A student group known as the "IV League," organized itself to take civic responsibility for Isla Vista, and coordinated street parties, meetings with the Deputies, cleanups, and planting of street trees. However, in 1968, a number of incidents between the small community of African-American students attending UCSB and law enforcement, as well as the election of Richard Nixon triggered a long downward spiral for Isla Vista, which culminated in three separate riots in the winter and spring of 1970. The IV League was viewed as too moderate and lost influence.
  The Bank of America building was burned by rioting students on February 25, 1970. Tensions escalated after students were walking back after listening to a speaker opposed to the Vietnam War when the police beat and arrested a student. According to Cril Payne, author of Deep Cover, a history of his career in the FBI, the FBI was very active in Santa Barbara and the charge of "students" that resulted in the burning of the Bank of America was a COINTELPRO FBI o
caption: An aerial shot spanning Ellwood, Isla Vista, and Santa Barbara
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