A tale of two cities

How does San Luis Obispo say, ‘I hate Santa Maria’? Let us count the ways

BY ANNE QUINN AND ANDREA PARKER

What a bunch of hicks.

What a bunch of snobs.

That pretty much sums up what San Luis Obispo and Santa Maria think of each other.

"Santa Maria sucks," says a SLO Town man at Uptown Espresso on Higuera Street, who asked not to be named. "It’s just ugly urban sprawl."

"San Luis doesn’t understand Santa Maria," says a shopper at Target in Santa Maria, who also requested anonymity. "They can think what they want about us. I don’t care."

That these residents wanted to remain anonymous typifies another dynamic of the two cities: They may not think much of each other, but they tend to voice their mutual antipathy only amongst themselves. After all, nobody wants to go on record as a jerk.

Elitist San Luis Obispo defines itself by how different it is from Santa Maria–the Evil Twin–and expresses unabashed dismay over its southern neighbor’s big-box-quick-bite-gas’n’go urban cityscape. Whenever the growth issue rears its ugly asphalt head, SLO Towners freak out, invoking Santa Maria as the appalling direction their city might head should rapacious developers prevail.

Yes, Santa Maria is crass, they say–but the shopping there is great.

Santa Maria’s feelings toward San Luis isn’t so vitriolic. In fact, it’s downright dismissive, much as one might respond to a dimwitted but harmless relative who just doesn’t get it. Santa Maria residents tend to ignore the constant criticism and just go happily about their business.

Yes, San Luis is full of itself, they say–but the entertainment there is great.

Like two sisters who don’t care much for each other, San Luis–the prettier of the two–primps and preens and gets asked out more often, while Santa Maria–more practical and straightforward–is the homebody who finds her sister a bit silly.

Do the snobs really have it over the hicks? They certainly think so. But could it be that Santa Maria is wealthier, better adjusted, more approachable, and even happier?

Of course not, San Luis residents will tell you. If you want to ruffle SLO feathers, just say that you think Santa Maria does something–anything–better than San Luis. The feathers will rise. They hate that.

SLO attorney Jim Duenow recalls speaking in front of a packed community meeting in the middle of the first San Luis Coastal School District’s budget crisis.

Duenow was pleading for raising teacher’s salaries and ended by saying, "they even pay higher salaries in Santa Maria than they do here."

Everybody laughed.

"But it’s true," he says.

"People in Santa Maria like their community," says Steve Kahn, a SLO resident who worked in Santa Maria for six years before becoming Atascadero’s public works director. "Very few of the 80,000 people living there are trying to move to San Luis Obispo."

In fact, Kahn points out, San Luis Obispans have "way more opinions about Santa Maria than people in Santa Maria have about SLO." He compared the attitude gulf as being as wide as the one between Northern and Southern California.

"Bay area people hate LA and think it should be nuked, but when I spent time in LA I realized that people in LA didn’t really think about the Bay Area much at all."

Patricia Wilmore, director of government affairs for the SLO Chamber, worked in Santa Maria as academic dean of the Santa Barbara Business College while living in SLO.

She summed up the differences this way: "You’d go to a SLO Chamber breakfasts in the morning, and have yogurt and granola, then go to a business lunch in Santa Maria in the afternoon, and you’d have tri-tip, baked potatoes, and bread. It’s just a whole different lifestyle."

Are we what we eat? San Luis Obispans thinks their city is not only cute and cozier, but smarter.

"I think there’s a higher intelligent quotient here as compared to Santa Maria, probably because of Cal Poly," said Fred McQuilliann, sitting outside Starbucks at the SLO’s Downtown Center.

So there you have it. Santa Maria isn’t just ugly. It’s also stupid.

Attorney Duenow says this presumption permeates the SLO professional community, too.

"I’ll probably get in trouble for saying this, but with the exception of a few excellent Santa Maria attorneys and doctors, the overriding perception in SLO is that there’s more professionalism in our legal and medical community."

High falutin’ comments like that inspire Santa Marians like Gil Armijo, a planning commissioner, to dub SLO town "snob town."

"Snob towns are great places to visit and escape–kind of like Alice in Wonderland places–but how much snobbery can a person take? How many times can you walk down Higuera Street and look at the same shops?"

Tim Ness, the city manager for Santa Maria, graduated from Cal Poly and then spent the next dozen years working for the county of San Luis Obispo. When an opportunity came up for him to become the Santa Maria city manager, and he took it, much to the disbelief of his coworkers at SLO county.

"They couldn’t believe it," Ness said. "‘Why would I go to Santa Maria?"

Ness said he’s lived in Santa Maria happily since 1990.

"People are much more community spirited [in Santa Maria], much more caring and giving than others. The people here are nice, genuine, community oriented, helpful, friendly," Ness said. "Santa Maria generally has the nicest people that I’ve ever been associated with."

But aren’t SLO people nice too? Didn’t children empty their piggy banks into fireman’s boots at the SLO Farmer’s Market the Thursday after the terrorist attacks? Don’t local churches open their doors to the homeless when the shelter fills every winter? Sjany de Groot said that the team of San Luis doctors who provide emergency care for her terminally ill children never charge. Isn’t that what you’d call caring?

And didn’t the community build a bright new day center for the homeless?

Well, yes, but the Prado Road Day Center was at least partially inspired by community wide grumbling over all those annoying, panhandling homeless people in Mission Plaza.

Sure, but you can’t deny all the generous funding residents ponied up for a warm, clean center that treats its charges with respect and dignity.

Obviously, plenty of nice people live in both cities. But it’s not the dearth of nice people we’re talking about. It’s the abundance of not-so-nice attitudes.

Bunch of hicks. Bunch of snobs.

Vicky Martinez, a regional Avon distribution manager who works in both SLO and Santa Maria thinks SLO is the place to be.

"People are friendlier, more carefree, relaxed, family oriented," she says. "There’s more money in SLO than in Santa Maria. Also more community events and involvement in the SLO area than in Santa Maria."

One advantage San Luis Obispo definitely has is that most Americans have heard of it know where it is–even though they often call it "San Louie Obispo." But Santa Maria? Isn’t that somewhere in Mexico?

Even Ness admits that. When he’s out of town, he often tells people he’s from "the Santa Barbara area," because most don’t know where Santa Maria is.

Speaking of names, do the signs for Santa Maria Tires, Inc. in SLO town say "SM Tire" because the company thinks San Luis Obispo won’t buy tires from a Santa Maria-based business?

"Definitely not," said owner Craig Stephens. "It’s really a modernization of our logo for Santa Maria Tire."

Well, it does make you wonder. When New Times launched the Santa Maria Sun last year, some business owners in the Five Cities refused to have copies in their establishments. Said they: "We don’t want a Santa Maria paper in here!"

Armijo thinks Santa Maria is less well known because both San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara are county seats. There is no Santa Maria County, although there have been attempts to create one over the years.

This leaves Santa Maria "sort of a vacuum," says Armijo. "Right now it’s just a sleepy Ag town."

SLO developer Rob Rossi recalls even sleepier days in the 1960s before Hwy. 101 was built. No one went to Santa Maria, in fact he said, "Pismo Beach and Shell Beach were considered too far" and the two cities had little to do with each other.

Then two things brought them closer: The construction of the 101 freeway, and the arrival of Costco.

Rossi said that Costco representatives once told him that 65 percent of its sales in the Santa Maria store were from SLO County. This, of course, has always bugged SLO Chamber CEO David Garth. When the chamber lobbies for big box stores, a perennial argument is why should SLO tax dollars keep going to Santa Maria?

"San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara get hung up on this elitist view of planning where they feel they have power if they can say no," Armijo says. "To a lot of people, that means no growth. There isn’t a reason for SLO to not accept growth other than it’s not going to. It’s snobbish to want the power to say no, and when they say no, they have to find the bad guy. That’s when they point the finger at Santa Maria and say anything can happen out there."

Let’s be frank: Santa Maria annoys SLO residents. There’s a furrowing of brows when the subject arises, an edge to voices when they speak.

To most of them, Santa Maria is a chunk of Los Angeles that somehow got plunked down here between the mountains and the sea, a fly in the Central Coast soup, a pretender in paradise. This is California’s distant Eden, after all, a land tucked in secret isolation far from the thundering metropolises of the north and south.

Santa Maria is everything SLO Town residents thought they’d left behind when they fled here–all the commerce and crassness, neon and asphalt, wide streets, fast food, and big box stores. And now there it all is in Santa Maria, a misplaced urban nightmare just 30 minutes away (Well, somebody had to just come right out and say it).

The Costco project on Alex Madonna’s Froom Ranch is a good example of San Luis Obispo’s ambivalence over whether size matters. The SLO City Council has gone back and forth on Costco. Whenever it comes to big box stores, Santa Maria thinks SLO Town is either being somewhat disingenuous (to put it politely), or down hypocritical (to be blunt).

Although the SLO City Council recently reversed itself, two weeks ago it was flexing its anti-big-box muscles, refusing to exempt Costco from a newly created size restriction ordinance that would have kept the store out of the city.

"I think they’re trying to save the beauty of their town, but are hurting themselves and don’t know it," said Alex Madonna afterwards. "Politics in this town is like the tail wagging the dog–and I’m doggone."

Residents of Santa Maria get that "oh, give me a break!" expression whenever San Luis goes ballistic over big box stores coming to town. They’re not just snobs–they’re hypocritical snobs.

Rob Rossi says a Costco representative once told him that 65 percent of shoppers in their Santa Maria store were from San Luis Obispo. We hate those horrible stores, says San Luis, but we like saving money. So we’ll drive to the stores we like and then tell everyone how much we hate the town they’re in.

SLO Town’s big box love-hate relationship has its politicians confused. First the Madonna’s Costco is in, but then it’s out. First the city rejected Alex Madonna’s Home Depot project, so he got the county to agree to it, so then the city annexed the county land, so now it will be in the city limits.

San Luis likes some big box stores, but only if they’re hip. Bed Bath and Beyond in San Luis is OK because it’s painted in trendy pastels and sells phony ethnic furnishings.

But Food 4 Less? The one on South Higuera Street isn’t OK at all because it’s a big corporate edifice. But another big corporate edifice will soon built next to Food 4 Less. Odds are that SLO Town won’t mind. Because it’s Trader Joe’s.

As for Target, that’s a toss up. There’s one planned for the Dalidio property on Madonna Road. And a Lowe’s Hardware, too. But San Luis shoppers don’t need Lowe’s. They can just drive to the one planned for Santa Maria.

Santa Maria has a new Best Buy. Linens ’N Things, PetsMart, and Wal*Mart all loom in the future at Santa Maria’s Cross Roads Shopping Center on Betteravia St., which will certainly lure thousands more SLO shoppers looking for big box bargains.

"If there was such a person as a community psychologist," says Armijo, "they would say that SLO is in a state of denial and that Santa Maria is working through its unresolved issues."

Few in San Luis would characterize Santa Maria as having "an active, vibrant downtown where there is a real sense of community," words that Ann Slate, the human resource director for San Luis Obispo used to describe SLO Town.

"There is some sentiment that Santa Maria [represents] urban sprawl at its worst–growth for growth sake," Ness said. "If people took time to find out about the Santa Maria General Plan and plans for future growth, they would see otherwise. The attitude is of Santa Maria being a ‘big box’ city, which is an unfair depiction of the town."

Unfair? San Luis doesn’t think so. After all, that’s what it is, right?

When asked if he’d ever explored Santa Maria beyond the freeway, a customer at SLO’s Downtown Center (who also requested anonymity), spoke for many others in SLO Town.

"No," he said. "And I don’t want to."

If he did, he might be surprised at all the charming tree-lined neighborhoods, authentic Mexican restaurants, brand-new grocery stores, and spotless stucco developments. But few would be so bold.

Santa Maria’ wide boulevards and endless traffic lights aren’t pedestrian or bike friendly town. Cars rule and rumble through its asphalt jungle.

Santa Maria remains misunderstood by out-of-towners. The city has more registered Democrats than Republicans. The English illiteracy rate is no higher than the national average.

And the ideal of ethnic diversity celebrated by white bread SLO Town has been a reality in Santa Maria for generations, where whites and Hispanics coexist without a second thought. According to the Santa Maria Police Department, hate crimes in the city are "almost nonexistent." SLO Town’s liberal sensibility really gets out of joint when you mention that.

"How about the fact that Santa Maria tore down its historic structures and stuck a big mall in the center?" chuckled one SLO snob.

It’s the first thing critics bring up. Santa Maria’s Towne Center was built in 1970s. That’s when cities across America were dying from the inside out as shiny new malls with plenty of free parking were being built on their borders, luring shoppers. Downtown Santa Maria was facing economic ruin. If it was to remain vibrant, it had to do something drastic. So it cleared its old buildings to build a big new one–hence, the name Towne Center Mall.

"In SLO, people in control in the 1970s made some good decisions," says Rossi, referring to Mission Plaza. But it wasn’t created because the citizens of San Luis were so forward thinking and preservation minded–in fact, it was quite the opposite.

"If you read the newspapers back then," says Rossi, "people complained about closing Monterey Street for the Mission. Thirty years ago, Monterey Street was a bunch of tin sheds falling into the creek, a no man’s land. Santa Maria unfortunately let its downtown go through more of a transition than SLO."

In fact, if public sentiment in San Luis had prevailed during the 1970s, even San Luis Creek might not be visible today. One serious proposal was to build parking over the creek so San Luis shoppers could more easily shop. If that had happened, Santa Maria would be laughing now at how foolish San Luis Obispo had been. San Luis wasn’t necessarily smarter. It was just luckier.

Those who don’t learn from history may be condemned to repeat it, but those who don’t even know it are certain to get it wrong. Back when both San Luis and Santa Maria worried about their downtowns, old buildings were just considered old buildings no one would miss much if they were torn down. From today’s perspective, that’s hard to believe.

But the fact remains that finding a downtown nicer than San Luis Obispo is difficult. Even Ness confesses he’d like to retire here.

Santa Marians can’t help but admire SLO, too, even if they don’t want to live here.

"I like San Luis Obispo–the liveliness, the downtown atmosphere," said Santa Maria resident Riaz Motlagh. "I think people here would be jealous [of people in SLO]. They’re more educated over there, richer. It’s a beautiful atmosphere there."

But Motlagh said he moved to Santa Maria from SLO because it gave him more financial freedom to work from home and have more spare time.

Financial freedom is a luxury few residents in San Luis Obispo can enjoy.

Rachel Beavers grew up in Arroyo Grande, but now lives in Shandon and drives to San Luis Obispo to shop.

"I’ve not seen much change in San Luis Obispo since the 1920s–the horse and buggy days," she said. "Those who want to keep this area just the way it was make the housing prices high. The only people who are moving into SLO are the rich–and the rest of us who were born and raised here have to go out because we can’t afford it."

While San Luis Obispo housing prices soar, Santa Maria keeps building more. Most SLO natives only see rampant housing developments butted up against the freeway, but there’s more to those that meets the eye.

Cookie cutter houses are on their way out, and smaller lots with houses designed to create a more neighborhood feeling are on the drawing boards.

"Those are the kinds of developments that will rival any snobbishness in SLO or Santa Barbara," Armijo said. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder–there are some very beautiful places in SLO and Santa Barbara, and that’s the direction of residential development in Santa Maria. Santa Maria is just entering its polar orbit of growth and enhancing its quality of life, while SLO and Santa Barbara have already hit their point of diminishing returns.

"Santa Maria has a more balanced view of growth. The power comes not from being able to say no, but from putting effort into understanding all the different factors–such as economic and social issues–that go into [planning] and finding a solution."

San Luis Obispo continues to be admired as the more beautiful of the two sisters. But like any aging beauty, she has to fight to keep her charm. Santa Maria, perhaps thought of as the plainer of the two, enjoys her wealth and continues to court success.

But family members need each other, no matter how much they might think otherwise, for the strengths each has complement the others weakness. It’s true in all families.

It’s also true that families squabble–and that they always will. Æ

 Admitted hick-snob Anne Quinn is a New Times reporter who sometimes squabbles with Santa Maria Sun reporter Andrea Parker, a longtime snob-hick. Executive editor Steve Moss was a contributor and referee, and remains a champion for the rights of snobs and hicks everywhere.