Montecito Ca

Brother Nicholas Radelmiller tolled the bell amid the ruins of the Mt. Calvary Monastery, but no worshipers were there to hear it. Down the mountainside, workers revved up their chain saws as homeowners burned out by November's devastating Santa Barbara wildfires prepared to rebuild. But at the monastery on a promontory 1,250 feet above the sea, acres of rubble awaited the bulldozers that are to arrive this week. The fire that swept through on the night of Nov.

Following a rebuke from the Montecito Planning Commission on Wednesday, mall developer Rick Caruso said he would consider selling 14 acres of beachfront property rather than conduct additional environmental studies on the site of his proposed luxury resort. "I just ask let me out, let me go. Let someone else take this on," Caruso said.

The Westmont College gym was itchy hot and getting hotter. Eye-burning smoke seeped inside, despite the blue duct tape covering the cracks between the double doors. As campus officials repeatedly assured about 800 students and faculty that this sturdy, cinder-block gym was the safest place to be, some evacuees formed prayer circles on the wooden floor. Others made frantic cellphone calls to family and friends. One played a guitar and sang.

A smoldering bonfire built by students on a ridge-top overlooking Montecito apparently sparked last week's disastrous Tea fire, Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown said Tuesday. Ten men and women, ranging in age from 18 to 22, had gathered at an abandoned property called the Teahouse late Wednesday night and built a bonfire to warm themselves, Brown said. They told fire investigators that they thought the bonfire was out when they left early Thursday morning.

Norman Waitt, co-founder of personal computer maker Gateway Inc. and an executive producer of the film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," lives and works in Omaha but vacations in Montecito. For at least a few years, though, his idea of a vacation has been to develop a 12,000-square-foot house on almost 3 acres in Montecito with mountain and ocean views. The French Normandy estate, called Belle Epoque, has been described as atelier style.

IT'S neither the biggest cottage nor the only one with an ocean view. But it commands at least $1,000 more a night than other lodgings at the historic San Ysidro Ranch in the Montecito hills. That's because John and Jackie Kennedy slept in it during their extended 1953 honeymoon, which, biographers say, took them first to Acapulco, Mexico, and later up the California coast. The future first couple probably paid $27 a night, the going rate then.

El Fureidis looks like it was meant for royalty, and it practically was. The Montecito estate was built in the early 20th century for J. Waldron Gillespie -- the scion of a wealthy New York family -- by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, a famed architect noted for combining Gothic and Spanish Colonial designs with modern architectural sensibilities.

This is a place where less is more. Forget garish Beverly Hills mansions and Bel-Air palaces that scream "look at me." Santa Barbara County's Montecito is understated elegance, English gardens and the quiet genteelness that comes from having nothing to prove. It is, however, only for the chosen few. Beginnings Montecito, which means "little woods," once teemed with grizzly bears and wolf packs. And then the rich and famous discovered it. At first, wealthy people came for the waters.

In this Ron Stoner photograph, a surfer is paddling away from a house in a field. There is an almost Andrew Wyeth quality to it, as if we are to sense some significance to the mansion and the golden youth's association with it. But it will be largely up to our imaginations to supply the import. Because the house is still standing, we know this photo of Hammond's meadow in Montecito was taken before 1970. That's when the mansion would be badly damaged in a fire and subsequently razed.

The fire near Gaviota jumped U.S. 101 and raced toward Buellton, blocking Eric Klemowicz's path to work. Duty bound, he drove east to the San Joaquin Valley, south to Castaic, west to Ventura and north to Santa Barbara County. Four hours later, the Montecito firefighter finally arrived at work. That was two years ago. But the area's high housing costs long ago pushed Klemowicz 90 miles north into the next county, near Pismo Beach.