Santa Barbara Ca

As the Jesusita fire raged around Santa Barbara this week, Mitchell Sjerven decided to temporarily close his Seagrass restaurant near the normally bustling State Street. The move to shutter the elegant "coastal cuisine" spot, where a "surf-and-turf" entree costs $48, could cost thousands of dollars.

Accusing Santa Barbara officials of "unconscionable" violations in prosecuting homeless residents, ACLU attorneys filed a federal lawsuit Friday to overturn city bans on sleeping in public and camping at parks and beaches. The attorneys also said they would seek a court order to keep all 200 beds in a Santa Barbara shelter available after April 1, when half of them are scheduled for their annual closure until December.

A wind-driven brush fire Tuesday in the Santa Barbara foothills charred at least 420 acres, forced the evacuation of about 1,000 homes and renewed grim memories of the devastating fires that swept through the area last fall. The Jesusita fire started about 1:50 p.m., racing through thick chaparral on the slopes above San Roque Canyon. It was burning about a mile west of November's Tea fire, which destroyed more than 200 homes in Santa Barbara and Montecito.

At 9 a.m. Thursday, three men met on the ridge and studied the mountainside above their homes. The worst looked to be over. White smoke rose in listless little spirals from blackened earth. The air was still. The mourning doves did their usual dirge from the overhead lines. Sprinklers swish-swished. But Santa Barbara's endemic twist on the Santa Ana -- the "sundowner" wind -- is as cagey as it is ferocious.

Jesse James Hollywood was pacing and chain-smoking. He had just told a family friend, attorney Stephen Hogg, that his pals had kidnapped the brother of a tough guy who had smashed windows at his home, threatened him and poisoned his dog. Hogg, a soft-spoken 65-year-old with a ponytail, described his meeting with Hollywood during testimony Tuesday at Hollywood's trial for the 2000 kidnapping and murder of 15-year-old Nicholas Markowitz.

More a celebration of art and imagination than homage to the change of season, Santa Barbara's Summer Solstice Celebration includes a festival and parade. This year's theme is "splash," and even though the festival technically begins Friday at 4 p.m., the parade won't begin snaking up State Street until noon on Saturday.

The tall stranger in the Stetson strides slowly into Santa Barbara's City Hall as a lone guitar plays in the background. His cowboy boots click as he smoothly makes his way up the stairs. In a corridor, he slips a wad of cash to a man in a suit and an unseen announcer describes the mysterious Westerner in words meant to send a chill through the hearts of Santa Barbara voters. "Why is this Texas developer spending more than a quarter-million dollars on the elections in Santa Barbara?"

With fantasies of billowing white sails against blue sky, my daughter, Julia, and I left sunny L.A. behind one recent Saturday, and drove up to Santa Barbara to learn how to sail. True, we could have learned a lot closer to home, in Marina del Rey, but a friend who'd taken sailing lessons there discouraged me with tales of sail- and powerboat-gridlock.

It's the postcard view of Santa Barbara: sandy beach, Chase Palm Park, white walls and red roofs, the Santa Ynez Mountains. By the 1870s, wealthy health-seekers were flocking to Santa Barbara. And East Beach is where they flocked. Horse-drawn streetcars (electrified in 1896) traveled the length of East Beach, bringing bathers from the bathhouses to the beach. Historians credit architect Peter Barber with the idea for a palm-lined shoreline drive along East Beach.

They are known as some of the toniest stops on a sort of Southern California Riviera. Laguna Beach, Malibu and Santa Barbara are separated by 200 miles of coastline, but they are united by their images as sunny playgrounds. Malibu has its movie celebrities. Laguna Beach has its artists colony. And Santa Barbara has an understated combination of the two. And all three cities have shared a propensity in recent years for brush fires.