Last Chance Texaco

 the brilliant Laura Funkhouser tells it like it is….er... was

Historic Roadside Santa Claus Threatened

Last Chance to Visit Santa?
By Laura Funkhouser
June 14, 2001


Santa Barbara (CA). Southern California’s most prominent example of roadside vernacular architecture is merely a supervisorial decision away from becoming a memory after a June 25 public hearing by the Santa Barbara County Supervisors. The jolly, rotund Santa Claus figure which sits atop Santa’s Candy Kitchen on Santa Claus Lane, along Highway 101 in Carpinteria, has entertained travelers and locals since 1948, when the figure was added to a roadside juice stand. Throughout the 1950s, Santa Claus Lane grew into a Christmas-themed roadside attraction, complete with rooftop reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, miniature train, shell shop, soda fountain, restaurants, refrigerated North Pole, and a Post Office. Until the 1970s locals would get their Christmas cards postmarked "Santa Claus, California." Santa’s Candy Kitchen still commands the lane.
The new owner of the Santa Claus Lane property would like to destroy the recently renovated landmark in order to create an upscale Cape Cod-style retail strip to service the conspicuous tastes of new residents to the community.
There has been a prolonged campaign advocating preservation of Santa from the Pearl Chase Society, the leading preservation group in Santa Barbara (that launched http://www.save-santa.com), the public, and architectural historians -- including eminent vernacular architecture authorities, Jim Heimann (author of California Crazy: Roadside Vernacular Architecture, featuring Santa Claus Lane) and Alan Hess (author of Googie: Fifties Coffee Shop Architecture). In spite of the outcry for preservation, the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission only reluctantly added the option of preserving Santa to their Santa Claus Lane planning policy recommendation, at the last possible moment before sending the document to the five Santa Barbara County Supervisors, who will decide whether Santa stays or goes, as part of the Toro Canyon Plan update. Prof. David Gebhard, the leading California architecture historian, fought to make Santa Claus Lane a landmark for decades. His untimely death just a few years ago prematurely ended a prolific and respected career and cut short his efforts to save Santa.
Located a few miles south of Santa Barbara, the image of the Carpinteria Valley, characterized by gentle foothills dotted with avocado orchards, family farms, and flower growers, is changing. In recent years, fueled by the arrival of state water and booming economy, the coastline area has become prime real estate for wealthy retirees. These newcomers favor faux Country French and Italianate hillside and oceanfront mansions, and would sooner sacrifice their luxury model Lexuses than live with the authentic mid-century American Santa Claus Lane.
Santa Barbara County is a sort of museum of arbitrarily themed-architecture communities – adjacent Summerland is a Victorian village, Santa Barbara a Spanish Colonial "American Riviera", Los Olivos a False Front "Petticoat Junction", and Solvang, a Danish village. Perhaps this tradition of installing quaint simulacra is why local decision makers are woefully behind the times with regard to the preservation of authentic historic architecture, particularly that of the early to mid-20th Century.

Figurative or programmatic architecture in Los Angeles, such as the Capitol Records building, Tail ‘O the Pup hotdog stand, the Brown Derby restaurant, as well as mid-century vernacular architecture such as ‘50s domed movie theaters, Dingbat apartments, and "Googie" architecture have come under the intense focus of California preservationists. The City of Downey recently preserved the oldest existing McDonald’s, while Burbank saved an original Bob’s Big Boy restaurant from destruction. Both restaurants have since become commercial hits because of their retro appeal to those nostalgic for a pre-mini-malled California.

Many Santa Barbara locals now refer to their upscale, tourist-clogged community as "Spanish Disneyland" and yearn for a monument to the good ‘ol days, when the Santa Barbara coast was a string of simple, laid-back beach communities and numerous Bohemian artist and surfer enclaves. Carpinteria Valley has generally retained its low-key authentic eclectic beach town character, accented by the rare "only in California" Santa Claus Lane roadside attraction. Yet, there is growing pressure from Carpinteria’s new wealthy taxpayers of the Toro Canyon area to pick a more upscale theme.

According to Lansing Duncan, student of history and David Gebhard, and former Santa Barbara County Planning Commissioner, "Although it does not fit the upscale Spanish Colonial Revival stereotype of Santa Barbara’s contemporary commercial architecture this creative roadside landmark epitomizes the naive innocence of California’s love affair with the automobile during the 1950s and 60s. Santa Claus is a middle-class American icon of the economic prosperity and do-it-yourself fantasy that has been used to sell California to successive waves of immigrants for centuries. This unique visible manifestation of Santa Barbara’s diverse cultural history should be preserved for future generations, not trashed for a run-of-the-mill, up-to-the-minute substitute, simply because we’ve ‘grown up’."

So who were the folks that turned a little juice stand into a roadside phenomenon that is featured in half a dozen books on roadside architecture? They were June and Patrick McKeon, who moved out from Ohio to find their place in the California dream – a dream that may soon end for generations of passersby.

　
June would later marry John Young and they had a ranch up in the Carpinteria foothills....a couple of nicer folks you couldn't find...I lived there, Playgirl Kym Herrin lived there with Danny Young, and Doobie Bro Tom Johnston lived there at one point....what a strange and wonderful gathering of people..it was like living in Big Sur..I felt like Jack Kerouac!