Stearns Wharf and the Santa Barbara waterfront, the local way

Outdoors · Santa Barbara

What is the Santa Barbara waterfront like when you stay for months, not days?

The Santa Barbara waterfront runs from the harbor breakwater east past Stearns Wharf to East Beach, tied together by one flat paved path. Stearns Wharf is the wooden pier at the foot of State Street. On a stay of a month or more in Santa Barbara, this stops being an attraction and becomes a corridor you use several times a week.

Short visitors arrive at the wharf in the middle of the afternoon, when the parking is worst, the path is busiest and the light is flat. Living here, you get the other version. Early on a weekday the harbor is working, the boats are going out, and the wharf itself is nearly empty. Walk out to the far end, turn around, and you can see the whole shape of the city at once: the low white blocks of downtown, State Street running inland, and the Santa Ynez Mountains standing directly behind it. It is a short walk from the foot of State Street and almost nobody does it before nine.

Here is the part the photographs do not tell you. This coast stays cool. Santa Barbara faces south, which softens the wind, but the water is cold year-round and the air coming off it is cool even in July and August. In May and June the marine layer often sits over the waterfront until early afternoon, sometimes all day: gray, damp, and well short of what people picture when they book a beach town for June. If you want the wharf at its clearest and warmest, aim for September, October and November. Those are quietly the best months on this coast, and they are the ones most visitors never think to ask for.

The waterfront rewards being broken into pieces. The harbor end has the boat traffic and the breakwater walk. The wharf has the view and the sea air. East Beach, past the wharf, has the wide sand and the grass, and it is where you go when you want space rather than scenery. Between them the paved path carries walkers, runners and a steady stream of bikes, and it links to the routes that run inland along the creeks. Short visitors do the wharf and leave. People staying a season learn that the stretch east of it is where you actually spend your time.

One practical note. Parking near the wharf is metered and fills up from late morning through the afternoon, which is a small daily annoyance that becomes a large one over three months. The fix is to stop driving to it. Homes in the downtown Santa Barbara and Funk Zone blocks put the waterfront within walking distance, and many homes in this market have room to keep a bike by the door.

If you're here for a month or more

Pick one hour of the week and make the waterfront yours, early on a Tuesday or Wednesday, before the parking fills and while the harbor is still working. Then rotate the rest: the breakwater one week, East Beach the next, the wharf on the days the sky finally clears. If you are arriving in May or June, plan on real layers for morning walks and treat September through November as the payoff months, and ask your local manager in Santa Barbara which side of Highway 101 your home sits on, because that decides whether the walk down is pleasant or a chore.