Just as the rollercoaster goes down, it goes up again. Three weeks has resulted in lucking into the most amazing apartment ever, two freelance gigs that actually pay something, and lots of work for Michael slinging espresso at Red's, a little coffee bar and gallery in what some would call "The Funk Zone" near East Beach in Santa Barbara. Only the artists call it the Funk Zone though. The city takes itself much too seriously to have a neighborhood called the Funk Zone. Better to call it something vaguely Spanish and expensive-sounding. "Playa de los Artesanos" or something. It has no official name. It needs one.

Anyway.

The Funk Zone is the strange industrial area between Garden Street and State Street on the east and west, and Montecito Street and the beach to the north and south. It is filled with hole-in-the-wall artist studios and scrapyards and shops, surrounded by an encroaching ring of pricey vacation beach rentals like the new misleadingly-named "Villa del Mar" development (million dollar condos directly overlooking the 101 freeway onramp, by the way). Only in Santa Barbara could anyone ask with a straight face for a million dollars for a two bedroom condo advertised as being "by the sea" though the beach is several blocks through an industrial area frequented by transvestite Mexican hookers and homeless people looking to score heroin. Maybe you can pretend the whoosh of traffic on the freeway 10 feet outside your window is the crashing surf. Half the neighborhood is also about to be demolished this winter to make way for "La Entrada" - another Spanish-themed, outrageously overpriced, multi-block all-timeshare monstrosity. But I digress.

A few days ago I went out for a walk around the neighborhood with Michael's boss, Dana, who was at the time trying to avoid the amorous advances of one of the homeless schizophrenic regulars who enjoys circling her place of business on his bicycle while muttering incomprehensible phrases to nobody in particular. Occasionally he comes in and tries to play the piano before we shoo him off. One time, in a moment of clarity, he walked in and asked her out to a movie. Predictably, she said no, but he's still circling the block all day on his bicycle, even in the rain. We're all a little creeped out. So we go for a lot of walks.

On every walk, even though we're only covering about a 3 square block area, we seem to find something new. Every door in every alley in that neighborhood leads to a different studio space with that permits-be-damned kind of decrepit charm. There are studios behind bushes, studios behind wooden plank doors, tiny yards with kilns and glassblowing shops and surfboard shapers. Everybody knows everybody else, and everybody knows the Big Secret of who lives in their studios in violation of zoning codes because there is no way to afford a place elsewhere. I could go in on a rant about affordable housing, but I won't. It's the same everywhere. Artists live where it's cheap, fix it up, it becomes trendy and dangerous and hip, and then the lawyers and real estate speculators move in. The Funk Zone is ripe for this sort of gentrification. Thus the million-dollar condos next to the Rescue Mission.

I've met more cool people since Michael started working at this coffee place than the entire time I've been in Southern California. It's the polar opposite of LA 'artist districts' like the Brewery, which on any given Saturday night is full of drunk Art Center students and assorted hipsters wearing ironic trucker hats and namedropping. There's a refreshing lack of poseurs here. Everybody just does Art and lives in their little workshops and they don't make a big deal about it. After being in LA for (and I cringe saying this) three years, this is a mindblowing revelation for me. I'm in love. I never thought I could be in love with Santa Barbara, tarted-up Yoga Jogging Stroller Mercedes SUV Whore that it is. But I am.

I'm lacking Photoshop on this computer, thus making it difficult to go through any of the photos I took of the neighborhood, but, for your enrichment, I'm including a couple of pictures I took of Michael's place of employment, Red's Espresso Bar and Gallery, on the corner of Helena and Yanonali Streets, conveniently located near the train station and only a block from the tittie bar. Enjoy. And come in for a latte, they make 'em better than Starbucks.