North Campus Open Space

Isla Vista (Spanish for "Island View", prounounce EYE-luh VIS-tuh locally) is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Santa Barbara County, California, in the United States. As of 2020 census, the community had a population of 15,500. The majority of residents are college students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, or Santa Barbara City College. The beachside community of Isla Vista lies on a flat plateau about 30 feet (9 m) in elevation, separated from the beach by a bluff. Isla Vista enjoys a Mediterranean climate and often has slightly less precipitation than either Santa Barbara or Goleta. Isla Vista is located on a south-facing portion of the Santa Barbara County coast, between Coal Oil Point and Campus Point in view of the Channel Islands. During El Niño years, precipitation in Isla Vista can be excessive and potentially dangerous. Some homes and apartments built on the south side of Del Playa Drive, most popular with students due to their direct ocean views, are in danger of collapse, since they are built on quickly-eroding bluffs thirty to sixty feet above the Pacific Ocean. Recent erosion has exposed foundation supports in several of the properties closest to the university campus, UCSB. As Isla Vista is on the south coast of Santa Barbara County, which has some of the highest housing prices in the United States, the student population shares densely packed housing with a working class Hispanic population. Since Isla Vista has not been annexed by either Goleta or Santa Barbara, remaining unincorporated, only county funds are available for civic projects. While the main campus is to the east, the community is surrounded on three sides by university property governed by the state Board of Regents.Isla Vista is home to a student housing cooperative, the Santa Barbara Student Housing Coop, as well as a food cooperative, the Isla Vista Food Co-op.

Deckers Outdoor Corporation, doing business as Deckers Brands, is a footwear designer and distributor based in Goleta, California, United States. It was founded in 1973 by University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Doug Otto and Karl F. Lopker. In 1975, the company was incorporated in California under the name Deckers Corporation. In October 1993, Deckers initiated a public offering of stock in its company. Deckers' portfolio of brands includes UGG, Teva, Sanuk, Hoka One One and Koolaburra.

UGG is an American fashion company primarily known for its sheepskin boots, founded in 1978 by Australian surfer Brian Smith in Santa Monica, California. After putting on his pair of Australian sheepskin boots after a chilly late-night surf in Malibu, Smith realized sheepskin boots weren't available in the United States like they were in Australia, giving Smith the idea to create UGG. UGG also sells apparel, accessories, and home textiles.

Dos Pueblos High School is a public high school located in Goleta, California, northwest of Santa Barbara. Located adjacent to the foothills on the edge of the Goleta Valley in an area known as El Encanto Heights, it serves a student body of approximately 2,300 in grades 9-12. It is one of three comprehensive high schools in the Santa Barbara Unified School District. Dos Pueblos High School, ("DP" or "DPHS"), is a National Blue Ribbon School. Dos Pueblos' school mascot is the "Charger" as well as Charlie the Charger Horse. The school has undergone recent renovations including finishing of the football stadium, as well as the building of a Broadway-sized theater, an Olympic size pool, and a 12,000-square-foot (1,100 m2) engineering facility. In 2012, Newsweek ranked Dos Pueblos High School as 597 within the top 1000 high schools in America, and 127 in the state of California. Newsweek based its ranking on several criteria, including its graduation rate (93%), percentage of graduates attending college (95%), number of AP/IB tests per student (0.5), average AP test score (3.4), average SAT score (1690), average ACT score (26.5), and the percentage of students receiving subsidized lunches (28%). Dos Pueblos is considered the best high school in the Santa Barbara area by a wide margin.

The Santa Barbara Student Housing Coop (SBSHC) is a student housing cooperative designed to provide affordable housing for students attending post-secondary institutions in Santa Barbara County. The first coop was established in 1976, and today consists of five houses; Newman, Manley, Dolores, Biko and Merton. In all, just under 100 students live in these houses. The purpose of the Santa Barbara Student Housing Co-op (SBSHC) is to provide low rent co-op housing regardless of gender, race, social, political, or religious affiliation. SBSHC engages in continuous educational programs that further the principles of cooperation through mutual, self-help living at a minimal cost. The co-ops are located in Isla Vista and are centers of artistic expression, alternative thought, social activism and creativity. In 2006, the massively successful and now institutionalized "Chillavista" festival was organized out of the Biko co-op, and featured musical talent from the Isla Vista community including many bands spawned from and frequently performing at Isla Vista Co-ops. Chillavista was powered through renewable energy, featured local organic produce, screened several films on progressivism and sustainability and proved to be a highly successful zero waste event featuring national touring acts such as Delta Nove, Blue Turtle Seduction, Elijah Manuel & The Revelations and local psychedelic jam masters Silent Wei. In 2006, the Isla Vista co-ops provided pivotal support to the over 200 residents evicted from their homes in Isla Vista by Conquest Housing. Many in the Isla Vista community regarded these evictions as racially motivated, since nearly all of the 200 men, women, and children who were evicted were Hispanic and had little access to legal representation on their behalf. In response, some residents of the co-ops rallied support for the families by throwing benefit concerts, establishing a protest "tent city" in the center of the UCSB campus and staging marches throughout Santa Barbara to raise awareness of these families' concerns. The efforts have contributed to the larger emerging front in Isla Vista united against the ongoing pattern of discriminatory eviction followed by student rent gouging. SBSHC also has a long-standing partnership with the Isla Vista Food Cooperative.

Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) is a network of astronomical observatories run by a non-profit private operating foundation directed by the technologist Wayne Rosing. Its offices are in Goleta, California. The telescopes are located at both northern and southern hemisphere sites distributed in longitude around the Earth. For some astronomical objects, the longitudinal spacing of telescopes allows continuous observations over 24 hours or longer. The operating network currently consists of two 2 meter telescopes, nine 1 meter telescopes, and seven 40 cm telescopes, placed at six astronomical observatories. The network operates as a single, integrated, observing facility, using a software scheduler that continuously optimizes the planned observing schedule of each individual telescope.

The 2014 Isla Vista killings were two misogynistic terror attacks in Isla Vista, California. On the evening of Friday, May 23, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others by gunshot, stabbing and vehicle ramming near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), before fatally shooting himself.Rodger stabbed three men to death in his apartment, apparently one by one on their arrival. About three hours later, he drove to a sorority house and, after failing to get inside, shot three women outside, two of whom died. He next drove past a nearby deli and shot a male student inside to death. He then began to drive through Isla Vista, shooting and wounding several pedestrians from his car and striking several others with his car. He exchanged gunfire with police twice, and he was injured in the hip. After his car crashed into a parked vehicle, he was found dead inside with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Before driving to the sorority house, Rodger uploaded a video to YouTube titled "Elliot Rodger's Retribution", in which he outlined his planned attack and his motives. He explained that he wanted to punish women for rejecting him, and sexually active men because he envied them. He also emailed a lengthy autobiographical manuscript to friends, his therapist and family members; the document appeared on the Internet and became widely known as his manifesto. In it, he described his childhood, family conflicts, frustration over his inability to find a girlfriend, his hatred of women, his contempt for couples (particularly interracial couples) and his plans for what he described as "retribution". In February 2020, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at the Hague retroactively described the killings as an act of misogynist terrorism. The US Secret Service describes it as "misogynistic extremism."

The Coal Oil Point seep field (COP) in the Santa Barbara Channel offshore from Goleta, California, is a marine petroleum seep area of about three square kilometres, within the Offshore South Ellwood Oil Field and stretching from the coastline southward more than three kilometers (1.9 mi). Major seeps are located in water depths from 20 to 80 meters. The seep field is among the largest and best studied areas of active marine seepage in the world. These perennial and continuous oil and gas seeps have been active on the northern edge of the Santa Barbara Channel for at least 500,000 years. The combined seeps in the field release about 40 tons of methane per day and about 19 tons of reactive organic gas (ethane, propane, butane and higher hydrocarbons); about twice the hydrocarbon air pollution released by all the cars and trucks in Santa Barbara County in 1990. The liquid petroleum produces a slick that is many kilometres long and when degraded by evaporation and weathering, produces tar balls which wash up on the beaches for miles around.This seep also releases on the order of 100 to 150 barrels (16 to 24 m3) of liquid petroleum per day. The field produces about 9 cubic meters of natural gas per barrel of petroleum.Leakage from the natural seeps near Platform Holly, the production platform for the South Ellwood Offshore oilfield, has decreased substantially, probably from the decrease in reservoir pressure due to the oil and gas produced at the platform.

Harder Stadium is a 17,000-seat, outdoor multi-purpose stadium on the west coast of the United States, on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, California. It serves as the on-campus soccer stadium for both the men's and women's programs. Currently used occasionally by the university's club rugby and lacrosse teams, it was originally the home of the defunct football program.

Caesar Uyesaka Stadium is a baseball stadium in Santa Barbara, California. It is the home field of the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos baseball team as well as the Santa Barbara Foresters.

On February 23, 2001, a vehicular homicide and assault occurred in the student community of Isla Vista, California, near the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) campus. Four people were killed and a fifth, who suffered critical injuries, died in October 2016. The driver, David Attias (son of television director Dan Attias), was ruled legally insane and sentenced to 60 years in a mental institution. In September 2012, a court approved Attias' release after 10 years.

UC Santa Barbara Events Center, previously known as the Campus Events Center, also known as The Thunderdome, is a 5,000-seat, indoor multi-purpose arena on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara in Santa Barbara, California.