The last time Newsmakers chatted with Gwyn Lurie, Editor-in-Chief of the Montecito Journal, the global pandemic was still breaking news, the economy had just begun to tank and no one had yet heard of George Floyd.
On Friday, Gwyn updated us with a batch of Montecito local news illustrating how the New Normal is impacting the village, from real estate and the Royals to restaurants and a new roundabout.
For starters, the market for homes in Montecito is sizzling, with 130 properties sold since the pandemic began, while social distance dining is booming, with Coast Village Road lively and buzzing on weekends.
The most notable of the home purchases, of course, was made by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, aka former Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who arrived last month with young Archie. While locals leave the global celebrities to their privacy, not so the nation's paparazzi, who routinely disrupt and annoy residents with helicopter passes over the royal digs and reliably are offering $250,000 for a single pic of the couple.
In more prosaic pandemic news, both Montecito Union and Cold Spring elementary schools have applied for public health waivers to allow in-person learning to resume, the county's pot ordinance continues to pique neighbors and there's a glimmer of good news for Paul Madsen, the embattled retired mechanic who's famously been waiting more than two years for a county permit to rebuild his house, demolished in the 2018 debris flow.
All this and more, right here, right now, on a special Press Clips edition of Newsmakers TV...and the podcast version is here.