Beautification Day: When Montecito Takes to the Streets, With Love

The days are getting shorter and cooler. Fog is drifting in, and it feels like spooky season is rolling in with it. Everyone is craving pumpkin spice, and dreams of the Great Pumpkin lighting up Halloween steal into our children’s blissful sleep. 

All of this can only mean one thing…

Yes, it’s time for Beautification Day in Montecito!

If you didn’t know, or are new here, Beautification Day is a beloved community tradition, held every year on the first Saturday after Halloween. On the morning of Saturday, November 5, this year’s Beautification Day, neighbors will gather in front of the Montecito Post Office. There they will don yellow Montecito safety vests, pick up equipment, share a breakfast provided by one of our amazing merchants, and then fan into the streets to pick up litter and tackle neighborhood beautification projects. Decades ago, when the tradition started, we handled a discarded Halloween candy wrapper issue. It’s morphed over the years into a large community gathering, with families participating, neighbors greeting neighbors, and people wanting to put their hands on this community, with love. We have community tables where you can learn about organizations serving our community, like the Montecito Community Foundation, the Montecito Water District, and MERRAG.

Beautification Day also tackles much bigger projects now: trash pickups at the freeway ramps, abandoned camp cleanouts by the Hands Across Montecito team, and trail upkeep by the Bucket Brigade. It takes a lot of community heart to do all this, and the good news is that Montecitans are big-hearted people, especially when it comes to community.

Want to Help? Here’s How:

Volunteers. We love families, kids, and company/nonprofit teams, so email info@montecitoassociation.org if you’re coming! You’ll receive a complimentary litter pick-up stick from the Montecito Association as a thank you.

Breakfast – Montecito and Coast Village restaurants – we need YOU! Are you one of our delectable restaurants in Montecito or Coast Village? Would you be willing to provide breakfast for our volunteers? Here’s what’s in it for you: public Thank You’s in these pages and to our membership. The chance to meet up to 200 new customers, in one setting, have them taste your food, fall instantly in love with you, and become loyal customers for life. The chance to provide your menus and catering info right there, in the event. And of course, the chance to be a fêted Community Hero. How can you possibly resist?

If you want to sponsor Beautification Day, we welcome your contribution at montecitoassociation.org. You will be thanked right here on these pages, and in email newsletters to our membership! It truly takes a village, and we can’t do this without YOU!

When volunteers return from shining up the neighborhood, the Montecito Village Grocery is donating hot dogs for the lunch, and our Montecito firefighters will be cooking them for you! Live music will be playing, and you get a chance to smile in the sun, enjoying your newly cleaned community, and catch up with your neighbors.

Montecito doesn’t always get fair treatment in news media, especially locally (outside of these pages, of course). Media loves to pick on us for being the Land of Oprah and Ellen, of elites who prize water-wasting verdant lawns, and exclusive, gated estates. However, they completely miss the vibrant, community-minded, caring majority of neighbors in this community that MAKE Montecito this incredibly special community. On Beautification Day, Saturday, November 5, you’ll see a sea of yellow Montecito safety vests out there making this community shine. That’s the REAL Montecito, and we heartily invite you to be part of it, too!

Sharon Byrne is the Executive Director of the Montecito Association