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Ten Fun Facts (and words of advice) About Carpinteria
Carpinteria – or should I say “Carp”, as the Cate slang goes – is a wonderful little beach town of 14,000, a home to various attractions highlighted in this newspaper edition, and the location of the very mesa (hill) upon which we live. However, many of you – certainly freshmen – may know little else about the town: about its culture, its industry, and its countless nuances. How will you get by, I ask? Well, to inform the curious and to serve as a precaution for those new students who don’t know what’s up, here are ten interesting and informative tidbits of Carpinteria trivia.
Carpinteria is one of only two towns in the United States to have a fish incorporated in its name. The other is Bass Lake, Wisconsin.
It is highly inadvisable to wear Cate cargo in the town of Carpinteria, or, for that matter, anywhere in the Santa Barbara area.
Carpinteria’s various industries are nothing to scoff at. For instance, the town is home to Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax, the popular brand of surfboard wax. Mr. Zog himself (Frederick Charles Herzog III, that is) grew up in the area and set up his first shop in Santa Barbara, before moving the headquarters to Carpinteria, where they remain today. Carp is also the world’s largest producer of silicone, the synthesized polymer used in breast implants and aerospace technology, not to be mistaken for silicon, the stuff of computer chips and a very wealthy valley in the San Francisco Bay area.
No one- and I mean no one- can finish a “jumbo” burrito from Taco Grande. Anyone who says he can is lying. (The burritos are about the length of an average man’s forearm and the girth of a young oak tree).
Not only does Carp boast the “World’s Safest Beach,” but it also has one of the most recent sightings of a great white shark – a large one, in fact – that attacked and killed two seals at the Harbor Seal Sanctuary on March 9, 2006.
If you decide to venture into the “Ninety-nine”-Cent store in Casitas Plaza (I place quotation marks around “Ninety-nine” because it is a lie), beware of the man who owns the place. He is incredibly suspicious and will not hesitate to kick you out, or even ban you from ever again setting foot in his veritable palace of crap.
If you find the sum of all the alphabet-corresponding numerical values for each of the letters in “Carpinteria” (ex. C=3), you will arrive at the number 114, which has no significance. Equally insignificant is that “Carpinteria” can be rearranged to read “interpracia”.
Another thing about Taco Grande: there are many questionable meats available for one’s burrito. Among others, I have seen “sesos” (brains) on the menu. Now, this is just an idea… but say you don’t like someone; you could order up one of these tasty brain burritos and give it to your unsuspecting pal. Hey, who knows; maybe he’ll like it!
The nation’s only official avocado festival takes place annually in Carpinteria. I highly recommend going to it, however I warn against avocado-flavored ice cream. Ironically enough, I learned, the festival takes place in October, months from the start of the local avocado season, meaning that the fruits have to be imported from Mexico or South America and are therefore quite pricey. (Sort of defeats the purpose of a festival, if you ask me).
Guys: avoid “Carpos X” at all costs. Girls: don’t go into Carp simply to flirt with the guys who work at Cajé.
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