AITO: Out-of-Towners at Deltopia?

April 10, 2025 at 12:00 pm by Lucy Dixon and Nina Rossi

DAILY NEXUS / ELIZABETH LEE

I.V. felt like Disneyland this past weekend

By Nina Rossi

As I walked down the streets of Isla Vista on Deltopia Eve felt like our town had been invaded. But oddly enough, it gave me a huge ego boost. Every time my friends and I passed someone we deemed an out-of-towner, our shoulders straightened and our posture sharpened with pride. There was something magical about it all. We were the locals at an exclusive theme park and everyone else was just visiting.

Of course, the crowds got annoying at times. The Blenders In The Grass line was entirely too long, and the Wingstop plaza was far too full. But that only inspired a new game: spot the “baddies” — a term we used for people who were objectively attractive.

And boy, did we spot them. Gorgeous people were everywhere, and for those of us who are painfully single, it was a blessing. The sheer number of options felt surreal.

There were a few other perks too. The people we typically saw, including those we didn’t want to see, were hidden by the flood of non-UC Santa Barbara students. Now, we too could hide in the crowds — something I very much enjoyed.

Now I’ll admit something: I slept through most of Deltopia. I was not a trooper, but I did get to experience some of the party. Seeing I.V. so full was endearing. Even if booze and baddies were the main attractions, it still felt good knowing people drove hours just to party at our school.

And back to that ego boost. Deltopia is perfect for socializing, flirting and kissing. Again, I was asleep during most of those hours, but my friends’ stories held up the reputation. One friend even met some guys before the Big Sean concert (yep, slept through that too). But they turned out to be total douchebags, so naturally, she decided to prank them.

The day after Deltopia, she invited them to an empty apartment by ours. From our window, we watched them try to find us. It was pure middle school energy, and we giggled like 13-year-olds the entire time.

The thing is, we couldn’t pull that off with fellow UCSB students. This type of thing only works with complete and total strangers. That means zero mutuals on Instagram. So thanks to Deltopia’s wave of attraction, we got to channel our inner childhood selves again.

In the end, I.V. really did feel like Disneyland. It was crowded, chaotic and a little bit wild but entirely unforgettable (the parts I was awake for at least).

Nina slept through Deltopia but still has the most to say about it.

In no world should the wait time for a bagel be over an hour

By Lucy Dixon

It was the morning after Deltopia, and my friends and I were in line for I.V. Bagel Cafe, a likely place for us to be on a Sunday morning. The line for bagels was long, but we were committed. When we finally reached the register, an equally hungover-looking guy behind the counter gently informed us that the wait time for our bagels would be approximately an hour and 15 minutes. Mouths agape, we left the line we had just spent forty minutes in.

We had many questions: How could our measly bagels with chive cream cheese possibly take an hour and 15 minutes? Were they boiling each individual bagel back there? Were they harvesting chives and actively curdling their cream cheese?

When we stumbled out of the cafe’s tiny storefront the line had grown exponentially longer. We decided to try Caje next and found an equally upsetting amount of people in line there. The problem with the long wait time at IV Bagel wasn’t because they were spending meticulous amounts of time on our three bagels. It was because they were making one hundred everything bagels with chive cream cheese.

I’m not sure if anyone can estimate precisely how many out-of-towners flood the streets of Isla Vista during Deltopia, but its effects are felt everywhere. Bagels aside, local businesses are overwhelmed year after year by the thousands of drunk partygoers descending on their storefronts. Normally, slow-going Isla Vista establishments turn into an episode of “The Bear,” with angry customers practically waving pitchforks and student managers just trying to hold the line.

Despite Isla Vista Community Services District’s urging to “keep it local,” out-of-towners continue to plague our streets. And in the same way that Del Playa balconies are not built to hold fifty people, Isla Vista is not built to withstand this massive flood of out-of-towners. Isla Vista is already bursting at the seams with UCSB and SBCC students, the housing crisis forcing students to live in their cars or pile on top of each other in beachfront houses. Packing an already overcrowded area with thousands of other people, even for a weekend, spells disaster.

Furthermore, Deltopia (originally known as Floatopia) began in 2004 as a celebration of Spring quarter at UCSB. Students piled onto beaches to celebrate the changing of the seasons and the bittersweet beginning of the last quarter of the year. Deltopia is unique in that it isn’t a celebration of some other saturated holiday season like Halloween or St. Patrick’s Day — it is our own Isla Vista holiday. Why should we have to share that with anyone else?

All of this being said, I’m not completely against out-of-towners at Deltopia. I would be a total hypocrite if I said that while having stowed two of my friends inside my apartment this past weekend. But my two friends, transfers from UCSB to other UC schools, were part of this community just last year. And I think in moderation, it’s okay to share a little bit of that UCSB magic with your best friends.

Lucy Dixon isn’t a fan of the Tik-Tok-kid-Airbnb-renter Deltopia visitors. Do not come.