How did we get to Deltopia, the UCSB spring street festival?

April 14, 2025 at 4:15 pm by Lizzy Rager

After every spring break, one tradition holds true for UC Santa Barbara students at the start of spring quarter: they want to party. Isla Vista’s annual unsanctioned street festival, now known as Deltopia, has been held annually for over 20 years. A hallmark of the UC Santa Barbara experience, the festival has taken different names since its conception — including Floatopia — as local policy adjusts with the events of each version.

The Deltopia tradition began in 2010, after the county banned use of the beach for Floatopia in 2009. Shengyu Zhang/Daily Nexus

Deltopia reflects UCSB’s party school reputation. Its once larger counterpart, Halloween weekend, also helped embellish the UCSB party-school image before it peaked in 2013. Officers call Deltopia a weekend of revelry, chaos and arrests. Students call it their release, or kick-off, of the spring quarter. For some, it’s their favorite day of the year, getting loose and hanging out with friends in movie-perfect beach weather.

For others, it’s a “Mass Casualty Incident” — a day where local emergency services are heavily strained, incidents of violence and sexual assault are rampant and drug and alcohol abuse are intertwined in its history. In the worst cases, individuals have died from drug overdose and cliff falls during the event.

Deltopia in recent years saw tens of thousands of people flock to the streets, drinking early and requiring medical attention earlier than other years. The 2024 Deltopia held a record number of citations and arrests at the time, alongside record medical response calls, with the earliest ambulance transport beginning at 8 a.m. Approximately 20,000 to 25,000 people showed up for the event in 2024.

It’s not unusual for students to party, especially in the spring. However, Deltopia is entirely unsanctioned, which means there is no central planning for the event, and it takes place across private residences.

Floatopia and Facebook

Floatopia was an unsanctioned festival on the Isla Vista beaches where partygoers took floaties to the ocean and drank. While several iterations of the Floatopia festival, at a smaller scale, were organized in years prior, 2008 was the first year it was public on social media.

Some say it goes all the way back to 1982, and it was spread through word of mouth, with small gatherings of a few hundred people — not much different from how many people go out to the beach on a sunny weekend. A student in 2008, Alex Wasbin, said it was created by engineering students, but sarcastically explained that the event’s origins date much further back.

“Floatopia began with the Vikings in the late eighth century, and has been passed along in strict lineage through generations until more recently, [when] it was bestowed upon us Isla Vistans,” Wasbin wrote rhetorically in a Facebook post in 2008 promoting Floatopia. “We try to keep the event as historically accurate and culturally sensitive as possible.”

Roughly 4,000 people RSVPed for the festival on Facebook, where Wasbin publicized the event.

The pathways to access the beaches on Del Playa Drive were packed with people, with bright floaties held above their heads. People floated on inflatable pools, innertubes, small boats and handmade rafts on the coast carrying coolers. There were two sound stages where dubstep and hip hop music was being played and food vendors set up camp. Chants of “Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole! Gauchos!” could be heard from the shore.

People packed the beaches during the 2009 Floatopia festival. Photo courtesy the Independent

An estimated 12,000 people showed up for Floatopia in 2009, who occupied a half-mile stretch from Devereux Beach to Campus Point. Emergency medical services that day struggled to get down to the beach and respond to medical response calls — including one reported drowning incident where ultimately no injury was reported.

Police issued 78 citations for alcohol-related crimes and made 13 arrests. Thirty three participants required hospital treatment for alcohol poisoning, heat exposure and cuts. Two of them toppled off the bluffs. After the party, the beaches were littered with trash, some of which washed into the ocean. Some of the trash migrated down the coast and ended up at Goleta Beach.

“The beach was a mess. Food, glass bottles, trash, inflatable floats and homemade rafts were all left on the beach to wash into the sea,” then-Isla Vista Foot Patrol (IVFP) Lieutenant Brian Olmstead said to the Nexus in 2009. “I’m disgusted at how the students disrespect their community, particularly on a campus that claims to be so interested in environmental causes.”

He said the event caught emergency personnel off-guard and required a redistribution of personnel.

Nicole Leopardo, a first-year student at UCSB in 2009 who attended the event, said her older friends told her it was a community event prior to that year where friends went to drink and hang out. The events of 2009 didn’t match up the previous versions of Floatopia.

“I remember seeing people getting pulled up on stretchers because they were injured and there wasn’t even space for firefighters or medical staff to actually safely get people out of the situation, either,” Leopardo said.

Trash piles the beach access point after the 2009 Floatopia. Photo courtesy The Independent

That year, a Floatopia 2 event was booked for May as well, which had 11,000 confirmed guests on Facebook. An article from now defunct Santa Barbara Sound said it could cost up to $50,000 for the county. Former UCSB Vice Chancellor Michael Young denounced the sequel event, saying the county doesn’t have the money to respond to it and that the community risks incidents of violence and sexual assaults. He said the responsibility lies with students to stop the event from happening.

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office (SBSO) tried to propose a social host ordinance in 2009 that would target party hosts with fines, where parties were any gathering of “five or more persons.” The proposed ordinance was largely unpopular among students, and the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors sent it back for revisions — at the time, Isla Vista was part of the same voting district as Santa Barbara. The current social host ordinance, last amended in 2024, bans parties of 250 people or more.

But the supervisors did vote to temporarily ban alcohol on the beach for six months that year and put any hopes for Floatopia 2 in the coffin.

“The sentiment was, it’s turned into something corporate and it’s turned into something out of control. The local folks were like, ‘Yeah, this was too much.’ I remember hearing that,” Leopardo said.

Pollution from the 2009 celebration created widespread environmental damage and cost the county over $20,000 to clean up. The county ordered barriers to block beach access entry points along Del Playa Drive, and they’ve stayed there every Deltopia weekend since.

“I remember later that week, when we all went back to class, a lot of the professors scolded us, or just expressed their disappointment in us,” Luis Duran, a student at UCSB at the time, said.

Some community members felt angry about losing their access to the beaches.

“I remember us being like, well, you can’t, you can’t tell us to not not use our beach. This is our beach. How can you say we can’t go down there?” Duran added.

So they took the party to the streets in 2010, for the first-ever Deltopia.

“I remember in conversations [with UCSB administration] that it was, ‘let’s give them a win and let them go up to Del [Playa],’ because Halloween was still big,” Associate Vice Chancellor of Student Life & Belonging Katya Armistead said, who was then the Assistant Dean of Student Activities in Student Life. “We saw it kind of as a win-win to keep them safe and away from the water.”

The following years saw a comparatively calm version of Deltopia, which stayed relatively local.

Then-UCSB student Chris Par applied for a Floatopia event to be sponsored in 2010, but was rejected by the Board of Supervisors for not submitting it within enough time and the county reasoned that they lacked the resources for such an event.

While Floatopia floated away, other beach towns tried to introduce their own renditions, including San Diego.

Deltopia Riots

Police sirens blared. Armored cars drove down the streets. Masses swiveled and rushed in several directions. Tear gas sprayed and rubber bullets flew. From the streets, the sky was lit by giant floodlights.

People on the streets run from riot police in the evening of the 2014 Deltopia, who used tear gas and rubber bullets against the riot participants. Benjamin Pu/Daily Nexus

Around 11 a.m. at the 2014 Deltopia, crowds were large — roughly 15,000 — but nothing was too unusual from the year before, Armistead noted. The day descended into chaos around 9:30 p.m., when a 17 year-old hit an officer in the head with a backpack containing alcohol. The officer had been trying to break up a fight when he was knocked down, and onlookers began throwing rocks and bottles as reinforcements arrived, according to then-Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Kelly Hoover.

The violence spread throughout Isla Vista, and local law enforcement called in officers from as far as San Luis Obispo and Ventura counties. Six officers were injured in the unrest. Approximately 18 people were arrested during the unrest.

“I think people grabbed a dumpster from one of the houses on DP and tried to put it in front of them, almost like a barricade, just kind of antagonizing the police. And then eventually it got kind of rowdy,” Duran said.

Tensions were high because a few days before, an IVFP officer posted on Facebook that no music would be allowed on Deltopia and people would be arrested — contributing to miscommunication about a festival ordinance for loud music that students had received no notification about.

“The communication to the community was terrible,” Armistead said. “I don’t think anyone got a straight answer, really honestly, and not even us.”

Out-of-towners who came later in the day, unaware of the noise ordinance, wandered the streets seeking parties and had no place to return to.

Additionally, SBSO installed cameras on yellow poles on the street without consulting students. While the county planning development department issued approval for the cameras on April 5, they were installed before the permits were sent to UCSB for final approval, the Nexus reported.

Then-UCSB spokesperson George Foulsham told the Nexus at the time that the cameras cost at least $7,848, paid for with “gift funds,” not student fees. They were requested by UCSB administration and SBSO.

Throughout the day, attendance was around 15,000. Law enforcement arrested over 100 people, and 44 people were transported to the hospital for injuries.

Jonathan Abboud, the Isla Vista Community Services District general manager and then Associated Students (A.S.) president, said there was tension among students that year due to rising tuition costs and cut classes, and the university spent money on the cameras on Del Playa Drive.

“I think that the tension was that UCSB paid for these, and our tuition just went up, and they’re getting a bunch of cuts, but they spent money on this. This is during the recession,” Abboud said.

At the time, Abboud called for students in a Facebook post to take responsibility for the events of the riots. While incited by out-of-towners, the community engaged in, and escalated, the events to cause the chaos that day, he said.

Administration involved with student life organized a talk at Coffee Collaborative the day after the 2014 Deltopia to discuss what happened and paths to move forward. Benjamin Pu/Daily Nexus

After 2014, the community began promoting the message “Keep it safe, keep it local.” Just weeks after the riots, Isla Vista experienced a devastating shooting that resulted in seven deaths — colloquially known as the Isla Vista Tragedy. For the next few years, the community embraced that spirit with smaller festivals.

Deltopia picks up again

The pandemic lockdown began six weeks before the 2020 Deltopia was to take place. It had a significant effect on the event for 2022 when restrictions for COVID-19 were lifted, as far fewer people came to the event compared to pre-pandemic numbers. But the numbers bounced back in 2023 — with an estimated 15,000 attendees.

The 2023 Deltopia picked up in attendance, beginning the path to what would be pre-pandemic levels of participation. Photo courtesy Brandon Doherty

“It was a lot bigger in 2019, and I think that the mood of the student body, the further and further away that we got from the civil unrest, was a more flippant attitude towards the values of keep it safe and keep it local,” IVCSD President Spencer Brandt said.

2023 was the first year Deltopia saw ticketed parties before the county later banned the sale of tickets for party entry in 2024. About 151 citations were issued, up 300% from previous years, and most of the citations came from open container or minor-in-possession violations. Some residents began to ring the alarm on increased police presence, “We have to shift away from their strategy of doing really heavy enforcement of these minor crimes,” Brandt said to the Nexus then.

“Students had been pretty isolated from COVID, and this was their opportunity to kind of have their experience that they felt like was taken away from them for so long,” Armistead said.

Deltopia escalated again in 2024, when police issued a then–record number of citations since numbers recorded from 2014. Police said they responded in tandem to the force they saw in 2023.

Keeping Deltopia alive

Many think the festival could be on its last leg due to its public safety impacts. The former IVFP Lieutenant Garett TeSlaa made a point in 2024 post-Deltopia that the festival would receive a tripling of police presence.

Abboud says managing Deltopia in the past 10 to 15 years has cost the county $400,000 to $600,000 in law enforcement costs alone. He says the funds that go to managing the festival could be better allocated to improvements to the Isla Vista community, including lighting, sidewalks or transportation services, among others.

For many local authorities, they would rather Deltopia not take place. But it’s a matter of whether the county can actually respond.

“There is a real conundrum that we all face of how to manage this event effectively, knowing that there’s never going to be unlimited resources for enforcement, and even in a year like this year where law enforcement is planning on up staffing significantly and bringing in all this mutual aid, there’s a real question of would there ever be a number that is enough to stop the event happening,” Brandt said.

Brandt’s philosophy is to turn the event into something safer. He says the only pathway for this event to continue sustainably is through a planned, organized event, like a music festival. The IVCSD has ambitions to bring its Spring Festival — an alternative concert event at Little Acorn Park to deter partygoers from Del Playa Drive — to a larger scale.