I grew up in Santa Barbara, California, in a little kind of a student ghetto called Isla Vista right next to it, and I didn’t realize what an idyllic place this was when I was a kid. We lived three or four blocks from the beach. I and any of the other neighborhood kids just could go wherever we wanted to. We explored vacant lots. We’d ride down to the beach. Plus, it had an incredible elementary school — Isla Vista Elementary School that I still think must’ve been one of the best schools in the country because every teacher I just remember vividly. They did really imaginative things with us, too. They’d just haul us out on these impromptu field trips.
I remember my third grade teacher. Her field trip once was to take us down to the railroad tracks and just talk to all the hobos that were down there. I try to imagine a teacher doing that today and there’s just no way. That was really a wonderful place to be a kid. I was around all these other kids whose parents were students at the university and so we didn’t realize it, but we were really getting a lot of education outside of school, as well.