March 2013 SLO Magazine 9

SLO townSan Luis

Obispo, (Spanish for St. Louis, the Bishop of Toulouse) is a city in California,

located roughly midway between Los Angeles and San Francisco on the Central Coast. Founded in 1772 by Spanish Fr.

Junípero Serra, San Luis Obispo is one of Californias oldest communities. The city is locally referred to as San Luis, SLO or SLO Town.

10 SLO Magazine March 2013

SLO Town

beaches

natureA vila Beach is a census-designated place in San Luis Obispo County, Califor-nia, USA[2] and located about 160 miles (257 km) northwest of Los Angeles, and about 200 miles south of San Francisco. The ZIP Code is 93424. The community is inside area code 805. The population was 1,627 at the 2010 census. The name Avila commemorates Miguel Ávila, who was granted Rancho San Miguelito in 1842.[3] The town was established in the latter half of the 19th century, when it served as the main ship-ping port for San Luis Obispo. Although Avila Beach still has a work-ing commercial fishing pier and the in-land areas have extensive apple orchards, tourism is now the main industry. There are few historical structures remaining; among the oldest is the Point San Luis Light, built in 1890 after a series of shipping accidents.The beach itself is less than 0.5 miles (0.8 km) long and shel-tered in San Luis Bay, which is formed by Point San Luis on the west and Fossil Point on the east.

Avila Beach faces south and the 600 foot elevation of Point San Luis breaks the prevailing northwesterly winds. It is therefore usually warmer than the other beaches on the Central Coast. Most of Avila Beach is undeveloped, except for a few blocks adjacent to the beach with homes, hotels, and small businesses, and a few recently built upscale housing developments inland, near a golf course. Avila Beach is also known for its hot springs, which are used for resort spas.Many people mistakenly pronounce the town’s name as ah-VEE-lah given the name’s Spanish origin. However, the correct Spanish pro-nunciation is AH-vee-luh. Ordinarily, the penultimate syllable of Spanish words is stressed, except when indicated by an accent over a different syllable. In Spanish, Avila is actually spelled “Ávila” thus indicating that the first syllable, not the second, is stressed. According to the United States Census Bureau, the CDP covers an area of 6.0 square miles (15.6 km²), 99.71% of it land, and 0.29% of it water.

left:A beautiful sunset over Avila Beach. Avila is a 10 minute drive on the 101 from Cal Poly.

right:Spring is mating season for lady bugs and Avila is in no short supply of them during that time of year.

  March 2013 SLO Magazine 11

Farming

sunsets

B ishop Peak is a 1,546 feet (471 m) volcanic plug near San Luis Obispo, California. It is the tallest of the Morros or "Nine Sisters", a chain of similar peaks stretching to Morro Bay. It takes its name from its resemblance to a bishop's miter, and is frequently referred to by locals as "Bishop's Peak". Like the other Morros, Bishop Peak is primarily composed of dacite. Over 20 million years ago, magma welled up un-derneath a layer of softer rock and solidi-fied. The softer overlying rock has since eroded away, leaving a distinct rugged shape. Bishop Peak’s thin, rocky soil supports many plants that are not common in the surrounding area. Vegetation includes an Oak woodland, sage scrub and chaparral.Woodland areas are composed of spe-cies like coast live oak and California bay trees, as well as poison oak and California blackberry. Scrub areas support many aromatic varieties of sagebrush, coyote bush, and monkeyflower. Bird life in-cludes large numbers of jays and other passerine birds as well as birds of prey.

These birds of prey include golden eagles, bald eagles, owls and vultures. Animals include deer, raccoons and opossums as well as predators like foxes, coyotes, bobcats and mountain lion. In the past some quarrying has taken place, primarily to provide stone for the nearby city of San Luis Obispo. Granite from the quarry can be found along curbs in most of the city’s older neighborhoods and on several extant structures, most no-tably, First Presbyterian Church. Current-ly Bishop Peak Natural Reserve includes 350 acres (1.4 km2) of land purchased or donated since 1977. There are several trails in the Open Space with trail heads on Patricia Drive and at the end of Highland Drive. The Felsman Loop trail covers the North East base and connects with Bishop Peak Trail which climbs the South slope to the sum-mit. There is a third possible trail head on Foothill Blvd. accessing a steep fall line trail on private property which intersects the Bishop Peak Trail partway up.

left:Orange carna-tions in bloom in the orchards near Bishops Peak, the highest of the re-gions nine rocky morros.

right: Another beautiful sunset that can be seen from the top of Bishops.

All photos by Brady Teufel

All text contributed by Wikipedia

12 SLO Magazine March 2013

SLO Town

economy & education

3,000

1,500

Top employers in the city according tothe City’s 2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report

Cal Poly2,693

County of SLO2,570 Mens

Colony2,000 PG&E

1,719

CPCorp.1,641

Six of San Luis Obispo County's top ten employers, as shown below, fall in the classification of Services, four fall in Public Administration. Downtown San Luis Obispo is centered around the carefully restored Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa. The downtown area also has many eclectic shops and boutiques. New downtown shopping centers have been added in recent years. The Court Street Center and Downtown Center house stores that belong to nationwide chains. One of the primary draws of this area for students, visitors, and residents alike is the plethora of outdoor sports such as hiking, kayaking, surfing, windsurfing, skimboarding, diving, sailing, and kite boarding.Scenes from the 1990 film My Blue Heaven were filmed in commercial areas of San Luis Obispo. Scenes from the 2002 film "Murder by Numbers" were filmed in and around San Luis Obispo. Southwest of the town center, several large shopping centers have developed since 2003. Takken’s Shoes is headquartered in San Luis Obispo.Ernie Ball’s Music Man factory is located in San Luis Obispo.

All public K-12 institutions in San Luis Obispo are operated by San Luis Coastal Unified School District, which contains seven elementary schools, one middle school (Laguna Middle School), and one high school, San Luis Obispo High School. There are also two pri-vate elementary schools and one private high school, Mission College Prep. San Luis Obispo is also home to California Poly-technic State University (Cal Poly), a public university enrolling nearly 20,000 students. The school is located just outside city limits and provides on-campus hous-ing for nearly 6,000 freshmen and sophomores. The community is also served by Cuesta College, a community college a short driving distance away.A city wiki website for San Luis Obispo at http://wiki-SLO.org is available for local knowledge sharing. In the state legislature San Luis Obispo is located in the 15th Senate District, represented by Republican Sam Blakeslee, and in the 33rd Assembly District, represented by Republican Katcho Achadjian. Feder-ally, San Luis Obispo is located in California’s 23rd congressional district, which has a Cook PVI of D +9[28] and is represented by Democrat Lois Capps.

Statistics from Wikipedia

  March 2013 SLO Magazine 13

Culture The Madonna Inn is a famous local landmark. Es-tablished by Alex Madonna in 1958, the inn is famous-ly eccentric. The Fremont Theater, a historic Art Deco theater from the 1940s, still plays first run movies on the huge screen. Murals adorn the walls of the main theater while neon swirls light the ceiling. The Palm Theatre boasts solar heating and is home to the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. Another destination is Bubblegum Alley. Since about 1960, people have been sticking chewed gum on the walls of this alley. The doc-tor's office on the corner of Santa Rosa and Pacific streets is one of very few commercial buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. San Luis also has a Carnegie Library which is now home to the San Luis Obispo County Historical Museum. Cal Poly’s open house, Poly Royal, was held annu-ally from 1933 to 1990. It was canceled in 1945 due to war rationing.[32] It began as a show-and-tell for students to display their projects.

By the 1980s, as the college became "the most popular...university in the 19-campus CSU system", Poly Royal began drawing over 100,000 people from throughout the state, including 126,000 people in

1985. Concerts, parties, and other entertain-ment were added and it earned $3–4 mil-

lion in revenue for the city every year. Following a "mini-riot" in 1989

at an off-campus apartment dur-ing Poly Royal, the events in 1990 would cancel the event "indefinite-ly." Two nights of rioting on April 28–29 led to 127 arrests, over 100 injuries and 14 police injuries on

top of "several hundred thousand dollars" worth of damage. A liquor

store near campus, Campus Bottle, was destroyed by revelers demanding alcohol.

The second night was much larger than the first as people were leaving a concert on campus and par-ties off-campus were broken up and revelers flooded the streets.

Teens at Shell Beach.

All text contributed by Wikipedia

Photo by Brady Teufel