Sorry about this “shades of Simpsons in Springfield” question, but:
Ok, we’ve just started watching Buffy from the first season DVDs on and, man, as a grad student here at UCSB, I must ask. . . is Sunnydale patterned after Santa Barbara or what? It IS 100 miles from Nieman Marcus, after all. . .
It certainly has nothing to do with SunnyVale, a suburb of San Jose.
Wait a minute. You mean I’ve been avoiding Sunnyvale needlessly?
The one thing I never could stand about Santa Clara.
All the damn vampires.
Well, I’m afraid I don’t have a cite, but I believe that both Lost Boys and Buffy are based on Santa Barbara, yes. Concidentally, too. I know I read it somewhere, but it was like six years ago.
Too many saints - Lost Boys was Santa Cruz 
( note the boardwalk amusement park ). But I agree on the Sunnydale/Santa Barbara connection.
- Tamerlane
No.
Hmmm… I thought Lost Boys was based on Santa Cruz, which is further north.
Well, there ARE the hordes of zombified out-of-work techies who roam the streets. But they don’t move too fast, and even if they catch you, all they do is bore you with talk of coding errors and complaints about worthless stock options.
Stakes in the heart work well on them, too.
The Lost Boys was so much “based on” Santa Cruz as it was “filmed entirely on location in” Santa Cruz. The one stipulation before they could get filming permits was that they never refer to the city as Santa Cruz, because the city fathers didn’t want people to think Santa Cruz was a pit of blood-sucking demon punks.
… In which case I think maybe there are too many darn Saints in Cali. Santa Cruz for Lost Boys, Barbara for Buffy.
Santa CARLA. Santa CLARA is also a suburb of San Jose, and nowhere near as scenic as Santa Cruz, which was also used as the shooting location for The Stunt Man.
I can tell you this: according to dialogue from the show, UC Sunnydale does feature “halls” named Stevenson, Porter and Kresge, which are also names of colleges at UC Santa Cruz, although I have no doubt there are analogously named facilities at UC Santa Barbara. (For the record, I spent a couple of years at UCSC in the late '80s; thus my personal recollection of the names. And if I remember correctly, Buffy was a Stevenson resident, which jibes with my impressions of that college–she’s definitely the Stevenson type. For what that’s worth.
I’m 98% sure that UCSB does not have Stevenson, Porter, Kresge, or those other colleges. At least one of the Buffy writers attended UC Santa Cruz, hence the references.
Ethilrist- Sunnyvale (and San Jose) is located in Santa Clara county. Therefore, avoiding Santa Clara county would entail avoiding Sunnyvale and the vamps within.
(source)
…Which, and this may be stretching a bit, may be a nod to the off-campus but student-friendly and popular Saturn Cafe in downtown Santa Cruz.
And, something I thought was damn cool… Buffy and Willow lived in Stevenson Hall, room 206. And that is where two of my friends stayed their frosh year. (Buffy’s Stevenson lacks multiple houses, the real Stevenson had eight seperate dorm buildings.) Now, if there were only a way to combine events that happened to me in that room, with the fictional residents of that room… 
[hijack]
The bridge that Micheal drops off of in The Lost Boys is in all actuality, maybe 15 feet over the water. I was both jazzed and disappointed.
A local told me that there was a cave used in the movie that still had coffins and such in it bolted to the ground. Any care to disprove that one?
[/hijack]
Doesn’t seem that way.
And Ethilrist’s Santa Carla seems to be the name of the town in The Lost Boys. That makes a lot more sense now.
Err, doesn’t “Santa” mean “holy” in Spanish, and not “Saint”?
From the Man’s mouth (well, keyboard) to your ears (okay, eyes):
http://moonlight.dreamhost.com/coj/gospels/gospel19.html
The lesser pantheon did research there (search for “Barbara”).