Welcome to Beautiful Altadena.
Beautiful Altadena (BA for short) has been a private locals-only community Facebook group since 2015 that’s grown to a constellation of subgroups including BA Gardens, BA Cooks, BA Real Estate, BA Trading Post (our less rigid version of Buy Nothing without the geofences) and a BA Book Club numbering nearly 15,000 members (in a town of 44,000). We’ve also got a public facing Facebook page here. And you can find us on Instagram here.
We started the group to connect neighbors, break and share fact checked news and happenings and discuss subjects that effect the greater Altadena and Pasadena foothill areas, as well as our surrounding community. We’ve since become the de facto trusted source for all things Altadena and also an advocacy group representing our members directly to LA County and the Board of Supervisors on multiple issues. Like Altadena, we’re inclusive and lean progressive. No surprise, we’ve also inspired multiple imitators and spinoffs over the years (hard to believe now that we were the lone active Altadena account on all of the socials when we started).
We answer community questions and address concerns on a daily basis, and cover events, happenings, history, photography, small businesses, promotions and offers, restaurants and pop-ups, lost and found (so many pets reunited), wildlife sightings, concerns and education (we talk a lot about coyotes and bears – a lot), environmental issues, vetted service provider recommendations, local politics, charitable causes, and much more.
Why ‘Beautiful Altadena’ you may be wondering? The expression was coined way back when developers were trying to attract the wealthy East Coasters to winter here in the temperate West. It was an ad campaign 100 years ago and it stuck, because it fits!
Why Substack? We create a mountain of content that we’ve allowed Meta to monetize all of this time while we’ve never taken a dime for any of the work. We’re also slave to the Meta algorithm which means only a handful of our thousands of members and followers ever see our content. As we all know, we don’t own our social media or any of our content shared there and if something is free, the product is you. It was time to put an end to that one sided relationship. Sorry, Zuck. Substack allows us to spend more time creating great content on a platform with tools made for content creators and then that content gets delivered direct to your inbox or app. What a concept! The Facebook groups are also private and geared towards current locals only, where this space is public and open to all with posts made to be shared.
About Altadena, California
For the unfamiliar, Altadena is a town or township (not a city) in unincorporated Los Angeles County, approximately 14 miles (20 mins by car) northeast of downtown LA, bordering directly north of the city of Pasadena, California. We are not a part of Pasadena or the City of Los Angeles. Instead of having a Mayor we are part of the 5th District and governed by the LA County Board of Supervisors where our representative is Kathryn Barger. Once rolling foothills covered in orange groves and poppy fields, with just a few estate homes dotted here and there, a winter escape for wealthy East Coast families, and the outpost for the Mt Lowe Railway, it is, in fact, quite beautiful and today is home to some of the most popular hiking trails in Southern California, including Eaton Canyon. We are a wildlife interface filled with century old trees from redwoods and sycamores to our native live oaks and the Deodar cedars that make up our Christmas Tree Lane. An oasis with a small town feel in the middle of one of the biggest metros in the world. You can read a short history of Altadena here.
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