The first time I saw the Whale House was when Dwell covered a listing for it in 2023. I remember it coming off as tacky psychedelia, like counter culture ephemera, even if it was built a little late for that, in 1978. To regard the whale-shaped Santa Barbara home in any kind of serious way felt to me as painfully cliché as clinging to the hazy dream of Haight-Ashbury. (I see you, Deadheads.) But earlier this year I got a call from a friend who said they knew the new owners of the home, and asked if I wanted to take a look. Why not? Most addresses I poke around in are devotees of the church of modernism, but this one was sacrilegous, perhaps, in that it does not have a single straight line. Plus, I’m usually up for a weird time.
I have to admit I was expecting to meet an annoying kid with a shiny new toy, or a wide-eyed cult member pushing the Kool-Aid, a fanatic type that would follow a jam band around the country or hasn’t missed a year of Burning Man since well before Zuckerberg hugged it out with the Winklevoss twins on the playa. But at my first visit to the home, Josh Raab, who bought the home with his wife, Marley Raab, spoke about its features and lore with a captive sense of remove: a red-tiled group shower with multiple sprayers; a pool that once had a 40-foot stripper pole; a place where Eddie Vedder lived for a month; homebase for a famous jade artist that sold weed, and maybe LSD. Wasn’t it all weird?
After that visit, I kept in touch with Josh and Marley, and they eventually approached me for a story with Dwell. Not being this publication’s usual fair, I hesitated. But not much of the home’s history had been reported on. Archival stories on the residence and its architect, Michael Carmichael, were all that existed beyond several real estate clips, and none of it is online. Add to that how Marley and Josh have been updating the home, working through an exhaustive maintenance punchlist, but also shaking off its lingering ’70s hangover with an aesthetic refresh and some tasteful branding. The Whale feels as if it's been dunked in cold water (forgive me), like it’s found its spiritual center, even. Not how a Marin divorcée might, but in a way that is disarmingly self-aware. Suddenly, the weird part was that such a goofy seeming space could feel… intriguing. Or cool.
Josh and Marley aren’t totally sure what it all means yet. They are renting it out for stays, doing shows, hosting friends, and may soon turn it into its own brand. But for as long as it has existed, the Whale has been a seductive, unwieldy world of possibility. Now, the couple wants to see just how deep it can go.
—Duncan Nielsen, Design News Editor
