Neverland tourists descend on a wary Santa Ynez Valley

LOS OLIVOS, Calif. -- Five years after central California's low-key, vineyard-dappled Santa Ynez Valley played a splashy supporting role in the Oscar-winning movie Sideways, the faithful keep coming.

Every week, vacationing oenophiles wander into the Los Olivos Wine Merchant & Café to ask where the film's four stars shared their first on-screen toast. Just recently, recalls waitress Laurie Madsen, two New Yorkers planted themselves at the bar, addressed each other as Sideways lead characters Miles and Jack, and exchanged bits of dialogue between swigs of the valley's legendary Pinot Noir.

But Hollywood and vines aren't the only lures around little Los Olivos (pop. 1,000) this summer, and wine lovers aren't its only pilgrims. As Madsen launches into her Sideways story, a young musician from Ohio interrupts for directions. His family's destination, about a 10-minute drive down a narrow two-lane road: Neverland Ranch, the scandal-tinged estate of Michael Jackson, who died unexpectedly June 25.

No matter that Jackson moved away from the 4-square-mile spread in 2005, vowing never to return after his acquittal on child molestation charges. Never mind that the exotic animals, amusement park rides and Disneyland-like railroad were gone long before the entertainer's death, or that curious tourists can't see anything but pastures and oak trees from the closed and guarded entrance gates on Figueroa Mountain Road. Even the name has changed back to its previous one, Sycamore Valley Ranch.

Such setbacks haven't stopped up to hundreds of fans a day from pausing to snap photos at an ad hoc shrine of wilted posies, heartfelt scribblings and stuffed chimpanzees. And though the chances of The Gloved One's former retreat becoming a tourist draw on the scale of Elvis Presley's Graceland appear slim at best, the prospect is churning controversy in the valley Jackson called home for nearly two decades.

"As macabre as it seems, we have seen a blip" in business since the singer's death, says gift store owner Thorn Kinersly. He sells Neverland T-shirts in nearby Solvang, a Danish-themed tourist town better known for faux half-timbers and dirndled waitresses than for Thriller videos. But, Kinersly says, "you can't rewrite history: The ranch will always be associated with Jackson."