There isn’t or wasn’t enough room in the above sub-title to add Santa Barbara, Summerland, Hope Ranch, the Mesa, or virtually anywhere along this golden little coast of ours. But, all those areas are included in the virtuous and valuable Circle of Friendship known locally as “real estate.” Sitting around in the living room of […]
Just a short note about this weekend’s Fifth Annual Santa Barbara Sea Glass & Ocean Arts Festival, featuring ocean-inspired art made by artisans from across the U.S.A. and that’s set to take place at the Earl Warren Showgrounds on September 14 and 15. In addition to some fifty-or-so artists’ creations on display (and for sale), […]
Telling us she is “shocked beyond belief,” and that it was the “most exciting honor I have ever received,” MJ columnist (“Aging in High Heels”) Beverlye Fead forwarded to us the following message she received recently: “On behalf of the Alliance for Aging Research, we applaud your inspiring career as an author, speaker, and activist. […]
Actor Dennis Quaid (whose most recent gig is as spokesman in the clever Esurance ads that have been all over TV of late) is also a musician and he and his band The Sharks are set to perform at the Topa Mountain Winery in Ojai this weekend (Saturday, September 7). “Girls With Guitars” opens the […]
This year’s 4th Annual Island View Trail Race, hosted by Santa Barbara County Trails Council, is set to showcase the Franklin Trail on September 15. The Franklin Trail – nearly wiped out by the Thomas Fire two years ago – is the longest trail in Santa Barbara’s front country. “It’s remarkable how well it has […]
She’s been the toast of the town, friend of Oprah and Ellen, been to the White House with President Obama. Her list of notable customers ranges from Katy Perry, the aforementioned Ms Winfrey and Ms DeGeneres, Kirk and Anne Douglas, and, well let’s put it this way: they didn’t come for the publicity; they came […]
Regular readers know how fondly we cared for the late Julian Nott, balloonist, pilot, inventor, and physicist extraordinaire. So, we thought we’d share this memory from his widow, Anne Luther: “In following the anniversary celebrations of the moon landing recently it was hard not to remember how much of a hero Neil Armstrong was to […]
They are still calling it the Montecito Motor Classic, but it won’t be taking place on Coast Village Road. Actually, the popular eight-year-old car show couldn’t have taken place on Coast Village this year because the county is about to begin a three-month resurfacing project on Coast Village Circle, hit hard by last year’s debris […]
During this year’s Village Fourth, I ran into Jamie and Andrew Nash and their beautiful son, Hudson Joseph William Nash. Hudson was born “with significant damage to both his kidneys due to a blockage to his urethra while he was developing in utero,” Jamie tells me as we enjoy the after-parade festivities in Manning Park. […]
Author Steve Oney will be dropping by Tecolote Book Shop in the upper village to celebrate the publication of his new anthology, A Man’s World: A Galley of Fighters, Creators, Actors, and Desperadoes. The reading and discussion will begin at 4 pm on Saturday, July 27. The book, we are told, features twenty profiles of men […]
The Profant Foundation announced that writer Howard Jay Smith would be a recipient of what has been dubbed the “James Buckley Excellence in Writing Award”: it comes with a $2,000 cash grant. Mr. Smith has recently published a piece in the Beethoven Journal about the Beethoven and Mozart collections at the Lobkowicz Palace Museum in […]
A special demonstration took place recently on the steps of the building at 1187 Coast Village Road. On hand to demonstrate the abilities of a 36″x18″x10″ Vantage tactical robot developed and produced by Transcend Tactical Vantage Robot – was Juan Camarena, a SWAT Lieutenant and Commander of the Isla Vista Foot Patrol Station. The robot […]
Art Specialist Jennifer Buur advises us that a photo of some of the young artists involved in the Farmers and Merchants art show from Our Lady of Mount Carmel School ran in issue # 25/23 but they were not identified. So, in an effort to correct this unfortunate error, here is another photo, along with […]
Debbie (Bruce) Saucedo sold her company, Debbie’s Delights, some time ago, but she has never left our sunny enclave. She and her husband, Mike Bruce, are big supporters of local non-profits and charities, including especially Fiesta Finale, which takes place on the Sunday at the tail end of Fiesta. Debbie and Mike offered a catered […]
Here’s one you don’t want to miss if you can help it: The Broadway Musical Cruise aboard the Condor Express. Owner Hiroko Benko invites one and all to come aboard and enjoy the best of Broadway on a smooth Saturday evening cruise with live and on-deck performers Deborah Bertling and Carol Ann Manzi, accompanied by […]
A couple years ago, I was proud to announce that my trusty 10.5-degree lofted driver helped me score my first hole-in-one at the 170-yard 17th hole at Glen Annie into a stiff wind; well, that was then, the glory has faded, and I’m once again just another hack. However, one of my regular golf buddies, […]
MJ‘s favorite painter, Thomas Van Stein, just completed a commissioned painting of the historic Knox-Cota building on Anacapa Street for the Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation. The house was built in the 1870s for Dr. Knox and his wife. The building’s facade crumbled in the 1925 earthquake, and has been sitting as a rather […]
The following comes directly from songwriter and Emmy nominee Molly-Ann Leikin, who informs us that she has written the official English lyric to Hatikvah, the Israeli National Anthem. The melody was adapted by composer Bedrich Smetana from a Lithuanian Folk song. In 1886, a transliteration was written by poet Naftali Herz Imber, but it was […]
Montecito resident Lawrence Dam‘s son-in-law Jason Baffa, who lives in Summerland, is the director and director of photography of the film Loopers, which opens Friday, June 7 at the Hitchcock Cinema & Public House on Hitchcock Way in Santa Barbara. The film takes on a subject I kind of know and absolutely love: golf. And, […]
Sue Brooks has been selling ads for Montecito Journal for… gulp… more than 22 years. When she first joined us, she and her husband, Steve (remember Brooks Jewelers on Coast Village Road where the Sushi Bar is now, next to Montecito Inn?) had two little girls: Michelle and Jennifer. Well, those girls are all grown […]
The Doublewide Kings will be playing the music of the Rolling Stones at SOhO music club in Santa Barbara on Friday night, May 31, beginning at 7:30 “with some of the mellower acoustic stuff while folks are having dinner (think ‘Angie,’ ‘Wild Horses,’ etc.),” says the group’s henchman (and high-profile Montecito resident musician) Palmer Jackson, Jr. […]
If you are a woman and are simply fed up playing with the guys, LPGA pro Lori Kibbie‘s Girls Night Out (GNO) league runs every Tuesday at Glen Annie Golf Club in Goleta, and again on Thursdays at River Ridge Golf Club in Ventura. I see Lori pretty much every Wednesday when I take advantage […]
Deacon T Buckley (his dad is MUS alum Tim Buckley) was awarded a gold medal at a recent National USASA (United States of America Snowboard and Freeski Association) ski meet in Copper Mountain, Colorado, in which he competed with regional winners from around the country (he had won two gold medals and two silvers in […]
Just chalk it up as another spectacular success for Janet Adderley and her Adderley School for the Performing Arts, as some two dozen-plus of her students performed West Side Story onstage at the Lobero Theatre twice on Saturday, May 4 and twice again on Sunday, May 5. The highlight, for me, was the heartwarming and […]
Over the years, I’ve had the good fortune to fly in a B-17 “Flying Fortress” from Santa Barbara Airport down over Montecito and back over the ocean because of my position as founder of Montecito Journal. I’ve also landed on and taken off from both the USS Ronald Reagan and the USS Abraham Lincoln. Those […]
Her full name is Beverly Aho (though most know her as “Bev Aho”) and, for the past five years, she was the constant companion of the recently deceased Central Coast Wine Classic founder and aficionado of all things grape, Archie McLaren, who passed away February 20th of last year. She and Archie lived in Avila […]
Maile Kai Merrick, along with Sofia Schuster, sang solo, and the entire Adderley choir joined in and recently sang “Somewhere” from West Side Story in honor of Jim Dougherty‘s 80th birthday at the Lobero. But you’ll get to hear the remarkable Maile Kai and Sofia sing again at SOhO this Friday, April 12 from 6:30 […]
This is the Santa Barbara Boys & Girls Club’s sixth Rally4Kids – a one-and-a-half day celebration of all things vehicular – and it’s the club’s biggest fundraiser of the year. It has also been a roaring success and lots of fun. This event begins the night before (Friday evening, April 26) at a private “drivers” […]
Every Friday morning when I’m in town, I spend 20 minutes at OsteoStrong, just off Las Positas, and so want to congratulate OsteoStrong’s Assistant Manager Lauren Farewell, who gave birth March 28, at Cottage Hospital, to a beautiful baby girl, Jada Michaela, weighing 8 lbs 4 oz and 20 and 1/2 inches long. Jada is […]
My longtime friend and confidante, balloonist, scientist, physicist, thinker, inventor, conversationalist, and bon vivant, Julian Nott, passed away peacefully on March 26 after suffering multiple injuries from an extraordinary and unforeseeable accident following a successful balloon flight and landing in Warner Springs, California. Every second or third Saturday morning, depending upon his schedule, we would […]
Nothing Earth-shattering going on, but the new look at the northwest corner of Coast Village Road and Olive Mill Road is indicative of what I believe has become a rapid upward swing in sentiment and outlook in this little corner of the world (see Kelly Mahan Herrick‘s Village Beat report on the handsome and finally […]
Chef Phillip Frankland Lee and his wife-baker, Margarita Kallas Lee, in addition to having opened The Monarch in the space occupied by Montecito Café for nearly 30 years, recently opened the most audacious restaurant experiment on the Central Coast. It’s called “The Silver Bough” (the name revolves around a Celtic legend), and it’s an eight-guest […]
No doubt our universal man-about-town Richard Mineards has covered the opening of Milt and Arlene Larsen‘s Magic Castle Cabaret, Montecito’s new private club, in his column. And there is no doubt that MJ‘s society maven and beauty expert Lynda Millner will report on the same subject soon after, so no need to add my seven […]
I’ve been to a number of Joe Lambert‘s Teen Star competitions and the only reason I’ve missed any is because I was either out of the country or out of my mind. This show – the Teen Star Final – always presents some of the finest, or at least most enjoyable, entertainment one is likely […]
Over the course of the past week, the Santa Barbara area received anywhere from four to eight inches of rain, possibly even a little more at what local weather people like to call “the higher elevations.” Montecito was blessed with a good amount of precipitation too (Jameson Lake is now filled and spilling over Juncal […]
This is being written as much of Montecito is under a Mandatory Evacuation Notice. Tuesday, January 15, at 10 am sharp, Montecito Inn hotel guests were required to check out, as were Four Seasons Biltmore guests. Traffic continued to move along critical roadways for a while, but many of those roads began to be closed […]
The Day The Hill Came Down First, of course, there was the fire. The Thomas Fire, so named because it began on the campus of Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula before devouring nearly 300,000 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara County along with nearly one thousand homes and/or structures. Following California’s cycle of cataclysms, […]
One of our favorite subjects – physicist, friend, balloonist extraordinaire, and all-around good fellow, Professor Julian Nott – is headlining one of our favorite annual events: Channel City Club’s Annual Christmas Luncheon. The luncheon will be held at the Hilton Beachfront Resort (formerly Fess Parker’s DoubleTree Resort) on Monday, December 3, and will feature not […]
Montecito’s vaunted “semi-rural” ambiance was shattered along with residents’ confidence after the Thomas Fire and the ensuing mud and debris flow that took the lives of 23 of our friends and neighbors and destroyed or seriously damaged nearly 10% of our housing stock. It is going to take a little time before the idea of […]
National Review editor, Los Angeles Times columnist, speaker, Fox News commentator, author, and teacher (for nearly a year he taught English to Czech citizens after the breakup of the Soviet Union), Jonah Goldberg is a product of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Jonah’s father was Jewish; his mother Christian; Jonah was brought up Jewish. Some may […]