The small-town civic theater is an enduring symbol; the unassuming downtown performance company – founded long ago by beloved local dandies – that secretly fuels the community’s daily life. The butcher, baker, and candlestick maker (the professional class, that is) have always been the gray-flannel measure of community progress. The town playhouse, though – dowdy […]
Life is capricious – to put it as charitably as possible – and “First Responder” has become too familiar a term. The full weight of what “First Responder” means bears some quick recollecting. When the Thomas Fire raged across 440 square miles of central coast some five years ago, it blasted all vegetation off the […]
Life-giving energy enters our biosphere as solar light; just incidentally fading our favorite curtains, keeping sunblock magnates in lobster bisque, and fomenting Earth’s diverse panoply of life—from Argoacterium to Tax Attorney. Our warm, wet little planet does its part to receive this bath of solar nourishment, endlessly turning on its axis like a rotisserie chicken. […]
“What they want to do with this place is the same vision I have, which is make it a community space!” That’s Kimmie Dee “talking,” which has never been an accurate description of her communication style. Kimmie is Santa Barbara’s longtime standup comedy impresario, a casually foul-mouthed tornado of benevolent energy. Should you suddenly hear […]
Frankenstein’s monster perhaps said it best: “Fire bad.” This is a capable summation but lacks actionable detail — and here in the celebrated Wildfire State, actionable detail is what it’s all about. Fortunately, the good people of Santa Barbara County’s Firesafe Council are hosting a three-day event that promises not just to fill the gaps […]
The pantheon of male American writers is a grab bag. Terkel, Mailer, Hamill, Hemingway — these tough guys and their generally hormonal prose are almost a literary brand. Plimpton — with his willowy erudition, patrician accent, and Paris Review creds — runs with another herd. Our Joe Donnelly is a third species, as evidenced by […]
Santa Barbara’s Brasil Arts Cafe is not what it appears. Walk through the restaurant proper to the shadowy back of the place. A grinning bruiser parts a speakeasy-like curtain and you enter a hidden grotto the police could raid at any moment. Welcome back! Local standup impresario Kimmie Dee’s aptly named NO INDOOR VOICES (NIV) […]
“So, I wait in line, get up to the front, tell them my story. Then, you know — ‘I’m an American.’ ‘Oh — you’re an American? Well, this only pays 750 crowns a day.’ And I’m like, ‘Dude. I’ll pay you!’” Grant McIver cuts quite the figure — as they used to say when everyone […]
It’s no secret that Montecito … has its secrets. Many of the town’s unprepossessing burghers, they of the shopworn André Rieu tee shirt and ill-fitting cargo pants, have hidden lives as movers, shakers, and candlestick makers (so to speak), their “gee whiz” dowdiness a performative feint to distract us from their collective, red-carpeted alias. One […]
The sparsely populated but energized International Terminal at LAX is an embraceable symbol of the reawakening world. Neither as devoid of life as a Charlton Heston zombie apocalypse, nor as thronged as in pre-COVID days of innocence and joy — when “viral” meant a dog pushing a lawnmower and conspiracy talk leaned to the now-lovable […]
The intersection of East 38th Street and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis is in the midst of a “makeover,” a new idiom for the city’s beleaguered traffic engineers. The assignment? Design an urban experience that creates space for mourning, reflection, and unimpeded vehicular flow. Not your typical work order. The intersection’s unusual commemorative mission is borne […]
What – exactly – is a bank? A bank is a financial institution licensed to receive deposits, make loans, and attach ball point pens to countertops with little chains that are inevitably too short by about an inch. A bank, if it chooses, will also advise on managing your wealth, will exchange your greenbacks for […]
James Joyce Answers the Tough Questions It’s a singular scene. In a spacious, unfurnished room aglow with natural light, James Joyce III is holding court, pacing before a vibrant orange wall whose only adornment is the framed photo of a swami. Several dozen yoga practitioners in shorts and tees sit before Joyce on a blond, […]
On Saturday September 21, from 2 to 5 pm in the sun-dappled environs of the Music Academy of the West, Jack and Laura Dangermond will be honored with the Gaviota Coast Conservancy’s (GCC) Coastal Legacy Award for 2019 – a festive and deeply grateful acknowledgement of the couple’s show-stopping rescue of 24,000 long-contested acres with […]
Jodie Hollander grew up in a musical family, and that is a largish understatement. Concert pianist father, cellist mother, two sibs each with the gift of drawing effortless gossamer from the violin; dinner conversation ran to the rhapsodic. Now imagine Jodie – a young girl whose double helix would later reveal itself as a ladder […]