Julie Anderson Mathias has spent much of her life thinking about how things fit together. Buildings. Rooms. Geometric grids. Colors. Occasionally, very large paintings that don’t fit through doors. The Chicago-based artist began her career in interior architecture, where precision was paramount and measurements generally had the good manners to stay put. Painting, however, offered […]

There are worse fates for a Chanel than being wrapped around a teacup. Still, it is probably not the preferred one. Years ago, while hunting through vintage and antique shops for old sewing patterns, Cara Austine-Rademaker asked one shopkeeper whether she had any tucked away. She did. They were in the basement, where she had […]

Twenty-five years is a long time to spend building…anything. For AJ Precision Concrete, it represents thousands of projects, countless relationships, and a reputation earned the old-fashioned way – through consistent, quality work. This August, the Santa Barbara-based company celebrates its 25th anniversary. The milestone traces back to 2001, when founder Antonio “AJ” Gijón set out […]

Friendship Center has never needed much of an excuse for a party. There is Senior Prom, the Fourth of July celebration and, most recently, a full Fiesta week of music, dancing, art and performances. Then there was this summer’s Polo Soirée, where nearly 100 guests helped the organization surpass its $75,000 fundraising goal. So when […]

Victorian women were expected to be demure, decorous, and to generally avoid spending their evenings in the company of bloodthirsty Transylvanian counts. Thankfully, times have changed. On September 19, some of Santa Barbara’s most formidable women will descend upon the Music Academy of the West for State Street Ballet’s annual gala, Victorian Vogue. There will […]

There are certain things teachers should reasonably be expected to bring to school. Patience, for one. A working knowledge of long division. The supernatural ability to detect chewing gum from thirty paces. What they should not have to bring is half the contents of Staples, purchased with their own money. And yet, back in 2002, […]

Coast Village Road traded its everyday stroll for a full-on Fiesta as more than 250 Santa Barbara and Montecito residents gathered to kick off the 2026 Old Spanish Days season. Music spilled into the street, dancers twirled in brilliant color, and the village transformed into a lively celebration of Santa Barbara’s history and heritage. A […]

As forecasters continue warning of a potentially strong El Niño pattern this fall and winter, residents along La Vuelta Road are pressing Santa Barbara County to take additional steps to reduce flood risks before the rainy season begins. Roughly two dozen neighbors met July 24 with 1st District Supervisor Roy Lee and representatives from the […]

There are few places where summer feels quite as complete as it does from the deck of a boat at sunset. The day’s heat softens, the Santa Ynez Mountains begin to glow pink, dolphins occasionally ride the bow wake, and the Pacific settles into that familiar golden calm that somehow makes everyone slow down. For […]

As guests arrived for Friendship Center’s third annual Senior Prom this spring, there were dresses to admire, jackets to straighten, old friends to greet, and a dance floor waiting just a few steps away. Volunteers and Richie’s barbers gave guests makeovers. Corsages were pinned. Music filled the room. Members arrived hand in hand with spouses, […]

For many people, vision loss arrives gradually. A favorite novel becomes difficult to read. Faces across a room lose their clarity. Street signs resolve later than they once did. The television gets larger, the lighting brighter, and the magnifying glasses stronger. Eventually, many people assume they have reached the blurry end of the road. Dr. […]

Between conversations, croquettes, and glasses of bubbly, a crowd gathered for the UCSB Arts & Lectures 2026-2027 Season Reveal party at the Hotel Californian. After a touch of cavorting outside, the guests moved into the Alhambra Ballroom to see what is in store for the world-class set of performances and speakers that audiences have come […]

Summertime… the season of sun. Okay, yes, the sun has been a little shy as of late, but I swear it’s up there. While the Earth’s own axis may be at maximum tilt on the solstice, it is also the moment where the local community gets a little tilted. Accountants become butterflies. Teachers become sea […]

As National Mental Health Awareness Month draws to a close, Santa Barbara is finding a meaningful – and celebratory – way to keep the conversation going. The Mental Wellness Center’s inaugural Wellness Weekend, taking place May 30-31 at Alma Rosa Estate in the Santa Rita Hills, is designed not simply as a finale to the […]

Village Properties is marking 30 years in business this May, a milestone that reflects not only the growth of one of Santa Barbara’s most recognizable real estate firms, but also the enduring appeal of remaining independent in an increasingly corporate industry. Founded in 1996 by Renee Grubb and Ed Edick, the company began with a […]

This Workshop Fills the Sails of Your Story You find yourself secluded in thought. The idea is there but how to free it from this lonely island. A raw thought can be difficult to describe. To share with others. Freeing an idea is the art of expressing creativity. You try to find the words to […]

The first thing Ace Atkins and I discuss is that writing used to be slower. Not the thinking, not the storytelling, but the act itself. Notes taken by hand, facts checked line by line, interviews reconstructed from memory and scribble. Now there are recorders, transcripts, digital trails that can be followed and revisited. The work […]

The rise of the “pet nanny” might sound like a novelty (or even a novel), but spend a few minutes inside the world of high-end domestic staffing and the picture sharpens into something far more nuanced. The increasingly important role reflects a rising need – a quiet and highly specialized system designed to support households […]

Somewhere between a swirl of silk gowns and the clink of champagne flutes, Opera Santa Barbara’s Moonlight Masquerade invited guests to slip behind velvet masks and enter the Rosewood Miramar for an evening of operatic enthrallment and Venetian glamor. As people entered to servers smoothly interweaving the masked crowd with  caviar and canapés, they were […]

Thirty years ago, before Airbnb listings and algorithm-driven bookings, Melissa Pierson unlocked the door to a different way of thinking about hospitality. A home, prepared with care and an eye for detail, could shape how someone experienced a place. What began with a single seaside rental grew into Coastal Hideaways, a lasting presence in Santa […]

Notre Dame School will mark its 100th anniversary this spring, celebrating a century of Catholic education in Santa Barbara with a commemorative Mass and evening gala. The milestone reflects both the longevity of the Micheltorena Street campus, and its continued role in serving local families across generations. Set for May 29, the centennial event is […]

NeuroField is not an easy thing to explain in a sentence. It blends neuroscience, clinical therapy, and a suite of technologies designed to read and influence the brain in real time. But behind the complexity is a clear goal: to understand how the brain is functioning, and then help it function better. At its core, […]

More than three decades ago, Geof Wyatt found himself in need of medical care without a clear way to get it. He didn’t have a doctor and needed tests, and someone suggested he try Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics (SBNC). What he encountered there stayed with him long after the visit itself. It wasn’t only that […]

It’s not hard to see why writers end up in Santa Barbara. Sure, the weather helps, but it’s more than that. There’s space to think here, and a kind of quiet that doesn’t feel isolating. Montecito, in particular, has long been home to a number of well-known writers (see Steven Gilbar’s mini tome), while downtown […]

The Santa Barbara International Orchid Show (SBIOS) opens like a passage into another world. For this upcoming weekend, March 20-22, Earl Warren Showgrounds will fill with dense greenery, towering installations, and orchids from across the world arranged in full-scale displays. These are not small tabletop exhibits. They are built out as environments, with layered foliage, […]

Long COVID resists easy definition. It arrives unevenly, lingers unpredictably, and for many patients, exists in the uneasy space between symptom and diagnosis. In the years since the pandemic began, millions (18M in fact) have reported not returning to baseline – fatigue that doesn’t lift, cognitive disruption, respiratory changes that persist without clear explanation. What […]

Every three minutes someone is diagnosed with blood cancer. It is a statistic that delivers a staggering reality and underpins Blood Cancer United’s annual Student Visionaries of the Year campaign, a seven-week fundraising effort that places high school students at the center of both outreach and leadership. Locally, the effort to raise $200K has been […]

Storyteller welcomed more than 300 guests to its sold-out Color the World Gala at Rosewood Miramar Beach, raising over $600,000 to support Santa Barbara’s most vulnerable children. This year’s theme, “Hues of Love,” celebrated the transformative power of stability, early care, and community. Guests began the evening on the lawn with a vibrant reception featuring […]

Longevity is less a sprint toward the finish line and more a quiet devotion to how we spend our ordinary days. Petra Beumer openly describes herself as a recovering “Type A high achiever,” shaped by a culture of rigor and accomplishment. Over time, she began to notice the toll that constant striving takes: burnout masked […]

Montecito understands what it means to rebuild. That lived experience makes ShelterBox’s International Women’s Day panel especially resonant here, where recovery is part of the community’s recent history. In a time marked by conflict, climate disasters, and widening inequities, the United Nations’ 2026 theme for International Women’s Day feels immediate: “Rights, Justice, Action. For ALL […]

At a moment when conversations around health are both deeply personal and publicly fraught, conditions that live quietly inside the body often remain the least understood. Medicine itself is built on privacy – doctor-patient confidentiality exists for good reason – and when pain carries even a hint of stigma or embarrassment, silence can become the […]

Mellow. That seemed to be the word used most frequently when I asked friends and peers about their New Year’s Eve.  Other years have seen glittering, largely silly, soirées that wrap with a costumed walk to East Beach as the year’s first sun rises. And sure, I had some friends raging in the rain this […]

The recent storm delivered a dramatic punch to Montecito’s shoreline, and nowhere was that more visible than at Butterfly Beach. The County of Santa Barbara rainfall sensor near Olive Mill and Hot Springs roads registered 11.40 inches of rain (year-to-date) on December 23; by the time the weather calmed on January 5, it read 20.87 […]

Here we go again, turning the page on another year! For us over here at the Montecito Journal, 2025 marks 30 years of publication in this Village of the Charmed. By our quick and approximate reckoning, that’s ~ 62,400 pages (gulp) and several warm decades of neighborly “gossip” over the back fence, public announcements, hometown […]

The iconic rolling concrete architecture and inimitable art of Bruce Heavin’s Hill House set the scene for an “Evening of Appreciation” on December 3rd. One805 staff and supporters, along with Santa Barbara County’s first responders, met at the structural masterpiece for the organization’s official launching of a $10 million One805 Mental Wellness Endowment Fund, a […]

Each piece in John Comer’s Across the Channel has a glow… one could call it John’s style and approach to light in plein air, though really it feels more like the embers of his enthusiasm for the islands. The new series, showing at Santa Barbara Fine Art, gathers more than a dozen works painted from […]

The leaves may be falling off the trees (I think, we don’t have much of a fall here) but the costumes are certainly coming out. It’s Ghost Village Road time along our favorite local haunt of the Lower Village.  Families, friends, and four-legged companions take part in one of the community’s most beloved traditions. The […]

Covid was a weird time. We listened to music, microwaved mail, and made sourdough – among other things. About two weeks before the shutdown, I was scrambling to host an event at SBCAST – the Swiss-Army Bauhaus facility where I was living at the time. Running up and down the stairs from my studio with […]

Dance has always felt like the truest artistic expression of the soul… an untamed yet measured outburst of our innate and most intimate instrument – our body. Similarly, fashion feels like the truest artistic expression of the body… a chance to show the world the hues, textures, and lines – framed by the canvas of […]