Tag archives: Funk Zone

Three of Santa Barbara’s song leaders come together again on Friday, March 20, for a special Spring Equinox community singing event in the Funk Zone. Amisha Sera Luna, who regularly leads community singing circles both indoors (every 1st and 3rd Sunday) and periodically at local parks, will be joined by Alison Zuber and Heather Stevenson, […]

Two former employees of the Funk Zone, who met and fell in love in Santa Barbara’s Arts District, share their frustration with the disappearance of locally owned community spaces. For my first article back from hiatus, I contacted my premier source for finding interesting artists to interview in Santa Barbara, my old pal Ariel. She’s […]

Animal activist Gretchen Lieff and my trusty shutterbug Priscilla co-hosted a birthday bash for yours truly at her La Lieff tasting room in the Funk Zone for the 22nd anniversary to my half century. The sunset soirée attracted quite the crowd including Wayne and Sharol Siemens, Joel and Jamie Knee, Caren Rager, Linda Rosso, William […]

Jamie and Natalie Sanchez announced this week their decision to close their Helena Mason Art Gallery at 48 Helena Street in the SB Funk Zone on September 27, immediately after their final exhibition party the same evening. The event offered one last look and serious discounts for purchases of the works of current exhibiting artists […]

How appropriate that a Funk Zone locale dubbed the Bakery Block raised a lot of dough when the Community Environmental Council hosted its annual Green Gala for 250 guests raising more than $100,000 to help its work in protecting California’s Central Coast from the climate crisis. The boffo bash, co-chaired by Carolyn Fitzgerald, Katy Powers, […]

I can still recall the chill running up and down my spine, not to mention that evening’s nightmares, after a teacher read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” aloud during an English class. But fans of Master of the Macabre, those who find pleasure in Poe’s powerful and often poetic horror stories – some of […]

A New Yorker, iconoclast, and pioneering expressionist painter and printmaker, Cecily Barth Firestein’s “career” as an artist paralleled – and was subordinate to – what she would surely have described as her first calling of wife and mother. Therein lies a story. Firestein’s large format wonders will be on display in the Funk Zone’s communal […]

Giving a new meaning to Friday the 13th, artist Tom Pazderka opened his show of his latest 13 art works at the Silo118 Gallery in the Funk Zone on precisely Friday, October 13. The show will be up through, you guessed it, 13’s reversed number, October 31st (yes, and Halloween). I attended the opening, having […]

Animal activist and winemaker Gretchen Lieff threw an end of summer bash at her La Lieff winery in the Funk Zone for 50 guests. “It has been a wonderful summer,” says Gretchen. “We hosted events for Planned Parenthood, the Wildlife Care Network, C.A.R.E.4Paws, the Adopt-a-Pet program, UCSB Arts & Lectures, and the Teddy Bear Cancer […]

It was all too beastly for words when Gretchen Lieff, vice president of the board for the popular Santa Barbara Wildlife Care Network, hosted a boffo bash at her La Lieff tasting room in the Funk Zone for 200 volunteers. “It’s the least we could do to show our gratitude for the many hours they […]

On Sunday night, a group of my Montecito neighbors gathered with animal activist Gretchen Lieff at her La Lieff tasting room in the Funk Zone with a three-man crew from U.K.’s ITV, led by Washington, D.C. news editor Alex Chandler, to watch the Duke of Sussex’s controversial half-hour interview with Cooper and give our thoughts […]

More than 40 musicians and singers – including session and touring artists who have played on more than a thousand different albums and thousands more concerts – will be gathering on the stage at the Lobero Theatre to celebrate the 25th anniversary of The Rhythmic Arts Project, aka TRAP, this weekend.  TRAP is the Santa […]

Montecito animal activist Gretchen Lieff, who has been making wine for 17 years, has opened her first La Lieff tasting room in the Funk Zone. The 1,000-square-foot Gray Avenue locale, formerly a storage facility for the late Pierre Lafond, had a sneak preview for Tama Takahashi’s 10-year-old Inside Wine club with 37 guests to show […]

To start 2022 off strong in the local art world, renowned painter Stephen Holland, at 80 years young, is exhibiting his latest works in a show titled “Longneck Circus,” at the Silo118 Gallery in the Funk Zone in Santa Barbara.  The new art is a breakout session for Holland, who spent his career painting commissioned […]

On December 1, from 5-8 pm, Montecito Journal Magazine and art gallery Silo118 are co-sponsoring a “Facing Ourselves: Reckoning” book signing by Patricia Houghton Clarke, with proceeds from the book designated to Human Rights Watch.  This book is featured in the upcoming Montecito Journal Magazine as part of a retrospective of Houghton’s significant body of work. […]

One of the sexiest cocktail bars in Santa Barbara just became the merriest. Pearl Social — a consistently great place to sip and be seen in the heart of Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone — is now part of what’s become a global Christmastime phenomenon. They call it Miracle. And it officially makes Acme Hospitality’s landmark […]

On October 9, Rod Lathim and Chris Gocong premiered their collab art — large-scale abstract acrylics on canvas with neon light accents — at Commen Unity, a new Funk Zone barbershop and art gallery owned by Isaac Gonzalez.  Lathim, no stranger to our town for his prolific work to establish live theater as the founding […]

Much like how an interest can form and spread, a crystal begins from a seed point and grows from there. For Maria Constanza Ferreira, her interest in crystallography and animation has led to her own life growth with her award-winning films and artworks being displayed around the world. Maria has had a deep fascination for […]