Tag archives: Meghan Markle
Now that Governor Gavin Newsom has lifted the total ban on eating out, I ventured to the historic Santa Barbara Yacht Club to dine with my trusty shutterbug Priscilla, the Montecito animal activist Gretchen Lieff and her longtime beau Miles Hartfeld. The dining room on the outside terrace overlooking the Pacific was socially gridlocked, with […]
There’ve been two letters in the past two weeks concerning the possibly inappropriate influence that Bob Hazard might be trying to exercise over water policy in our village, specifically his amateur hydrological agenda that includes a risible proposal to merge the boards of the Montecito Water Authority (MWA) and the Montecito Sanitary District (MSD). For […]
Santa Barbara City College’s Atkinson Gallery and the SBCC Foundation have been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Getty Foundation to prepare for the next edition of the region-wide arts initiative Pacific Standard Time, scheduled to open in 2024. Pacific Standard Time is an unprecedented series of collaborations among institutions across Southern California. In each, […]
The Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara has named 22 student artists as winners of its art scholarship competition. Each will receive a colleague scholarship for the 2021-22 academic year. “Under normal circumstances we would hold the competition at the Ridley-Tree Education Center and host a reception for the winners at the Santa Barbara Museum of […]
Having completed five years leading Girls Inc. of Greater Santa Barbara, Barbara Ben-Horin is leaving the pro-girl nonprofit. Since joining the organization in January 2016 it has expanded its Teen Center programming, overhauled its emergency planning, and advanced its advocacy efforts on behalf of girls’ rights and opportunities. “I deeply believe in Girls Inc.’s vision […]
Oracle tycoon Larry Ellison, who has owned a number of homes in Santa Barbara for many years, is quitting California to live in Hawaii. Ellison, 76, the world’s 11th richest man, owns 98 percent of Lanai, the state’s sixth largest island at 140 square miles. He bought it in 2012 and employs the majority of […]
Signs that a community is in the throes of an historic transformation are rarely overt and almost never seismic. They’re small yet perceptible shifts that, in aggregate, tell a story of where a town or a city is coming from and where it’s most likely headed. In the case of Montecito those signs – at […]
An old friend, Sean Smith, former gossip columnist of London’s Sunday People newspaper and now a successful celebrity author, has sent me his latest book, Meghan Misunderstood, on the Duchess of Sussex. Sean, who has also penned bestselling tomes on singer Adele, George Michael, Tom Jones, Ed Sheeran, Kate Middleton, Kim Kardashian, Justin Timberlake, Britney […]
UCSB’s popular Arts & Lectures series has obviously been scrambling during the pandemic lockdown to present its normal program of international acts and artists. I took the opportunity at the weekend to watch 21-year-old cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason and his pianist sister, Isata, play a virtual concert from their home in Nottingham, England, and couldn’t fail […]
To the Hotel Californian for the re-opening bash of Blackbird, the hostelry’s signature restaurant, which has been reimagined with “a beverage-forward atmosphere” featuring cocktails by celebrity mixologist Devon Espinosa, alongside a thoughtfully curated menu of light bites by executive chef Travis Watson who pays homage to the culinary bounty of the Central Coast. My trusty […]
A stunning 554-acre ranch once owned by McDonald’s mogul Ray Kroc in the Santa Ynez Valley is up for grabs, for $29 million. Kroc and his wife, Jane, a former secretary to the actor John Wayne, bought the property in the Happy Valley area 16 miles from the late singer Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch in […]
It was just four months ago that singer Ariana Grande splashed out $6.75 million for a Tudor-style home, The Porter House, consisting of two bedrooms and three bathrooms in two antique barns that had been imported from England, and just a month later Prince Harry and his wife Meghan spent $14.5 million for a nine-bedroom, […]
The Riven Rock estate Prince Harry and Meghan Markle bought for $14.5 million had been listed for rent on the website Giggster. The listing, which was taken down on Sunday after media reports, advertised the nine-bedroom, 16-bath property on 5.4 acres for $700 an hour. The listing said the lush estate could be used as […]
For a few decades before and one decade after the Millennium, there was a well-known restaurant in New York named Elaine’s, known as the “it” celebrity hang-out and “the private place where public people go to be private in public.” There was a rigorous selection process to get in (which was conducted by Elaine herself). […]
Along with key community partners, United Way of Santa Barbara County is leading a multi-pronged response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on needs assessments conducted with dozens of community partners, the response efforts are focused on providing direct assistance to local individuals, families, and nonprofit organizations, supporting essential workers and workplaces with emergency childcare services […]
Oliver’s, the Coast Village Road vegetarian restaurant that took five years to transform from the old Peabody’s space under owner cell phone billionaire Craig McCaw, 70, has been sold, says my mole with the martini. McCaw, who has moved back to Seattle, has been divesting himself of his properties in our rarefied enclave, including his […]
On a personal note, I remember dashing Yale-graduate Peter Beard, the legendary wildlife photographer, who has died at the age of 82 after going missing from his Montauk, Long Island, home. Peter, heir to two great fortunes in tobacco and railroads, was a fixture on the New York social scene, where I first met him […]
Santa Barbara resident and horse racing enthusiast Barry Schwartz, the co-founder of Calvin Klein Inc., is selling his sprawling equestrian estate in New York’s Westchester Country for $100 million. Spanning around 740 acres, the property is among the largest privately held estates in the county, according to Christie’s International Real Estate. Known as Stonewall Farm […]
An old friend, New York interior designer Geoffrey Bradfield sends me his latest 295-page tome A 21st Century Palace Asia, featuring a 250,000 sq. ft. 36-bedroom home in China on 30 acres, which took four years to complete. Geoffrey, who has worked on homes with quite stratospheric budgets in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Jakarta and Japan, […]
Montecito dynamic duo Jon and Brandis Deitelbaum, producers of Beau Joie champagne, have teamed up with the Georgina Chapman, creative director and co-founder of the fashion label Marchesa. The groundbreaking new collaboration will include several new products available on beaujoiechampagne.com and cross-marketed globally beginning with luxury retailers, and eventually rolling out to high-end resorts, hotels […]
