Tag archives: Tecolote

Between the inaugural Santa Barbara Literary Festival and the 52nd annual Santa Barbara Writers Conference, an almost incalculable number of authors were in town speaking about their works over the last two months. Now things slow down a bit for the summer, especially with UCSB Arts & Lectures on hiatus until late September. But there […]

“We sold the book to Leonardo DiCaprio a long time ago,” Michael Armour says. He’s told the story so many times – lived with it for long enough – the episode’s clearly been stripped of its power; except for the power to make Armour’s stomach sink. “He and the director held onto the book for […]

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 […]

Before we left for Southern Patagonia, our South American travel agent insisted, “The most important thing to remember is you must go with a driver and a guide. The roads are terrible, and each hotel is isolated. There are no gas stations between hotels, and no place to stay if you cannot reach the next […]

On Saturday, Jan. 17, from 3-4 pm, Montecito’s storied Tecolote Bookshop, now entering its 101st year of operation, will host a book launch and reading by local author Fran Davis of her historical fiction novel Red Summer. A tale of love, betrayal, and revenge in the McCarthy era, the novel portrays a small California town […]

In 1970, future Montecitans Tom and Christine Frisina were headed back to the States. Both in their twenties, the young marrieds had spent two years in Chuo-Rinkan,Japan –Tom working in Naval Intelligence with a top-secret cryptographic clearance, Christina finding a career with a Tokyo agency as a top model. Their respective endeavors in Japan may […]

Once upon a time, an English lad named John Holman was sojourning in Australia some 10,000 miles away from his home village of West Grinstead in the U.K. Searching for himself, really, John had incautiously entered a passageway provided by his family’s wartime past.  At Tecolote Book Shop this coming Saturday, November 8, from 3 […]

Jeff Harding criticizes the college educated youth that are gravitating to Socialism with puerile augments such as “Capitalism has provided the greatest prosperity ever.” This is simply not true; it has provided the greatest wealth inequality in history and left our environment shattered. Science has progressed in the last 200 years, and this provided the […]

Tecolote Bookshop? Our flagstone-wrapped salon in the Upper Village? This year the place turned 100. Yeah, as in “years old.” This means [holds fingers aloft like a savant and moves them algebraically] … Tecolote Bookshop opened in 1925. There’s more.  “My mother would drop me off at Cold Spring Elementary School every morning and I […]

Carpinteria photographer Christie Jenkins launched her new polo men’s calendar with a bijou bash at Tecolote, the bustling bibliophile bastion in the upper village. Polo: Man & Horse 2025 features 44 lavish shots of players in the barns with their favorite horses. The calendar benefits 16 equine charities across America, with the players choosing the […]

This political season is sufficiently fraught that your fraidy-cat columnist is going to steer well clear of the melee and write about something we can all agree on. I’m talking of course about the inarguable virtues of Communism. Ha Ha Ha. Kidding.  As has been lightly touched upon in endless cocktail party conversations (and more […]

Writer and comedian Steve Martin turned up at Tecolote, the bijou bibliophile bastion in the upper village, when prolific Montecito author Steven Gilbar launched his latest tome Montecito Noir: True Tales of Murder & Mayhem in Paradise. Gilbar has lived in our rarefied enclave for 40 years and has written myriad works over four decades.

Yes, there are people in the area you are more likely to have heard of than to have actually met. Jeff Bridges. Carol Burnett. Beloved local mononyms Ellen, Oprah, and Harry. Steven Gilbar is in this category, but with a caveat. The name rings a deafening bell, but where the hell have you heard it? […]

Celebrated advocate of the profound healing properties of writing, Dr. Diana Raab will be discussing and signing her book Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors at Tecolote Bookshop in Montecito’s Upper Village, and at Summerland’s enchanting and indescribable Sacred Space. “Hummingbird coincides with my 70th birthday, a time when many of us intuitively reflect on our […]

Artist Symeon Shimin’s name may not be a household word, but his most famous work might be one of the better-known images in American history: the original poster for Gone with the Wind. But Shimin, who died in 1984, not only painted such promotional images for Hollywood films but was also an award-winning illustrator of […]

The veteran experience is also a jumping off point for The Hardest Year: A Love Story in Letters During the Vietnam War, a just-published memoir by author-poet Carole Wagener and her husband, William Wagener, that has been called a personal snapshot of the turbulent ‘60s as framed through the hearts of two souls divided by […]

A bevy of bibliophiles descended on Tecolote, the upper village literary gem, when retired corporate attorney David Gersh hosted a launch bash for his latest art mystery, All’s Fair, featuring Jonathan Benjamin Franklin. It is one of eight books that Montecito resident David, a Harvard Law School graduate, has written. His last tome, published in […]

On a sultry August evening in 2018, Linda Goldbloom was struck in the head by a line drive foul ball at Dodger Stadium. She died four days later. Seated next to her husband Erwin in the loge section of the storied ball field some 200 feet behind and above home plate, she never saw it […]