Third-grader Tom Snow came home from school one day with the devastating news that most parents regard as the sum of their deepest fears. “I told my mom that I wanted to play the trumpet.” When the poor woman had regained her composure, she gently but firmly took Tom by the shoulders and aimed him […]
Richard Slater – Englishman, explorer, cultural spelunker, and during a particularly trying economic downturn in his native Liverpool, a bin-man – gathered his strength. New York City had been kind to him but was draining him of precious lucre. He’d spent his time well – hung out with a couple of Dutch tourists (scions of […]
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LONDON (1982) – Richard Slater, anecdotist, adventurer, and future server at San Ysidro Ranch’s legendary Stonehouse Restaurant, hoisted his backpack in a gesture of fortitude. A wall of glass gave onto the gigantic, riveted machine that would presently loft him out of Heathrow Airport and deposit him at JFK in New York City. Slater stared […]
Monty Roberts is the Salinas-bred cowboy who spent years trying to turn the equestrian community from “breaking” horses through violence to instead gaining their confidence through trust and gentility. The story of the owner of the decades-long Flag is Up Farms in Solvang and his ability to train horses through his kinder method isn’t a […]
Santa Barbara and the surrounding areas were rocked last week by a series of four burglaries, including one targeting an estate in our tight-knit community. The break-ins all occurred over the course of a single evening, Wednesday, Jan. 24, according to a statement from Raquel Zick of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office. The modus […]
Happiest Man Alive is a tough claim to quantify – but when they decide to hand out an honorary statuette for the title, Larry Nobles will be a red-carpet nominee. “The way the stars aligned to make all this happen is just unbelievable,” he exults. Nobles and I are sitting at the gorgeous off-hours bar […]
The newest spot in town for a sexy sipper is, actually, a perennial favorite. The Plow & Angel, the famed watering hole at the San Ysidro Ranch that, for decades, has been a classy yet approachable place to sip, unwind and be seen, reopened last month as a Prohibition Era-inspired watering hole. No secret password […]
Sometimes you idly head downtown to hear a public speaker and end up in Tanzania. It happened to Ivan Rasmussen. “I went to my apartment,” Rasmussen recalls of the fever that gripped him following the event. “I took out my pen and writing pad and got started. By midnight I’d essentially organized a civil rights […]
Our group of 10 with morning bleary-eyed faces, meets at the Coast Village Chevron station and trudges down through the newly-rebuilt Butterfly Lane tunnel with its colorful murals. We emerge on the railroad tracks and begin searching from the Bird Refuge to Eucalyptus Lane. As usual, we find only a few people, but there are […]
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Here at the MJ we’ve taken great pains (not literally – this is a self-congratulating figure of speech) to throw light on your seasonal gift-giving panic; to add a spark to this season of beneficence. Gifting anything to a loved one – be it an original Van Gogh or a silken beach stone made lovely […]
After nearly 30 years, the mudslide of 2018 put an end to her elegant Trattoria Mollie on Coast Village Road. She opened a new Mollie’s next to the Granada on State Street, but COVID-19 crushed that endeavor too. Armed conflict broke out in the Tigray region of Ethiopia in 2020 and the country is now […]
Changes to Santa Barbara’s State Street – recently reborn as a cozy, sun-soaked pedestrian promenade – have transformed the palm-lined commercial-and-arts district into an almost park-like destination for calming and convivial holiday shopping, the salt-scented, sparkling beach mere blocks away. Seriously. How do we love State Street over the holidays? Let us count the ways… […]
In a momentous occasion on Tuesday, November 28, Heal the Ocean (HTO) was presented with a check for $500,000 from Senator Monique Limón representing California Senate District 19 and Assemblymember Gregg Hart representing the 37th California Assembly District, to support HTO’s Summerland Oil Mitigation Study (SOMS). The study was proposed and started by Heal the […]
It’s that time of year again. We have communally checked the Large Flightless Bird box and stumbled right over the line into “The Holidays.” Yes, your bone-dry and otherworldly delightfully moist and aromatic Thanksgiving turkey was an absolute hit. Your Aunt Marge’s startling “Pea Mush” was likewise well-received, producing the usual bug-eyed attempts to swallow […]