Social gridlock reigned at the Montecito home of Justine Roddick and Tina Schlieske when the dynamic duo hosted a Coney Island-themed, sold-out bash for 120 guests, raising nearly $200,000 for CADA (Council on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse). The fun fest, entirely underwritten by local real estate magnate Earl Minnis, featured singer-songwriter Patti Smith, 74, dubbed […]

For the 15th year my millinery skills, garnered from attending the Royal Enclosure at Ascot, England, where outrageous hats are de rigueur for ladies attending the centuries’ old races attended by Queen Elizabeth, for more than four decades, were called on by the Santa Barbara Polo Club to judge the annual hat contest during the […]

The party animals were out in force, vaccination passports in hand, when the Santa Barbara Zoo hosted Zoofari Ball XXXV Return to Basecamp, attended by more than 630 supporters and raising nearly $200,000 for the popular menagerie. Guests in their safari gear and Harrison Ford lookalikes joined the party on the hilltop for sunset cocktails, […]

It was a case of High Cs on the high seas when bubbly Condor Express owner Hiroko Benko hosted her fifth annual opera cruise on the popular 75-foot whale watching vessel. Given the pandemic uptick, guest numbers were kept to around 50 instead of the normal 145 for the two-hour maritime recital by soprano Chelsea […]

California’s most expensive residential property, a 22-acre spread known as the Sanctuary at Loon Point, has just surfaced for sale in Carpinteria for a hefty $160 million. The titanic price tag makes it the priciest property in the Golden State, beating out a $135 million retreat up for grabs in Woodside and a $115 million […]

A gleaming red firetruck from the Carpinteria Fire Department stood guard when Teddy Ru, son of former Santa Barbara Polo Club president Wes Ru and his wife, Victoria, celebrated his third birthday. The event also coincided with Firefighter Appreciation Day for the Montecito and Summerland stations, who utilized the sprawling Carpinteria polo fields as staging […]

Santa Barbara Museum of Art is back in business! As the venerable 60,000-square-foot institution, a former Post Office, celebrates its 80th anniversary and its reopening on August 15 after the lengthy pandemic lockdown, not to mention a $50 million, six-year renovation expanding exhibition space enormously making it possible to show more of the 27,000 works […]

Millions of dollars’ worth of exotic horsepower was on display when Lotusland, the 37-acre paradise founded by the late Polish opera singer Ganna Walska, hosted its 26th annual gala, raising nearly $500,000. The botanical bash, co-chaired by interior designer Caroline Thompson and David Jones, chair emerita Belle Hahn, and honorary chair Hania Tallmadge, had a […]

It was a super sunset birthday soirée by degrees when yours truly marked the 18th anniversary of his half-century with a boffo bash at the University Club hosted by Gretchen Lieff and her beau, Miles Hartfeld. Having been scheduled to wing to an old friend Cat Pollon’s home outside Marrakech for the past two years, […]

It was a case of kids helping kids when youngsters from Mountain View Elementary School donated $1,600 – 20 percent of their tickets sales from their annual school fundraiser – to Cold Spring School, which lost two pupils in the January mudslides and is currently trying to raise $485,000 after property tax revenues were impacted […]