“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” Shakespeare employed that now famous line in his play Romeo and Juliet to imply that the naming of things is irrelevant. The Riviera Ridge School might beg to differ.  The highly-esteemed independent educational institution that serves […]

It couldn’t have been a more purr-fect evening when ASAP, the Animal Shelter Assistance Program, hosted its eighth annual Basil’s Big Bash at the Hilton, with 274 guests helping raise around $100,000 for the 33-year-old feline charity that provides shelter, veterinary care, and adoption facilities for cats in need. The beachside hostelry’s Plaza del Sol […]

The Fund for Santa Barbara handed out checks totaling $330,000 at a Spring Community Awards celebration at the Cabrillo Pavilion. Since its founding 42 years ago, the organization has given away more than $8.5 million to worthy recipients, says Marcos Vargas, executive director. The fund’s major annual money raising event, held since 1994, is its […]

Opera Santa Barbara ended its season in grand style with a lavish production of Verdi’s 1853 classic La Traviata at the Granada, last performed in our Eden by the Beach 11 years ago. Soprano Anya Matanovic was superb as the titular Fallen Woman with her beloved played rousingly by tenor Nathan Granner in the three-act […]

Ensemble Theatre Company has concluded its 42nd season at the New Vic with an absolute cracker! Anthony Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning 1970 play Sleuth, directed by Jenny Sullivan, staged on a magnificent baronial set, is an absolute old-fashioned delight with two perfectly chosen British actors, Daniel Gerroll and Matthew Floyd Miller as the principal characters of […]

As Montecito’s Music Academy of the West celebrates its 75th anniversary, it’s a whole new image for the storied 10-acre Miraflores oceanside campus, I can exclusively reveal. For the past eight months, a team of academy board members, administration, and professional consultants – 21C Media Group from New York and My Brilliant Friend from Los […]

To the charming Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez for A Toast To Home, a fundraiser for PATH – People Assisting the Homeless – which attracted 150 guests and was expected to raise around $60,000 for the 38-year-old charity that has homeless services in more than 150 cities with more than 60 locations. In 2021-22 PATH […]

Racketeers were out in force at La Arcada on State Street when the Santa Barbara School of Squash threw a colorful Viva Las Vegas! bash at the Eleven14 Sports Bar with 100 guests raising more than $50,000. But, laments executive director Robert Graham, it is a squash club without any courts given its regular facility, […]

In one of the funnier moments in the famous 1967 film The Graduate, a friend of Ben’s parents takes him aside to deliver some advice about his future: “I just have one word for you: Plastics.” Back then, of course, plastics was becoming a burgeoning field, as the material seemed to be an incredible scientific […]

Wade Stewart Cowper is a political consultant and Partner at CCA Enterprise. Born in Alaska when his father was Governor, Wade is a 4th generation Santa Barbarian. His significant other, Paula Phan, is a Senior Customer Experience Specialist for Novartis who is originally from Dana Point, California. The couple decided to forgo a traditional wedding […]