21 May 2020
The Montecito Village Grocery Family
Roxy Lawler had already been in the grocery business for nearly 15 years when she and her family took over Montecito Village Grocery in January 2017. But in the last three years alone, the store has experienced not one but two once-in-a-lifetime (or perhaps once-per-millennium) disasters: the devastating January 9, 2018 debris flows and this […]
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Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation Pivots
In a time when many nonprofit organizations are struggling to raise their usual funds, Teddy Bear Cancer Foundation, which assists and supports families dealing with childhood cancer along the Central Coast, has pivoted to raise much needed funds for their families. TBCF has announced a new song, “Stronger Than You Know,” is available for purchase […]
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Coast & Olive Coming Soon!
If you’ve walked along Coast Village Road in the past weeks, you may have stopped to peruse the menu posted at the Montecito Inn; the hotel’s new restaurant, Coast & Olive, is set to open for takeout orders in the coming weeks. The eatery, which is run and managed by the Copus family, the owners […]
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County Releases Reopening Playbook
Last week, the County of Santa Barbara published a local supplement to the State’s guidelines for reopening various industry sectors following over two months of stay-at-home orders. The Reopening in a Safe Environment Guide, aka RISE Guide, is a roadmap that describes when and how the County can reopen businesses safely. The Guide, which is […]
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Cava Reopens on Coast Village Road
Just in time to celebrate the eatery’s 23rd anniversary on Coast Village Road, Cava owner Carlos Lopez-Hollis says he is thrilled to be reopening his doors after a two-month pandemic-related hiatus. The restaurant opened Wednesday, May 20, and is open noon to 8 pm, seven days a week for take-out and curbside pickup. “It feels […]
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SEL Out Online
SBCC School of Extended Learning’s summer session got underway earlier this week, but it’s never too late to join the ongoing classes, particularly now that all of their offerings are online. Among the selections in the Spirituality, Self-Management and Psychology sections are beginning and intermediate sections of “Nature and Self-Healing,” where students can explore the […]
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Socially Distant Ecstatic Dancing
Also taking to the great outdoors this week is the Santa Barbara Ecstatic Dance Co-op, which features music programmed by members of the community who are encouraged to express themselves through their choices of songs, rhythms, and beats. Its last dance took place at Divinitree Yoga studio the first Friday in March before bowing to […]
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Qigong Gets Back to the Garden
Carpinteria Qigong/tai chi teacher Jessica Kolbe was one of the last to shut down in personal classes, only giving up her gatherings that were fighting the spread of COVID-19 through social distancing on Carpinteria State Beach when the statewide stay-at-home orders became official in mid-March. She’s been offering online classes ever since, with the more […]
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Taken Too Soon
My condolences to Santa Barbara rocker Dave Crosby whose son, Beckett Cypher, 21, has died after struggling with opioid addiction. The musician, 78, was the sperm donor for singer Melissa Etheridge and former partner, Julie Cypher, and addressed the tragic passing in several short messages on social media, saying that he’d taken an active part […]
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Hard Work Pays Off for Local Scholars
In an otherwise dismal end to the academic year, there’s some late-breaking good news for nearly 2,000 local students heading on to college or graduate-school. On May 15, the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara awarded college scholarships totaling more than $6 million, providing an average $3,357 per recipient. The foundation is the nation’s largest community-based […]
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Getting the Gang Back Together
Montecito actor Christopher Lloyd, Michael J. Fox, and Lea Thompson recited famous lines from the classic Back to the Future franchise in an epic Zoom reunion. Superfan Josh Gad orchestrated the reunion on the latest episode of his YouTube series, Reunited Apart, where he also brought on Montecito writer-director Robert Zemeckis, Elisabeth Shue, singer Huey […]
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Civil Rights Lawsuit Filed on Behalf of Lompoc Federal Prison Inmates
Although it houses just 1,162 people behind bars – not to mention a healthy supply of razor wire – Lompoc Federal Prison already has no less than 900 inmates who have tested positive for COVID-19. That’s not only well more than 70 percent of the prison’s population, it’s also roughly half the number of people […]
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Will Montecito Go Full Speed Ahead with Desalinated Water?
This month, roughly 4,600 households in Montecito and Summerland received a special insert along with their monthly water bill. “WATER RATE UPDATE!” the flyer declared in urgent all caps, adding that the “Montecito Water District has Plans for Delivering a Secure Water Future.” Stating that its customers “want their drinking water to come from local, […]
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Hot List
Despite the doldrums created by the pandemic, Los Angeles billionaire Rick Caruso is smiling after Conde Nast’s Traveler listed his Rosewood Miramar hotel on its 2020 Hot List, one of the hospitality industry’s most esteemed awards that honors the best newly opened and renovated properties around the world. Based on the firsthand experiences and reviews […]
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Ooh, oh, Gimme Shelter
In the pre-pandemic era, last weekend would have marked the Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival’s 60th annual event, a downhome acoustic instrument extravaganza that is rivaled around these parts only by Santa Barbara’s own similarly-themed Fiddle Convention and Festival, which still has high hopes of holding its event in the fall. Instead, Topanga […]
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Kickin’ it with KITP
The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics has streamed more than 30 hours of videos of events by KITP’s visiting scientists since it launched the series of curated talks from its archives in mid-March. New videos are added each Wednesday, with a recent week’s interesting entries including “Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car […]
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Having Hope
Beanie Baby billionaire Ty Warner‘s limited edition multi-colored Hope Bear, which I wrote about in this illustrious organ last month, has been donated by the hundreds to children served by CALM and Storyteller Children’s Center, with 100 per cent of proceeds from sales going to the United Way Worldwide fund. “The world needs hope and […]
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May Day for Lemay
Festival artist Jennifer Lemay, who started street painting with chalk for I Madonnari in the festival’s second year in 1988 and has missed only a handful of I-Mads over the ensuing 32 years, is joining nearly 60 other artists in creating works in her own driveway to celebrate the Memorial Day Weekend event. We caught […]
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Chalk it Up! I Madonnari Street Painting Festival Persists During Pandemic
Street painting artists have been compared to masochists, in that their hobby of drawing with chalk on the sidewalk has become an obsession, back pain and sore knees ignored in a mission that is exhibited annually on the pavement in front of the Santa Barbara’s Old Mission during the I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival […]
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State Street Serenade
For decades State Street has been the hope or bane of Santa Barbara’s existence. Today, the moment of truth has arrived as a groundswell of public opinion favors the Mediterranean town square model: closing State Street to traffic and opening up the street to pedestrians, retail and outdoor dining, in hopes of making the city […]
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