Deck the Hills with Vows of Dali Another Not-at-all-Surreal Gift-Giving Compass

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 by untold eons of erosion – should always be a thrilling exercise. We impart to those we love objects that deliberately speak that love, whether in a whisper or a shout. And there are as many varieties of gift as there are shadings of love. You heard it here first. We hope.

In the Santa Ynez Valley, the Mayberry-like town of Los Olivos seems to exist outside of space and time. Into that ecosystem saunters LOU Los Olivos owner Leanna Drammer. In 2009, she created Downtown L.A. Fashion Week and has a global reputation for blue-chip event production around such trifles as the Oscars, Emmys, and Grammys. Her eye, taste, and acumen are matched only by her fashion intuitions. To her impeccably appointed Los Olivos shop she has now added a gorgeous and inviting online experience (www.loulosolivos.com) that features the warmth and ease of a brick and mortar. Shopping in pajamas is invited. Even suggested.

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Mary Beth Larkin’s Santa Ynez boutique – (IN)LARKIN – doesn’t want you to have to make that Faustian choice between glamour and comfort. We’ve all (or most of us) had the experience of wearing a knockout ensemble so closely-tailored you dare not sit down or, like, breathe? Larkin’s training at NYC’s Fashion institute of Technology – and immediate post-grad decade with Giorgio Armani – led her to develop what she calls “athglamour” – an uptown offshoot of the “athleisure” movement that happily married comfort and radiant style. Larkin’s shop in Santa Ynez, and her online presence at https://inlarkin.com, are all about you stunning the paparazzi, feeling amazing, and breathing easy. 

ZFolio parlays the Czech Republic’s 700-year-old glass-making mastery into jewelry and art you can both cherish and wield. When in 2003 Zdena Jiroutova delivered a suitcase full of decorative crystals to a Nevada City Christmas festival, the response to the glittering glassware was such that it gave her the epiphany that grew into ZFolio. Insanely gorgeous and unique jewelry, soul-penetrating glass art you can stare straight into – ZFolio’s spaces in Solvang and Monterey simply astonish. Glass is an amorphous solid not yet completely understood by science. Fortunately, ZFolio’s offerings exemplify a beauty that surpasses understanding. So relax. www.zfolio.com

The Fabric Merchant is a business whose name needn’t be puzzled over. Irene Salas came all the way out from Santa Fe (and places more unimaginably distant) to display her wares in the heart of SYV. Salas’ 30 years of international travel in search of couture fabrics, textiles, and home furnishings will wow you. To those entranced by the endlessly varied look, feel, and indescribable texture of fabrics from all over the Earth, Irene is combination globetrotting expert and textile genie. She has spent decades plumbing the global depths of all the color and tactile beauty this world has to offer. For you! 2920 Grand Ave, Los Olivos

Solvang’s The Winston sumptuously answers the longstanding rhetorical question: “Isn’t there a fine hotel experience that allows me to check myself in and relax without having to interact with the frightfully chatty front desk?” We’ve found that the best way to help our guests get the most out of their trip is to simply get out of their way. How does that sound?“Check-in” is a private access code that lets you directly into your room, the dreaded, publicly penetrable “hotel bar” is here a carefully stocked honor bar for guests-only, and the environs feature sound-dampening gravel. Add to that a spirit-lifting color palette and embraceable décor, and you’ll agree The Winston has earned its definite article. www.thewinstonsolvang.com

Italian Muffins is not exactly the business you think it is; it’s better. A group of daydreaming entrepreneur/foodies who craved both pizza and muffins spent a lot of time in a test kitchen (poor dears) combining ingredients in search of what they would come to call an Italian Muffin. When they dialed this in it must’ve been a very loud Eureka moment. Margherita? Sausage? Hawaiian? Pepperoni? Yes, these are muffins, folks. And if you can eat just one you may be superhuman. Send a gift box of these things to someone you adore. Contrary to the Beatles tune, you can buy love. www.italianmuffins.com

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Santa Barbara Travel harkens to a time when travel arrangements were excitedly conversed about with a charming and experienced global pilgrim – someone who had not only seen it all; someone who knew your loves and limits and could advise on how best to optimize your own life-changing explorations. Yes, we’re talking about that delicately lamplit time before robots, algorithms, and inhuman murmuring electronica. Founded by a certain Bertie de L’Arbre in 1947 following his service with the OSS (precursor to the CIA), SB Travel remains a family affair, and an experiential souvenir from a time when the world was a cozy, endless map you sometimes had to fold. www.sbtravel.com

Latitudes Photographic Art brings the world to you – the world of “natural beauty” that those two words are rarely sufficient to describe. Stephanie Hogue and Steve Munch are the sort of reverent master photographers you’ll see gliding silently in kayaks through tall marsh grasses, stalking the perfectly singular photograph. These are arrayed in immersive walk-in galleries located in Ventura and – yes – Poipu, Kauai. If you adore photographs of office equipment and dogs catching frisbees, Latitudes will displease you. Hogue and Munch’s galleries, like the artists themselves, are utterly devoted to this nutty, inexplicably gorgeous wet rock we call home. Latitudes does Earth and nature lovers a service. https://latitudesgallery.com

Ojai’s Jes MaHarry is a jeweler whose creations are intentional infusions of beauty into a world that will take all the beauty it can get. Jes’ love of Life, animals, and the environment can be seen in every lovingly hewn cuff, ring, and necklace this singular artist produces. Jes and her metalsmith/furniture designer husband Patrick met in art school and landed on a ranch in Ojai – whose otherworldly vibe is famously both artisanal and spiritual. Jes MaHarry’s work shines with Ojai’s frank vibratory essence. Her Sun Horse Cuff (for instance) looks almost to have emerged from the Earth. This is “jewelry” for the unsung tastemaker in your life. https://jesmaharry.com

An Easy Pass for Gifts

What can the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History possibly have to do with gift-giving? If a baby woolly mammoth in the living room seems a bit much, how about giving your favorite Euell Gibbons fan a season pass to Santa Barbara’s jewel in the crown of eco-history? The beloved and entrancing exhibits here are matched by the grounds that surround the place. Walk out the SBMNH’s back door and you will forget where you are. www.sbnature.org

UCSB’s Arts & Lectures could be called a misnomer. Yes, the renowned research university has a right brain mission to bring the world’s endlessly kaleidoscopic personae to your hometown. Yes, these often take the form of art and… lectures? Having said that, UCSB’s beloved A&L has been absolutely blowing minds since 1959. Their published seasonal roster of visiting emissaries from the vivid outer orbits of performance and idea-sharing is a much-anticipated menu of delights. Gift your jitterbugging, world-loving friend some A&L tix this season. Knowledge is a bottomless well of delight. https://artsandlectures.ucsb.edu

Ensemble Theatre Company of Santa Barbara (ETC) is the American Riviera’s only Equity theater company. This unbelievably cool theater company produces five plays a year and performs them in the unspeakably sweet New Vic Theatre. Just sitting in this gorgeous hometown performance space feels like cozying into your favorite lamplit corner. Since 1978, the acting is professional and imagination-stirring, the sets are stunning, and the “house” is a dream before the curtain even rises. Gift some season tickets to your most fervent thespian pal and bask in the warmth of their gratitude. https://etcsb.org

MOXI (full official title being The Wolf Museum of Exploration + Innovation)is, for one thing, the first LEED Gold certified museum in Santa Barbara County. Which fits the place’s science mission like a glove. The MOXI is a hands-on science experience that gets kids out of the classroom and into the macabre and beguiling world of – yes – science. Exhibit-wise, the laying on of hands is part of the MOXI’s raison d’être. Why? Because while our crazily mechanistic world is a delight to read about, getting your hands on the Wonder is a form of enlightenment. There is a deeply curious science nerd in your life who would love season tickets to this amazing journey. Surprise them this year. Some gifts can be a fork in the road. Looking for another surprise? Just wait until the next section. https://MOXI.org

Sock Skating is Hard Science. Just ask the MOXI.

Santa Barbara’s MOXI is a renowned science center where discoveries are made every day. Discoverers are made there, too. Science is humankind’s attempt to get to the bottom of a resounding mystery. “How does the world work?” These questions are endlessly deep and intriguing. The effort to answer these questions can be frightfully bone dry. The heroic pursuit of scientific truth is characterized by lots of scribbled mathematical gibberish on blackboards and purloined hotel stationery. Which brings us back to the MOXI. 

Is the MOXI the kind of science center that features smocked men and women silently staring at bubbling beakers and computer screens, their arms slack or draped into pen-filled pockets? No. It is the kind of science center where future scientists are encouraged to slide around in their socks laughing uncontrollably, arms madly windmilling for balance. At the MOXI, science is something you do; the deep wonders of the world presented as an interactive funhouse. And so we come to one of the MOXI’s newest… um… exhibits? The rooftop Sock Skating Rink. Kaia Joye Wesolowski – MOXI’s Director of Learning Experiences – attempts to explain. 

“The sock skating rink is built out of artificial ice tiles that have a real-ice feel, giving visitors a chance to explore to slips, sliding, and gliding. The slippery polymer tiles have less friction, or resistance, than a normal floor, and we have loved watching visitors go from taking tentative steps to slowly building the confidence to slipping, gliding, and twirling. The rink’s surface provides a safe place for kids to take risks and explore friction through play – and occasionally take a splat. It’s slippery!” MOXI colleague Angie Bertucci weighs in. “The tile material is designed to mimic ice and could be used with real ice skates,” she says. (In fact, hockey teams have used variants of MOXI’s ice tiles to train their players.) “It has about 10-15 percent less friction than traditional ice. The rink is located outdoors on MOXI’s rooftop, in the Levinson Family Sky Garden.” And horseplay? “We don’t allow bare feet on the rink, or any rough play,” Bertucci inveighs with a grin. “That includes knee or belly glides.” Fair enough! The MOXI’s rooftop Sock Skating Rink has a view of the Pacific that may anyway cause even more goggle-eyed slipping and sliding. 

“This is our first year with the sock skating rink,” Bertucci says. “And we will be making it an annual feature. [The museum purchased the installation so that they can bring some sock-filled fun every winter.] It will be open through January 7, and we do have a few special events already planned around it; including an adult happy hour on December 15, extended hours on December 16-17 when the museum will stay open until 7 pm, and New Year’s Eve hours on December 31, from 9:30 pm – 12:30 am.” Kaia Joye Wesolowski has seen the young experimenters dabbling in materials science. “We’ve been seeing lots of sock experimenting – which material slides the best? Cotton? Wool? Synthetic blend? What happens if you turn your socks inside out?”

This is how science is done, people. Stop in and learn a bit about friction and mild, indecorous falling. If you have the MOXI moxie.

‘Tis some season or other. Remember – whether we’re talking about a lovely sun-bleached stick found at the beach, or an outlandish Gucci ashtray (do they make those?), it is better by far to give than receive. With any luck your friends will see it the same way. 

If you need a little more help on what to look for this season, scan this QR code for more gift ideas!