Tag archives: covid
It seems apropos to be writing about one of my newfound loves, pottery, on the 30-year anniversary of the movie Ghost, in which a clay-splattered Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze share the pottery wheel in one of cinema’s most famous romantic scenes. As inspiring as that movie scene was, after months practicing how to “throw […]
Remember the movie Home Alone? It’s a fantasy, a comedy, and a horror film wrapped in one. The parents leave for a family vacation and amidst the chaos of preparing to leave, they forget the most important thing… their son. So the kid gets left home alone with no grown-up in charge, no one to […]
My wife and I have significant comorbidity issues that would be extremely dangerous were we to contract COVID-19. Many of us have been self-quarantined since mid-February with no end in sight. Why are we here? California started way behind New York in experiencing large pandemic infections, only to pass it. Why are we here? Santa […]
The Montecito Country Mart (MCM), located at 1016 Coast Village Road, is home to 21 boutique shops anchored by the Vons grocery store and Union Bank. MCM owner Jim Rosenfield acquired the mall in 2010, reconstructed its original 1960s façade and added outdoor patios to make it an upscale Montecito shopping destination. “I am so […]
In a video clip released July 27, former First District Supervisorial candidate Laura Capps officially announced her re-election campaign for the Santa Barbara Board of Education. In her case, “re-election” is somewhat of a misnomer, as Capps is the first to point out. “We got two new Board members in 2018, but the three of […]
After moving north to Montecito from Long Beach 10 years ago so that his family could be closer to the mountains and the sea at the same time, Tim Sulger began hiking the local canyons above his home near Westmont College. A decade into what has become a near daily routine, the daytime options trader […]
Planning for future events in the face of the pandemic continues to be a major challenge for all arts organizations. Some have chosen to sit out the upcoming 2020-21 season (among them Camerata Pacifica) while others are cautiously rejiggering their bookings in hopes of being able to stage socially distanced performances after the first of […]
Uneasy about dining outdoors in public? Bring the chef to your home for an intimate social distance gathering with loved ones On a recent sunny afternoon, Chas Escalante, SB Event Co.’s co-founder and chef, takes a tape measure in hand to assess spacing for a backyard barbecue at a home perched atop the Riviera. Just […]
In the film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, the candy mastermind’s base of operations first appears as a nondescript, smoke-stacked factory with no obvious hints outside as to what goes on inside. But something does; and passersby want to know what. Carpinteria’s Airplant Alchemy is like that. Owned and operated by Brian Kollenborn, a […]
The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum, which remains closed to in-person visits due to COVID-19, offers an online exhibition, “Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition,” which reflects on the perennial tensions between the material and the spiritual in human life and in society, through August 15 at westmont.edu/museum/matter-spirit. The exhibition is a product of a gathering in […]
Jason Tavarez joined the Westmont community as director of institutional resilience in February 2020 and almost immediately began working to protect the college from the dangers of COVID-19. “My biggest concern has been keeping the coronavirus off our campus and doing everything we can, as a community, to keep our remaining students and employees safe […]
When I was younger, I dreaded my parents’ weekend declaration of an impending family walk. I would plead to ride my bike alongside them; to run, skip, cartwheel, anything but walk. We would (slowly) stroll along the dirt path at the nearby Ennisbrook trail and my eyes would meander towards trees that needed climbing, streams […]
Popular Santa Barbara eatery Mesa Burger has made its long-awaited debut on Coast Village Road, officially opening for business on Tuesday, July 21. “It’s been a long time coming,” said owner Chris Chiarappa when we stopped by the restaurant a few weeks before the opening, as Chiarappa was busy building a parklet to accommodate social […]
Guy Hamilton and his wife, author Cynthia Hamilton, have lived in Summerland for 33 years. He wouldn’t live anywhere else. Guy recently reached out reminding me that he owned Chanticleer (now the site of Lucky’s) back in the late 1970s-early ‘80s and suggested he could offer a “little different perspective on things.” “Wouldn’t it nice […]
These days, Geoff Green‘s bed is more than just a place to sleep. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s now his office. Since he also sleeps there, he spends about 20 hours a day in his bedroom, exiting the cave only to eat or spend time with his family. His life is consumed by not only […]
WOW! It’s yet another week of rising COVID numbers as the country lurches forward and backward without any Federal leadership. This limbo period feels like it may never end. Well, in the dynamic context of conflicting realities of life and death, of abundance and growing homelessness, I’m writing today about living a meaningful life. Possibly […]
Despite complications from COVID-19, Personal Stories, Center Stage Theater’s popular series that features local authors and actors performing true first-person stories drawn from their own lives never actually went on hiatus. Sure, the PS performances were put on hold, but auditions and coaching continued in hopes that the theater would soon be reopening post-pandemic. Now […]
A baseball-themed double-header screens next in the UCSB Arts & Lectures free Summer Cinema series dubbed “Game On! Grit, Grace & Glory – Movies Under the Stars in Your Cars,” on Wednesday, July 29, at the West Wind Drive-In. At 8:30 pm, you can slide on down in your car’s front seat or folding chair […]
In other SBIFF-related news, psychological thriller The Night has received a license for theatrical release in Iran, serving as a historic benchmark for the country’s filmmaking community as it is the first U.S.-produced film to receive such permission since the revolution more than 40 years ago. Why that matters in our little berg is that […]
Critics have been falling all over themselves to praise Palm Springs, the new ambitious yet taut genre-scrambling sci-fi/existential/rom-com starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti that made its debut on Hulu on July 10. As the film buffs have suggested, the movie that employs an infinite time loop as its central conceit is much more than […]
