It’s Fiesta time again in Santa Barbara, and that means the city comes alive with flamenco dancing, mariachi music, and mercados in celebration of its Spanish/Mexican roots. In addition to revisiting history, revelers can participate in one of Santa Barbara’s newer attractions-wine tasting. At the Courthouse Sunken Gardens on Saturday, July 28, from 4-7 p.m., there will be 30 well-known boutique wines to try, along with gourmet food and live music.
1) Music: Hard to classify but easy to love, the Violent Femmes-whose folk-punk sounds bounce from playful to serious-play the Majestic Ventura Theatre on Sunday, July 29.
It’s hard to imagine Southern California’s current culinary landscape without Nancy Silverton. She created La Brea Bakery, which taught us bread could be a thing of wonder and not just Wonder Bread. (In 2001, Silverton and partners Mark Peel and Manfred Krankl sold an 80 percent stake in the bakery to the Irish company IAWS Group for $68.5 million, so she knows how to raise all kinds of dough.)
Pelosi Politics: The biggest ovations at Representative Nancy Pelosi’s fundraiser at Betty Stephens’s place were for Marilyn Horne performing a ditty to the tune of “California, Here I Come,” and for Sarah Weddington, who at the age of 27 was the winning Roe v. Wade lawyer before the Supremes.
Santa Barbara Art Studios hosts an artist’s reception in honor of photographer Jill Richards Proctor on Friday, July 27, from 6-9 p.m. The gallery will exhibit Proctor’s collection, In My Backyard: Bugs, Birds, and Boats through August.
em>Kiss Me, Kate is so full of catchy tunes and witty dialogue that even a mediocre production would be fun. What a joy, then, to arrive at the Solvang Festival Theatre and realize that PCPA has done much better than that. From Michael Jenkinson’s flawless choreography to Misti Bradford’s perfect costuming-a challenge, given the play-within-a-play structure of the show-Kiss Me, Kate is a delightful, if slightly qualified, success.
Since Father Jun-pero Serra brought grapevine cuttings from Mexico to this area in 1782, it’s only fitting that Old Spanish Days makes room for some vino in its Fiesta, or at least a few days prior. On Saturday, July 28, there will be two opportunities to celebrate the grape and its S.B. (and some points north and south) heritage. From 2:30-4 p.m., Elements Restaurant & Bar (129 E. Anapamu St., 884-9218) will conduct a rare and reserve tasting especially matching food with wine and featuring wineries like Ampelos, Brander, Fiddlehead, Ken Brown, Justin, Flying Goat, Beckmen, Foxen, Dierberg, and Ojai.
This year, for the first time in human history, more people will live in urban areas than in rural lands. Though the tipping point will most likely be reached-or perhaps already has been-without fanfare, its significance cannot be overlooked. With this new age comes a whole new set of rules, values, and views that threaten to leave many of our most celebrated traditions behind as we work to reconcile past methods of survival with a less agrarian lifestyle. Here in the United States, with the ever-growing beast of urban sprawl spilling from cities toward the horizon, the rural, agricultural spaces that were the societal backbone of previous generations are fast becoming zigzags of highways connecting suburbs to shopping centers.
Laurence Hauben-who for several years headed the Santa Barbara Certified Farmers Market, and who is Food & Home magazine’s food and wine editor, as well as the leader of Slow Food Santa Barbara-has begun a new business conducting outings centered around eating.
With a luminous palette of dusty purples and translucent blues, Richard Schloss’s New Paintings, currently on exhibit at the Easton Gallery, celebrates the natural beauty surrounding Santa Barbara. The show consists of Schloss’s quintessential moody landscapes, in which the artist captures the glory of the county’s vistas, from the shoreline beside Stearns Wharf to the wine country of Santa Ynez.
