During the Vietnam War, American soldiers used more than 200,000 Zippo lighters. But they weren’t just for lighting smokes. As soldiers began etching designs and words on their Zippos, the shiny silver lighters became canvases for self-expression and very personal symbols of identity in a situation where individualism and creativity were discouraged.
“A hip, hop, the hippie, the hippie to the hip hip hop you don’t stop.” Who knew that those goofy lyrics-the opening verse to the 1979 hit song “Rapper’s Delight”-would turn out to be so prophetic? In the 28 years since Sugarhill Gang dropped one of the first rap songs, the hip-hop movement has, as the song predicted, not stopped. Since then, the song has brought in billions of dollars a year and shaped popular culture from Tokyo to Tehran.
Tuesday’s testimony of Colby Frazier, Starshine Roshell, and Melissa Evans also included crucial arguments.
Sarah Sinclair, Tom Schultz, Barney McManigal, and Anna Davison take center stage.
Food, water, and shelter might be the top triumvirate of human needs, but it’s the urge to relieve oneself that requires the most immediate attention every morning, noon, and night. So when the right to pee gets privatized and priced-as is the premise of this happily wacky, intelligently humorous, and satirically self-referential musical-people get pissed, and revolution isn’t far away.
A chunky, undressed Elvis impersonator in a man-bra and lady’s britches. That’s the symbolic soul of a month-long exhibit of “new and used” photographs by Santa Barbara native Matt Straka at Samy’s Camera on Chapala Street ’til October.
Deryk Schlessinger is still serving in Afghanistan, but the military won’t comment on whether he was reprimanded for an objectionable MySpace page.
Isn’t he lovely? A very spirited and skillful Stevie Wonder rocked Santa Barbara on Tuesday, August 28.
It’s a late summer tradition at El Encanto: watching the afternoon fog rolling in, enveloping the waterfront, and draping the Mesa in wet lace on its misty, streetlight-blurring crawl through Santa Barbara toward the spires of St. Anthony’s. For the past 90 or so years, that’s been the highlight of many a day for both tourists, who’d stay at the charming Riviera resort, and locals, who’d frequent the popular bar and restaurant for drinks and dining.
Call it the Santa Barbara naturalist’s creation story: In the beginning, everything is a bush. On the first day, we discover some bushes are different than others. On the second day, we learn which is really a bush, which is a flower, and which is a tree. On the third day, we can name a plant or two or five or dozens. On the fourth day, we start to understand the role of each plant in the ecosystem. On the fifth day, we realize these bushes may also be useful to humans, specifically those who lived here centuries before us. On the sixth day, we come to cherish, respect, and protect the plants that surround us. And on the seventh day, we finally get our bible.
