What was once a weed-grown lot languishing against the northbound side of the 101 at Gutierrez Street is today a quiet oasis of artists’ lofts known as El Zoco. Here, artists live and work close to the heart of the city, creating work that might never have existed in Santa Barbara without such a home.
“C’est mieux de n’en pas parler,” I said to myself the first time I sat on top of Ryan Mountain and tried to put my finger on the exact shade of goodness the Joshua Tree National Park radiates. The expression I came up with-“everything in its place”-was the reason I quickly urged myself (in French, which is naturally the language I use to admonish myself) not to speak it aloud.
UCSB’s defending national soccer champions unveiled their version of David Beckham last Saturday night. Early in their exhibition game against Westmont College, the Gauchos were awarded a free kick about 25 yards out from the goal. Sophomore midfielder Ciaran O’Brien stepped forward and swung his foot into the ball.
SHADOWBOXER: Latin jazz star Luis Mu±oz brings his culturally inspired Costa Rican grooves to SOhO (1221 State Street, Suite 205) in honor of the release of his latest full-length, Of Soul and Shadow. The follow up to 2006’s critically lauded and publicly praised Vida (the album won Mu±oz an ACAM award for Jazz Composer/Producer of the Year), Of Soul and Shadow mixes classical compositions, contemporary jazz, and Costa Rican folklore to create a sound unlike any other.
1) Community Spirit: A little more than a month ago, Heather Mattoon, one of Santa Barbara’s brightest rising artistic stars, came crashing back to earth in a spine-cracking fall from her third-story apartment. Though her fall from grace was only momentary, the repercussions remain-Heather is currently paralyzed from her belly button to her toes.
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Contributor David Obst knows just how to put a cultural leader like Music Academy of the West’s NancyBell Coe in generational context. He has written a book, Too Good to Be Forgotten: Changing America in the ’60s and ’70s, that brings together his experiences as a literary agent for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during and after Watergate with his role in the publication of the Pentagon Papers and his assistance in bringing the My Lai massacre to light.
NY/NJ SNAPSHOTS: Drove west on 78, straight outta Newark to just this side of the Pennsylvania border, and then stopped in historic Clinton, NJ to eat at the Clinton House, est. 1743 (for reference, that’s four decades before Padre Serra set up shop to build the Santa Barbara Mission, with ample help from Chumash slave labor).
City air makes free” was the slogan of medieval serfs, who could escape their enslavement to the great rural landowners by migrating to the city, where such customary obligations did not apply. Out of this early modern political anomaly has risen what this group show terms “the urban myth,” a complex and ever-evolving set of ideas and assumptions about what city life has to offer.
Days four and five of the National Labor Relations Board hearing against the Santa Barbara News-Press rolled along last week, with a few moments of excitement scattered amid a tedious two days of testimony and paper-shuffling. The government called four people to the stand Thursday and Friday, including Melinda Burns-the first of the fired News-Press reporters to testify.
