Showing 28 results for

Sandy Courts & Seaside Games: The East Beach Volleyball Scene

I’m a beach volleyball enthusiast. A volley-ho, if you will. I’ll play with just about anybody, nearly any time, any day of the week. You can call me a beach bum, if you like, but lying out in the sun isn’t the point. It’s about the game. The sport. The lifestyle.

Volleyball by the Sea

In an era when more than half of all marriages end in divorce, everyone knows it’s hard to make relationships last. But the rate at which the top men’s beach volleyball teams broke up last off-season made even those notably precarious Hollywood hook-ups look like life-long commitments by comparison.

Blue & Green Guide 2006

Our Annual Blue & Green Guide
In one of our region’s oddest years of weather ever, this year’s cold, wet winter slipped into the June gloom we all know before we even entered May. But sunshine actually broke through for a few hours last week, offering us a glimpse of a hopefully bright summer to come. So it’s with perfect timing-fingers crossed-that we unveil our annual Blue & Green Guide to the great outdoors.

Spiritual Football

Twenty-seven years since the removal of the notorious dictator Idi Amin, Uganda is still struggling. Refugee camps dot the northern portion of an east African nation ravaged by AIDS.

How to Stop Fighting

In October of last year, I was reading The Santa Barbara Independent when my eye caught an advertisement for a free kickboxing class at a martial arts center in town. I had recently returned to the States from a stint as a professional modern dancer in London and was looking for a way to stay in shape while I plotted my next move. It was a time of upheaval: I had ended a six-year relationship and returned to my hometown to be close to my father who is facing cancer. In retrospect I wonder why I even made the call.

The Black Knight of Surfing

Miki Dora Stars in the Eighth Annual Digital Days Festival

Late surfing legend Miki Dora had an article published (post mortem, I believe) in The Surfer’s Journal titled “The Aquatic Ape,” which inspired third-generation filmmaker Wes Brown (grandson of Gaviota’s Bruce Brown, who made a little film called Endless Summer) to craft a mini-movie called Chasing Dora. The film follows Dora’s dream of a contest devoid of judges, wetsuits, or sponsors, to be held in eight-foot Jeffrey’s Bay in South Africa on handmade, natural boards.

Kick out the Jam

S.B. Chapter Underneath a beautiful sliver moon and in between rain clouds, the newest old American pastime officially arrived in Santa Barbara two Thursday nights ago.

Dancing on the Line

NCAA Madness & Hope in Las Vegas

This story has nothing to do with fear and loathing and everything to do with hope. This is a tale about heavenly light in the dark depths of a starless night, glimmers of triumph in the face of certain soul-snapping failure, and rising from the ashes of financial destruction to cover a nine-point spread in double-overtime. It’s about booze-soaked, cigarette-stained faith in the underdog, about risk and reward and having irrational confidence in the latter.

Foreign Exchange

With the UCSB’s men’s Â-tennis team looking to extend its home winning streak to five earlier this month, the Gauchos’ co-captain Elad Stern did his best Boris Becker imitation. But substituting for a flu-stricken Nick Brotman at the No. 1 singles slot, the Israeli junior channeled the brattier side of the former German star. Stern scolded himself in his native language (Hebrew in this case), punctuating key mistakes with clenched fists of anger on a Sunday afternoon where both he and the Gauchos would go down in defeat against Georgia State. “Usually I don’t get that frustrated,” Stern said, following his 6-2, 6-4 loss.

UCSB Men’s Volleyball

Just as college students seek extra help in the form of study groups or CliffsNotes, Evan Patak has taken a similar approach in his fight to be a healthy contributor to UCSB men’s volleyball. Injuries have been a constant of the 6’7″ junior’s career with the Gauchos. But after a sore right shoulder kept him out of three full matches and a part of another this month, the 2005 All-American sought and found treatment for the ailment with a Montecito massage therapist.

Login

Please note this login is to submit events or press releases. Use this page here to login for your Independent subscription

Not a member? Sign up here.