Celebrating Local Life and Culture
Happy American Craft Beer Week! Santa Barbara is privileged to have several craft breweries to help us wet our whistles, and we celebrated a few of our favorite brewmasters and local breweries with our Cheers to Beer! video, with interviews from Pete Johnson of The Brewhouse and A.J. Stoll of Figueroa Mountain Brewing. Keep your eye out around town for special beer events and tastings, talks with brew masters and connoisseurs, and discounts on hoppy goodness.
-The SEASONS team
Check out our new video focusing on Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone:
Santa Barbara’s unique arts, business and industrial district—The Funk Zone— supports a wonderful mix of creative souls and creative uses. Listen closely and you’ll hear the sounds of change in this beloved area, a funky mix of creative and quirky that resides between State and Garden Streets from Montecito Street to Cabrillo Boulevard. Santa Barbara SEASONS presents a view of the Funk Zone’s past and present, narrated by Nathan Vonk.
March 9, 5-9 p.m. Santa Barbara Maritime Museum Annual Fundraiser
Come support our Maritime Museum while enjoying great wines, beers, spirits, and food with this year’s theme of “Harbor Treasures and Tastings”. This event will take place at SBMM.
SEASONS Magazine Publisher Greg Corso and Editor Leslie Dinaberg will be reached on TVSB’s Creative Community Television Show, hosted by David Starkey. You can watch the video here:
Creative Community: Leslie Dinaberg & Greg Corso, SB Seasons Magazine from TV Santa Barbara on Vimeo.
Or watch the show live on TVSB Channel 71 the following dates and times:
3/1/2013 at 11:30 PM
3/2/2013 at 1:30 PM
3/3/2013 at 4:30 PM
3/4/2013 at 2:00 AM
3/4/2013 at 9:30 AM
3/4/2013 at 4:30 PM
3/5/2013 at 11:30 AM
3/6/2013 at 6:30 AM
3/6/2013 at 4:30 PM
3/6/2013 at 6:30 PM
3/7/2013 at 6:00 AM
3/7/2013 at 9:30 AM
DanceWORKS Santa Barbara
Feb 2013
How much fun is that? Do you see some local faces in there? You’ll see them on stage this weekend as well. For more information click here.
The holiday season is always a favorite time to gather with friends and family, thus we offer a special toast to Santa Barbara County’s exploding craft-beer movement with Cheers to Beer! in the winter issue of Santa Barbara SEASONS. After personally sampling several flights while researching and filming our Cheers to Beer! video (online at www.sbseasons.com/blog) with local brewers—hey, it’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it—I can attest to the fact that the local suds scene offers something to savor for every palate and every kind of tasting experience. —Leslie Dinaberg, Editor
The small town of Isla Vista is a unique community inhabited mostly by college students. Although the majority of its inhabitants are young, many of its buildings have been there for decades. One of the most well known streets in Isla Vista, Del Playa, is home to some of the oldest and largest homes in the small beach town. Many of these homes were built at the edge of cliffs, and due to powerful wave impact over the years, the cliffs are beginning to erode, leaving many home foundations exposed. Because of the impending danger that this cliff erosion presents, many oceanside properties in Isla Vista will eventually be torn down. The notion of tearing down these antique treasures is very unsettling for those who appreciate the beauty of the original designs and foundations of the vintage homes.
“Instead of chopping the houses and destroying them, it’s important to keep the footprint and also the design that’s in them,” says architect Angelica Hogarth.
One very unique property is a house on the 65 block of Del Playa. Known as the “Tiki House” to some Isla Vista residents, the house was built in 1905 and is over 100 years old. In order to preserve it, the owners hired Hogarth & Associates Architects to move the whole house 35 feet back from the cliffs, hoping to preserve the original property for another 70 years.
Of course, the task of moving an entire house is daunting and takes time; Hogarth & Associates Architects has been planning this move since 2006 and was recently granted a permit from the county to do so. The whole process of moving the house takes about four months—the house will be ready to rent out again in September, just in time for the new school year.
“The house itself is now saved from 1905, it’s over 100 years old, and nothing’s going to the dump. Everything is being recycled, the whole house,” says architect Donald Hogarth. Watch our video of this remarkable house move here.
—Katana Dumount
The clinking of glasses, the swirling of wine, the breathing in of delectable aromas, smiles and opinions shared among friends and strangers. That’s the tasting room experience thousands of people enjoy in Santa Barbara County each year. And basic to the beginner and the connoisseur, every oenophile knows that how wine tastes is a reflection not only of the winemaker’s skill and style, but also of how and where the grapes were produced. Santa Barbara SEASONS takes you behind-the-scenes of our summer feature, talking with veteran winemakers Steve Beckmen (Beckmen Vineyards) and Bob Lindquist (Qupé) about why they choose to follow biodynamic farming practices in their vineyards.
An intimate installation opening and concert at The Santa Barbara Botanic Gardens is sure to provide a thrilling evening for all attendees on June 15. This opening will feature 10 original stained glass-on-glass works created by the award-winning Santa Cruz-based artist Kathleen Crocetti paired with the Rose & the Nightingale quartet of vocalists and instrumentalists.
Crocetti’s installations combine art and community building to distill complex social issues into visual metaphors. Her process allows individuals to participate in the creation of art on a small scale. Crocetti has received several prestigious awards, including the 2010 Gail Rich Award from the Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County and the 2011 California Art Educator of the Year by the California Arts Education Association. Three of her works will be greater than 10 feet across and the theme of all the pieces are a mix of California landscapes and close-up views of California native plants–a theme in harmony with the Botanic Garden’s native plant mission.
The opening of the installation, paired with Rose & the Nightingale will make 
for an unforgettable event, as the quartet will play their unique and genre-defying music full of melody, harmony and energetic expression. Their program, “Spirit of the Garden,” blurs the boundaries of world music, folk, art song, and jazz improvisation. The program integrates poetry about gardens with the nexus of spirituality and nature. This concert marks the return of live music at the Garden for the first time in 12 years.
Attendees will be able to meet all the artists, enjoy a special preview of the artwork, as well as dine and listen to music in the Meadow in the soft evening sun. Attendees will also enjoy plentiful hors d’ouerves and wine–just be sure to purchase tickets soon, as space is limited to 80 people for this exclusive performance!
Tickets can be purchased here or by calling 805/963-0408
–Colleen Lai
Among the many iconic figures featured in the special tenth anniversary spring issue of Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine are members of the Oak Group, a pivotal group of plein air painters who generously give their talents to help preserve Santa Barbara’s precious open space.
Take a look at our web exclusive video for a very special portrait of the Oak Group.
Santa Barbara SEASONS takes a look at the history of the Oak Group painters and their quest to preserve open space in Santa Barbara.
