Rick Caruso: The Man in the Miramar

JOURNAL

ontecito WINTER 2021

RICK CARUSO: THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

Representing Legacy Properties of Representing Legacy Properties of Montecito & Santa Barbara Montecito & Santa Barbara

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© 2021 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHHS and the BHHS symbol are registered service marks of Columbia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is © 2021 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California (BHHSCP) is aismember franchise system BHH Affiliates LLC. BHHS and the BHHS symbol are registered service marks of Columobtained from various sources and will not be verified Properties by broker or MLS. Buyer advised of to the independently verifyof the accuracy of that information. bia Insurance Company, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including measurements, conditions, and features of property. Information is obtained from various sources and will not be verified by broker or MLS. Buyer is advised to independently verify the accuracy of that information.

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SUZANNEPERKINS.COM +1 805.895.2138 | suzanne.perkins@compass.com | DRE: 01106512 ©2021 Compass is a licensed real estate broker and abides by Equal Housing Opportunity laws. All material presented herein is intended for informational purposes only. Information is compiled from sources deemed reliable but is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, condition, sale, or withdraw without notice. No statement is made as to accuracy of any description. All measurements and square footages are approximate. Exact dimensions can be obtained by retaining the services of an architect or engineer. This is not intended to solicit property already listed.

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JOURNAL

ontecito Volume 14 Issue 2 WINTER | 2021

Editor & CEO Gwyn Lurie gwyn@montecitojournal.net President & COO Tim Buckley tim@montecitojournal.net VP Sales & Marketing Leanne R. Wood leanne@montecitojournal.net Art Director Trent Watanabe Magazine Managing Editor Gina Terlinden Copy Editor Lily Buckley Harbin Photography: Edward Clynes Administration: Christine Merrick Account Managers: Tanis Nelson: tanis@montecitojournal.net Susan Brooks: sue@montecitojournal.net Contributors: Hattie Beresford, James Buckley, Lauren Clark, Les Firestein, Karen Folsom, Emily Heckman, Kelly Mahan Herrick, Kim Reierson, Gabe Saglie, Kevin Scanlon, Katherine Stewart, Sarah Tomlinson, Leslie A. Westbrook, Jeff Wing

Montecito JOURNAL

(glossy edition) is published by Montecito Journal Media Group, LLC. Corporate Offices located at 1206 Coast Village Circle, Suite G Montecito, CA 93108 For distribution, advertising, or other inquiries: (805) 565-1860

“Home is a refuge not only from the world, but a refuge from my worries, my troubles, my concerns.” –M AYA A NGE LO U

L E T U S HE L P YO U F I N D YO U R R E F U G E

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©2021 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties (BHHSCP) is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC. BHH Affiliates LLC and BHHSCP do not guarantee accuracy of all data including meas

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BEHIND EVERY GOOD MAN...

1143 COAST VILLAGE RD SANTA BARBARA, CA 93108 (805)565-1284 DANIELGIBBINGS.COM

Contents The Man in the Miramar

Los Angeles-based developer/hotelier Rick Caruso (well-known in Montecito for the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort) opens up about his dream come true with The Miramar, his philanthropic priorities, his political aspirations, the roots of his deeply held values, and the thing he holds most dear – his family.

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Reel Life

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A Conversation With:

omegrown filmmaker Max Barbakow talks about his H inspiration for his film Palm Springs, what he has up his sleeve for his next cinematic debut, and the influence of Santa Barbara on his burgeoning creative journey.

eteran comedy writer Les Firestein talks to veteran V comedy writer and new Montecito resident Michael Weithorn about the current state of comedy and tragedy.

Upper-End Travel

eticulously run by proprietors François and Francine M Dapremont, Hotel Balmoral is your comfortable yet elegant home away from home in Paris.

California Dreamin’

or more than 100 years, Santa Barbara has beckoned visitors and partF time residents to our shores in search of sun, sand, and the sea. Not much has changed since….

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Speaking Volumes

Academic publishing doyenne Sara Miller McCune takes us on her journey that has made her the powerhouse she is today – socially, politically, and professionally.

Education Innovators

Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy founders Amir Abo-Shaeer and Emily Shaeer take us inside the prestigious world-class high school program that has captured the imagination of students across Santa Barbara County.

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Oldies & Newbies

Longtime go-tos and fresh newcomers on the food, fashion, and home decor fronts.

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Contents

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Creative Forces

A peek through the colorful lens of four local artists.

A team. A family.

An assist with everything that matters.

That’s the Power of WE. Imagine life with a complete

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support system. It’s like an extended family working together and making things easier. Meals, prescriptions, appointments, personalized care, even a hobby or two, all taken care of— with smiles at every turn. Having it all, and an extra hand when you need it.

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The Revival of the Montecito Inn

read through the storied chapters of the iconic Coast Village Road A property and how it’s weathered the many storms of Montecito.

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Fateful Connections

World traveler/photographer Patricia Houghton Clarke focuses her lens on displacement, identity, and the human experience.

Local Treasure Trove

UC Santa Barbara’s Special Research Collection houses a world-class collection of archives including the work of acclaimed journalists and renowned Santa Barbarans Lou Cannon and Annie Bardach, longtime local organizations, and more obscure materials available for research by the worldwide scholarly community.

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Real Estates

From Ojai to Montecito, Santa Barbara to the Santa Ynez Valley, a plethora of dream homes waiting for their forever owners.

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A LUXURY EXPERIENCE THAT EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS “Our success is built on relationships that last over time because of our exceptional service and commitment to our clients’ happiness—the only metric that matters.”- Managing Partner, Dina Landi

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Contributors Sarah Tomlinson – Sarah is a Los Angeles and

Karen Folsom – Karen is a Santa Barbara-based illus-

editor who happily relocated to Santa Barbara from New York City a decade ago. The coauthor of nine nonfiction books, she loves writing about education, health, parenting, and topics related to the environment and social justice. After a long career in book publishing, she’s enjoying writing about this exceptional community for the Montecito Journal. When she’s not typing away on her MacBook, you can find her on the beach or drinking a stellar glass of wine with friends.

trator and commissioned portrait artist. Her work includes several children’s books and children’s promotional material. She creates book and music cover art, posters and murals, and she wrote and illustrated The President’s Pet. Her concept and editorial work has been for clients in entertainment, hospitality, institutions, foundations, and private ventures. She is a member of The Society of Illustrators Los Angeles as well as The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

Kim Reierson – Kim is a California native who re-

Leslie A. Westbrook – Author of the Insiders’

Jeff Wing – Jeff is a besotted typist who finds ev-

turned to Santa Barbara from New York City where she worked as a fashion photographer from 2000 to 2010 and is represented by the Robin Rice Gallery for her fine art work.

She is best known for her photography book Eighteen: A Look At The Culture That Moves Us, which is a visual documentation and an homage to America’s 18-wheeler truck drivers. Her work has been featured on ABC News, CNN, and National Geographic and is exhibited nationally and internationally with clients that include Forbes FYI, Bloomingdale’s, Ralph Lauren, Smithsonian Institute, and Vogue Mexico.

Guide to Santa Barbara, Leslie Westbrook is an award-winning travel journalist who is grateful to return to globetrotting since COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted.

When not researching and reporting, she enjoys listening to jazz, classical music, walking on Padaro Beach, and enjoying the many pleasures of Carpinteria, where she resides. She also assists friends and clients around the world sell fine art, antiques, and collectibles at auction and can be reached via LeslieWestbrook.com or auctionliaison.com.

ery whirling, particulate detail of Life on Earth® emotionally stirring – often to his discredit. He writes the “State Street Scribe” column for the Santa Barbara Sentinel, and hectors a host of other patient word-purveyors. A hesitant speaker of Tarzan-quality Dutch, Jeff venerates Mancini, Nick Laird, Andy Partridge, Marc Chagall, Morricone, Mike Viola, Saul Bellow, Paddy McAloon, Sinatra, local extraterrestrial T.C. Boyle, Thomas McGuane, and the exalting (and churlish) Philip Larkin. To name a few.

Katherine Stewart – Katherine’s work has ap-

James Buckley – Jim founded the Montecito Jour-

Kevin Scanlon – Kevin is an award-winning photog-

peared in The New York Times, NBC, and the Montecito Journal, among others. Her latest book, The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, won the Excellence in Nonfiction Books award from the Religion News Association. When she’s not on deadline, you’ll find her hiking the San Ysidro Trail.

nal in 1995 and covered not only local news and events for nearly 25 years but also wrote a popular real estate column called “Best Bets” for more than a decade. Since selling the MJ, he now serves as MJ’s chief travel correspondent and spends as much time in France as his wife (who is French) will allow. He writes a regular column, mostly political but also on travel, at jimb.substack.com.

rapher. Since 2001, he has shot an impressive array of celebrities, artists, musicians, athletes, everyday people, and business luminaries for editorial, entertainment, and advertising clients. When he doesn’t have a camera hanging from his shoulder, he has his ’63 Fender Jazzmaster or his set of golf clubs to take its place. Kevin splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn.

Les Firestein – Les is a longtime comedy writer who

Edward Clynes – Edward, a Brooks Institute grad-

Lauren Clark – Lauren is a PhD candidate in feminist

Gabe Saglie – Gabe is the wine columnist for the

Kelly Mahan Herrick – Kelly is originally from

Hattie Beresford – Hattie has been writing a

has worked for many TV shows, movies, newspapers, and magazines. Before coming to the Montecito Journal, his most interesting job was as a bouncer for the Ramones. “No Ramones ever died on my watch,” he says, “so I consider that time a success.”

Montecito Journal and has been covering the Santa Barbara County wine and food scene for more than 20 years. His storytelling approach aims at making the culinary industries more accessible to consumers and at highlighting the personalities behind the labels. A former morning weatherman for Santa Barbara’s KEYT-TV, Gabe is also the senior editor for the global travel media company Travelzoo, covering destinations and travel trends as a contributor for network TV stations, radio, and major print publications across the country.

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Emily Heckman – Emily is a freelance writer and

Joshua Tree-based writer/editor who authored the 2015 memoir Good Girl and has ghostwritten or cowritten 20 books. Her personal essays and articles have appeared in publications including Marie Claire, MORE, Publisher’s Weekly, The Boston Globe, and the Los Angeles Times as well as essay collections such as He Never Came Home and Slouching Towards Los Angeles: Living and Writing by Joan Didion’s Light.

uate and local freelance photographer, has been a periodic contributor for the Montecito Journal during the past six years. When not working commercial gigs, his love of the natural world drives him to explore local and faraway hiking trails in search of the next great vista to photograph.

Newbury Park, California, but has called the Santa Barbara area home for 22 years.

A graduate of UC Santa Barbara, she has been reporting on local news and real estate issues for multiple media outlets since 2006.

Kelly is currently a contributing editor for the Montecito Journal’s weekly newspaper as well as a partner with the real estate team at Calcagno & Hamilton, and she is also a director on the board of the Coast Village Association, a community organization whose mission is the advocacy and protection of the business owners and residents .

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studies at UC Santa Barbara, a writer, and a stand-up comedian (yes, really). Recently, she has written news and human interest stories for the Montecito Journal, and her previous work can be found in the Los Angeles Times and The Establishment. When not working on her doctorate or a story, she can be found performing all over California.

local history column for the Montecito Journal for more than a decade. She has written two Noticias and coedited My Santa Barbara Scrap Book, the memoir of local artist Elizabeth Eaton Burton, for the Santa Barbara Historical Museum. Her book, The Way It Was ~ Santa Barbara Comes of Age, is a collection of a few of her nearly 400 articles written for the Journal. She is the researcher and author of Celebrating CAMA’s Centennial, a chronicle of the Community Arts Music Association’s 100-year history.

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Editor's Letter

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hose who have lived in Montecito for years are aware of the incredible blessings – geologic and geographic – of our little village. We’ve hiked Montecito’s trails, strolled its shores with pups in tow, and lounged at its cafés, pinching ourselves over our good fortune. We know that, above all, it’s the human treasure that catapults this place into the stratosphere of the world’s paradises. This town has been our little secret.

But the cat’s out of the bag. Montecito has woken up from its slumber, and with the opening of the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort came a big cultural shift, bringing with it a migration from down south, up north, and every which way.

And with that came new appetites and new attitudes.

No matter what you think of the influence the Miramar has had on our local culture, there is no getting around the fact that its arrival has boosted commerce, tourism, and generalized global interest in this place during a time when so many have suffered. And unquestionably, a lynchpin of Montecito’s ascension and durability during the pandemic has been “The Man in the Miramar” – Rick Caruso.

I wanted to meet him. I wanted to know why, of all places, Caruso wanted to come here; what he thought about this community; and what his larger plans are not only for his personal journey, but, given his political aspirations, for the well-being of those who have not been buoyed by skyrocketing real-estate prices and an all-time-high stock market.

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I appreciate Caruso’s willingness to have this conversation with me, so that I could share what I learned with you. We are all entitled to our opinion about Montecito suddenly being so directly in the world’s spotlight. But there’s no question that when it comes to our cornucopia of offerings, there’s never been a livelier time for Montecito, and in some ways, Santa Barbara.

Which is why this magazine is expanding from a biannual to a quarterly publication, so that we can tell even more of our community’s compelling stories. And the lucky part of my job is that I get to help showcase – with the help of my talented staff – so many of the elements that make this place a human treasure trove.

With this issue, I’m excited to present to you not only my interview of Caruso, but profiles of local powerhouses like that of academic publishing magnate and philanthropist Sara Miller McCune, homegrown filmmaker Max Barbakow (Palm Springs), innovators in engineering education Amir Abo-Shaeer and Emily Shaeer, and the colorful chapters of the iconic Montecito Inn. I hope you are as entertained and inspired by the stories in these pages as we have been telling them. Because the truth is, we are still left pinching ourselves.

WINTER 2021

Gwyn Lurie

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THE MAN IN

BY GWYN LURIE

Caruso and his beloved dog, Dodge, at Miramar Beach

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THE MIRAMAR

R

ick Caruso is a successful businessman known for his luxury developments in Los Angeles and, now, Montecito. On the flip side is a philanthropic man who puts his family first.

I

n the movie version of this story, we open on a shot of Invictus, a sleek 215-foot yacht with sophisticated, timeless maritime beauty – all six decks of it – replete with a swimming pool, a gym, a theater, nine bedrooms, and an elevator. Of course.

We pull out further to reveal Rick Caruso, the yacht’s owner – a striking, fit, tanned man in his early 60s, dressed to nautical perfection down to his crisp silk pocket square. He is surrounded by his four grown children (ages 21 to 31), his coifed white dog, and Tina, his beautiful and adoring wife of 35 years, and his world looks complete. But there’s more.

We pull out even further to see that we’re just off the coast of picturesque Montecito, its understated shore lined with centimillionaire surf “shacks” chilling in the shadows of a grand, idyllic beachfront hotel designed – like the yacht in its midst and the man at the helm – to perfection.

However, because this is not a movie, but real life – where this character’s presence has had a profound impact upon Montecito (and Santa Barbara) – we wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the man who infused so much dry powder into our local economy despite our town’s mixed feelings about how the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort’s arrival might have impacted local culture. And if you don’t believe me, ask any retailer or restaurant owner on Coast Village Road.

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

What we found beneath the surface of Caruso’s polished persona is a surprisingly gritty and strategic civic-minded leader who, against tall odds, has succeeded where other notable hoteliers – such as Ian Schrager and Ty Warner – did not.

But why would that be such a big surprise? Three of Caruso’s shopping centers – The Grove (Los Angeles), The Americana at Brand (Glendale), and Palisades Village (Pacific Palisades) – rank among the top 15 in the country in sales per square foot. So who is this movie star-like, real-life protagonist who could have built anywhere but took on the challenge of a highly problematic rodent-infested site, wedged between a rising ocean, an active railroad track, and a widening 101 freeway? And that was after making it through the labyrinthian gauntlet of the California Coastal Commission, multiple boards of architectural review, and a seemingly interminable permitting process. All the while, turning negatives into positives. A challenging parking situation?

Just create an adorable wicker-lined Jolly. There’s a train running through the center of the property? No problem! A Disneylandesque passageway across the track will do the trick.

It did indeed. And by all accounts, he’s killing it. Just three years after opening its doors (which Caruso claims are never locked), the Miramar is one of the country’s most expensive (and he says most

successful) hotels. And from it has flowed a new lifeblood which, by the pandemic’s happenstance, Montecito very much needed.

But the story doesn’t end here. Now, Caruso is taking his I can get s**t done where others have failed attitude back home to Los Angeles, where, as of press time, he is dead serious about throwing his hat in the ring to become Los Angeles’s next mayor.

Will he succeed? It is of course unclear. But what is clear is: One, Rick Caruso is not daunted by big challenges, and two, he should not be underestimated. For a hard-driving entrepreneurial real estate developer turned hotelier known for his connection with elite brands and a fancy, high-end clientele, Caruso is very clear on his priorities – and they just might surprise you.

GL: What don’t people know about you?

RC: Oh, that’s a really tough question. It’s a great question but it’s a tough one. What don’t people know about me? I think that you fall into a bucket if, when you’ve had success, your priorities are different than mine. What I care about most at the end of the day is my wife and kids. I tell my wife multiple times a day how much I love her – we’ve been together for 35 years. I couldn’t talk to my kids more – I talk to them every day. I could lose everything.

I thought about that during the pandemic. We were in the center

Personal details include Caruso’s family crest, which adorns an outdoor fireplace in a loggia at the Miramar

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

The laughing Buddha at the Miramar features four children climbing on him, mirroring Caruso’s own family

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

of the bullseye – retail, restaurants, hotel.... I thought a lot about losing everything. And now we’re having our best year ever, which is incredible. But all I cared about was keeping the family safe. I don’t think credit is given when maybe if you’re successful, your priorities are really aligned with what most people’s priorities are, which is their family.

My grandparents were immigrants from Italy and all four sides came through Ellis Island. So there was always a great Italian culture in our home, and there still is today in terms of how we operate as a family. If you want to know about me, you’ll know how dear my family is to me. That’s what I treasure the most. And that’s what motivates me at every one of my properties, including the Miramar. At the Miramar, there are things that celebrate my children. They’re always very subtle and low key, and unless you know they’re there, you probably wouldn’t notice them. For example, if you look at the weathervane on the beach building, it doesn’t say north, south, east, and west, it has the initials of my kids. And they each picked quotes that are engraved in brass and in the stonework on the veranda overlooking the great lawn.

GL: The Miramar was not an easy project to develop, and there had been other strong-willed, experienced developers with great capacity who couldn’t pull it off, but you wanted to do it. Why? RC: I always wanted to build a hotel or a resort. I always felt we were in the hospitality business anyway. At The Grove or Palisades Village, there’s a concierge and we’re there to serve customers – it’s all about the guest experience. I felt it was a natural extension of what we already did – and honestly, there’s just something very sexy about building a hotel where you have people come and stay with you and you can create this holistic experience. Our core business is always defined by enriching lives.

And we can do that through our retail, our restaurants, our apartments, and our resort. I remember the morning I read that Ian Schrager bought the Miramar. My heart dropped because I thought, Oh my God, I didn’t even know it was on the market. I missed an opportunity. And from then on, I followed it. And then of all the darn things I read Ty Warner bought it and I missed that opportunity. And then when the opportunity came to buy from Ty, obviously I did.

I don’t think you can find a more beautiful property than the Miramar. And I really don’t think you can find a more beautiful community than Montecito. I love so many places in the world, but the reality is Montecito is one of the most unique and beautiful communities in the world. And so how could I not want to do something with this property?

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The Miramar in its original splendor

GL: How do you think the Miramar has impacted Montecito?

RC: I think people who live in Montecito are obviously better judges of that than I am, but what I hope is that we enrich people’s lives on a daily basis. We’re happy it’s a place where people can go, and if nothing else, just sit in a chair, read the paper, and enjoy its beauty to make their day better.

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

GL: I don’t think I’m the first to notice that the vibe in Montecito has changed over the past few years. It feels a little fancier – more celebrities, royalty, more flash. Is this a result of the Miramar?

RC: I think it has tapped into a culture in the community that maybe we unleashed a bit more.

And I always talked about it when we were going through the entitlement process – that the resort is going to be a place where you’re going to be as comfortable walking through the lobby in a bathing suit during the day as you will be wearing a beautiful blazer while going to dinner at night.

There’s a chic, casual, comfortable elegance I feel Montecito always had. It never tries too hard because it doesn’t have to – it’s not showy.

You don’t need to prove anything. I think we’ve tapped into a culture that hopefully aligns with the values and the priorities of the people who live in Montecito. And I also think it’s aspirational for people who come from different parts of the world to visit the Miramar and Montecito and say, “I wish we lived here.”

GL: Well, aspirational would be one way to describe a $4,000 cotton sweater at Brunello Cucinelli. [I’m only half joking with Mr. Caruso when I raise the issue of the prices of ultra high-end luxury brands sold in the Miramar’s stores, because one of the things about Montecito I have appreciated is that you didn’t see a lot of name brands parading down Coast Village Road.] There has always been an understatedness to the wealth in our community, so this shift feels like a real change. That’s not just the Miramar; there are many new people who have moved into the community since the pandemic. But stores such as Dior, Brunello Cucinelli, and Goop certainly signal – if not endorse – a new vibe, don’t you think?

RC: I personally don’t view that as a bad thing.

I think people in Montecito now probably have more options of where to shop and how to dress and how they want to express themselves – I think it’s a healthy thing. But it does go back to my earlier point that I think there is a low-key, subtle elegance to Montecito. I don’t see that changing. It may be

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The Rosewood Miramar in development after years in ruins

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

expressed a little bit differently from time to time – somebody buying a Gucci bag and walking through town – but I think Montecito is going to continue to evolve because you do have a lot of new people in town.

GL: High-end brands aside, does the Miramar make money?

RC: It does very well – it’s probably the most successful hotel in the United States right now. By far, in fact. It’s funny you ask that question.

I remember when I was going through the entitlements, people said, “You’re never going to make any money, you’re going to lose a lot of money.” I wasn’t in this for charity. This was not part of my charity work. It’s a very profitable hotel.

GL: Do you have plans to buy a house in Montecito?

RC: We built a private residence on the grounds at the Miramar. It’s a perfect setup because we get to enjoy the property and experience everything our guests experience yet we still have our privacy.

GL: You’ve been a champion of small businesses for a long time. And you worked on state and national level task forces, including Gavin Newsom’s Caruso and Radha Arora, president of Rosewood Hotels, at the groundbreaking of the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort

The Carusos’ Manor House at the Rosewood (also available for bookings to the public)

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T H E R E V E R E RO O M

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

business and jobs recovery task force during the pandemic. What advice could you give to Santa Barbara regarding its attempt to renew State Street and to rebuild its small business strength?

RC: It’s complicated because there’s a lot of impact on State Street.

You have issues with the homeless, you have issues with crime, and you have an incredible street with a really glorious history to it. I think every city, not just Santa Barbara, needs to create – for lack of a better term – “opportunity zones” for small businesses, where

54

fees are waived and local taxes may be reduced in a way to help local businesses grow. And then once they get to a certain size, you can peel that stuff away. But I believe the backbone of any great city is the small businesses – the small restaurants, the entrepreneurs, the local stores. And that applies to Montecito on Coast Village Road, the Upper Village, and to State Street.

Small businesses were so hurt during the pandemic. One of many things I’m proud of with my company and my team is that

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our goal was to get through the pandemic and bring everybody across the bridge with us – our employees, our families, and our retailers. And to do that, it had to be an enterprise where I was contributing money to support small businesses. Our bigger retailers were paying rent in order to be part of the whole system, and we didn’t lose anybody. To this day, there are small businesses on our properties that still don’t pay rent because we want them to regain a firm footing. I think that’s critically important.

Caruso and Arora at the ribbon cutting ceremony

“We’ve done a lot in Santa Barbara and Montecito and we’re prepared to do more. It’s an important community for us.”

Montecito resident/actor Rob Lowe gives a warm welcome to Caruso and the Miramar

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

GL: You’ve been widely recognized not just for your business innovations but your philanthropy in the Los Angeles community as well. You’ve endowed the Our Savior Parish & USC Caruso Catholic Center; you chair the board of trustees of USC; you also serve on the board of visitors of the Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, the board of trustees of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute, and the boards of Para Los Niños, St. John’s Health Center Foundation, and The California Medical Center. And you and your wife, Tina, founded the Caruso Family Foundation, which is dedicated to supporting organizations that improve the lives of children in need of healthcare and education. Clearly giving back is a priority for you. Why? RC: There are so many things that help shape you. And as a young child with immigrant grandparents who had nothing, it always amazed me by how generous they were. And they always drilled into my head that my job – all our jobs – is to work hard for the next generation, give back, and bring people along with you. There’s always room at the table, and I live my life that way.

We’re always here to help people in need. So the philanthropies we care about the most and we fund the most involve families – in particular children who have very little, are typically living below

“My job – all our jobs – is to work hard for the next generation, give back, and bring people along with you.”

Caruso in the lobby of the Rosewood Miramar resort

Caruso and students at St. Lawrence of Brindisi School in Watts

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

the poverty level, who don’t have access to education or healthcare, and who live in very tough conditions. We’re very proud of the fact that it’s not just about writing a check, but also about getting to know them and getting our hands dirty helping and working with them. All of my kids work on Skid Row in Los Angeles. They work at Operation Progress at the Nickerson Gardens and in the projects where these wonderful families live.

My daughter started a program called the Angel Riders where she brings young kids living in the inner city who have never been around a horse and gets them on horseback. Obviously, faith is a big part of it because she was raised Catholic. I think every faith is about being generous and working for others. And that philosophy also informs what we build, why we build, and our connection to the community. Every one of our properties is always open – there are no guards or gates – none have hours for a reason, and they are available to every walk of life. I think this is a wonderful way to celebrate life.

GL: So let’s discuss the elephant in the room. Are you running for mayor of Los Angeles?

RC: I’m certainly thinking about it – very seriously. For the past year, we’ve had a team that’s been doing a lot of research and work. It’s clearly the direction I’m heading. A dear friend asked me: “Why the hell would you do this? It’s a tough job.” Although it sounds corny, the truth is: I love Los Angeles. I raised my family here, I have my business here, my employees live here, yet there are problems that need to be fixed. The question was, “Why are you choosing to do this?” And I really don’t think I have a choice; I feel I have a duty to give back.

GL: You’re obviously not doing it for the money...

RC: I’m definitely not doing it for the money, nor am I doing it for a career change. I don’t want to run for governor. I don’t want to go anywhere else. I want to come in. If I do serve as mayor, I’ll redirect some things, solve a bunch of problems, and then come back to private life and hang out at the Miramar.

GL: Your family gives back quite a bit in Los Angeles. Do you plan to get more involved with philanthropy in Santa Barbara?

RC: Absolutely. When we had the terrible mudslides, we gave heavily to Santa Barbara through the American Red Cross. They needed everything; they were not prepared. And then at the Miramar, at the onset of the pandemic, we quickly branded a food truck, and every single day, we provided breakfast for the firefighters, police officers, and the rescuers. We’ve done a lot in Santa Barbara and Montecito and we’re prepared to do more. It’s an important community for us.

“The question was, ‘Why are you choosing to do this?’ And I really don’t think I have a choice; I feel I have a duty to give back.”

Caruso Scholars, which was launched in partnership with South Central Scholars in 2013, at an outing at The Grove. The college scholarship program provides four years of tuition assistance, academic assistance, and career mentorship to high-performing, low-income students who are often the first in their family to achieve higher education.

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

“If you want to know about me, you’ll know how dear my family is to me. That’s what I treasure the most. And that’s what motivates me at every one of my properties, including the Miramar.”

GL: As former president of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners, what are your thoughts about this complicated moment in our country?

RC: You’re right – it is a complicated moment. Crime is out of control, homelessness is out of control. And I look at it this way: We have a very wealthy city in a very wealthy state in a very wealthy country. And nobody should be living on our streets or under a freeway overpass in a tent. It’s not right. It’s inhumane.

And that then affects communities and people trying to raise their kids and run a business. There’s nothing good about it, and it can be solved. It’s complicated, but I think it’s going to take somebody who’s not worried about getting reelected, somebody who is liberated from that and can say, “This is the right thing to do. We’re just going to do it.”

GL: What does that look like? Homelessness is like a giant octopus with each of its arms representing a different aspect of the issue. There’s mental health, the lack of affordable housing, addiction, income inequality.... These issues are not unique to L.A. yet no one’s cracked them. How do you plan to bring people together to solve this problem?

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RC: This isn’t a bold decision I’m making in the midst of a crisis; many cities like L.A. are in the midst of a crisis. No one can solve it alone – it takes strong leadership, getting people to follow you, then putting a stake in the ground and saying, “We are going to do this.” I don’t think the formula of big committees solving problems works. We’ve been doing that for too long and the problem has only gotten worse. You have to build shelters quickly to get people off the streets. You have to have services for mental health and services to retrain people. This kills me, but do you know the largest growing population of homeless are the elderly? So we now have seniors becoming homeless at a faster rate than anyone else. What kind of society puts their seniors on the street? And you can’t tell me they want to be there. So yes. This problem can be fixed. I’m not on a bunch of committees, I don’t spend my time doing that.

I surround myself with really smart people and give them a lot of tools to do their job.

GL: At one point you were the youngest commissioner in the history of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. So in terms of water and sustainability, based on the LA100 study, Mayor Garcetti announced the department of water and power will pursue an 80

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THE MAN IN THE MIRAMAR

percent renewable and 97 percent carbon-free grid by 2030 as well as 100 percent carbon-free energy by 2035. That was, I guess, 10 years ahead of schedule. Would you make a similar commitment?

RC: When I was a commissioner at DWP, I was the one who took all of these coal plants in the L.A. basin and converted them to gas to reduce emissions. And I was the one who oversaw the building of Palo Verde Generating Station (a nuclear plant in Arizona) to bring in clean power. And I was the one who settled the water war in L.A. County. So I understand water and power.

I think goals are great. What I would say to Eric [Garcetti] is, “Give us your plan on how to get there.” It’s really easy – set a goal.

And yes, sustainability is very important to me, it always has been.

We want to have a clean basin and we want to have sustainable policies in place. But you have to have a real plan. And then you have to say, “What is the cost of that plan for the average resident?”

Because a big chunk of people’s paychecks go toward their utility bills. So there is a balance, but yes, I am committed to sustainability.

GL: Does the Miramar live up to this standard of environmental stewardship?

RC: Absolutely. The Miramar is one of the most sustainable properties we have – down to how we do laundry. There are no plastic water bottles, everything is in a metal bottle. Reusability is really a model of sustainability.

GL: You’re a guy who builds luxurious experiences. And while anyone could go sit and have a drink in the gorgeous bar at the Miramar and not pay $2,500 (or in some cases $13,000) per night to be a guest in one of the oceanfront rooms, your brand is – in all ways – elite. Are you prepared for the blowback against you as something of a poster child for “the good life” asking to lead a community effort to solve problems such as extreme poverty, wealth inequality, racial inequity, and inclusion? How are you prepared to counter charges of elitism that will come your way?

RC: I think it’s a great question, and I’ll answer it a couple of ways. What was more exclusionary was when the property sat

Watts 2 Boston is a nonprofit organization that provides students with a nurturing environment through education and experiences working with the Los Angeles Police Department

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vacant for 15 years with a chain-link fence around it. The beach was dirty and you couldn’t get down to it because there was a gate with a lock on it – and only a few people had the key. Now anybody can safely walk through the property and enjoy the beach.

The other thing I would tell you is because of our charities, I live a big part of my life in the poorest parts of Los Angeles – and so do my children. I didn’t grow up rich in the beginning. I know what it’s like to see these kids at St. Lawrence of Brindisi School in Watts and what they go through – the gunshot drills and they’re running back to their classrooms. I know what it takes for a young man who goes to the high school down in Watts, walking from Nickerson Gardens and being teased by the gangs for going to Verbum Dei because you have to wear a black tie and a white shirt. I’ve sat in the classroom with those kids and I know their parents. I understand it really well. What I don’t understand is being a pompous legislator who thinks they have all the answers yet actually has never experienced it. And has actually never signed the front of a check – only the back. And you know there isn’t an elected official in the United States who had a pay cut during the pandemic whereas most every other worker did.

Intentionality can be found in all corners of Caruso’s life. So I wondered why he named his yacht – perhaps the most conspicuous symbol of his vaunted life – Invictus.

GL: Why is the name of your yacht Invictus?

RC: It’s named after the poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley. It’s the story of the struggles of life and eventually getting to heaven to get through the gates. And when you read the poem, it’s about how you get battered and bloodied and bruised, but you become the master of your faith and the captain of your soul. If you stay true to what you believe in and try to do the right thing, you get through the gates, even though you’re going to be a little bit beat up. That’s the philosophy I and my family live by.

GL: As Caruso leaves me with those poignant words, I reflect upon the words that originally inspired him:

Invictus

By William Ernest Henley GL: You say you didn’t grow up rich, but your parents owned Dollar Car Rental, didn’t they?

RC: My dad did, but not until well after I was born. My dad became a very successful businessman, but we weren’t raised that way in the beginning.

GL: You serve as chair of the board of trustees for USC, which has gone through some turmoil in the last few years. (One of the most corrupt university administrations of higher education saw an overdosed prostitute in a hotel room, an FBI sting of a basketball coach, disturbing sexual abuse allegations and cover-ups, a shockingly blatant influence-peddling scheme including a central role in the massive college admissions scandal, and, most recently, the announcement of federal corruption charges against L.A. City Council member Mark Ridley-Thomas and a former dean at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.) Are there lessons learned here you would apply to your leadership in Los Angeles?

RC: Oh yeah. Many. Listen, accountability matters, integrity matters, leadership matters, making decisions quickly, not letting things brew. But the biggest problems at USC were the priorities were wrong, there was no accountability, and things got swept under the rug. We changed that culture with a lot of help from many good people on the board of trustees along with new leadership.

It’s a different place today, and I’m very proud of the progress that’s been made there.

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Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.

Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

GL: For fun, I look up the word invictus, which, as it turns out, is Latin for unconquered or undefeated. Suddenly, it all makes sense.

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LOCALLY OWNED | GLOBALLY C ON N ECTED | VILLAG ES IT E .C O M | D RE 0 120 6 7 3 4 M ONTECITO 805.96 9.8 9 00 | SAN TA BARBARA + MESA 805 . 6 81 . 8 80 0 | SANTA YNEZ 805 . 6 8 8 . 1620 All information provided is deemed reliable, but has not been verified and we do not guarantee it. We recommend that buyers make their own inquiries.

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LOCALLY OWNED | GLOBALLY C ON N ECTED | VILLAG ES IT E .C O M | D RE 0 120 6 7 3 4 M O NTECITO 805.96 9.8 9 00 | SAN TA BARBARA + MESA 805 . 6 81 . 8 80 0 | SANTA YNEZ 805 . 6 8 8 . 1620 All information provided is deemed reliable, but has not been verified and we do not guarantee it. We recommend that buyers make their own inquiries.

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LOCALLY OWNED | GLOBALLY C ON N ECTED | VILLAG ES IT E .C O M | D RE 0 120 6 7 3 4 M O NTECITO 805.96 9.8 9 00 | SAN TA BARBARA + MESA 805 . 6 81 . 8 80 0 | SANTA YNEZ 805 . 6 8 8 . 1620 All information provided is deemed reliable, but has not been verified and we do not guarantee it. We recommend that buyers make their own inquiries.

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REEL LIFE PALM SPRINGS DIRECTOR MAX BARBAKOW TRAVELS THROUGH A PORTAL BACK TO HIS HOMETOWN OF SANTA BARBARA

BY SARAH TOMLINSON

ED

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Max Barbakow takes five at the Arlington Theatre (Photo by Kevin Scanlon)

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anta Barbarabred filmmaker Max Barbakow is kicking back in the Arlington Theatre just one day before its post-COVID-19 reopening, riffing on his memories of the historic movie palace. “I have a vivid memory of seeing The Matrix here, which is huge,” says the director of the Sundance Film Festival’s 2020 breakout hit, Palm Springs. Barbakow, who also remembers spilling pink lemonade all over himself during a screening of The Mask of Zorro (“very cold and very embarrassing”) enthusiastically shares the Arlington’s history: “People refer to this place as a temple of cinema, and I think it’s really true…. For certain movies, [producer] David O. Selznick would take the train up from Hollywood with reels, to preview films in this theater. One of those was Gone With the Wind.”

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REEL LIFE

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The cast and crew on set (Photo by Jessica Perez/Hulu)

arbakow’s directorial dreams were seeded in his hometown, where he credits “the sunshine and the generosity of spirit” with creating an atmosphere that is conducive to making things. In contrast to Hollywood, Santa Barbara is “a place people can appreciate the value of film, but it’s not dictated or driven by the commerce of the thing...it’s a little more holistic and grounded.”

Close familial ties to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (his father, Jeffrey Barbakow, is a chairman on the film fest’s board) afforded a teenage video camera-wielding Max a literal front-row seat.

To his benefit, the festival was prestigious enough to attract top-tier Hollywood players, yet homespun enough to allow him to observe and absorb from the annual cavalcade of talent. “The panels were always a really big deal for me because you had incredible writers, directors, and producers coming and talking about their craft,” he says in a phone interview. “And then, of course, it was around Oscar season. So every year, you have the who’s who of Academy Award nominees coming through town.”

Back then, Barbakow had no idea he’d someday be on the award-season circuit himself, as Palm Springs was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance as well as two Golden Globes. But taking notes from the best did give him a tangible sense that moviemaking was possible. “It demystified the craft and the process a little bit,” he says. “When you have professionals who are working on such an inspired, high level come and talk about what goes into collaborating and making stuff, it makes it seem a little more attainable.”

Barbakow debuted his first feature film at SBIFF in 2013, and was understandably anxious, though not just because he was sharing his work on the stage where he had projected his own dreams. More pointedly, his documentary, Mommy, I’m a Bastard!, was a deeply personal story about the dramatic circumstances surrounding his own adoption. When prescreening nerves set in, he soothed them by watching other films at the festival to remind himself that he was in it for the love of cinema. And he relied on his local community. He says, “It helped that Roger Durling, who runs the festival, is a close family friend and had [already] seen it.

And I know him well enough to know when he’s being nice or lying about something. I could tell he liked the movie when we did the Q&A. So that gave me some confidence. But you just kind of learn to let go.”

Barbakow made the film while an undergraduate at Yale. By the time of its screening, he was attending the American Film Institute in Hollywood, where he met Palm Springs screenwriter Andy Siara.

The two cemented their fruitful friendship and collaboration during a weekend desert getaway. “I think being from Southern California and having a familiarity with Palm Springs and what it means as a vacation destination for hedonism and fun—from the Rat Pack to Coachella— made it interesting to set an essentially raw and sad movie there.”

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REEL LIFE

Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg play Sarah and Nyles (Photo by Jessica Perez/Hulu)

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he Andy Samberg-starring, existential sci-fi romcom deftly embodied the duality of its titular city as both a glam architectural destination and a sunbaked Hollywood getaway, while also being a magnet for desert mystics. The film sold to Neon and Hulu for a recordsetting $17.5 million (and 69 cents), and premiered on Hulu in the midst of the pandemic in July 2020. Housebound film fans ate up the plot in which the main characters’ time loop misadventures seemed to mirror our own Groundhog Day-like reality. According to Hulu, it netted “more hours watched over its first three days than any other film in the platform’s history.”

These days, Barbakow is currently shooting the comedy Brothers, which stars Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage as twin brothers; Glenn Close plays their mother. The screenplay was written by Etan Cohen, who wrote Tropic Thunder and Get Hard, as well as Macon Blair, who also penned the indie cinema darling, I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore.

The film is steeped in family and place – clearly themes that resonate with Barbakow. “I call it a Southern, really twisted and exuberant, and emotional kind of caper movie about brothers reconnecting with each other” (as well as their estranged mother), he says.

These days Barbakow has a home in Los Angeles and his filmmaking takes him even further afield, but Santa Barbara will always bring him back. And if he were to get stuck in a time loop, like the hero of Palm Springs, Barbakow knows exactly where he would choose to chase back cold ones in eternity. “Elsie’s is a bar I really love in Santa Barbara,” he says of the cash-only classic known for its pool table and board games. And where would the time loop portal be found?

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Max Barbakow and J.K. Simmons on set (Photo by Christopher Willard/Hulu)

Without a moment’s hesitation, Barbakow cites two locations for the amateur films he made with friends as a teenager: Knapp’s Castle, the site of a ruined turn-of-the-century mansion, which is no longer open to the public, and Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park. “Talking about mysticism or magic, there’s a magic up there, there’s a primordial vibe,” he says. “I think there’d probably be a portal up there.”

The homegrown filmmaker at his old stomping grounds (Photo by Kevin Scanlon)

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A CONVE RSATI O N WITH: A tal k wit Weith h Mic orn, hael the T creat V sho or wh launc w o h h e Micha lped and K e evin l J. J Fox ames. he is Today tryin , his s g to lau nch emire tirem ent in Mo nteci to

ED

BY LE S FIR PORTR AITS ESTEI

BY ED N WARD C

LYNES

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A CONVERSATION WITH:

LF: MW:

You’re our most recent notable Hollywood expat to make the leap to “sleepy” Montecito. So welcome.

I don’t know about notable.

LF: I didn’t say most notable. I said most recent.

MW: Of course there’s that actress from Suits who moved in. What was her name?

LF: Meghan something. Was it… McCain?

MW: I think it was Merkel.

LF: No, that’s the nice lady who used to run Germany.

MW: Then what ever happened to the gal from Suits?

LF: We’ll Google it later. So tell us about your path from Queens to here.

MW: Queens? You’re really obsessed with royalty. I didn’t know that about you.

LF: In your early days in showbiz, you worked with the TV luminary Gary David Goldberg, the creator of Family Ties and many other successful shows. He was also a notable Montecitan.

ED

TV writer Michael Weithorn annoyed that his interviewer has crashed his photo shoot

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A CONVERSATION WITH:

MW: Gary was my mentor. A beautiful man and a great force in my life.

LF: Gary always kept a place up here. And his wife, Diana Meehan, still lives in it. I spoke to Diana about you, and she and Gary both credit you as the person who really cracked and defined the Michael J. Fox character on Family Ties. I am quoting from Gary’s memoir here: “Michael [Weithorn] had a much keener insight into the character of Alex Keaton than I did. It’s hard to imagine the show succeeding without Michael Weithorn’s contribution.”

MW: Gary and Diana were uniquely generous about sharing credit.

LF: But if you helped launch the career of Michael J. Fox, that means you’re also partially responsible for the movie Teen Wolf.

MW: Van Gogh and Galileo were not popular in their lifetimes either.

LF: Tell us more about your relationship with Gary David Goldberg.

MW: Gary didn’t just hire me but really took me under his wing.

LF: He had wings, too?

MW: If he didn’t before he certainly has them now. In addition to being highly supportive of me as a writer and aspiring producer, Gary basically made me a part of his family. Most weekends he would invite me to his and Diana’s house on Broad Beach where I – only months from a $12,000 a year “1984 Titans of Television in rapidly ascending order of importance (left to right): Me – with mustache (they were legal then), NBC prez Brandon Tartikoff, and my beloved mentor (and future Montecitan) Gary David Goldberg,” says Weithorn.

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teaching job – would play volleyball and share beers with a variety of Hollywood big shots (the most notable for me being one of my comedy heroes, Dick Martin, who was a lovely, funny guy). Steven Spielberg was up there too. Anyway, Gary was the most natural-born leader I ever worked closely with.

Regardless of how good or bad the script was, how behind we were or how late we’d have to work, he would always find a way to boost morale and make us believe it would all be okay.

I remember on a particularly bad day Gary called a production assistant into the writers’ room, threw a few bills on the table, and said, “Go get $100 worth of donuts.” And he meant it.

Gary was a man of big appetites in every sense. The basketball games were legendary. Three on three usually, and Gary would usually stack his team to ensure victory.

LF: Like that time he claimed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was his production assistant?

MW: I never liked being on Gary’s team because the pressure stressed me out – if I missed my open shots I knew it was going to be a long rest of the day in the writers’ room, with few or none of my jokes making it into the show. But he really didn’t need me on the court anyway – even 30 pounds past his Brooklyn days as a star player, Gary had a variety of feints and jukes to free himself up for his deadly jump shot. In basketball or TV, Gary was highly competitive and knew how to win. And he wanted to win desperately. I remember sitting next to him at the Emmys, Family Ties was nominated for Best Series, and when they announced the winner (not us), he said under his breath through gritted teeth, “God DAMN it!!!”

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A CONVERSATION WITH:

LF: Is Gary what drew you to Montecito?

MW: I never saw Gary in Montecito after he moved up here.

The last few years I saw him in L.A. here and there and then in New York a month before he died so prematurely, in 2013.

I actually have a standing plan with Brad Hall (another Gary David Goldberg protégé who’s married to Julia Louis-Dreyfus) to make the pilgrimage to visit Diana but it’s very much a post-COVID thing. We missed our post-vaccination pre-Delta window but we’ll definitely try to catch Diana between the second and third waves.

LF: Is there kind of a Family Ties mafia up here in Montecito?

I understand Michael J. Fox just bought a place.

MW: Yeah I guess there’s a Family Ties cabal that now includes me.

LF: Do you ever go over to Michael’s place to borrow a cup of sugar?

MW: We’re both trying to cut down on sugar but sometimes I borrow Stevia because Michael is a shameless Stevia thief. Don’t let him into your restaurant. He’s a Winona Ryder klepto of sugar substitutes. That whole NBC Thursday night lineup – The Cosby Show, Family Ties – let’s just say they’ll all be in an actual lineup sooner than later. Not counting Cosby himself who already has.

LF: Scrolling back, tell me about your path from bluecollar kid living in Queens to gentleman squire living in tony Montecito. Like what did you do before you were a comedy writer?

MW: Honestly? Almost nothing. I literally never had another career aspiration other than comedy writer even though I had no idea how to do it or even go about it. I still may not know.

But I’ve definitely been very lucky.

LF: How did you finally crack the show business nut?

MW: After Swarthmore, I moved to L.A. in ’78, and got a job as a teacher at the then-fledgling Brentwood School.

LF: Was Adam Levine your student or, alternatively, was he your neighbor here? Or both?

MW: Sadly, I missed Adam in both places. Though my suspicion is he’s avoiding me because my falsetto is more beautiful and haunting than his.

LF: You totally missed those five minutes he owned a place here.

MW: Anyway, as a teacher in Brentwood, I would drive around – this was pre-VCR, that’s how long ago it was – I would play actual cassette tape recordings of sitcoms as I drove, trying to figure out the formula…I mean magic.

“The Family Ties house band in the groove at the 1986 wrap party: Marc Lawrence (left, our John Lennon), Michael J. Fox (right, our Paul McCartney), and me (center, our Pete Best).”

ED

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“A snapshot of me and Michael J. Fox on a Tahoe ski trip, where we wowed rural Nevadans with our fancy sports car, designer sunglasses, and hip Hollywood acid-washed jeans. We were escorted out of the state.”

LF: At least you didn’t say you drove around with your Victrola.

MW: Yes, that definitely would have been harder. In any event, L.A. has a lot of traffic as you know, so I learned quickly. Then as luck would have it, the aforementioned Gary David Goldberg was doing a show called Making the Grade, which just so happened to be about teachers, so he hired me I guess thinking even if I sucked at comedy, at least I’d be good at verisimilitude for teachers.

LF: You’d be the fact-checker of the comedy room. A very

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A CONVERSATION WITH:

Apparently the editors think my face is too broad and needs to be broken up with text.

— MJW

important and underappreciated position. So after Making the Grade essentially didn’t make the grade...

MW: Gary’s next show was a series called Family Ties, which he hired me for and was a runaway hit. And for some reason, I had a knack for writing the Michael J. Fox character.

LF: I wonder why that would be? Why would you have a knack for writing the ambitious, unrepentant asshole?

MW: You should probably ask my first wife. Or my current one.

LF: Speaking of your first wife, you and I kind of crossed paths in show business. Your first wife, Lisa Todd, was a Fly Girl (dancer) on the show In Living Color where I worked.

Why do you suppose Lisa talked to you but not to me?

MW: Maybe because my opening line was, “Isn’t Les Firestein a total douchebag?”

LF: We both did a number of Black shows in the ’90s, though back then they were called “urban.”

MW: It was an interesting time. I did two shows in the ’90s with predominantly Black casts: True Colors and South Central. Both shows were of my own creation, the network allowed me to make them and run them, but it’s unlikely that a Black writer/producer would have been accorded the same opportunity. On South Central, I teamed up with a great writer named Ralph Farquhar, who is Black, primarily because I knew he would be a strong creative partner but also because it didn’t seem right that I should be doing this particular show on my own. “Not my story to tell,” as they say today (and quite rightly). At that time, showrunners of color were few and far between since few got hired in the first place on writing staffs and thus never had the chance to learn and acquire showrunning skills. Typically, if not always, Black talent was paired with white showrunners like yourself and a handful of others.

LF: It was definitely a strange dynamic. Kind of like how Blacks were excluded from the quarterback position or, to an extent, from whole fields such as architecture. Until quite recently.

MW: Fortunately things have changed. In those days, the studios wouldn’t dream of not placing a white writer or producer in a leadership position on a Black-themed show.

And today they wouldn’t dream of doing it.

LF: So, interestingly, most of these urban shows were on Fox, a network that made its name by programming to the underrepresented. But then in the mid-’90s, pretty much all those shows got cancelled at the same time. I think Rupert

ED

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A CONVERSATION WITH:

Murdoch wanted to gentrify his own airwaves. We called that time the “ethnic cleansing” of Fox. Shows like yours and mine got replaced by shows like Ally McBeal and That ’70s Show.

LF: Today if you wanted to counterprogram, you’d do a white show and it would be called something like Avocado Toast: The Series.

MW: Or maybe just do a show called Karens! with an exclamation point and include, of course, Miss Betty White.

LF: After Fox’s ethnic cleansing, I guess we both experienced a form of white flight. I worked many years on The Drew Carey Show while you developed The King of Queens, which was a big hit and I understand is being rebooted? Tell me that whole origin story, if you don’t mind.

MW: Immediately after South Central got cancelled in 1994 – the show, not the place – my once-promising career pretty much bottomed out. I had just done two Black-themed shows in a row that had not become hits. The series development deal I was on at 20th Century Fox expired and was not renewed.

My agent said to me, quite memorably, “If you want to revive your career, better do a white show.” Well, having a new wife (Lisa) and a baby on the way at the time, I very much did want to revive my career, so I wrote the pilot for Ned and Stacey on spec. White folks-a-palooza! Fox bought it, and though it only ran two years, it was a good show and well regarded in the community, and did in fact revive my career, giving me the platform to then create The King of Queens. We originally developed The King of Queens for NBC, but this was during a time when most of the other NBC shows were about pretty, upwardly mobile people living and dating in Manhattan. Our show, on the other hand, was almost wolfsbane for NBC’s lineup. I don’t know if you’ve met Kevin James, but he’s not that pretty. We had him married instead of dating, and in the show he was happy with a job that most of the NBC executives would consider menial and blue-collar. In fact, the individual who was head of NBC programming at the time said about the pilot, “I worry that his being a truck driver makes him seem like a loser.” He actually said this. And we wonder now why the blue-collar class hates Hollywood elites….

LF: Even though his collar was actually brown. He drove for UPS, right?

MW: Fictionalized UPS, yes. So his collar was technically green.

LF: This is in contrast to today, when package delivery guys are considered frontline workers and pandemic heroes.

MW: Brown-suited Santas in shorts delivering water cooler jugs of hand sanitizer and N95 masks so Jeff Bezos can fund his important astronaut cosplay.

Actually we decided to bookend our text with face.

— The Editors

ED

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A CONVERSATION WITH:

LF: Are we talking about Cosby again?

MW: Not that kind of cosplay. So of course NBC passed on The King of Queens. The network programmers couldn’t get their heads around a protagonist who was happy delivering packages, did not aspire to be the president of the company, and wasn’t married to a model.

LF: Of course in real life Kevin James is married to a model….

MW: Yeah but we weren’t doing a documentary. The fictional Kevin James was married to Leah Remini.

LF: The famous Scientologist.

MW: And now famously not a Scientologist.

LF: Interesting that the Kevin James character you wrote for so many years was sort of the polar opposite of the Michael J. Fox character you wrote for so many years. Michael Fox being comically ambitious on Family Ties and Kevin James being kind of comically satisfied on The King of Queens. Über mensch versus Uber driver, if you will.

MW: That’s why we called him the “king” of Queens. Kevin’s character was like a lot of guys I knew growing up. He was pretty happy, with a pretty wife, and he didn’t feel the need to run UPS or NBC for that matter.

LF: In the reboot would Kevin James drive for Amazon?

MW: I’ve thought about that. Honestly I don’t know how the Kevin James character would hack it as an Amazon driver. He was soft. Too many years living on a pretty good union contract.

Decent pay, good benefits, with the expectation of a pension.

It’s a real question how he’d handle the abrupt death of the labor movement and the gig economy and all that. I feel like tougher folks, mostly of color, are doing that job with a desperation he just couldn’t muster up, even if desperate.

LF: So there’s your reboot: Kevin James has to fight for a worse job against younger and hungrier competition. And eventually justify his existence in a world of sleek, Muscovite self-driving Tesla trucks that are constantly tracking his productivity.

MW: Sounds like America, right?

LF: Can we also talk about some of your work since The King of Queens?

MW: I assume you are referring to my Jenga sculptures.

LF: I’m talking about your near blind date with Kamala Harris.

MW: I could have been the first Second Gentleman.

LF: While we’re dropping names, I got a message from LinkedIn that my “connection” Doug Emhoff is in the news.

MW: Who ever said writers lead boring, internal lives.

LF: Let’s talk about your show The Adventures of Baxter and McGuire. Which seems a little like something you’d put in The Producers to guarantee a quick cancellation.

MW: Baxter and McGuire was an animated series I made with Nick Bakay for Comedy Central. It was a buddy comedy about two dudes who are total opposites, forced by circumstance to live in incredibly close proximity.

LF: Yes but you’re kind of talking around the subject: Baxter and McGuire were a pair of animated, anthropomorphized, human testicles.

MW: You could call it my seminal work.

LF: And this actually aired on television on this planet?

MW: It was on the Comedy Central website mainly, but on TV for a brief glorious moment, yes. Kind of at the height of the buddy cop bromance genre. But perhaps it was a bridge too far. I may have actually ended that genre. Sorry, genre.

LF: Who thought the show was going to work?

MW: I thought there’d be sort of a universal appeal, since we all basically started life in that same circumstance. But ultimately perhaps the setting didn’t really give the series a lot of places to “go.” In retrospect, if we had done a hernia episode that would have been Baxter and McGuire’s version of a road trip.

LF: Speaking of living inside, you built your house here.

As this kid from Long Island, why didn’t you move to, say, the Hamptons?

MW: Yikes, never considered that. Too many undesirables out there, I hear. Fancy TMZ socialites and whatnot. True story: My wife and I rented a beach house one summer and an iconically famous young party-girl rented the house next door. The first day she was there, I was walking past with my dog, and at the base of her sea wall was an empty plastic pill vial (soon to choke a pelican). It was so perfect on every level – it was almost like bad writing on life’s part.

ED

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How about cutting a paragraph to make room for the rest of my face?

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A CONVERSATION WITH:

LF: As they say, “We’ll always have Paris.” So what was the appeal of Montecito?

MW: What’s not appealing about Montecito? As much as I loved L.A. when I moved there – and loved living there for 40 years – the city has changed, gotten more packed, more tense, plus I was done with the ambitious, work-all-the-time phase of my career. I always loved Montecito, used to come up here for weekends and such. And the proximity to L.A., for whatever work I might stumble into, or seeing friends, is perfect. I guess you could say Montecito is socially distant from L.A. LF: I always thought Montecito is like a town from a model train set. Perhaps the ideal Zoom town.

MW: It’s a great perch from which to watch the end of the world. It’s like enjoying all the first-class amenities on the Titanic for the two hours after it hits the iceberg.

Michael ED Weithorn

Upside down my forehead looks enormous.

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Paris

Hotel Balmoral is a quiet, elegant, comfortable four-star hotel located near the Arc de Triomphe, just off the Avenue des Champs-Élysées

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UPPER-END TRAVEL

BY JAMES BUCKLEY

THE FAMILY-OWNED FOUR-STAR HOTEL BALMORAL IS A HOME AWAY FROM HOME IN PARIS

I

Paris

was bragging that I had walked at least 10 miles the previous day, all the way from Hotel Balmoral – the elegant boutique four-star hotel where I was staying – just behind the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on the barely pronounceable (for a bloke like me) rue du Général Lanrezac, down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, across the Place de la Concorde, past the Louvre where da Vinci’s painting of Madame La Gioconda still winks at her admirers (who now seem to visit just to take a selfie with the smiling lady on wood), to the Place de la République at the other end of Paris. My eyes gleam, my chest expands. “That’s because Paris is so small,” my French friend says as my chest deflates. A 10-mile walk and I get no credit? “Paris is one of the smallest big cities in the world,” my friend adds.

And, as I look back, standing on Pont Alexandre III – the most beautiful of Paris’s 37 bridges that span the Seine – Paris did seem small. There are few tall buildings, nothing much other than the Eiffel Tower (the tallest man-made structure at the time it was built), Notre-Dame, the Sacré-Cœur Basilica at Montmartre, and other grand buildings and various monuments to celebrate events that reach for the sky. Otherwise, Paris is a city built for human habitation.

Everywhere I looked as I hoofed it past busy department stores, boutiques, cafés, and restaurants, people were walking. And these were mostly French men and women, as the pandemic had kept tour buses off the boulevards of Paris for the better part of a year and a half. Many people were wearing masks though they weren’t required outdoors; an equal number of others weren’t. And they were often walking at a faster pace – much faster – than I was. Everyone walks in Paris. Whether they’re just hurrying to go to school, board a train, a bus, the métro, a secret rendezvous, or their favorite lunch spot, they’re walking.

So my 10-mile hike was no big deal.

Which brings me to Hotel Balmoral. I first read about it online and it sounded like someplace I might enjoy staying. And, since I was on my way to Paris – or at least I had hoped to be on my way depending upon the progress of COVID-19 – I inquired about a stay to celebrate my wife’s and my wedding anniversary. After some discussion, I booked a suite for early April, but COVID kept interfering with our dates. We changed reservations perhaps three more times and finally settled upon dates in August.

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Hotel Balmoral has 50 rooms, including six suites (with small, French-style balconies), two “prestige” apartments for six, and eight family rooms for four. Such accommodations are not easy to find in Paris, so I contacted François Dapremont, the hotel’s owner, and asked a few questions, such as why he offers these configurations. “The idea of having family rooms,” he explains, “comes from both our experience and guest feedback.”

What I have learned is that not only does François and his wife/partner, Francine, pay close attention to their hotel, they pay even closer attention to their clients’ observations and desires. The difference between a fivestar hotel, such as George V or the Ritz, is not just the price (which can be significant), but also its amenities.

For example, the beds are not turned down after dinner (therefore no after-dinner mint on your pillow) and no cook waiting to make your omelette at breakfast; neither is there a restaurant attached. Breakfast, however, is more than adequate and consists of fresh pastries, fresh fruit, fresh juices, scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, toast, butter, jams, coffee, tea, cereals of all types, cheeses, sliced meats, etcetera. And, the breakfast room is open from 6:30 to 11:30 am, so if you have a hearty late breakfast you really don’t need lunch.

Excellent lighting (and plenty of it) is a feature of the spacious bathrooms at Hotel Balmoral

The living room in one of the six suites makes for a comfortable and stylish respite

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FIGUEROA FARMS 1833 FLETCHER WAY, SANTA YNEZ

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The 106 +/- acre paradise features a magnificent residence, guest house, manager’s house, 4,300 tree olive orchard and includes 40+/- acres of valuable south-facing land primed for viticultural development. Rhone and Bordeaux style varietals have flourished in this Happy Canyon AVA. This magical estate transports you to a Mediterranean countryside surrounded by rolling golden hills, orchards of olive trees, and vineyards as far as the eye can see.

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UPPER-END TRAVEL

The hotel is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And, one of the reasons you’ll receive such attentive service is the quality of the staff. “We have 20 employees,” François says, and boasts that “most of them have been working with us [since we opened].”

The hotel was built and first opened in the early 20th century and accommodated U.S soldiers during World War I. It has been a family-owned hotel from day one; the previous owner had operated it for 40 years before the Dapremonts purchased it in March 2010 as a three-star hotel; they converted it a few years later and reintroduced their new “smart fourstar hotel” in 2014.

The couple has been in the restaurant and hotel industry for nearly 30 years and owns an additional 53-room four-star hotel Hotel Mademoiselle Paris.

King-size beds, personally chosen artwork, You’ll be impressed with the design of the rooms at and high-quality linens make for a restful stay the Balmoral, so you should know that they were decorated by Francine under the supervision of French designer Michel Jouannet, who has designed private palaces and hotels such as L’Orangerie in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, the Ritz in Madrid, the Grand Hotel Europe in St. Petersburg, the Cipriani in Venice, among many others.

The pandemic put a crimp in the hotel business all over the world, and Balmoral was not an exception. Nevertheless, the couple opted to stay open throughout. “Of course, we had some very hard periods,” François recounts, adding, “with sometimes only two or three rooms sold per day. I had to sleep in the hotel many times to allow my staff to take some rest. But remaining open allowed us to keep hope and optimism, waiting for better days.”

In both 2020 and 2021, the hotel offered rooms to nurses and doctors working in hospitals nearby free of charge. “It was too

Hotel owners/proprietors François and Francine Dapremont have three children; he has a PhD in economics from Paris Dauphine University

hard and long for them to return home each night,” he says. The Mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, and Rachida Dati, a former Minister of President Sarkozy, officially honored François for his benevolence.

Room rates are surprisingly low for a hotel of this caliber (€130 to €350 a night, from classic room to suite; before the pandemic, rates ranged from €180 to €600). Assuming rates will increase when the pandemic is truly behind us, take advantage – readers of the Montecito Journal can receive a 10 percent discount and a bottle of Louis Roederer Brut Premier upon arrival. To do so, book online (balmoral-paris-hotel.com) and mention you read about it in the Montecito Journal, or contact François directly (dapremont@ hotelbalmoral.fr). I think this home away from home in the grand city of Paris will meet every standard you may require.

The lobby at Hotel Balmoral, 6, rue du Général Lanrezac

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THE WAY IT WAS

W

hen all the leaves were brown, and the skies grew gray, Easterners turned their thoughts to California and the warmth of its winter days. Traditionally arriving after Christmas, they settled in for extended sojourns. Others arrived in spring, summer, or fall, but no matter when they arrived, they were of one accord with the poet John Masefield who wrote, “I must go down to the seas again….” Even King Albert I of Belgium during his short stay in Montecito in October 1918, had no sooner arrived than he headed for Miramar beach to plunge into the mighty Pacific while his retinue watched from shore.

In “Sea Fever,” Masefield expressed a universal and primeval desire for the sensory touch of ancient waters.

Masefield longed for “a tall ship and a star to steer her by,” but land-tethered sea bathers found a sense of freedom in gazing at the vast ocean and listening to the rhythmic slapping of the waves upon the shore. The clatter of tumbling stones as water rushed onto the sands and the cries of sea birds in the salty air infused the scene with a sense of peace. Then as now, floating buoyantly, diving under frothy breakers, and riding the swell toward the shore, refreshed the mind and expanded the spirit. The call of the sea remains strong.

“I must go down to the seas again,” said Masefield, and so, historically, have thousands upon thousands of Santa Barbarans.

Locals enjoy Miramar Beach in the late 1930s. Edgecliffe, a private beach club, lies on the point in the distance.

(Courtesy of Montecito Association History Committee and the Doulton family)

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CALIFORNIA

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CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

Suitable Sea Bathing

O

nce upon a time, ocean swimming and sea bathing required only a birthday suit, but by the Victorian age, dress codes were being strictly applied and one needed proper swim attire to enter the ocean. In August 1872, Santa Barbara’s city council passed Ordinance 54, which decreed that no one could bathe in the sea between Santa Barbara Street and Castle Rock during the daytime without a “suitable” bathing costume. Those caught bathing au naturel were subject to a fine that ranged from $1 to $100, and, if the fine were not paid, could be imprisoned at the rate of $2 per day.

“The climate and pleasant atmosphere on the seashore and the beautiful sandy beach that stretches over fifty miles of its extent, are particularly inviting to those fond of sea bathing,” said one advocate of developing Santa Barbara as a sea resort in 1873.

Postcards soon echoed his sentiment. (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

By 1916, bathing suit design had reached the couture houses, and trendy stores vied with each other for the latest fashions (Wikimedia Commons) Circa 1918, at the second Los Baños bathhouse (the first burned down in 1912), two suits reveal the intersection between the old and the new.

The woman on the left is wearing bathing shoes, woolen tights, and kneelength bloomers under a dress that covers her shoulders and has a high décolletage. The other woman wears a more modern suit and bares her legs and shoulders. Only the bathing caps are the same. (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

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The law was enforced and violators were reported. One such miscreant, who had bathed insufficiently clad, was brought before the court. He admitted he had bathed without a stitch but claimed it was legal to do so before 7 am. The court did not agree, and he was fined $5. Nevertheless, plenty of people continued to flaunt the law. One writer from Los Angeles reported, “The Santa Barbarans are complaining because people persist in

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CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

The cover of Puck, the swimsuit edition of 1904, graphically reveals the controversy between the proponents of old-style suits and those of the new (Library of Congress)

bathing on the beach without being arrayed in the ugly bathing suits they have for hire at that place.”

Bathing suits of the Victorian era strove to disguise the form of the female body. Men, too, were restricted. They could not show their chests and had to wear shirts. These limits were constantly being challenged, however. One writer in 1876 was intrigued that local women were eschewing the long trousers of their bathing costumes and instead wearing drawers to the knee and striped stockings that revealed the shape of their calves. Sometimes pretty young women dispensed with the stockings altogether, he said, and went bare legged below the knee, exposing them to the rays of the sun and the admiring eyes of the onlookers. He advised his readers to go to the beach to see for themselves.

In July of the centennial year, another beach watcher reported, “The proper thing in bathing suits this year is garments of red, white, and blue stripes, with patriotic figures on the white stripes. It is just splendid to see the ladies run up the national colors on the beach.”

Bathing suits continued to obscure the core of the female figure into the 1910s, and by then, women’s clothing stores had begun to carry the costume, which had become fashionable (though still impractical) under the hands of inventive and skilled designers.

By 1920, a revolt was underway in Santa Barbara. At the bathhouses, girls were demanding boys’ bathing costumes – two sizes too small! Many beachgoers complained about the racy costumes, and demands were made on city council to regulate beach hours and send in the police to enforce the rules.

Hawaii had dealt with this issue in 1918, when the young women of the Outrigger Club started wearing one-piece bathing suits. A concerned group of

The Hammond family shows off the latest in swimwear on the beach adjoining their Bonnymede estate in 1910. From left to right are Elizabeth Hammond, Esther Fiske Hammond, Gardiner Greene Hammond Jr., Mary Hammond, Frances Hammond, and George Stanley Fiske (Esther’s brother). The family would make a lasting imprint on Santa Barbara and Montecito. Today, Hammond’s Beach is a favored surf spot. (Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)

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women asked the Honolulu City Council for an ordinance to compel the girls to wear a skirt reaching to the knees. The mayor told the petitioners they should knit more socks and sweaters for the soldiers so they’d have less time to criticize the dress of others. The council, he said, had plenty of work to do without worrying about the length and breadth of ladies’ bathing suits.

Slowly but eventually, most American women came to embrace the practicality and freedom of the skimpier suits, and American men had more to admire than shapely calves. As sea bathing and ocean swimming became ever more popular, Santa Barbarans had plenty of beaches from which to choose for this pleasant pastime.

West Beach

A

fter the hide-and-tallow shacks – with their stench and detritus – were abandoned at West Beach, city promoters became aware of Santa Barbara’s potential as a beach resort. In 1873, one such advocate wrote, “The climate and pleasant atmosphere on the seashore and the beautiful sandy beach that stretches over fifty miles of its extent, are particularly inviting to those fond of sea bathing.”

By 1877, three public bathhouses and several private ones had been established along today’s West Beach. They offered changing rooms, rented

“It is just splendid to see the ladies run up the national colors on the beach.” (Library of Congress)

Sunday visitors to Plaza del Mar listen to a band concert circa 1910. By then, the Potter Hotel replaced the old adobe house on Burton’s Mound, and a Mission-style teahouse and other structures anchored the corner of Castillo Street and the Boulevard. (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

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In the late 1880s, a wooden bathhouse stood at the base of Castillo Street. Today’s West Cabrillo Boulevard was only a dirt track, and the beach itself was the preferred course for strollers, riders, and horse-drawn carriages. Flower-bedecked chapeaux adorned the ladies while bowlers vied with boaters for the men at the Fourth of July gathering at the bathhouse. (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

Known today as Leadbetter Beach after the second owner of the mansion and estate built by Thomas B. Dibblee on the Mesa lands above the cliffs, the beach west of Bennett’s Bathhouse extended to Castle Rock, seen here in the middle of the photograph. The photo seems to show some sort of swimming event as there are three photographers at the scene, as well as an audience in bustles and bombazine. (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

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cotton and flannel swimsuits, placed rafts with lifelines in the bay, and featured freshwater showers and towels.

In her memoir My Santa Barbara Scrap Book, Elizabeth Eaton Burton – Parisian expatriate turned California girl – recalls that in the 1890s, “…State Street was our Rue de Rivoli if we selected eleven a.m. as the hour to walk its length on our way for a swim. For at this hour, one met the whole world there. Every office was emptied as if by magic, as each joined the procession; for a sea bath on a beautiful day was a sacred rite to be duly observed.”

With sea bathing so popular, it’s no wonder that in 1893 the city completed construction of today’s West Cabrillo Boulevard and the parkland of Plaza del Mar. In 1901, a new Mission-style bathhouse and a pleasure pier were added to the plaza. West Beach became the place to go for boardwalk strolls, picnics, band concerts, swimming and diving, bowling, and changing rooms for sea baths.

The Parrott family from San Francisco – vacationing in Montecito near the Country Club on Channel Drive – enjoyed the plunge at Los Baños in 1901 (Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)

Postcards of the Pleasure Pier, Plaza del Mar, and Los Baños became popular with tourists (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

Members of the Parrott family enjoy the strand at West Beach in 1901.

Stearns Wharf is in the background.

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In 1901, a new Mission-style bathhouse was built at Plaza del Mar and named Los Baños. The second story band shell was used for the popular Sunday concerts.

(Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

“A sea bath on a beautiful day was a sacred rite to be duly observed.” – Elizabeth Eaton Burton, My Santa Barbara Scrap Book: A Portrait of the Artist (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

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CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

Miramar Beach and Edgecliffe

N

amed for the cottage hotel on the bluff behind it, Miramar Beach became a favorite with visitors and locals alike. Over the years, the Doulton family – who had established the hotel in 1886 – built a pier, a tearoom, and more than 250 individual cabanas on a boardwalk. Local residents hopped on the train in Santa Barbara and debarked at the Miramar Depot (recently deposed by the current owner of the property). Others came by boat. A raft with a lifeline attached to the beach provided safety for timorous swimmers.

Over time, the bluff west of the resort became dotted with private cabanas, and later, charming beach cottages. And in 1924, farther west beyond Eucalyptus Lane, George Owen Knapp established a private beach club that he named Edgecliffe. In 1916, Knapp, a founder of the Union Calcium Carbide Company, had purchased the Montecito estate called Arcady. He later built several mountain lodges in Santa Ynez range and a beach cottage at Sandyland. He was a generous philanthropist and donated funds to various Santa Barbara institutions, especially Cottage Hospital.

By the late 1930s, clothing had been truly liberated from Victorian strictures. The girls are posing on the Miramar pier, and the 250 cabanas line the bluff behind them. The effects of the harbor on the formerly wide sandy beach of the Miramar are clearly seen. (Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)

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Edgecliffe featured rows of palm-roofed cabanas along the bluff plus a tearoom and a dance floor. After the completion of the Santa Barbara harbor in 1929 changed the littoral drift and sand started disappearing from southern beaches, the club installed groins and weirs to capture drifting sand. These groins saved its sands but began to deplete the sands at Miramar. The Doultons were not pleased and filed a court case, which was not settled until 1941 when the groins at Edgecliffe were demolished.

Cabana boys at the Edgecliffe Beach Club overlook the wooden boardwalks and umbrellaed dining tables on the sand (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

The late Dora Bromfield was just a child when she made sandcastles at Miramar Beach in the 1920s.

Wearing a wool knit bathing suit and stylish bathing cap, dimpled Dora smiled engagingly for the camera.

(Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)

One-piece bathing suits that revealed shoulders, neck, and legs – and exposed the female form – were allowed at Miramar in the late 1920s, but men still had to cover their chests. The Miramar pier became a favorite with local fishermen, and a rope to the raft provided security for timid swimmers.

(Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)

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Sandyland

S

andyland was built on a sandspit backed by wetlands teeming with bird life and fronted by gently breaking waves of the blue Pacific.

Summer days at Sandyland were for lazing on the beach playing backgammon with friends or taking to the surf with air mattresses. Others trotted out long wooden surfboards, imitating Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimming champion who had popularized the sport of surfing in California. At Sandyland, the sounds of beach parties and picnics mingled with the crashing of waves and whistling of birds all summer long.

Sandyland was established in 1906 when Stewart Edward White, renowned Western author, and Joel Remington Fithian, Carpinteria rancher and founder of the Santa Barbara Country Club, purchased 160 acres of slough and dunes near Carpinteria. White, who had become entranced with the idea of owning a beach retreat, felt the remote and private location was perfect. They built a simple beach cottage behind the low dunes, and White and Fithian and friends spent many summer days at the idyllic retreat. He and Fithian became the first in Santa Barbara to ride the wild waves on long redwood surfboards.

Stewart Edward White may have been a gifted author, but he proved that science was not his milieu when he decided to plant a beach colony on a sandspit. Despite seawalls and revetments, angry waves laid waste to the exclusive community time after time.

Helen Davidson with Bill and “Bunny” relax in front of the Strong cottage at Sandyland in 1932 (Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)

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Around 1915, White started selling large plots of his Sandyland holdings at $4 a foot. He sold to people he knew and whom he wanted as neighbors. Initially, the cottages were unpretentious; some were little more than cabanas, and some lots stayed empty, used by the owners for picnics and family outings. Exclusivity had been built into the area, however, and prospective owners were vetted by those who already owned property.

Forget thin wooden boards, stockings, and skirts, Betty Strong and friend have a nice soft, buoyant air mattress (Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)

Boogie boarding at Sandyland despite the drag of modesty skirts (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

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CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

I

n 1887, the Montecito Land Company purchased the acreage bordering Butterfly Beach and subdivided it. The timing was unfortunate because the land boom, which had been in full force and fueled by the promise of a coastal route for a railroad from Los Angeles to San Francisco, went bust. The line stopped at Ellwood and would not be completed until December 31, 1900.

Banker Joel Adams Fithian – together with his sons Joel Remington and Barrett – arrived in Santa Barbara in 1892 and began investing in Santa Barbara real estate. Since his sons and others were interested in forming a country club, he purchased lots from the Montecito Land Company and built a small clubhouse

in 1894. Eventually, his sons would come into possession of the Santa Barbara Country Club, which expanded tremendously during their ownership. A pier and a bathhouse were built in addition to tennis courts and a second building to house billiard, card, and reception rooms as well as showers. Land was leased for a golf course.

Eventually, the club moved and built a clubhouse on the site of today’s Music Academy of the West and then in 1918, to the present location of the Montecito Club. For a time, the lands along Channel Drive became a residential community with rental cottages known as Montecito Park, whose patrons enjoyed basking in the sun and strolling along the sands of Butterfly Beach when they weren’t taking a refreshing swim in the ocean.

Wearing the latest in swimwear, two soaking wet girls of the Parrott family run from the camera on the pier of the country club at today’s Butterfly Beach (Courtesy Montecito Association History Committee)

Before the harbor changed the drift of the sands, brightly colored cabanas graced the beach across from the Santa Barbara Biltmore (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

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Wearing a swim hat and conservative bathing costume, Caroline Herter Bridge tests the waters with her son, John Dwight Bridge Jr. in 1921. Caroline and her husband were involved in the early years of the Community Arts Association and were connected to one of its greatest supporters, world-renowned artist Albert Herter.

(Courtesy Caroline Bridge Armstrong)

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Two properly clad girls ride bikes on Butterfly Beach in the 1910s (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

In 1927, the Santa Barbara Biltmore was constructed and the cottages became rentals of the hotel. In 1937, the Coral Casino was built to replace the Biltmore Beach Club because the continued erosion of the sands had caused the hungry sea to invade its cheerfully striped cabanas. The Biltmore pier was dynamited in 1983 for a television commercial. The narrow beach is open to the public and remains a popular spot for walkers, sunbathers, and swimmers today.

The beach was named for Butterfly Lane (originally named Montecito Avenue), which was renamed for the monarch butterflies that roosted in the eucalyptus trees. Today, the butterflies no longer visit the lane and only the name remains.

An aerial view of Butterfly Beach and Channel Drive circa 1940. The Santa Barbara Biltmore (middle foreground) replaced the old country club buildings, and the Coral Casino (bottom left), which was completed in 1937, replaced two older facilities. Butterfly Lane runs left to right near the middle of the photo. At the top East Beach lies left, Santa Barbara Cemetery is in the middle, and the Bird Refuge is on right. (Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

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An aerial view of East Cabrillo Boulevard circa 1920. The bluff west of Summerland can be seen in the distance. The white area near the top is today’s Andrée Clark Bird Refuge, and the railyard is now Hilton Santa Barbara Beachfront Resort.

(Courtesy Santa Barbara Historical Museum)

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CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’

East Beach

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wo tidal sloughs adjoined the beach east of State Street, both of which could become odiferous during the summer months. At the western end of this stretch of beach stood Stearns Wharf along with the mills, works, and resultant pollution of the Santa Barbara Lumber Company. At its eastern end lay the salt marsh, which was once surrounded by a racetrack and considered for the site of the harbor. It was a favorite local spot for duck hunting and stunk to high heaven during warm months. In the 1930s, it was reconfigured to become the Andrée Clark Bird Refuge.

Below the middle estero – where another racetrack and agricultural pavilion had been built – lay the rail yards. Nearby, Santa Barbara’s short sewer outflow released the excrement of the town into the sea. Needless to say, East Beach was not the destination of choice for most residents.

In the 1920s, however, a major effort was made to improve that stretch of strand and turn it into parkland. A line of palms and lawns with seawalls and revetments accompanied the realignment of the boulevard away from the churning storm surf. The sewer outflow pipe was extended out 2,000 feet, and a beach pavilion and bathhouse were to be built.

Financed by David Gray – Montecito resident and former head of Ford Motor Company – the Cabrillo Pavilion was designed

by Roland Sauter and E. Keith Lockard in the Spanish Colonial

style. It was immediately popular with the people of Santa Barbara, to whom it was dedicated. A playground, stoa, and wading pool were built and dedicated to Frederick Forrest Peabody by Kathleen Burke Peabody’s Wolf Cubs. During the summer months, the children of the town flocked to the pavilion to rent bathing suits, splash in the wading pool, crash through the breakers, and eat their fill of hot dogs and peanuts.

At various times and over time, other beaches – both private and public – were developed. Today as then, all along the Santa Barbara shore, locals and visitors still respond to the call of the sea.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

(From “Sea Fever” by John Masefield) (Sources: Contemporary Morning Press articles; previous “Mansions and Moguls” and “The Way it Was” articles by Hattie Beresford; Montecito and Santa Barbara: The Days of the Great Estates by David Myrick; various internet sites; The Mamas & the Papas; and My Santa Barbara Scrap Book: A Portrait of the Artist by Elizabeth Eaton Burton.)

Like the Miramar and the Biltmore, the Cabrillo Pavilion offered a safety rope and a raft for ocean swimming.

The 1940s-era photo shows the Marmonte Hotel in the background and the stoa and wading pool on the right.

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Speaking Volumes

How Sara Miller McCune’s passion for books and ideas helped shape the world of publishing

By Katherine Stewart

F

rom the road, the Miller McCune residence looks like just another one of Santa Barbara’s elegant, semirural homes – a series of white rectangles trimmed in blue in the abstract contemporary style. On the inside, it is the record of a remarkable journey.

Within its wide hallways and open-plan rooms, you will find art collected from travels in India, East Asia, and Europe; a signed trumpet from Wynton Marsalis as a tribute to Miller McCune’s support for UC Santa Barbara’s Arts & Lectures program; an array of mementos from noted intellectuals and prominent leaders including Gloria Steinem; framed photographs of Mahatma Gandhi and former president Franklin D. Roosevelt; a few treasured pieces of furniture saved from a childhood in Queens, New York; and, above all, long shelves of books – some of them precious, all of them carefully catalogued.

Sara Miller McCune is the cofounder – with her late husband George McCune – of SAGE Publishing, which produces more than 1,000 journals and hundreds of books every year, as well as databases, videos, tools for supporting research methods, and other digital products. For more than 50 years, the company she founded has been at the forefront of the publishing world of social science research, pioneering a multidisciplinary approach. The world 120

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Miller McCune at the yearbook office at Queens College, City University of New York, in spring 1961

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headquarters of SAGE now sits in Thousand Oaks, California, with additional offices in London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington, D.C., Toronto, and Melbourne. But it is safe to say that the spirit of the enterprise lies in Montecito, where Miller McCune has made her home since the early 1990s.

Miller McCune likes her house the way she likes her politics: progressive and cosmopolitan – but decidedly efficient. Everything here appears to be in its place. The collection of rare books – the unmistakable centerpiece of the house – reposes in a custombuilt, climate-controlled, windowless sanctuary and is organized according to specific areas of interest: American intellectual history, English literature, India, New York, Oxford, social science, Jewish life and thought, art, and more.

The same sense of purposeful order can be seen from the loggia that overlooks the rose garden. Much of the garden has been transformed to drought-tolerant landscaping dotted with a variety of succulents and native plants.

Miller McCune greets me in the loggia in white jeans, a flowing blue top, and blue glasses, her white hair drawn into a neat braid.

Her appearance seems to represent a coherent match with the blueand-white lines of the home. We are a very long way from Queens, and yet every step on the journey she relates seems to have been taken with the same combination of keen curiosity and deliberate intent.

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orn in Manhattan in 1941, Sara Miller McCune was raised in Yorkville, the South Bronx, and Queens. From the start, she was encouraged by her parents’ support, if not her mother’s aspirations. “She wanted me to be either an actress or a radio commentator. She had dreams for me that she might have dreamed for herself.” She pauses and offers a wry smile. “I was only cooperative to a point. In New York City, at the time, anyone with an IQ above 130 could do three years of schoolwork in two years of middle school, thus graduating high school ahead of time.” This enabled her to graduate college four months after her 20th birthday.

When she landed at Queens College, she was in a rush to reach the finish line and completed a three-year degree in political science and history in two years’ time. “The summer after my senior year of college, I was supposed to go to Europe with a friend,” she says. “But instead, my friend got married and I fell in love with publishing.”

Though her ambitions burned brightly, at the time, chances for women in the field were as dim as they were in business in general during the mid-1960s. At Macmillan Publishers, where Miller McCune got her first job, it was very unusual to see a woman as a department head. “Except for things such as copyright or records

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Miller McCune with her late husband, George McCune, meeting Sara’s mother at Los Angeles International Airport, 1967

keeping, or maybe the royalties department, women were not working at executive levels and had nothing to do with strategic planning or decision-making,” says Miller McCune. “The only areas in which women actually chose the books to be published were in the children’s books department or perhaps religious books.

But I grew up in a family that believed I could do anything. They were very supportive, so I had a lot of confidence.” And, thanks to her years of experiences making speeches as a teenager all over the United States and Canada in theater, “I wasn’t afraid of speaking in front of people.”

And then she found a kindred spirit – in her boss and mentor.

George D. McCune had 15 years of publishing experience and headed the college sales department before Macmillan Publishers was acquired by Crowell-Collier (and subsequently expanded with other acquisitions). Miller McCune founded SAGE in 1965 and married George the following year. “George and I were very much partners. That is one of the reasons why SAGE Publishing has its name,” she says. “On my list of possibilities was the word sage, as a synonym for scholar. On George’s list the word SAGE appeared because it was the first two initials of each of our first names: SA for Sara and GE for George. It was the only name on both our lists.”

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“The summer after my senior year of college, I was supposed to go to Europe with a friend. But instead, my friend got married and I fell in love with publishing.”

Miller McCune on Mother’s Day

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ome people hope to hit the jackpot in unexploited natural resources or with some new device or app. The McCunes saw gold in ideas. The raw material on which they built their future was more specifically the vast flow of underappreciated intellectual labor that washed up on American shores during the European political crises of the middle of the 20th century.

“In the years before World War II, there was a great flight from Europe of academics – who were often Jewish – leaving the continent,” Miller McCune notes. “There were also some very wellknown French and German scholars, among others. Some made it as far as England; others came to the New World. It was a diaspora of brilliant minds. And they brought with them so much wisdom and so much knowledge.” Many of these intellectuals, Miller McCune notes, were affiliated with the New School for Social Research, the University of Chicago, major state universities, and other institutions on the cutting edge of social science research.

“And then of course there was the G.I. Bill,” she says, referring to the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 that provided a range of benefits including funding for education for veterans of World War II, “which many people, including George, took advantage of.”

From the start, SAGE Publishing distinguished itself both in its focus on the social sciences and in its pioneering emphasis on interdisciplinary research. An avid follower of social science research and developments, Miller McCune began to chafe at the fact that academic departments at nearly all the universities remained enclosed in their silos. “So you had the sociologists, the political scientists, the economists, the psychologists, people in management

(just as they were in chemistry and physics and biology). But all the interesting stuff to me seemed to be where at least two of these categories overlapped in the social and behavioral sciences.”

Miller McCune committed to creating publishing opportunities for cross-pollination – political sociology, the type of urban studies research by well-known writers such as Jane Jacobs, and other interdisciplinary arenas that didn’t fit into the existing mold. “It was where people’s interests seemed to be, and it was where the excitement was for me,” she says. “I decided, I guess, to go with my instincts.”

Under Sara and George’s guidance, SAGE developed a habit of landing at the forefront of emerging academic disciplines. “The move toward cross-cultural studies also fascinated me,” says Miller McCune. One particular area of interest was the gender studies movement. “We were the first to do women’s studies and then men’s studies,” she says. “Family research ultimately had this whole bubbling up of interest in family violence. It wasn’t just child abuse and wife abuse. Women battered men to a certain degree, and what the British call ‘granny-bashing’ – elder abuse – is a huge arena. But that, to us, was very multidisciplinary.”

Communications was another swiftly developing field that captivated Miller McCune. “It seems like every tree kept thrusting out branches, and every branch kept thrusting out more branches,” she says. “There were all these new areas – from health communication, mass media, to interpersonal communication, intrapersonal communication (or what your mind and your gut is telling you).” As the American Psychological Association kept growing new divisions, Miller McCune attended their conventions and followed the growth and developments of a myriad of subdisciplines. “There were always Young Turks in communications,” she says, “and it was the Young Turks that we tended to ally ourselves with.”

It was a heady time, and Miller McCune was at the center of it.

“I was not just meeting the leading researchers,” she says. “I was also meeting the next generation of brilliant social scientists as they were getting out of the nest.”

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Speaking Volumes

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t takes only a few moments inside Miller McCune’s Montecito residence to grasp that travel – restless, almost wanton in its range and intensity – is an inescapable part of her story.

From the start, Miller McCune was resolutely international in her perspective on the publishing industry. “We knew we had to be global,” she says. In its sixth year, SAGE expanded to London, then eventually to India, Singapore, and beyond. But the process took years of relationship building. With a base in London near Covent Garden, they had to persuade their partners that they were interested not just in distributing scholarly journals and books but also in building an ongoing publishing enterprise.

Though she thrived in the world of ideas and research, her eye was never far from the next opportunity for growth. “In many cases, people would talk about things they’d like to see, such as a new journal on a particular subject, and I’d say, ‘Let’s do it,’” she says. “So I became a direct-mail queen.” She pauses. “I was also a cash-flow queen,” she adds with a smile, “and that helped!”

Sometimes Miller McCune found opportunities in rescuing faltering ventures. One of her smaller clients, a political scientist who was the editor and publisher of American Behavioral Scientist, had become fascinated with an expansive project that didn’t fly.

“He was about to go bankrupt, and I said I would take over his debts if I could take the journal,” she says. The editorial board at the time included Donald Campbell, a major figure in social psychology, and economist Kenneth Boulding. “These were leading lights, the top people,” she says. “That’s how I got to know (Daniel Patrick) Pat Moynihan. He was head of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard and MIT; he gave me their whole mailing list.”

But not every endeavor worked – at least not initially. On another occasion, the coeditor of the Journal of Contemporary History, which was part of a U.K.-based group publishing five journals, realized they were not working with a company familiar with journals (or with much-needed knowledge of the vital American market). “He called me and said, ‘Can you help us?’ and I said, ‘Sure, I’ll take them on,’” she says. “We only had five staff in London to train on the fly to publish those journals.”

Reflecting on her journey, Miller McCune takes a sip of water and looks out at her rose garden. “It was serendipity, plus curiosity, plus energy, plus willingness to go with my gut, and at the same time a willingness to work hard and work smart.”

By the late 1980s, some industry voices were beginning to predict that the publishing business would pivot entirely to digital. But Miller McCune treasured books and journals as physical objects.

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Furthermore, as she had observed, librarians tended to modify their work habits slowly. So she and George figured they would remain watchful and let others be on the vanguard of the pivot to digital. At the same time, they began encouraging journal editors to assume that they would, one day, be publishing both print and digital formats, laying the planning and groundwork. And as newly created universities in the Middle East and beyond were beginning to build their own physical libraries, physical journals remained profitable.

“You had the sociologists, the political scientists, the economists, the psychologists, people in management ( just as they were in chemistry and physics and biology). But all the interesting stuff to me seemed to be where at least two of these categories overlapped in the social and behavioral sciences.”

But ethical issues in the field were beginning to emerge. Forprofit academic publishing companies were coming under fire for profiting off knowledge created in large part with public tax dollars.

Elsevier, a large Netherlands-based publisher of scientific, technical, and medical content, was a frequent target. “We haven’t completely avoided the issues, but there are differences,” Miller McCune comments. “For one thing, Elsevier has many more journals in the hard sciences, and they have also been very high priced.” She pauses. “So it was seen as the 800-pound gorilla. And we’re not a public company, we’re not run-by-the-numbers people. We are not subservient to Wall Street or the City of London.” With the trend to digital, SAGE has created a variety of all-access deals with universities and institutions. It experiments with different business models for different markets and categories, adjusting fee structures for community colleges and other under-resourced institutions.

In response to current events, it also creates microsites with free content centered on different topics such as racial justice and the COVID-19 virus.

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RE-IMAGINE RE-VITALIZE RE-INSPIRE

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Speaking Volumes

W

ith the benefit of hindsight, the fact that Miller McCune’s journey would take her to Santa Barbara seems more inevitable than it has a right to. The first step, when the company was a year and a half old, was to trade New York for California. She and George found a place on the south side of Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, but in less than a decade outgrew the space (and found employee parking costs too high) and moved the company to Thousand Oaks – still close enough to Los Angeles International Airport, given the amount of travel they did in those years.

But Thousand Oaks, with its vast suburban landscape, had never felt like a great cultural fit. The couple had a number of friends affiliated with UC Santa Barbara and thus became well-acquainted with the community. “By the time George died in 1990, I knew I wasn’t going to stay in Thousand Oaks as a widow,” she says.

“Within two years, I came here looking for a place.”

Miller McCune with African American studies philosopher and professor Molefi Kete Asante at SAGE’s 50th anniversary

Left to right: Blaise Simqu, president and CEO of SAGE Publishing; Marjorie Margolies, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 13th district; Sara Miller McCune: actor and comedian Alan Alda; and Ken Prewitt, Carnegie professor of social affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., at one of SAGE Publishing’s 50th anniversary events

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“It was serendipity, plus curiosity, plus energy, plus willingness to go with my gut, and at the same time a willingness to work hard and work smart.”

Miller McCune with Fareed Zakaria, Indian American journalist, political commentator, and author at the New York Public Library for a special event honoring SAGE Publishing’s 50th anniversary

Miller McCune took up residence at the edge of Montecito near downtown and threw herself into the life of Santa Barbara.

In her quest for connection to culture, she played a part in the restoration of the Granada Theatre, acting as campaign chair and serving on the board for a decade. She also joined the council for UCSB Arts & Lectures, bringing notable artists and thinkers to the community and leading the group in a $20 million fundraising campaign for five years. She has worked with the Community Arts Music Association of Santa Barbara, collaborated with the Santa Barbara Ensemble, and funded the Léni Fé Bland Performing Arts Partnership at the Santa Barbara Education Foundation and the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at UCSB. Reflecting her longtime interest in political issues, she supported various candidates for public office including Lois Capps, who served as the 24th Congressional District’s representative from 1998 to 2017. But her interest in politics extends well beyond the borders of Santa Barbara County or the State of California. “I have been interested in politics since I was in college, where I served as the Queens County chair of students for Kennedy in New York City – before I was old enough to vote!” Miller McCune says. “I usually express my support through financial donations and occasionally by cohosting events. I support politicians who hold values similar to my own. I am currently quite concerned about the challenges to democracy in this country.”

Miller McCune has also remained involved in the foundation that she cofounded with her late husband – The McCune Foundation, which builds social capital among underserved communities in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties with a particular focus on youth, social justice, and education.

Kismet poster for the production that celebrated Miller McCune’s 80th birthday

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ometime around 2017, Miller McCune realized her book collection had outgrown her existing 4,000-square-foot abode. “I had piles of airplane reading – mysteries and such – all over the house,” she says. “My bedroom had knee-high piles of paperbacks. I realized I wanted a house that would allow me to grow my rare book collection, as well as provide more room for my other books.”

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Miller McCune with California State Senator Monique Limón

Miller McCune with Kismet dancers and original Kismet actress Bonnie Evans

“The only areas in which women actually chose the books to be published were in the children’s books department or perhaps religious books. But I grew up in a family that believed I could do anything. They were very supportive, so I had a lot of confidence.”

She moved into her current house in 2017. Roomier quarters proved to be a blessing during the COVID pandemic. Every other Sunday, Miller McCune hosts a group of four to six friends for dinner and conversation at the long table on the loggia, where discussion ranges widely – from books they have been reading to social issues and politics. “What I value in my friendships are intelligence, honesty, common interests, and a strong belief in social justice,” Miller McCune says. “During the pandemic, we turned on the heat lamps and sat six feet apart until we were vaccinated. A month after the last one got vaxxed, we started moving the chairs a little closer.”

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hile Miller McCune remains watchful of public health developments related to COVID-19, she hopes to play a part in welcoming the performing arts back to the city. In fact, as an 80th birthday gift to herself and to the community, she produced a Santa Barbara revival of the musical Kismet, which won several Tony awards when it debuted on Broadway in the early 1950s; the production was performed at the Granada Theatre in October. The musical was directed by Lonny Price, who has collected multiple Broadway credits including Sunset Boulevard, Company, and Sweeney Todd. Kismet featured the Santa Barbara Symphony and State Street Ballet, along with performers from around the world. “Because I am a businesswoman,” Miller McCune notes, “I have a plan A1 and a plan A2 with regard to the production, as well as a plan B if the Delta variant really gets wildly out of hand. But,” she adds with a smile, “the show must go on!”

On my way out, Miller McCune takes me on a tour of her book vault. If there is a sacred space in the home, this is it. It is illuminated by recessed lighting and, from above, the chandelier from Miller McCune’s mother’s dining room in Queens. The impression is one of meticulous planning. Even the future of the collection has been secured; UCSB will receive all of the books with the exception of two titles that are bequeathed to the South Asian Library at UC Berkeley.

The various sections of the collection are broadly representative of facets of McCune’s long and eventful journey.

I see dozens of holdings spanning the globe – from Southern India to the Santa Ynez Valley. Miller McCune lingers over a 400-year-old folio of William Shakespeare’s works – clearly one of the prized possessions in her collection – and nods at a section of a bookshelf containing everything that Winston Churchill ever wrote. Booker T. Washington and Sojourner Truth share the space with Clarence Darrow, Emma Goldman, and Amelia Earhart, whose sister was one of Miller McCune’s political science teachers. Then, Miller McCune points to a collection of works by philosophers and thinkers that influenced America’s founding fathers, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s The Social Contract and an early edition of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense as well as a first edition of The Federalist Papers, a collection of essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. It strikes me that these may be especially close to her heart. Paine was the restless writer born in England who, not satisfied with kicking off the American Revolution, threw himself into the French Revolution, and then into projects of social reform that continue to inspire. He seems like a good fit for this house.

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EDUCATION

Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy founders Amir Abo-Shaeer and Emily Shaeer

INNOVATORS STORY BY

EMILY HECKMAN PHOTOGRAPHS BY

EDWARD CLYNES

HOW AMIR ABO-SHAEER AND EMILY SHAEER OF THE DOS PUEBLOS ENGINEERING ACADEMY ARE REVOLUTIONIZING LEARNING IN SANTA BARBARA

I

Students using mills and lathes to create parts for their projects in one of the machine shops at the DPEA

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f you head over to the Dos Pueblos High School campus these days, you’ll see some impressive construction going on. What’s being raised on the footprint of a former parking lot, just in front of the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy (DPEA), is a building that will house state-of-the-art learning spaces and machine shops; an interactive exhibit hall to showcase student-designed and -built mechatronics exhibits; and a rooftop observatory that will be linked to a global network of telescopes via Goleta-based Las Cumbres Observatory. This new facility, to be named the Virgil Elings Center for Creative Learning for the famed engineer and philanthropist who himself attended a vocational high school where he learned machining before obtaining his PhD in physics, embodies the entrepreneurial spirit and visionary leadership of Amir Abo-Shaeer and Emily Shaeer, the dynamic husband-andwife team who have been transforming education at Dos Pueblos High School for nearly two decades.

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EDUCATION INNOVATORS

The Shaeers were both once local students. They graduated from Dos Pueblos High School and met while working at the Goleta Vons and putting themselves through college at UC Santa Barbara. Amir graduated with an engineering degree and worked in the private sector for a few years before realizing his passion lay in teaching.

He and Emily, a literature major, both returned to UCSB to gain teaching credentials, and started working at Dos Pueblos at the same time in 2001, with Amir teaching physics and Emily teaching English, English as a second language, and support classes for firstgeneration college-bound students.

One year teaching physics as a “lone ranger” left Amir wanting more. He yearned to collaborate more closely with teachers in other disciplines and provide students with an entrée into the practical applications of physics. The next year, he offered a course called

“A

Student fabricating a part on a milling machine

mir and Emily are innovative, energetic teachers with an enviable rate of success. I am pleased to be able to help facilitate a new STEAM program to expand their approach to learning to even more students in the community. I am confident that students will learn technical and other skills needed to be informed citizens and succeed in whatever endeavor they choose. Selfishly, I hope some of them will decide to stay in Santa Barbara and become our next generation of inventors and start-up entrepreneurs.”

– VIRGIL ELINGS Emily Shaeer, Virgil Elings, and Amir Abo-Shaeer at the groundbreaking for the new Virgil Elings Center for Creative Learning (courtesy DPEA)

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Teacher Joe Shelton providing instruction to a student about using a milling machine

Students taking turns learning the basics of part fabrication on a manual milling machine

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engineering physics, and when he stepped into his classroom, he was stunned by the gender gap he faced: “When I taught physics, my class was 50 percent girls, 50 percent boys,” he says. “When I added the word engineering to the course description, I lost all but two female students.” This was a lightbulb moment for Amir: “I came out of a college engineering program that had no women. I came out of an engineering company that had no women. I realized there was a lot of work to do there because this gender bias was not okay. It took us a few years to turn this around, but our model is committed to 50 percent female students coming through our program.”

In 2006, Amir added a robotics team to his program, and this added a level of glamor and prestige to what he was doing, but space was so tight at DP at the time, they had to build their first robots in a storage closet. Nonetheless, the competitive robotics team gained national recognition and put a spotlight on the exceptionality of the DPEA. Local families started to take notice and applications for admissions in the program skyrocketed. By the end of 2006, the Shaeers began to envision a dedicated facility to house the growing academy. Their goal? To one day educate 400 students a year in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math)-related classes, with an emphasis on design and engineering. They therefore applied for a Career Technical Education Facilities Program grant through the California Department of Education. In 2007, they learned they’d secured the grant of $3 million for the Santa Barbara Unified School District, but there was a catch: The district would only receive the funds if another $3 million was raised locally. Amir immediately reached out to the larger DP family for help, and a core group of dedicated parents led by Sandy Seale (who has a PhD in engineering from MIT herself) created the DPEA Foundation, a nonprofit organization tasked with raising those matching funds.

Their first significant donation came from The Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara, a sign for Seale that they were on their way to reaching their goal. Then Virgil Elings donated a capstone $1 million, and ground was broken on the new building.

Teacher Ann Wirtz providing guidance to a student who is learning how to solder resistors to a printed circuit board

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EDUCATION INNOVATORS

That same year (2010), Amir was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship (informally known as the “genius grant”), providing the Shaeers the security they needed to fully focus on imagining and expanding their vision for the DPEA. When the Elings Center for Engineering Education opened its doors in 2011, it proved to be a banner year in many ways. In addition to admitting the first freshman class of 108 students, best-selling author Neal Bascomb’s 2011 book, The New Cool: A Visionary Teacher, His FIRST Robotics Team, and the Ultimate Battle of Smarts, which documented the success of the 2009 DP robotics team, was published. For most people, these achievements alone would indicate a stellar career, but for entrepreneurs like the Shaeers, they were just getting started.

Sensing the limitations of the robotics program – because it didn’t allow for the hands-on participation of enough students – Amir began to dream of ways to shift the program’s emphasis away from competition (the robotics team was, in essence, a club sport) and more fully into collaboration. This was a controversial decision at the time, but he and Emily knew that for the program to evolve, change, and meet their goals of engaging the most students, it had to be made. So while the robotics program was still up and running (circa 2015), Amir created the blueprint for a massive piece of engineering that would engage multiple teams of students, and which would become the iconic “Carousel of Physics” mechatronics exhibit showpiece that heralded the start of the next phase of the DPEA. The transition was, as is the case with most positive disruption, a bit bumpy, but now, in 2021, the DPEA is populated by students with no recall of those early robotics days. Today, it’s all about building interactive pieces that allow students to showcase their knowledge in unlimited ways.

In late August of this year, I was able to visit the DPEA in person.

It was the first week of school, and 518 days had passed since the students had last been on campus. But now…they were back! They were once again working in dynamic groups steeped in math, physics, and CAD (computer-aided design); they were soldering and donning safety glasses and running the industrial-grade machines that were humming along in the machine shop. (During the pandemic, the Shaeers and their colleagues managed to keep the program alive by sending project kits home to the students and using Zoom and other technologies to keep them as virtually engaged as possible.) The atmosphere felt positively joyful.

Emily walked me through their classrooms and into the machine shop while she described the basic way the program works: “Our students work in groups, and they physically move together through the learning spaces while they work to complete a year-long project.

We use a rotational model, a recursive model, where the students get to loop back and forth to reinforce their learning. They’re also able to interact with teachers from several disciplines at any time, which is unique to the way we ‘team teach.’ This process isn’t linear; it looks like DNA, and it builds into our students a love of learning, resiliency, and the commitment to problem-solve.” It’s what the Shaeers refer to as a “mastery of learning” approach, where, if you hit a closed door, you look for another one, then another one.

Or finally, as Emily says, “You ask, ‘So where’s the window?’” It’s all about believing that you will be able to find a solution to a problem.

This mindset – and their passion for collaboration – is what allowed them, and the DPEA Foundation, to work their magic once again and secure the funds needed to build out the CTE facilities now emerging on the DP campus.

The following collection of photos are of the “Carousel of Physics” that 60 students and their teachers developed during the 2014-2015 school year.

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Even without this new building, their work is paying off in spades – 100 percent of DPEA students graduate and attend college, and more than 85 percent major in STEAM-related fields of study. The DPEA prepares a diverse and inclusive swath of students for careers in design and technology fields, and all of them leave the DPEA with actual machining and building experience – a huge leg up.

I got to hear how this “learning by doing” approach changed the trajectory of one student’s life. Siena Applebaum, a 2016 DPEA graduate, earned both her BS and MS in mechanical engineering at USC. Since graduating in 2021, she’s been working for Apple in Cupertino. When we spoke over the phone, Applebaum was effusive about how the DPEA shaped her life: “Initially, I was super resistant to even applying to the program. I was 12 years old, and I had no idea what engineering was,” she says. “But my parents encouraged me to apply, so I did. Once I got there, I quickly understood what a great opportunity it was for me to get a project-based educational experience that would expose me to much more than just engineering. I absolutely loved the program as I was going through it – not only because I felt seen and supported, but because I actually fell in love with engineering.

The program literally changed my life in two major ways: one, it

instilled in me the confidence that I could succeed in engineering disciplines, which I doubt I otherwise would have had the courage to pursue. And two, it gave me the opportunity to discover a field I really loved: Sure, I’ve always liked math and science, but where else would I have learned how much I love 3D CAD design, how to turn a hex axle on a lathe, or craft working machine parts in the machine shop? I will forever be grateful for this exposure. I learned how to allow myself to ‘not know’ something, to take on new challenges, and to problem-solve creatively. At the DPEA, the Shaeers – and all the teachers – constantly stress that ‘anyone can be an engineer.’ I’m so grateful for this, because I came out of a gender-equal program at DPEA, walked into a program that was 70 percent male at USC, and now I’m on a team at Apple that is 90-plus percent men. But I don’t let that bother or intimidate me – I know Apple and other companies will one day catch up and get on board with the equity and inclusion piece that is the foundation of the DPEA.” I also had the chance to meet with current students (and some recent grads of the program too) during one of my campus visits, and they gave me an incredibly rich sense of what it’s like being a DPEA student.

The “Carousel of Physics” was DPEA’s first attempt at creating museum-quality exhibits.

This installation demonstrates more than 60 physics concepts and has more than 100 unique mechanisms.

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EDUCATION INNOVATORS

What these students shared is that on top of learning to apply math and physics and other academic subjects to practical skills such as using CAD soldering and professional-grade machinemaking tools, DPEA students master the “soft” skills of leadership, collaboration, and problem-solving. In short, DPEA students leave the program prepared to step directly into college or full-time jobs and thrive.

“W

hat I love most about the program is that it’s designed to allow us to use both sides of our brains. It’s a very structured program, yet it allows for so much creativity. I feel so close to my DPEA teachers and being part of this program has really reduced academic stress for me because it just doesn’t feel like work – it feels fun and important. We learn together. We make mistakes together. We’re getting through a pandemic together.

And we succeed together. I’m definitely planning on a STEAM career, and that’s thanks to this program. Plus, I feel SEEN here – as a Latina, I’m well-represented in this program, and that really matters.”

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– ISA MIRELES, JUNIOR

The Virgil Elings Center for Creative Learning is opening in 2022, which happens to be the 20th anniversary of the DPEA. The Shaeers and their colleagues have come a long way from the days when they repurposed a former theater to accommodate their growing program. As they look toward the future, one constant remains the same – their commitment to Dos Pueblos students and the larger Santa Barbara community. Their commitment to the principles of representation, inclusion, and access are breaking

“I

’m a pretty outgoing and social person, and I was a bit nervous coming in, thinking being part of a team like this would diminish my leadership skills. But the opposite has happened: I’ve learned how to ask for help and collaborate and let my classmates take the lead when they should – all of which has made me a better leader. I love the ‘full immersion’ aspect of the program, and not just for the creative aspects of it but because it’s helped build my confidence – especially as a girl. I’m no longer afraid of the unknown and I’m no longer limited by social expectations.”

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– GRACIE FUENTES, JUNIOR

down barriers to entry for the future designers and engineers who will shape so much of our culture.

As Amir said during our last conversation, “We’re just stepping into the Golden Age of tech, and we want our students to be the leaders of this. For us, it’s not just about opening up ‘tool culture’ to girls.

We also want boys to be exposed to the altruistic culture of collaboration. Our goal is to break through the roadblocks to STEAM fields that, until now, have limited who gets to excel in these fields. We absolutely believe that anyone can learn engineering. And not just learn it but love it. This is what our program is all about.”

“I

was in the 8th grade at Goleta Valley Junior High when some DPEA students presented the program to us. I did not have a full understanding of what the DPEA was before the presentation, but I remember feeling so excited that I saw girls up front! I was unsure about engineering, however my parents encouraged me to seize the learning opportunity, so I applied and got in. I was nervous when I first got here, but I began to relax and build my confidence as we designed and built projects. By my senior year, I felt confident enough to apply to the engineering program at George Fox University Early Decision, and I got in. I applied to run the machine shop too, and I was working in the DPEA machine shop when I found out I got the job. I became the first freshman girl to hold that position. Now, heading into my junior year of college where I’m majoring in mechanical engineering, I realize that I’m very much still on the DPEA track – that’s how strong the foundation is.”

– TIANA RINGER,

DPEA class of 2019, George Fox University class of 2023

Tiana Ringer, Amir Abo-Shaeer, and Lynda Weinman

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anta Barbara entrepreneur and philanthropist Lynda Weinman counts the Dos Pueblos Engineering Academy as one of many organizations she graciously supports.

“I was blown away when Amir Abo-Shaeer took the bold step of shifting away from the competitive culture of robotics where ‘winning’ was the goal," she says. "He became aware of how kids were getting left behind because of this, and he realized the emphasis on competition wasn’t serving the greater community of students, so he switched over to building museum exhibits rather than robots. I really admire him for making this hard decision and making this pivot – what a stroke of genius. What’s most impressive is what excellent leaders both Amir and Emily are. Most likely, Amir could get a job anywhere on Earth with much less responsibility and much higher compensation, but he’s too passionate and committed to our community. He’s a national treasure, as is Emily – what they’re doing at Dos Pueblos is truly profound.”

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Oldies

Newbies

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By Gabe Saglie

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ome of these ventures are tried and true, while others are making a splash for the first time. Here’s a peek at some of the lifestyle-driven businesses that are broadening Montecito’s appeal as both a traveler’s mecca and simply a truly idyllic place to live.

Local

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A rendering of the soon-to-be Montecito go-to, Local

rue, launching a restaurant is a first for Mike Sheldon.

The former CEO of the technology and hardware company Curvature, however, has long been a lover of food and wine. “I cook at home four or five times a week,” he says, “and have always dreamed of doing something in the culinary world.” His dream turned reality is called Local, the newest foodie haven to open soon in Montecito. The project is very much hands-on, with Sheldon himself making calls on everything from furnishings and decor to a food-and-beverage program meant to rival his Coast Village Road neighbors. A collaboration with the innovative Chris Chiarappa of Mesa Burger fame, Local aims to become the preferred neighborhood watering hole, with house wines by the noted Paul Lato, a 3,000-bottle list, and a noteworthy cellar. There are indeed 25 seats at the bar with another 35 in the dining room, and an additional 60 seats outdoors, most under trellises with heaters. Open-air seating “is quite important nowadays,” Sheldon says, “and not just as a risk mitigation factor but also because people have learned to love sitting outside.” The culinary spin is, well, local: The dishes, including a raw bar, as well as the kitchen staff, are a snapshot of what Sheldon calls, “the neighborhood.” He adds, “We want this to be a place the locals will love.”

1187 Coast Village Rd., Montecito, localmontecito.com.

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Whistle Club

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ebecca Blair opened Whistle Club in downtown Santa Barbara in 2014, but she resettled to an address in the 93108 a year later. “We’re lucky to have a strong local community here that has supported us through tough times,” says Blair. “From the fires to the mudslides to the pandemic.” Indeed, the many months of lockdown have inspired a reset of sorts at Whistle Club – an e-commerce push includes home delivery of designer fashions such as Proenza Schouler, Tibi, and Rachel Comey and styling sessions via Zoom. But the core draw remains the in-store merchandise: “Tightly curated specialty women’s apparel and accessories,” says Blair, “featuring a mix of independent designers and fashion industry favorites, with a focus on quality, integrity, and design.” A UC Santa Barbara grad and a former New York-based buyer for the Gilt Groupe, Blair spotlights a global blend of brands and stays abreast of evolving trends – something that’s made celebs such as Katy Perry and Natalie Portman part of her return clientele. Inspired by pandemic-driven preferences, “Our spring 2021 buy was by far the most casual,” she says. “But the exciting thing about fashion is that the pendulum always swings. People are not going to sacrifice comfort but there’s always room for getting dressed in a way that enables you to move and feel good.”

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(Photos by Katrina Dickson)

1235 Coast Village Rd., Montecito, 805-565-2800, whistleclub.com.

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K. Frank

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he “K” has two namesakes here: Kevin and Katie. The husband-and-wife team has been married 15 years – just as long as their popular design shop has been open for business. K. Frank’s first 10 years were spent along State Street, but it has called Montecito home since 2017, where the “face-to-face interactions with so many of our clients,” says Kevin Frank, “have really made us feel a part of this community.”

The pair scours the globe to ensure their designer offerings are

K. Frank proprietors Katie and Kevin Frank (Photo by Edward Clynes)

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modern, varied, and special. Katie spearheads the assortment of women’s clothes, jewelry, and accessories, while Kevin handles the men’s. Customer service is a primary tenet at K. Frank. But the couple’s carefully curated edit of clothing and accessories (along with their location) plays the main role in their success – especially during the pandemic. “Resort towns such as Montecito have become respites for people wanting to get away from the city life,” says Kevin, a former retail buyer in Aspen. “We’ve always been positioned as a lifestyle store, so as people reevaluate everyday life and look for things to live in and look good and feel good in, it plays to our strengths.”

1150 Coast Village Rd., Montecito, 805-560-7424, kfrankstyle.com.

Via Vai

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estaurants have come and gone ever since Pietro Bernardi launched Via Vai in 1994. Few, though, have come close to leaving the same kind of indelible impression on Montecito’s culinary scene. The vine-shrouded, secluded outdoor courtyard is a relaxing escape from the surrounding buzz of the Upper Village. And the food – a remarkably genuine representation of the Italian fare on which Bernardi himself grew up – is as consistent as it is delicious. The dozen-plus pizzas – such as the Siciliana, with spicy Italian sausage and capers, and the Cotto e Funghi, featuring Italian ham and mushrooms – are baked daily in the wood burning oven. Ingredients are seasonal and organic, and the main dishes – from pastas to steaks to an impressive array of seafood – are regional and fresh. Enticing Italian desserts include affogato, panna cotta, and tiramisu. Open for lunch each day but Sunday and dinner nightly, Via Vai also features an evolving array of premium local and Italian wines. Its sister eatery, the nearby Pane e Vino, became Montecito’s original Italian restaurant when it opened in 1988.

1483 E. Valley Rd., Montecito, 805-565-9393, viavaisb.com.

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A photo of owner Pietro Bernardi’s parents, Antonietta and Marcello

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Cabana Home

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teve Thompson and Caroline Thompson – business partners and the combined driving force behind Cabana Home – both list retail industry experience at Neiman Marcus on their resumés. The last 15 years, though, have been about making Cabana Home a real standout in the world of residential styling and decor. Their secret sauce is the two-pronged approach to their business: It’s the only interior design business in the Santa Barbara area that doubles as a comprehensive retail store. The pair love their Funk Zone setting. “The reinvention of the area has generatPartners Steve and Caroline Thompson (Photos by Edward Clynes)

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ed a whole new clientele,” says Steve – and plenty of steady foot traffic. But with “a large percent of our business from Montecito,” he adds, “we’d be there if we could find space large enough.” Much of their repeat clientele own multiple residences, so “once we help design a home here, they’ll invite us to work on their home in Marin or Truckee or New York – all over the country.” Regardless of location, though, the pandemic has recalibrated the way people focus on their homes. “They don’t have a proper office, they want a home gym,” says Steve, “so we are helping make their home fit their

ED needs.” Cabana Home features an impressive array of home furnishings – from beds, sofas, and desks to fine art as well as decorative accessories, mirrors, and linens. Exterior fixtures include umbrellas, tables, chairs, and lighting options stretching from inside the home to the great outdoors.

111 Santa Barbara St., Santa Barbara, 805-962-0200, cabanahome.com.

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Hayward’s

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his one’s the stalwart. Hayward’s was launched in 1890 and has grown to become one of the premier suppliers of outdoor furnishings and accessories on the South Coast. The downtown Santa Barbara showroom encompasses more than 12,000 square feet – the largest space of its kind between Los Angeles and San Francisco – and is stocked with everything from umbrellas and fire pits to patio sets and loungers. Design materials range from teak wood and wicker to wrought iron and stainless steel. With an emphasis on both comfort and sophistication, the selection of in-stock items represents premier industry designers, manufacturers, and suppliers. For customers set on their own fabrics and finishes, Hayward’s also offers a variety of custom-design services.

Located in Santa Barbara’s lower east side neighborhood – an easy drive from Montecito – Hayward’s also features various indoor furnishings and kitchen items.

Hugh Hayward at the downtown showroom (Photo by Edward Clynes)

7 Parker Way, Santa Barbara, 805-966-1390, haywards1890.com.

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CREATIVE FORCES THESE FOUR ARTISTS SPEAK TO WHAT INSPIRES THEM

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NEW BEGINNINGS

BY LAUREN CLARK

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n a cruel twist of fate, Santa Barbara-based interior designer Jodi Goldberg lost the Montecito home she spent years renovating and designing from the ground up; it was actually the project that sparked her entire interior design career. Jodi, an unflinching optimist, stresses it could have been much worse – she was sure she narrowly avoided meeting a tragic end during the 2018 mudslides all because her longtime friend had a premonition. On the night of the mudslides, Jodi recollects her friend telling her he had a really bad feeling she and her family needed to get out of the house that night. “I said, ‘Why? You told me it was going to rain. Why am I afraid of rain?’ and he said, ‘I just have a feeling,’” she says. Jodi protested, telling him her husband had friends from out of town staying with them. “He said, ‘You need to ask them to get on the road before it gets too stormy.’ They left at 7:00, and by 7:15 we were unwinding in our PJs, getting ready for bed, and his voice kept coming in my head, ‘Leave the house.’ So we literally called our best friends who lived around the corner and went in our pajamas – no computers, nothing – and went to bed. I had horrible sleep that night, like something felt really wrong to me.”

The friends Jodi stayed with last minute awoke her from her fitful rest at 6:00 the next morning and asked her to come downstairs.

“She said, ‘I need to show you something and I need you to just breathe.’ I turned on the TV and there was a man standing in mud, like just...in mud. And I didn’t understand what was happening and she said, ‘That’s your old house.’ And I said, ‘Where is my house?

Like, where is my house?’ And all I can tell you when something like that happens is, you go to a really adrenaline-y place. I was just shaking, and out of sorts, and in disbelief that anything like that could happen to our life and to so many others. There were missing bodies and treacherous stories of people struggling to get out of the mud.” She continues: “We couldn’t get into the area for about two weeks, and then they started bussing people in. I really didn’t know much except that I knew I was very lucky that we left, that we would have never made it. There was nothing left of our house – zero. Out of the whole acre, there was nothing.” Weeks later, volunteers from the Santa Barbara Bucket Brigade helped Jodi and her family dig around the site of her home, but all she managed to recover were a few personal items that she still cherishes today – her husband Johnny’s favorite book, The Buddha Text, and two “his-and-hers beautiful fat Buddhas that were on our dresser in our bedroom,” Jodi recalls with a hint of a smile.

Surrounded by the exotic textures and colors of her resortlike downtown home, Jodi’s voice breaks with emotion while retelling this story – the only disturbance in her placid, soothing presence.

Beautiful and fashionable, she wears a becoming off-the-shoulder blouse and soft black beret that sets off her dark hair and eyes. Soft

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(Photo by Nancy Neil)

music and incense linger in the background – her aesthetic sense infusing the atmosphere. Jodi describes moving her entire family to Santa Barbara on a whim. Born in Santa Barbara but a selfdescribed “L.A. girl” by the time she married and had kids and began a flourishing career in fashion, she and her husband made the decision to move to Santa Barbara when their daughter, Jordan, began struggling to fit into the juggernaut of the Los Angeles school system. Jodi’s husband proposed they move to Santa Barbara after discovering the beauty of the town in his many bike rides up the coast – and with the gorgeous landscapes and beautiful, warm community, they felt “What a great place to raise our children.”

Jodi was skeptical at first, wondering what she would “do” in

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CREATIVE FORCES

Santa Barbara, but things quickly fell into place. After checking out Montecito Union School (MUS), she found that her old principal was the principal at the time. Jodi and her family moved to the Coast Village Inn, signed her daughter up at MUS, and they lived in the motel for 90 days until renting a house while they searched for their forever home. “We rented this house with no furniture.

We would literally skateboard through the house because there was nothing in it except two cardboard boxes on a blow-up mattress.

We lived there for a while and kept looking at houses. The one house that kept presenting itself to us was one on Olive Mill. It was one that kept falling out of escrow because no one wanted it – there was so much to do with it, but we fell in love with it! It was 285 Olive Mill Road. We bought it, and it was a humongous purchase for us at the beginning – a lot of money, very stressful – but we took the plunge to change my daughter’s life, really. We moved in and ended up with immediate plumbing issues. But inch by inch, I carved that house into a Balinese paradise retreat. It was everything we wanted in a home and more. It was our safe place, our sanctuary, our.... It was really where I thought I would live and die, until the mudslides happened.”

Losing her cherished family home in the 2018 mudslides made Jodi realize she “needed to get into the community and help and figure out what we were going to do: It’s just a breath at a time, a kindness at a time, and the only thing I can say about Santa Barbara and the community is I don’t think a couple could have felt more loved and held, and I know they weren’t only holding us. They were holding the whole community that was suffering. People reached out

with food, clothes, underwear, and basics when we had nothing.”

With the support of her community, Jodi and her family bounced back. However, 30 days after she moved into her new home downtown, in 2020, she received another horrible shock – she was diagnosed with lung cancer. “I don’t know if it was the stress of everything or my destiny, but they told me I was going to die, and it was very touch and go for a while,” she says. “I had Stage 3b lung cancer, which my mother had just died of. So, the last 18 months have been struggling to be alive, have a good attitude, and stay in the faith and not in fear, and be brave, and lead by example, which is always what I want to do – lead by example. I’m always trying to be part of this community that gave me so much, so I always try to give back.”

“I resonated creating spaces for people where I knew I was going to leave them feeling however they told me they wanted to feel within their homes – whether it be Zen, joyful, or like they’re on vacation or in a faraway place – I knew I could create that for people.”

(Photo by Nancy Neil)

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“Time doesn’t stop because you get sick. Time doesn’t stop because you lose a house,” Jodi emphasizes. “You have to find within yourself what is going to make you keep wanting to go forward.” It’s why she says her work is so important to her.

Afraid no one would hire her when she got sick with cancer, Jodi was relieved to find that was not at all the case – she threw herself into her work, designing a number of high-profile homes throughout the pandemic and her illness.

Jodi got her start in fashion styling, the industry she worked in most of her life, and she launched her own business at the tender age of 18. When she moved to Santa Barbara and started “gutting the Olive Mill house,” as she puts it, neighbors and friends took notice of the work she did on her home. People in the community began seeking her out to design their homes, and Jodi not only found she was innately talented at interior design, but she loved creating beautiful, functional living spaces for people. She speaks about the families’ homes she designs with a sort of reverence. “I resonated creating spaces for people where I knew I was going to leave them feeling however they told me they wanted to feel within their homes – whether it be Zen, joyful, or like they’re on vacation or in a faraway place – I knew I could create that for people. Lucky enough, the longer I worked, the more inspired I became. I was given so much opportunity – I felt I was given the chance to water my own garden.”

Although Jodi used to run an entire boutique out of her home, now she focuses on selling beautiful jewelry in a personalized,

Jodi was brought on to design this modern-Zen home in the hills of Montecito as a nod to wabi-sabi, upholding a minimal style while delicately bringing in one-of-a-kind and eclectic pieces (Photo by Nancy Neil)

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(Photo by Nancy Neil)

exclusive way from her home. “I’ve always had a room in any house I’ve lived in with stuff to sell that I’d actually want to wear. I used to have a whole boutique in my old house with clothing and gifts but now I pretty much only do jewelry.

I curate my jewelry with two people – one from L.A. and one from Tahiti. We work together to create looks that I know are going to sell and are Santa Barbara style. We’ve been doing that forever, and it’s kind of a hidden little gem.

It’s word-of-mouth only. It’s one-on-one, it’s in my home, people come and shop. It’s a very personal experience. It’s really nice if people are going to an event or just needing to update their jewelry wardrobe,” says Jodi.

Jodi Goldberg’s story is one of remarkable resilience and deep love between her family and community. In particular, she shares an incredible bond with her husband.

“I’m so lucky – I seriously won the lottery,” she says. They met when she was 24 and have been together ever since their very first meeting. Jodi says through tears, “It’s as if the universe aligned, the clouds met, and the heavens did something. He said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you all my life,’ and I said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you all my life.’ I had found my everything. He’s my everything. Why my life never made sense before, Johnny was my sense.” With her amazing lasting love story and passion for her work and her community, Jodi underscores the importance of not taking anything for granted. “I go to bed with a gratitude prayer every single night: You’re a breath away from being here, or not. It’s that simple.”

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AN ARTFUL EYE FOR FASHION AND HOME DECOR

BY LAUREN CLARK

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was born in Kenya, but primarily grew up in England where my father was a director for a bakery chain called Greggs,” recalls Caroline Diani, CEO and founder of DIANI Boutique, DIANI Shoes, and DIANI Living. “I grew up being fascinated by his job and how he created magic in all these bakery retail stores. I would follow him around on a Saturday morning when he would do his rounds and check in on everybody. That was when I was really young, and it was my first job when I was allowed to work at age 15.”

Diani, who trained in fashion design at Kingston University outside London, ended up in Ventura, California, in 1995 when she accepted an internship at Patagonia. Her early work experience set the tone for the type of values she hoped to embody in her own business one day. “I fell in love with California and the lifestyle – and Patagonia as a company. I was just so intrigued by how they ran a business in a for-profit way but with such an emphasis on philanthropic work and doing good for the employees, the consumer, and the environment. Looking back, I realize these were stepping-stones that led me to starting my own business.”

Fast forward to 1999. Diani relocated to Santa Barbara for a relationship but ultimately stayed for the love of business and the welcoming community. In 2002, she opened her first namesake store since so many women in town felt dissatisfied with the local shopping options. “A lot of women were saying, ‘I don’t shop in Santa Barbara, there’s nowhere for me. I go to Los Angeles or shop when I’m traveling around the world.’ So I started researching and

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CREATIVE FORCES

realized I could get access through my connections with friends who I went to college with to some European brands that hadn’t made it out here yet,” she says.

Because of Diani’s well-traveled lifestyle and her keen curatorial eye, she brought pieces from Europe, and her clean, modern aesthetic caught on instantly. (She was one of the first three American retailers to bring the popular French designer Isabel Marant to the United States.) This clamoring for the exclusive European designers she carried led her to create an e-commerce website. “It was really how my online business exploded,” she says.

“We were getting calls from all over the world. People were asking, ‘This piece is sold out in Paris. I heard that you have it – can you ship it to me?’ It was getting so time intensive sending photographs, taking measurements, credit cards back and forth,” says Diani. “It just blew up. Isabel Marant almost single-handedly got me on the map internationally.”

Her boutique grew well beyond clothing to include shoes and accessories as well as a home goods store and blog, and Diani credits the restoration of her own upstate New York Colonial home for increasing demand for her aesthetically pleasing collections. The 1752 farmhouse is being lovingly restored for the last five years since Diani and her husband, Jeffrey Doornbos, purchased the home. Her New York home has been featured in The New York Times as well as Jenni Kayne and the Remodelista blogs. “That put a big spotlight on the home store,” says Diani. “Clients I’d had for years started asking me to do their homes.”

Diani’s aesthetic is influenced by her upbringing in Kenya and England, and her mother’s love of Victorian flourishes. “It was very floral. Laura Ashley was a big inspiration for her,” Diani says with a laugh. For many years, Diani shied away from these details, leaning into a much more modern aesthetic. However, “After 20 years of living with that, I realized there were a lot of things from my childhood that brought me comfort,” she says. “I started sourcing vintage fabrics online and at antique fairs, so I’ve melded a mix of mid-century modern with old vintage florals and old French linens and stripes. My New York home has lots of antiques but textural elements that are more modern, like seagrass rugs and sharp brass fixtures and lighting as well. And being born in Kenya, we had a very indoor-outdoor lifestyle, so I enjoy creating that way of living.”

During the pandemic, comfort became key not only for Diani’s customers, but also herself, and though now she sees her clients tossing their sweatpants for blazers and dresses, there is still a new emphasis on comfort and timelessness as opposed to following every passing trend. “During the past 19 years, DIANI has become a place where women of all ages can feel like I offer something for them – for their wardrobe, home, and their lifestyle,” she says. “A lot of what I talk about on my blog is being a woman in my 40s. There’s a lot of personal struggle with letting go of what was and embracing what is. Time and again, customers say, ‘It resonates with me, because I know when I come to DIANI, you can relate to me, and I know you’re buying for me, and my stage of my life.’”

(Top to bottom) Diani’s mix of old and new decor at her New York home

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Farmhouse-chic finds at DIANI Home

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A WOOLEN GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS

BY LES FIRESTEIN

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anta Barbara-based artist Kellen Meyer grew up in Yuma, Arizona, but moved to Montecito 10 years ago. Her recent show “Entwined” of Jules Verneesque fibrous formations that she has knitted, crocheted, and otherwise loomed recently showed in both locations – at her beachside studio gallery here in Carpinteria as well as the Yuma Art Center.

Fiber sculpture called Golden Shining Hour, canvas and wire. “This piece is a nod to my love of bees and the whimsy of the frayed canvas backed by a setting sun,” says Meyer.

(Photo by Cecily Breeding)

Installation artist Kellen Meyer in her studio with pieces from the “Entwined Collection 2021” that include large-scale fiber installations, paper and reed sculptures, and holding petals/leaves that became the ethereal window installation at the Yuma Art Center (Photo by Chris Orwig)

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CREATIVE FORCES

Meyer in her Carpinteria studio gallery (Photo by Cecily Breeding)

As one walks inside Meyer’s creative space, one instantly feels enveloped by the warm embrace of nature; being inside her studio feels like curling up inside the most sumptuous cable knit sweater on a chilly day at the beach. You simply can’t not want to touch her sometimes massive, burgeoning, lively, seemingly almost respirating installations – in fact you want to get in them. And some of the works are large enough to do so.

Meyer’s work is ethereal and organic and clearly rooted in

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biological forms. She works mostly in wool, organic papers, reeds, and sometimes the pieces include driftwood. The word “biomimicry” comes to mind, with some clusters looking like sea fans, kelp, drying fishermen’s nets, and others like mermaids’purses.

Then there are other installations that look like the random collisions of nature we find washed ashore and entwined by the surf – but rendered in wool. Everything is bristling with life.

Over the course of her career, Meyer has worked in many

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Large-scale fiber sculpture called ’Twas a Misty-Meisty Morning, hand-dyed canvas. “This was inspired by early morning misty walks at the beach when the tide is low and I glimpse limpet shells adorning the rocks,” Meyer says. (Photo by Cecily Breeding)

A large sculptural beehive fiber installation called And Then Came The Blossoms, knit and crocheted wool and local driftwood reminiscent of budding vines or underwater kelp forests (Photo by Cecily Breeding)

(Photo by Cecily Breeding)

mediums as an artist and has been knitting and crocheting since childhood, but it wasn’t until somewhat recently that she put her many skills together to create “Entwined.”

Undoubtedly she was influenced by her somewhat recent move and proximity to the sea.

When asked what inspires her work and where it “comes from,” Meyer replies, “Sometimes I start with a shade or a mood or a form. But I mostly don’t direct the art; it directs me. That’s

been an epiphany for me as an artist – letting go and just surfing it.

When things are really working, my process is more like I channel the art – I try to help the art get where it wants to go, help it along, and stay out of its way. Maybe I’m more of an instrument than a musician. At least that’s how it feels when I’m really in my flow.”

So where do these ethereal forms come from? “I think they come from a greater consciousness but not necessarily mine. I’m just a facilitator or maybe more of a midwife.”

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PATTI PAGLIEI WAXES POETIC

BY LAUREN CLARK PHOTOGRAPHS BY KIM REIERSON

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t was kismet how Patti Pagliei, founder and creative director of Waxing Poetic jewelry featured in her Funk Zone boutique The Shopkeepers, began her business. At the Rose Bowl Flea Market, she noticed beautiful wax stamps for sale, ones used to seal letters and documents. “I saw those, and I had this thought, Why is nobody turning these into jewelry? It came to me and just made sense – the letters are stamped in wax, and the lost wax process is how you do casting for jewelry. So I started collecting seals. I started stamping them and making my own waxes.” Pagliei’s colleague then connected her to her business manufacturer of 20 years in Bali, Indonesia, who helps bring Pagliei’s designs to life. Once a fun way to relax and be creative with her girlfriends – “I’d invite girlfriends over, and we’d sit around and drink wine, make jewelry, and have fun” – Pagliei got more serious about her jewelry line and started doing trunk shows. Then, an actress wore a Waxing Poetic necklace to the Golden Globes, and soon after, Pagliei’s jewelry would be carried at national retailers such as Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, and Anthropologie.

Pagliei is adamant that she wanted to make objects of lasting value as opposed to the trend of the moment – quality, warmth, and energy radiate from all her pieces, which have an old-world, charming imperfection. Pagliei frequently collaborates with worldrenowned thought leaders and writers such as Elizabeth Gilbert, Glennon Doyle, and Cheryl Strayed. “Buy things that last. Buy things you love. Buy things with meaning,” she says. The pieces borne of these collaborations often feature bits of written wisdom or positive affirmations. Collaborations like these, with women who are working toward improving the world, are important to Pagliei. “Moving toward the future, I just want to be part of the wave of goodness that keeps the world together.”

Pagliei is a trained fine artist and designer from New Jersey and came to Los Angeles in 1995 to work in the film industry. “I got into storytelling and that stage of my life made an imprint on me because I realized story is really powerful – it’s what connects people,” she says. Then, Pagliei recalls entering a difficult period right before and after 9/11. “I was working at a tech startup company when the bubble burst in 2001,” she says. “I lost my job, I was going through a divorce at the same time, I was doing a lot of soul-searching. After 9/11 happened, the world stood still. With

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“Buy things that last. Buy things you love.

Buy things with meaning.” both my personal world and our national security shaken, I went back to basics – I started making things that felt good and drew on my own ideas and talent to support myself. Little did I know that later that year, magic would happen – I’d fall in love with my now-husband John, and the wax seal idea I had would flourish into a larger business with his help.”

Even the name Waxing Poetic was divinely inspired. “I was talking to my husband about what to name this new line of

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CREATIVE FORCES

jewelry– he’s a writer, an avid reader, loves words, loves language – and it came to him, ‘Waxing Poetic!’ And I said, ‘Waxing poetic?

It’s a double entendre!’ The masters for casting the charms were made from stamped wax…and poetry is this thing you can’t really put your finger on. It’s expressing some truth of experience in a meaningful way. And then putting the words waxing and poetic together, it takes on the meaning of like a waxing moon – it’s becoming, it’s growing, becoming more poetic like being verbose and being more connected to this beautiful world. As a name, Waxing Poetic works on so many levels. To this day, it still feels like a divine gift.”

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The REVIVAL of the MONTECITO INN A LOOK THROUGH THE VARIOUS CHAPTERS OF THIS ICONIC PROPERTY ON COAST VILLAGE ROAD

BY KELLY MAHAN HERRICK

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ocated on the prominent corner of Olive Mill and Coast Village roads, the Montecito Inn, with its iconic white walls and black trim, was designed nearly a century ago as a playground for Hollywood royalty to escape the big city. Back then, Coast Village Road was known as Old Coast Highway, and it was utilized as the only major highway between Los Angeles and San Francisco – an area begging to be a respite for weary travelers.

The project to build the hotel began in August 1927 and was said to be financed through a group of investors headed by silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin; the silent film actor and comedian’s likeness would come to be associated with the hotel for decades.

The project was the second major hotel project occurring at the time in Montecito, as The Biltmore would open its doors to guests in December that same year.

The brains behind the endeavor were Don B. Sebastian and William S. Seamans, both Montecito residents whose construction team included architect A.B. Harmer and superintendent J.H. Bradley. The construction costs are said to have totaled $300,000 – a lofty expenditure at the time.

The glamorous three-story, 61-room hotel opened on February 16, 1928, to much fanfare: The first guests included film stars Norma Shearer, Janet Gaynor, Wallace Beery, Carole Lombard, Gilbert Roland, Warner Baxter, Marion Davies, Conrad Nagel, and Lon Chaney, Sr., solidifying the inn’s allure as an opulent Hollywood getaway.

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The historic Montecito Inn has welcomed visitors and locals since 1927

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A STORIED PAST

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ccording to local historians, the inn changed hands multiple times in the mid-20th century, and even underwent a name change to become­The Montecito Hotel in 1938. Downturns in the economy – beginning with the stock market crash in the late ’20s – led to the multiple ownership changes in the ’30s and ’40s, and in 1957 the hotel was sold again, with the new owner restoring the original name and pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remodel.

Around that time, the hotel’s restaurant, Olive Mill Bistro, became a local favorite, with famous pianist Gil Rosas delighting guests and nearby residents for nearly two decades.

In the 1980s, there were several more ownership changes, the first in 1981, when Myron Lippman reportedly spent millions of dollars refurbishing the property, which by that time, was perched on the edge of the newly built 101 freeway. Following Lippman, a trio of developers revived the commercial businesses on the ground floor of the hotel, which included a jewelry store, a bank branch, and the Montecito Café, which would go on to lease the restaurant space for 30 successful years.

In the summer of 1987, the hotel was listed for sale for $8 million, with the owners, who had bought the distressed property from the bank in 1985, hoping to attract a buyer who would pay at least $7 million for the property.

A NEW ERA

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early two years after the inn was put up for sale, local residents Dewayne and Kathy Copus – who had invested in several apartment buildings and a hotel along the water in Santa Barbara – purchased the property for $6.75 million, a price that Dewayne called “a bargain” at the time. Dewayne was raised in Oklahoma picking crops; he came to Santa Barbara as an adult and built a successful paving business before venturing into the commercial real estate business.

Dewayne and Kathy, who had three young boys (­ Danny, Jim, and Jason) when they purchased the inn in 1989, knew the

During the 1950s, the inn’s beloved Olive Mill Bistro was a local favorite

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purchase was a risk, as the hotel had been run down as it idly sat on the market. But Dewayne had a hunch that the location – and Coast Village Road in general – would eventually become a bustling thoroughfare and a popular access point to Montecito and Santa Barbara from the south. He spent the first two decades of his ownership with his boots on the ground, an on-site owner eager to fix maintenance issues and tend to guest complaints as he steadily increased occupancy rates and built a flourishing business.

The Copuses originally hired Linda Spann, who had managed their Tropicana Motel for nearly a decade, to run the inn. Once she retired, Danny Copus, the eldest Copus brother, took over as general manager. Dewayne and Kathy had always envisioned their boys working for the family business, and the brothers grew up working summer jobs, then behind the front desk, and eventually filling vacant roles in upper management over the years.

It’s now been about 18 years since all three siblings have worked at the inn full-time, giving their parents the opportunity to step away from the day-today operations while still staying involved behind the scenes.

A TRAVEL AND CULINARY DESTINATION

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anny, Jim (operations manager), and Jason (director of sales and marketing) have turned the inn’s current 61 rooms (including nine luxury bedrooms and suites) into a popular, upscale hotel that appeals to travelers of every generation. The property has undergone several small-scale renovations under their watch, including the addition of custom fireplaces and spacious Italian marble bathrooms with spa bathtubs in the suites.

At the heart of the hotel’s main building is the original Otis elevator, which was installed in 1927 and has been maintained and is still in use. Higher ceilings have enhanced once-narrow corridors; bathrooms have been renovated in gold and pewter hardware and hand-painted tiles; the breezeway fitted with wrought-iron railings is lined year-round with fresh flowers. The brothers say that all renovations and upgrades have intended to keep the inn’s elegant legacy alive, with extensive use of fine Italian marble, etched crystal doorways, and gold-plated fixtures, recapturing the essence of a bygone era.

The entry level includes a foyer that opens to the heated pool, spa, sauna, and conference facility, and the design incorporates handmade columns and moldings along with custom-made handrails and lighting fixtures, representing the true intent of the original building. In the last few years, the loose Charlie Chaplin theme has faded away as the brothers explain the reputation of the inn can now stand on its own. “We want our offering, which includes excellent service and upscale products, to speak for itself,” Jim says during an interview that took place at the recently remodeled hotel restaurant, Coast & Olive.

Given their backgrounds in the hospitality business, the Copuses

Clockwise from top right: The inn’s newest restaurant, Coast & Olive, offers lunch and dinner for guests and the public; the palm-lined pool; holiday decor in the lobby; a breezeway on the top level of the hotel

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(Top)The Fogged Hog – WhistlePig rye whiskey, agave, walnut bitters, grapefruit, and candied bacon. (Above) Mike Monteleone making the popular cocktail The Mamba - Empress 1908 gin, lemon, simple syrup, and passion fruit foam. The Mamba was created in honor of the late Kobe Bryant; ingredients used highlight the Lakers colors.

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decided to run the new restaurant themselves – a first for the family.

The space was occupied by the beloved Montecito Café for 30 years until 2017, when The Monarch (owned by Scratch Restaurants) took over the space from August 2018 to September 2019.

The brothers redesigned and remodeled the bright space, giving it a fresh interior look that is elegant yet approachable, much like the menu. Keeping it friendly and comfortable for both hotel guests and locals, Coast & Olive offers lunch and dinner – and brunch on the weekends – with fresh dishes such as trout almondine, Dungeness crab risotto, braised short ribs, and wagyu striploin as well as an array of innovative appetizers, salads, and pastas. A full bar with imaginative drinks and comfy bar stools make it an ideal place for happy hour or an after-dinner cocktail. “We are happy and proud of what the restaurant has become,” says Jim, “and being the operators has allowed us to take suggestions to heart and get even better.” The spot has become a hit among locals, who frequent the restaurant for date nights, lunch meetings, special occasions, and everything in between. “We opened the restaurant to be an amenity of the hotel, but also to make our local neighbors happy,” says Jason.

A smaller restaurant space on the east end of the property now houses Sushi|Bar, which was recently awarded a Michelin Star.

Founded by husband and wife chef duo, Phillip Frankland Lee and

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MONTECITO INN

Margarita Kallas-Lee, the omakase speakeasy serves up a whimsy of its namesake fare in 17 courses. The intimate restaurant offers a play on new wave nigiri and other delicacies from land and sea, a menu which is curated with a selection of drink pairings and Japanese beverages, including sake, beer, and Japanese whiskey.

Brothers Jason and Jim Copus

A charcuterie board with local cheeses and meats, honey comb, marcona almonds, and crostinis. (Opposite top) Dishes on the seasonal menu include items such as braised short rib with confit shallot, roasted baby carrots, asparagus, and potato purée. (Opposite bottom) Creamy ricotta and organic egg ravioli with mascarpone, spinach, parmesan, sage brown butter, and beech mushrooms.

PILLAR OF THE COMMUNITY

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n years past, the corner on which the inn stands has been referred to as the “gateway to Montecito,” and as such, the hotel has stood both literally and figuratively as a pillar of the community during recent difficult times.

After strike teams that came to Montecito to fight the Thomas Fire, the inn was evacuated in late December 2017, due to the proximity of the roaring blaze, which, at the time, became the largest fire in California history. The hotel was significantly damaged during the subsequent debris flow in the early morning hours of January 9, 2018. Much of the worldwide media coverage of the debris flow – which took the lives of 23 people and destroyed nearly 500 homes in Montecito, as well as shut down Coast Village Road and Highway 101 for weeks – centered on the iconic hotel.

The inn sustained extensive damage that early morning, with the underground parking garage filling with water, mud, and debris that also damaged the exterior of the building, the main doors and part of the lobby, and flooded the hallway leading to the groundfloor suites. The property underwent a mini transformation during the subsequent two-month closure, with the installation of a new exterior marble driveway, new epoxy coating in the valet garage, repairs to the back parking lot, new grand entrance doors, new carpeting, exterior plaster repair, and repainting of the entire exterior including trim and iron work.

The Copus brothers also designed a newly landscaped garden, which includes a planter surrounded by 23 stones in honor of the 23 lives lost on January 9. In addition to that token of remembrance, the inn shined a bright blue spotlight for 23 hours over several evenings in early February 2018 – members of the community reported being able to see the gleam from their homes during the week that Montecito was repopulated after extended evacuations.

“We definitely felt like the reopening of the inn was a symbol of restoration for the area,” says Jason. “There was a sense that if we could recover, then the community at large could recover.” That same blue light shined on the anniversary of the debris flow, as members of the community gathered for a candlelight vigil.

More recently, the Montecito Inn and Coast & Olive – like the majority of small businesses around the globe – were hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and associated closures. From March to May 2020, the inn was shuttered then reopened with limited operations for most of the remainder of the year. “No one was traveling during the pandemic, even when we could be open,” says Jim. Coast & Olive was opened in the middle of the crisis, only offering takeout orders for many months before being able to open fully for indoor dining. “Looking back now, it was a crazy idea to open in the middle of a pandemic,” Jason laughs. “But in a way, it gave us and the community hope for the future.”

Now, nearly a year and a half into the pandemic, the businesses are thriving once again, thanks to a boost in tourism and the easing of restrictions statewide. “We’ve recovered in the sense that our occupancy rates are impressive, and the restaurant is showing strong numbers this summer, but it will take a while to fully recover,” says Jim. The interruption in business is yet another story to be told about the inn’s 93-year life span, and while the Copus family navigates the aftermath of a catastrophic mudflow and global pandemic, the inn still stands, statuesque on the corner of Coast Village Road, quietly welcoming travelers seeking an elegant, locally owned hotel with stellar service – a vital piece of Montecito history.

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Patricia Houghton Clarke at her Carpinteria studio (Photo by Edward Clynes)

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Fateful Connections

By Katherine Stewart

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World traveler Patricia Houghton Clarke focuses her lens on displacement, identity, and the human experience

n her Carpinteria studio, surrounded by photographs she has taken throughout her lifetime, Patricia Houghton Clarke muses on the beauty and mystery of fateful connections. Behind her, an image of a marketplace in Maiduguri, a large city in eastern Nigeria that was once known as a hub of Islamic scholarship, rests on the wall. The photo, which she took in 1974, depicts a busy market scene, conveying the intimacy and interconnectedness of the community. Clarke thinks of this as the first “real” picture she ever took, and she tells the story behind it.

Marketplace, Maiduguri, Nigeria, 1974, 35 mm film, archival pigment print. “In 1974, while on a 10,000-mile trans-Africa journey beginning in London and traversing the continent as far south as Nairobi, I traveled with an intrepid group of adventurers across Nigeria to see this spectacular ancient market in Maiduguri, also known from ancient times as Yerwa,” says Clarke. On January 10, 2015, the Monday Market was bombed, killing 19 people. On January 25, 2015, Boko Haram launched an assault on the city.

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Fateful Connections

Cletus, Nigeria/Italy, 2017, from Facing Ourselves: Martignano, digital image, archival pigment print. “Born in Eastern Nigeria, Cletus began his migration journey when his Christian grandfather was murdered in their village,” says Clarke. “Leaving behind his wife and young child, from there he traveled thousands of miles, along the way suffering the brutal deaths of his father, aunt, and brother, and being shot in the back while escaping militants in the Sahara.

Arriving in Italy by boat from Libya in 2017, he spent most of his first months in the refuge of a small village church.”

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he and her then-husband were dedicated travelers, making their way across Europe, Israel, Asia, and Africa, often under rugged conditions. At some point, they stopped in Maiduguri. Captivated by a bustling market on the outskirts of the city, she pulled out her Instamatic. But she never did anything with the negatives until years later when she read that the terrorist group Boko Haram had bombed that very marketplace.

In 2017, Clarke found herself in Puglia, Italy, interviewing members of a fresh wave of migrants. “The man I’m interviewing, Cletus, tells his story, and these threads start showing up,” Clarke says. “He and his family lived in a small Nigerian village, but his grandfather (the chief ) was murdered for being a Christian. So the rest of the family left and went to Maiduguri.” Soon, according to Clarke, the security situation deteriorated there, too, and Cletus’s father advised him and his brother to leave. They traveled west to the city of Kano. When the marketplace in Maiduguri was bombed, his father and his aunt were killed. “It was unbelievable that I was sitting in this village in Italy hearing about this bombing in the

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village that had so much impact.” She pauses. “I’m just doing this kind of work because it makes me feel like I am in the right place doing the right thing with my time on the planet.”

Chances are good that you have come across Clarke’s work, even if you can’t quite put a name to her photos. With exhibitions at multiple local galleries including MichaelKate Interiors and Gallery, Brooks Institute, and the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art – as well as others up the coast in Carmel – Clarke is a major presence in the public art world in coastal California. Her work has also hung in galleries and public displays in England, Italy, the Czech Republic, and other countries. She has been honored with multiple awards and grants, has produced a large body of work focusing on migrants and those who welcome them into their communities, and recently published a new book, Facing Ourselves: Reckoning.

She has traveled to more than 40 countries, where she has engaged in visual arts as well as social justice – efforts that, for her, are often one and the same. But she has deep roots in Santa Barbara, the community she makes her home.

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Fateful Connections

Rainbow Toes, 2008, from Erasing Lines series, digital image, archival pigment print

Flex, 2008, from Erasing Lines series, digital image, archival pigment print

“The above two images are part of a multiyear project titled Erasing Lines, a deep look at the drag community of Santa Barbara. Partnering with drag artist Amber (Stuart Carey) we did installations, live performances, and personal photographic shoots, calling attention to the vibrant and deeply embedded drag culture in this area,.” says Clarke.

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Fateful Connections

ravel always seemed to be in her bones. The day she turned 18, she and her boyfriend, whom she had met at Santa Barbara High School, ran off to Lake Arrowhead and then began roaming the world. “We were on the hunt, immersing ourselves in different cultures, and seeing the humanity of people,” she says. The couple eventually married, returned to Santa Barbara, had two children, and founded Homes For People – an affordable housing nonprofit that won awards and eventually worked with the city. Clarke – who studied art and design at various institutions including at the Warsito Studio in Java, Indonesia, Santa Barbara City College, and at UC Santa Barbara’s continuing education program – continued to travel extensively, with her family as well as alone, volunteering at Catholic charities as an English teacher to young migrants and developing her skills as a photographer.

The couple later parted ways. In 2000, Clarke met her current partner, designer Michael DeRose, during a spontaneous chat over tea at Santa Barbara’s now-shuttered Our Daily Bread bakery. Over time, Clarke produced a book of photographs of a stately Mediterraneaninspired home and garden DeRose designed for a family in Montecito. But as a photographer, she kept returning to recurrent themes of displacement, identity, and the human condition.

The images on the walls of her studio include African refugees in Italian communities, migrant families, Hmong refugees, and members of Santa Barbara’s drag community. “In my work, I hear incredibly poignant stories both from the people who are migrating, but also from the people who are welcoming the migrants,” she says. “That is a very important part of my work – who is welcoming them and why.”

Some international photographers seek to capture stunning landscapes or take portraits of people whom they perceive to be “exotic” in their home environments. For others, photography is a form of advocacy that aims to change policy. Clarke’s photographs tend to tell complex human stories. “There’s a place for all kinds of photography,” she says. “I want to show how everybody is connected rather than different.”

Orang Asli, Sarawak, Malaysia, 1997, 35 mm film, archival pigment print. “In 1997, during an extended tour and trek in peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo, we came across this group of joyful Orang Asli children in the forest,” says Clarke. “On our way to find a fabled ‘rafflesia’ flower, further on into the forest we came across a blind, elderly hunter sitting with his blowpipe listening patiently to the sounds of the forest.” From Kirk Endicott’s Malaysia’s Original People: Past, Present and Future of the Orang Asli, “The Orang Asli are, with minor exceptions, descendants of the earliest human inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula. The term ‘Orang Asli,’ which means ‘original people’ in Malay, was adopted by the Malaysian government in the 1960s to replace the English term ‘Aborigines’ and the Malay term ‘Sakai,’ which have derogatory connotations.”

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larke dates her focus on displacement and identity to a trip she made to Borneo in the late 1990s. Flying into the island, Clarke was stunned to see the scale of logging. She couldn’t help but wonder how the environmental devastation was impacting human populations. “I ended up in a traditional long house way up the river with this tribe that literally had shrunken heads hanging from the ceiling,” she says. “The old guys were heavily tattooed and in loincloths, and the young guys were wearing jeans. We are fast-forwarding into the future, and we are kidding ourselves if we think things are staying the same. That trip changed my perspective on a really deep level; I became completely open to photographing what exists, not what I imagine exists.”

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Fateful Connections

er subsequent work in Laos and Thailand built on those themes. “Clothes were changing. Kids had white paste on their faces to make their skin lighter,” she says. “My stance as a photographer is to be as nonjudgmental as possible and just show things as they are, and then people can look and decide how they feel about it.”

Phon Liang Mun, Chiang Mai, Thailand, 2006, from the Correspondences series, mediumformat film, archival pigment print. “Nestled in a residential neighborhood in Chiang Mai, Thailand, I discovered a walled secret garden. Venturing in an open gate, I discovered a shady courtyard filled with statuary of all shapes and sizes lying helter skelter in all directions,” says Clarke. “In the corner was an elderly man with a hose, watering these new statues to ‘age’ them for export. This image is part of a series titled Correspondences from Thailand and Laos, with accompanying poetry by Ellen Chavez Kelley.”

Phu Si, Luang Prabang, Laos, 2006, from the Correspondences series, medium-format film, archival pigment print. “Mount Phu Si is at the top of a major hill in the center of the old town peninsula in Luang Prabang,” says Clarke. “This famous site houses several Buddhist shrines and has an inspirational view of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers.”

Andaman Sea, 2006, 35 mm film, archival pigment print. “Having just recovered enough from a bout of typhoid to get out of bed, I found myself wandering the coast of the Andaman Sea near Krabi, Thailand, and came across this dreamscape.”

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No One is Born Hating Another Person, Santa Barbara, 2020, from Facing Ourselves: Reckoning, digital image, archival pigment print. “Immediately after George Floyd’s murder and subsequent outpouring of grief and quest for justice, several murals appeared around Santa Barbara, including this one on Haley Street,” says Clarke. “The message of unity with the black and white hands clasped, and the hopeful quote by Nelson Mandela, are as important now as ever.”

Recognition of her work in the field led to a 2011 artist-in-residency in the small village of Martignano, in southern Italy, where Clarke was embedded in the local population. “They have such a unique blend of cultures; the older villagers speak ancient Greek,” she says. “So in more recent years, as I was reading about the refugee crisis there, I decided to return to that same village, and see how they were coping with this influx of refugees. And that’s where my imagery on migration really started.”

Juanita, Facing Ourselves: Carpinteria 2019, from the Facing Ourselves project, digital image, archival pigment print. “As part of the yearlong Facing Ourselves project examining migration and community in the small coastal town of Carpinteria, due to ongoing ICE raids it was very difficult to find undocumented subjects who weren’t afraid to be part of the project,” says Clarke. “Juanita agreed to be photographed, not only from behind but also from the front as well. She was a proud and brave woman who understood the importance of being seen and acknowledged.”

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Clarke’s recently released book, Facing Ourselves: Reckoning

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any of those images have been featured in her ongoing project, “Facing Ourselves.” Originally conceived as a public art exhibition, it has also been used as a fundraiser for groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the British nonprofit, Waging Peace. Facing Ourselves: Reckoning is an offshoot of that project. “Many of the images in the book seek to address the reckoning that we are all in. It’s not just migration. We have a political reckoning.

A socioeconomic reckoning. The ongoing reckoning with racial justice. A huge environmental reckoning.” She takes a deep breath. “So many areas of reckoning if we hope to finally create a compassionate and humane society.”

(Photo by Edward Clynes)

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UC SANTA BARBARA’S SPECIAL RESEARCH COLLECTIONS AND THE INTELLECTUAL OUTING OF A BEACH TOWN

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WRITTEN BY JEFF WING RESEARCH AND INTERVIEWS BY LESLIE A. WESTBROOK PHOTOGRAPHS BY EDWARD CLYNES

Curators of the Lost Arts - inside UCSB’s Special Research Collection archives

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eautiful places become loci for culture. Democracy found its feet in Greece, its nadir in Siberia – just as a fr’instance. After a day of obtuse jibber-jabber, even beard-tugging Aristotelians are known to favor a lawn chair and strawberry daiquiri at water’s edge. So it is that Santa Barbara’s stupendous beauty has long drawn culture-stirring avatars from near and far, over time infusing our town with a largely unsung socio-historical heft belied by that surfeit of sand, sun, and sandal/ sock combinations that suggest a mere tourist vortex. Blessed by what can only be called tectonic good fortune, the fair city of Santa Barbara spills from foothill to shoreline like the politely flung contents of a jewelry box, “nestled” (as is often said) between a picturesque lil’ mountain range and the sparkling, self-congratulating immensity of the Pacific. Our town’s jaw-droppingly lovely setting has earned her the sort of global reputation lesser towns (to be frank) can only envy from afar.

But like a runway model with a poorly matched glass eye and secret life as a String Theorist, SB is also a whiplash contradiction.

This globally famous waterfront idyll boasts a namesake academy that perennially ranks as one of the world’s top research universities.

Seaside, bluff-top UC Santa Barbara is indeed a unique institution of higher learning, perfect surf breaks complementing a faculty liberally seasoned with clanking, medal-wearing Nobel laureates.

Despite the fact that Santa Barbara’s secret history as an intellectual maypole preceded the establishment of her renowned university, “Santa Barbara has gravitas!” remains a seldom-shouted exclamation.

Danelle Moon, local history collections curator of UCSB’s Special Research Collections, may have a thing or two to say about that: “We have amazing collections and we pride ourselves on making these collections accessible for world-wide discovery.”

Every family secret obliges a dead-bolted room at the top of a darkened stair – so to speak. Santa Barbara’s musty, secret-stuffed annex is (naturally) a glorious, sun-splashed edifice of glass and steel in the approximate center of the shamelessly picturesque UCSB campus. Its Special Research Collections could be called the pulsing dynamo whose energies both derive from and continually nourish our deceptively button-down beach town. Packed with brow-furrowing, eye-widening surprises guaranteed to flip the wig of the most hardened University Archives Enthusiast® (a species reportedly on the rise), this Special Research Collections is an exactingly curated and punctiliously organized treasure trove. Let’s all thank Danelle.

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Danelle

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CSB’s Danelle Moon has been director of the Special Research Collections since 2015. The conversation takes place in the sort of room one is accustomed to seeing in art heist movies – temperature-controlled and high-ceilinged. The walls, though, feature the expansive floor-to-ceiling windows art thieves abjure. Tastefully muted California daylight pours in to illuminate what is, after all, a reading room; one which neatly doubles as a venue for campus events, lectures, and other chatty academic soirées.

Moon – who previously managed archives at San José State University and Yale – works alongside 17 full-time staff members whose number include a rare book cataloger, an archival processing unit, and seven curators – there is to date no partridge in a pear tree. Staff responsibilities run the necessary gamut – from charming and cajoling folks into donating their historically potent treasures, to purchasing items for the collection from such

civilization-rescuing monks as Montecito rare book dealer Jerry Jacobs of Lost Horizon Bookstore – and many others in a regional network of stealthy archivists. Moon is a widely respected, deeply informed, and wonderfully deliberative gatekeeper.

Special Collections: The Understatement

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pecial collection” as a term does not raise the heart rate. It is instructive to recall, though, that Indiana Jones’ anxious efforts ended in the Ark of the Covenant (yes, that one) being wheeled by a bored civil servant into the anonymous recesses of a government document hangar. In the same way (approximately), UCSB’s Special Collections nom de la paix is surely a cover for this wonder-stuffed repository. Twenty years in the planning, the modern glass-and-steel addendum to UCSB’s Library opened with some fanfare in 2016 amid speeches,

Even-keeled and omni-directional, Danelle Moon curates with panache

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interpretive dances, and Chancellor Henry Yang cutting through a blue-and-gold banner with the largish ceremonial scissors these occasions oblige. UCSB’s Special Research Collections is today home to a cornucopia of rare documents and eye-opening curated materials of which the general public is largely unaware.

Or unawares.

The private lives of public individuals – both their creative and personal aspects – are deep experiential wells to be respected and culturally plumbed. UCSB’s trove of personally revealing papers and objets de curiosités ranges from amiable local legacy to the more jarring and obscure. This is a collection that includes early contraceptives from (yes) the Marie Carmichael Stopes Birth Control Collection. Stopes was a lesser-known contemporary of early 20th-century birth control avatar Margaret Sanger. Her cache of early day contraceptive devices – and the cultural incandescence that attaches to such objects – provides a timely example of how a collection’s variousness gives it a kind of cyclical gravity. Such objects are fascinatingbut-anodyne curiosa – until such time as they attach to suddenly relevant and volatile public conversations. Danelle Moon’s brilliant and illuminated curation boasts this deliberate interdisciplinary diversity – one whose increasing depth and breadth speak to both the mad variety of history’s jetsam, and the gasoline such objects periodically throw on the public square’s ever-growing bonfire of conversation and dissent.

How many individual items comprise the archives? The question may not be reasonable, but is worth a try. “We don’t really have a count of the individual items,” Moon replies evenly.

It’s just possible she was prepared for every query but this one. It seems fair to suppose there is more here than anyone would have the patience, or the mortal runway, to comb through in a lifetime.

To switch briefly to a layperson’s gee-whiz, the place is chock full of crazily fascinating stuff. There are the early contraceptive devices that make the Dalkon Shield look positively demure, Civil War muskets, and an 1859 first edition of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species – the 162-year-old book’s fitness and survivability soundly illustrating its own central hypothesis. How did these rarities come to rest in UCSB’s archives?

Moon spells it out. “It’s a long process initiated most often by forming relationships with people and learning about what they actually possess,” she explains. It develops that many people aren’t necessarily ready or willing to part with their babies at the conversation’s outset. Most items are donations, though, which is a good thing. The collections’ budgetary bandwidth is…limited.

Ultimately, some of the items are hybrids; part donation and part purchase – an acquisitive gumbo that illustrates the never-say-never 190

inventiveness of UCSB’s development office. (Those considering a donation might be interested to learn there is a tax write-off for appraised value of accepted items; though the IRS’s kindness doesn’t apply to self-created works. That is, while a donor can write off the appraised value of a box full of historically significant correspondence, a donor cannot appraise and write off her own brilliantly executed, 700-pound modernist aluminum mobile.)

Lou Cannon holds court in his book-jammed Summerland nerve center (home)

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Lou’s Canon

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ou Cannon – feted presidential biographer, former state bureau chief for the San Jose Mercury News, former White House correspondent for the Washington Post, and current Summerland habitué – has devoted his writing life to explaining the inexplicable; to politics, that is. Most of Cannon’s

celebrated reportorial energies have been spent plumbing the political id of one Ronald Reagan. Cannon’s Reagan studies are a critically and popularly revered body of granular revelation whose “no stone unturned” ethos makes these volumes famously immersive reads. Prizes, you ask? Yep. Cannon took home the White House Correspondents Association’s Aldo Beckman Award (1984) for overall excellence in presidential coverage,

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and was the inaugural recipient of the Gerald R. Ford Prize (1988) for his reporting on the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations – a worryingly piquant stretch of our republic’s over-caffeinated political history.

Cannon also published, in 1997, what many consider the defining volume on the bloody Rodney King conflagration – Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD. More recently, the celebrated biographer and

Interrogation at 36,000 feet: Cannon ambles up from coach to corner the President.

Reagan’s amiable note reads “Are you asking the questions or am I?”

historian made his voluminous Rodney King and Ronald Reagan papers available to UCSB’s Special Research Collections – a handoff comprising 70 cartons, nine document boxes, and 248 audiocassettes. These numbers merely hint at the vaunted thoroughness of Mr. Cannon’s research.

During a visit with Cannon at his bursting-with-papers Summerland home, the obvious question was asked: “Why not donate or sell your Reagan materials to the Reagan Library?” He’d made the decision to archive his materials at UCSB for a

Cannon’s publicly edifying contributions to journalism and biography have earned him a number of awards

“August 1985 at Reagan’s annual event for the press in Santa Barbara. He didn’t host it at his own ranch, but at another ranch that was more accessible, often Fess Parker’s,” says Cannon of an image with Mary and Reagan.

“Reagan was jumping the gun just a little in signing it to the two of us – we were married in September.”

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Art and Objects from the Museum’s Collections Now open at the John and Peggy Maximus Gallery

2559 Puesta del Sol, Santa Barbara 805-682-4711 • sbnature.org Wed–Mon, 10:00 AM–5:00 PM

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Every, came through with another substantial contribution, and with that we were very close to the total. I’m so very grateful to Sara and Pat. I hate fundraising.” One component of the Reagan papers arrangement was that Cannon would then donate the Rodney King archive from his Official Negligence book as well. To our common good fortune he did exactly that.

Where is the Secret Service? Gang of award-winning scribes – Cannon, David Hoffman, and David Broder – close in on the Chief Executive George H.W. Bush

number of reasons. Cannon – a verified giant in the culture’s biography section – cut a decidedly Earthbound figure during the visit, padding around in his stocking feet, his book-filled downstairs study the very picture of a research fiend’s paper-and-glue jammed nerve center, where Cannon’s wife/memory bank/archivist of 30 years, Mary, often works alongside him. At present, Cannon is toiling away on his memoir and is literally knee-deep in research: “I’m on the Gorbachev-Reagan period now,” he notes.

Yes, Cannon’s gravity is such that the man has a Gorbachev-Reagan period.

While writing his first book on Reagan in 1968, Cannon had visited the Reagan Library to view the Gipper’s film archives. What he found instead was a familiar disappointment. The revenue-obsessed movie studios had sold Reagan’s films to the highest bidder “without much thought,” Cannon says quite reasonably.

Reagan’s film oeuvre had been snapped up by a faraway branch of the University of Wisconsin (Madison) – whose location handily stymies both the wing-tipped D.C. politico/researcher AND the tastefully tattooed Los Angeles-based film historian; a genuinely bicoastal inconvenience. The studios’ transactional glibness had a useful effect on Cannon. “I wanted to make sure that my archives are accessible for whoever wants to examine them,” said the 88-year-old. Specifically, Cannon wanted his Reagan collection to be close to the Gipper’s namesake Simi Valley Presidential Library. He further felt that UCSB “made sense,” since he has worked for years in the Santa Barbara area. Cannon also has a long association with UCSB that includes his having received the Raznick Letters and Science Distinguished Scholar Award for the spring quarter of 1995, his having given a number of notable speeches at the university throughout the years, and his having delivered a commencement address on June 18, 1995, at the invitation of Chancellor Yang. Cannon and his wife have been friends with Henry and Dilling Yang for decades.

Moon’s expert Cannon-coaxing didn’t hurt, either. UCSB indeed expressed interest in purchasing the Reagan papers for a stipulated amount, adding that they would need to raise the money to do so. Cannon knows his way around biographical majesty and applying instructive coherence to the quicksilver vagaries of history. Fundraising is another matter. “I asked Sara [Miller McCune] for advice on how to do that,” Cannon says. “In response, she made a large contribution. Another friend, the late Pat Van 194

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Vintners.

LGBTQIA+.

Wax Cylinders.

Vampires.

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CSB’s Special Research Collections is both eccentric and scholarly. This is not an easy balance to strike, and recommends the place to a public unfamiliar with the joys of mixed arcana. There are the Santa Barbara vintner records, for example. UC Davis (thanks to its viticulture curriculum) has the most prominent collection, UCSB trailing closely behind with raised glass and an uncertain gait.

All manner of African American, Asian and Pacific American, Chicano and Latino, and Native American pieces comprise the California Multi-Ethnic Archives, one of Special Collections’ most heavily utilized research destinations

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The vintner cache includes rare wine labels, articles, clippings, and other ephemera related to the area’s overweening success with the sour grape. If that doesn’t fill your Riedel, there’s a goldmine of uber-rare antique wax cylinder recordings in the music holdings, vast archives on the Chicano movement, and the papers of influential film composer and Hitchcock co-conspirator Bernard Herrmann – he whose shrieking violins set the post-Psycho shower curtain trade back at least a decade.

The collection’s artifacts can come from anywhere. A rare early 20th century Carpinteria newspaper produced in both English and Spanish – “...a really amazing thing!” Moon exclaims – came to the collection’s attention courtesy of Dr.

(Left) Pacific Pride Foundation records document the activities of the groundbreaking Santa Barbara organization from its 1976 founding forward.

(Below) United Farm Workers’ landscape-changing pushback is wellrepresented in Special Collections, with a range of historic ephemera.

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Jim Campos. “It was found in someone’s attic in Carpinteria,” Moon says avidly, her dedication clearly augmented by the occasional giddy revelations of domestic junk-diving. “It was the only liberal, progressive newspaper in Santa Barbara County at the time.”

UCSB is one of the few campuses whose deep Chicano movement materials are regularly accessed by scholars. “We have a very large California Multi-Ethnic Archives that largely documents the Chicano artist movement, Self-Help Graphics, and El Teatro Campesino,” Moon says. She adds that the collections’ Pacific Pride Foundation, LGBTQIA+, and Asian archives are also widely respected destination resources for researchers.

(Top) GOO (Get Oil Out!) was formed in the wake of the devastating Santa Barbara Oil Spill of 1969, which arguably launched the modern environmental movement. (Bottom) A gorgeously illuminated Italian Book of Prayer dates to the very early 15th century, likely sometime before “Columbus sailed the ocean blue.”

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The archive’s diversity also includes a vast survey of religious collectibles reaching from the ancient to the modern. The Medieval Bible collection contains beautifully preserved, lavishly illustrated scripture, as well as a 14th-century illuminated book of prayers purchased by the once incredibly fruitful and nowdefunct Friends of the Library. “The book of prayers,” Moon says with a trace of resignation, “is also the 1,000,000th book donated by the former Friends of the Library.” Perhaps it’s fitting that sources can be as evanescent as history itself. Soon to be added to this collection – which includes archives on Mormonism, yogis, astrology, and Wiccans – is a large stash of vampire lore that Moon discovered in Los Angeles, courtesy of two librarians at USC. Were the two contributors pale and nocturnal appearing? “That will be a hot collection!” Moon says delightedly. It is heartening to know that the Ivory Tower® can still make accommodations for vampires.

Ann of a Thousand Ways

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enowned investigative polymath Ann Louise Bardach (aka A.L. Bardach) is a reporter like Neil Armstrong is a plucky flyboy. One could be excused for thinking her crowded portfolio a mistaken gathering of unrelated scribes, so varied has been her decade-spanning journalistic yen. Her work has Sid Vicious rubbing shoulders with Fidel Castro, for instance.

“Annie” (as familiars call her) has been all over the place in a career driven by curiosity and acclaimed investigative chops.

She has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, POLITICO, The Wall Street Journal’s magazine, Los Angeles Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Guardian, Financial Times, The New Republic, Newsweek, and The Daily

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Bardach and Cannon: truth-telling birds of a feather flock together in Special Research Collections

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A.L. Bardach’s history-making Cuba reportage would lift the veil on Fidel’s revolutionary statesmanship. To his clear delight.

Beast. She was a Vanity Fair contributing editor for a decade, right around the time VF was arguably hitting its indescribable peak – the mag’s branded parfait of high society and scarifying subterfuge playing to Bardach’s subtle skill at unpacking the juxtapositions that illuminate the world’s weirder precincts.

But it’s her decades of pugnacious immersion in all things Havana/Miami (the Two Cubas) – her access to Fidel Castro (and his many enemies, including the presidents and leaders of Mexico, Pakistan, Morocco, and a clutch of other history-makers), her reporting on the relentlessly creative anti-Castro movement, her hard-won appreciation from the movement’s warring factions, and her incomparable sense of the place and its indomitable people – that have seen Bardach unofficially coronated as the Western journalist best suited to sing the benighted island nation’s complex paean. Or as the Columbia Journalism Review put it, “[Bardach is] the go-to journalist on all things Cuban and Miami.”

The eyes have it: hurriedly snapped photo of Bardach with pleasedlooking Subcomandante Marcos, ostensible leader of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Rebel-held Chiapas, Mexico, 1994

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“I

recently gave the original of this letter (with the envelope) to those incredibly brilliant UCSB librarians Kristin, Lidia, Danelle. I mention this as Tom Wolfe, the father of New Journalism, sold his letters and papers to the New York City Library for $2.8 million before he died. This letter was sent to me in the run-up of the 2016 election, and is one of the loveliest I received – not to mention his astonishing calligraphy.

– A.L. Bardach

”

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It was Lou Cannon’s suggestion that prompted his friend Annie to likewise house her papers in the Special Research Collections.

Her having founded UCSB’s international journalism class – and her longtime Resident Scholar role at the university’s Orfalea Center – would seem to make the Gauchos Special Collections a natural for Bardach’s papers. She is also on the board of UCSB’s Carsey-Wolf Center and PEN Center USA. Bardach is still poring over a lifetime’s worth of typescript in her Carpinteria home office, where photos of Sid Vicious, Subcomandante Marcos, Johnny Rotten, William Burroughs, New Journalism founder Tom Wolfe, critic Kenneth Tynan, and Fidel Castro make incongruous shelf-fellows.

“They took 65 boxes!” she says with something like wonder, and eyes boxes yet to make the move. Here and there in the denuded-looking office a few boxes remain. “See this?” she says brightly, gesturing. Her accent is Rapid-Fire East Coast. “It’s a box of tapes and transcripts of my interviews with the Cotton Club murderers! What a crowd they were! The library did a magnificent job. My view is that Lou [Cannon] makes great company and I’m honored to share a few shelves with him.” Bardach describes the effect on her self-regard of watching her life’s work disappear into academia’s version of cold storage – then laughing, says, “I feel like I’m dead or something!” Surrounded by the gold-plated flotsam of a storied career that has yet to decelerate, she reaches down and produces an old issue of the original WET Magazine. As journalists will, we jump to the masthead and find her interview with occultist auteur Kenneth Anger. To say that Bardach’s career has been a “journey” is a ringing understatement.

Her kaleidoscopic archives reflect the early energized general assignment reporter whose high-octane curiosity laid the groundwork. She has spent a peripatetic investigative career unearthing paradigm-tweaking truths and dragging them into daylight. UCSB Library’s Special Research Collections thus has her award-winning Castro and Cuba books cheek-by-jowl with reporting on the early New York punk scene, the JonBenét Ramsey murder, Sex Pistols’ self-taught bassist/bad boyfriend Sid Vicious, Watergate Plumber and Bay of Pigs architect E. Howard Hunt, early Manson murderer Bobby Beausoleil, New Wave chanteuse Deborah Harry, and much, much more.

Bardach is now unencumbered, to our common benefit. Minutiae notwithstanding. “I thought I got rid of everything, but it keeps multiplying. What do I do with the 30 years of letters from dead lovers and fights with my mother?” she wonders aloud. “Write your memoir,” is one suggestion. She has both the material and anecdotal moxie any reader would devour. We learn, for instance, that as a young, aspiring reporter Bardach would hang out in the 202

third basement of NYC’s Bellevue Hospital morgue, tossing back nightcaps with the coroner – NOT a happening spot in 1970s – in hopes of scooping one of the Big Apple’s other “10,000 reporters” when “an interesting body would come in. You never know! I was there when Gig Young and his wife (a murder/suicide) were rolled in. And of course, Sid Vicious’ gal. So it sort of worked out.”

Granted, it is a strange sensation to go through one’s lifetime of work with the goal of gifting, selling, recycling, or dumping it.

Can we call this a sort of end-of-the-road karmic dance? Let’s do.

Many-Splendored

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oon is currently working with a family in possession of a large collection of Agustín Barrios – the Paraguayan classical guitarist and contemporary of Andrés Segovia. One gets the impression her work life is a series of “work with families.”

Closer to home, UCSB’s beloved and history-reflecting campus radio station KCSB is having its audio archives digitized – “We are looking for grant funding for that,” Moon says – and the American Radio Archives, a renowned collection of historically

Edison’s stubbornly cool Model A-100 (1915-1918) played only “diamond” discs; a fragile wood-core format that defied modern digitization. Now UCSB’s American Discography Project (ADP) will preserve some 9,000 of these nearly lost recordings. (Allen G. Debus Collection)

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weighty radio broadcasts, will also become part of Special Collections in 2021, thanks to the Thousand Oaks Library Foundation (TOLF) who established the radio archive in 1984.

Special Collections’ riches are stored and easily accessed in the aforementioned modernist temple on the UCSB campus, but parts of the collection reside nearly 100 miles away at UCLA. Appointments to review materials – available to scholars, students, professors, film and television researchers, playwrights, and others – can be made online.

Many rare first and signed editions of major American and British authors – with emphasis on 19th and 20th century literature – are available to peruse. These include works by cautionary novelist Aldous Huxley, father of poetic modernism T.S. Eliot, American icon Robert Frost, Henry James, avatar of environmental verse Robinson Jeffers, D.H. Lawrence, censorship magnet Henry Miller (Philip Peatman Collection), Christopher Morley, Ezra Pound, blue-collar bard of the Central Valley John

Steinbeck, and Henry D. Thoreau. “The most important reason we collect,” Moon says, “is for access to resources for scholarly productions, documentaries, plays, and journalists’ articles.

Preservation is what we’re doing when we bring in donations or acquire a purchase. It’s all about research, teaching, and learning.

We are a public university, and we need to make things accessible!

Our top collections include the California Multi-Ethnic Archives, American religions, William Wyles, performing arts, and Santa Barbara history.”

Special Collections has a number of symbiotic relationships with researchers who both feed the collection and mine it. Abel Debritto is a (Beat poet) Charles Bukowski scholar and expert who visits annually from Spain to conduct research. Debritto is also regularly called upon by Special Collections when they have a question about the beery bard of the boarding house. “We consult with him when getting offers of Bukowski items,” Moon confirms.

In terms of local authors, Moon acquired some original rare copies

Wonder-gadgetry for digitizing auto archives

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It’s said these rare and curious objects can be read without an internet connection. First and signed editions of major American and British authors.

of Sue Grafton’s early books “before the Alphabet series.”

Also drawing from the deep end of the Santa Barbara “legendary talent pool” are texturally and textually delicious book arts, including artist Mary Heebner’s Ocean (she whose restless work has appeared in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery, the Library of Congress, and a number of other tumbledown roadside stops), and the photographic work of her husband, renowned Yucatán Peninsula proselytizer Macduff Everton. Carolee Campbell’s Ninja Press is represented by the gorgeous and helplessly tactile objets d’art poétique for which she is celebrated. Harry and Sandra Liddell Reese’s magnetic and unclassifiable bookwork, and Linda Ekstrom’s eyebrow-raising explorations of the numinous, have likewise found permanent residence in the heart of the artists’ collective alma mater. Noel Young’s beloved Capra Press archives have come home thanks to Capra’s Robert E. Bason, and perennially gracious philanthropist Sara Miller McCune’s rare book collection springs eternal as a dynamic bequest (see “Speaking Volumes,” page 120). “She will continue gradually providing material,” Moon says happily. “She is still actively collecting!”

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“ Despite being less-robustly funded than

other large universities and Ivy Leagues, we have similar world-class collections, and these have mostly come in via donation. In any case, we have amazing collections! We pride ourselves on making these collections accessible for world-wide discovery.

”

Special Collections are currently working with documentarian-photographer Nell Campbell to acquire Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta images from Campbell’s acclaimed body of work. The Santa Barbara artiste cabal further includes Rosanne (R.T.) Livingston, whose 9/11 work in Manhattan stirs and electrifies as an online exhibit. Former Montecito resident and contemporary artist Nancy Gifford – whose unavoidably poignant and timely Lament installation now resides in the

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4 3 + / - AC R E S O N 2 PA R C E L S A B OV E T H E STO R I E D S A N YS I D R O R A N C H

1 6 4 0 E A ST M O U N TA I N .C O M

Offered at $33,000,000

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Nothing compares.

CALIFORNIA

Premiere Montecito Ocean View Estate

FRANK ABATEMARCO

805.450.7477 | FrankAbatemarco.com FrankAbatemarco@gmail.com © 2021 Sotheby’s International Realty. All Rights Reserved. The Sotheby’s International Realty trademark is licensed and used with permission. Each Sotheby’s International Realty office is independently owned and operated, except those operated by Sotheby’s International Realty, Inc. The Sotheby’s International Realty network fully supports the principles of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Opportunity Act. All offerings are subject to errors, omissions, changes including price or withdrawal without notice. Featured Agent Frank Abatemarco DRE: 1320375

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Special Collections’ political archives tell perennial stories of leadership and hope

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Santa Barbara Public Library – is donating a digital archive of all of her artwork from 1980 onward; a once-dissolving cache now restored and preserved in striking perpetuity thanks to modern tech. “Luckily,” Gifford wrote in an email from her new home in toasty Scottsdale, Arizona (it’s a dry heat) – “we were able to scan and color-correct all the old chromes before they deteriorated too much.”

The Santa Barbara history collection goes back to the city’s foundational (and diminutive) dynamo Pearl Chase – she who ran roughshod over the day’s mustachioed loudmouths to make Santa Barbara the garden that it is. It also includes political archives acquired from former-U.S. Congressional representatives Walter and Lois Capps as well as recently retired California State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson. When Jackson was closing down her office, the library reached out and UCSB history professor Dr. Mary Furner took it on herself to pick up the proffered materials from Jackson’s house. Jackson’s husband, retired Superior Court Judge George Eskin, had but one desperate-sounding instruction for Dr. Furner: “Don’t come back with anything!”

UCSB has a comparatively flat budget for collections and has not received any new allocations since 2009 or so; this despite rising costs of serials and digital content. In Special Collections, Moon manages various endowments – but by American

Research Library Standards, UCSB’s endowed funds output is “quite moderate” (less than $100,000 annually). “Most of the endowments are restricted to specific formats and subject areas,” says Moon, but is insistent on one point of pride: “Despite being less-robustly funded than other large universities and Ivy Leagues, we have similar world-class collections, and these have mostly come in via donation. We do receive cash support with many of our collection donations as an additional financial resource, and many donors do this because they feel strongly about making their collections accessible.”

It does take a village – or in this case a canny gang of culture fiends – to navigate the byzantine rules of procurement and turn austerity into a publicly edifying awesomeness. Danelle Moon and her team are surely experts at the creative stonesqueezing that continues to bring in the goods. UCSB’s Special Collections is, to paraphrase Sinatra, a ManySplendored Thing. Thanks to the team of helmeted culturespelunkers, it will only become more so. UCSB’s Special Research Collections’ animating spirit is scholarship, yes. But “scholarship” is an unnecessarily plain-faced noun with the heart of a roman candle. Right, Annie? “I was once paid for a story with a pair of suede roller skates!” she laughs.

See?

Molten core of erudition and history Special Research Collections’ cleverly disguised nerve center

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BY KELLY MAHAN HERRICK

Kelly is a licensed realtor with the Calcagno & Hamilton team of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, specializing in Montecito, Santa Barbara, and the Santa Ynez Valley

ith an influx of new residents flocking to Montecito during the COVID-19 pandemic, the demographics of Montecito have shifted in the last 18 months, bringing in a crop of urbanites looking to escape bigger cities both within and outside of California. This increase in buyers, coupled with a staggering lack of listings, has had a significant impact on our local real estate market, increasing our home values and making Montecito even more coveted than ever.

Perfectly situated between the mountains and the sea, Montecito, with its impeccable weather, lush landscape, and small-town atmosphere, is home to some of the most exquisite homes and estates on the California coast. Residents know that one thing that makes Montecito so unique is the diversity within its micro neighborhoods, all of which share a carefully curated semirural ambiance. With the 93108’s dozen or so neighborhoods, it would not be uncommon to find multi-acre estates found nestled among relatively modest homes, ensuring that no single street is known for its over-the-top mansions. This gives our area a sort of approachability that few other enclaves can claim, and adds to the “village feel” that Montecito residents hold so dear. This variance in size also extends to style: A lane of homes might range in style from a quintessential beach cottage, to timeless Craftsman, to midcentury modern, to the hallmark white plaster walls of a George Washington Smith creation.

One of the most sought-after neighborhoods in Montecito is called the Golden Quadrangle, described by most to be the sunny area (above the fog line) between East Valley Road and East Mountain Drive, sandwiched between Hot Springs Road to the west and Park Lane to the east. The upper area of Montecito also includes Birnam Wood, Eucalyptus Hill, Cold Spring School District’s boundaries, and more, located in close proximity to the charming shopping district known as the Upper Village. It’s here that

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photo by Eric Foote

Montecito’s semi-rural atmosphere is heavily felt, with no sidewalks or streetlights, and much foliage and mature trees.

In the Lower Village, on the north side of the freeway, sits the Hedgerow (known for its namesake historic privacy hedges), Montecito Oaks, Coast Village, Pepper Hill, Ennisbrook, and Casa Dorinda (Montecito’s coveted retirement community). On the south side of the freeway, you’ll find multiple beach enclaves, including Miramar Beach, Butterfly Beach, Bonnymede, Sea Meadow, and others; these neighborhoods tend to be a mix of modest beach homes, convenient condominiums, picturesque storybook cottages, and exquisite oceanfront properties.

Beyond Montecito, other nearby enclaves with magnificent homes and estates include the art-infused town of Ojai, and the bluff-side community of Hope Ranch in Santa Barbara, which features private beach access, gorgeous views, and a rural feeling with quiet country roads and horse trails. In the Santa Ynez Valley, residents enjoy true country living while enjoying spectacular mountain views, nearby vineyards, and quaint villages offering world-class restaurants and boutique shopping.

Here’s a closer look at 18 current offerings in Montecito, Ojai, Santa Barbara, the Santa Ynez Valley, and beyond.

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MAJESTIC TORO CANYON COMPOUND

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ocated on a private lane in Toro Canyon Park, this incredible estate sits above Montecito and has a front row seat to astounding ocean, mountain, harbor, city, and canyon views. Set on approximately 58 acres of park-like grounds, this stunning compound is made up of five structures totaling approximately 12,000 square feet. The nearly single-level, five-bedroom main residence has stunning views from every room. The heart of the main home, the kitchen is a sunny gathering place complete with the finest chef’s appliances, granite countertops, a roomy butler’s pantry and three refrigerators. The spacious primary suite overlooks the ocean while the additional four ensuite bedrooms look to the mountains.

Elsewhere on the site, a detached guest house, meditation room, and freestanding gym are all impeccably appointed, each with its own extraordinary presence and exceptional view. Take a dip in the rock pool, dine al fresco, lounge in the sun, all with incredible views of the sea. Tend to plants in the raised garden beds, play basketball on the sport court, hike one of Toro Canyon’s nearby trails or soak in the hot tub under the stars. The regulation-size tennis court can convert into a double pickleball court and features a spectator section for players and fans to both enjoy the game. The adjacent, detached gym is perfect for practice and training. Steps away from the main house, the estate’s library can host an impressive collection of books and doubles as a beautiful, ocean-view office space.

Set on an extraordinary landscape with breathtaking views and enviable privacy, this estate is the ultimate compound and retreat.

Offered for $26,500,000

by Riskin Partners Estate Group of Village Properties

photo by Blake Bronstad

photo by Jim Bartsch

photo by Eric Foote

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MONTECITO’S VALLEYWOOD

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alleywood is an iconic estate in the heart of the Golden Quadrangle. Nestled on a gorgeous oak-studded property, with beautiful mountain views and peeks of the ocean, this iconic compound dates back to the 1930s.

Three gated entries, wide-open spaces, and a circular driveway create a stately welcome to the property. The spacious foyer showcases streams of sunlight through an octagonal skylight set into the 12-foot ceiling, illuminating the inlaid wood floor medallion that anchors this unique galleria.

Connecting the east and west wings of the home is the spacious and sun-soaked formal living room, which offers French doors that frame the manicured gardens, thought to have been inspired by the iconic sunken gardens at the Santa Barbara Courthouse. A large, formal dining room is ideal for entertaining, and the casual family room with a built-in entertainment center is a perfect place to lounge.

Within the west wing is a distinguished den with a fireplace, and the primary suite is a private sanctuary with dual baths. Valleywood offers a well-equipped kitchen and butler’s pantry, outfitted with designer appliances. Adjoining the kitchen is an office, a bedroom, and a full bath. Three bedrooms occupy the second story.

The raised pool terrace is situated on the front grounds, and a detached and private guest studio is perfect for staff, a home office, or an oversized playhouse. On the northwest corner of the property, the original stable was transformed in 1981 to create what has become an ideal office.

Offered for $14,900,000

by Riskin Partners Estate Group of Village Properties

photos by Jim Bartsch

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VILLA BELLA VISTA

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verlooking the Montecito valley toward a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean, one of the area’s most luxurious and finest-built estates embodies authentic Italian spirit and the most sophisticated iteration of the California coastal lifestyle. Villa Bella Vista is set on approximately six terraced acres, and is located minutes to the San Ysidro Ranch and Hot Springs trailhead.

The exemplary floor plan enables mostly single-level living with gracious formal entertaining rooms, an elegant kitchen and lounge, a library, a wine room, and the ethereal primary suite occupying the entry level. The kitchen exudes an understated elegance balanced by top-performing functionality, and offers a robust 900+ bottle wine room; a butler’s pantry expands the capacity of the kitchen when entertaining.

The primary bedroom of Villa Bella Vista enjoys views down the coast to the Pacific beyond, and features an ultraluxe ensuite bath. Two bedroom suites access a tranquil courtyard grotto while a wine room, flexible media room or gym, and additional storage rooms complete the lower level.

Positioned to enjoy the southern view toward the pool terrace and its Pacific Ocean backdrop, the pool cabana accommodates guests with an elevated level of privacy. A lounge, kitchen, ensuite bedroom, and additional pool bath with outdoor shower enable the cabana to simultaneously function as long-term guest accommodation and a resortlike pool house. The Bisazza glass tile pool spanning 55’ in length is accompanied by a spa, fireside patio, and a chef’s outdoor kitchen featuring pizza oven, La Cornue rotisserie, Wolf grill, and refrigerator. Six terraced acres host citrus trees, rose gardens, lawns, intimate seating areas, and sculpture enclaves and are maintained by a private well.

Villa Bella Vista bestows a rare combination of ultraquality construction, unparalleled authenticity, and a formal yet approachable, mostly single-level floor plan. The result is an elegant home reminiscent of Italy’s most lavish villas in an A+ location within the coveted coastal enclave of Montecito.

Offered for $21,500,000

by Riskin Partners Estate Group of Village Properties

photos by Jim Bartsch

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BREATHTAKING OCEAN-VIEW MONTECITO RETREAT

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stunning example of what it means to live the ultimate Montecito lifestyle, this breathtaking oceanview retreat boasts unfiltered luxury at every turn – an ambiance of relaxed sophistication and seamless indoor/ outdoor living. State-of-the-art renovations and impeccable design complement the incredible panoramic ocean, island, and mountain views to create the ultimate dream home. It is embraced by a serene natural setting and utmost privacy yet located moments from all Montecito has to offer.

The compound-like Spanish Colonial-style estate features a stunning five-bedroom, seven-bath main residence, a detached one-bed, one-bath guest house, and an extensive list of indoor and outdoor amenities, making this the perfect place to entertain.

No expense was spared during the custom remodel with premium finishes throughout, including French white oak floors and customized marble, wood beam ceilings, and refined archways. Wake up to dreamy ocean views in the lavish primary suite, complete with a private ocean-view patio, impressive ensuite bath, versatile bonus room, and large walk-in closet. The gourmet kitchen is fitted with top-of-the-line appliances, abundant custom cabinetry, a generous island with counter seating, and custom steel bifold and French doors to the resort-like grounds.

The approximately 3.48-acre grounds boast a spacious patio off the main living spaces where a custom fireplace with cozy seating, outdoor kitchen, and alfresco dining neighbor the aweinspiring infinity pool and spa. Meandering pathways guide one through the vibrant orchard to the sport court and nearby emerald lawn. In addition, the property also hosts a private well, back-up generator, two two-car garages, and a convenient outdoor shower.

The best of both worlds, this immaculate estate offers the utmost privacy, convenience and surreal natural beauty, yet is located moments from Montecito’s Upper Village, renowned hiking trails, world-class beaches, and more.

Offered for $10,750,000

by Cristal Clarke of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services

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QUINTESSENTIAL QUADRANGLE

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erched on nearly two lush acres in the heart of the Golden Quadrangle rests this quintessential Montecito estate, offering unparalleled quality and perfection at every turn. Jaw-dropping 360-degree ocean, island, and mountain views create the ideal backdrop in which to enjoy this five-bedroom, A+ Mediterranean estate.

Graceful arched doorways create a sense of intimacy while the coveted southern exposure fills the elegant dining room each evening. Sweeping ocean views extend through the epicurean kitchen, and adjoining the kitchen is a spacious family room with a stone fireplace and beautiful built-in cabinetry. A casual dining area opens to the covered loggia and allows for seamless indoor/outdoor living. The main stairwell leads to the upper level of the estate, which hosts three ensuite bedrooms in addition to the primary retreat, which offers antique French oak floors, a custom stone fireplace, and French doors that open to sweeping ocean views.

The garden level of the home was thoughtfully designed both for wonderful entertaining and providing the most luxurious of guest accommodations. A luxury ocean-view, ensuite guest bedroom with an oversized closet and steam shower is a welcoming retreat for guests or loved ones.

The beautiful casual living room opens up to the park-like grounds and is adjacent to a second full kitchen and dining area. Rounding out the estate is a spacious wine cellar, a comfortable theater and game room, and a hidden grotto that opens to the pool.

There is a fruitful orchard with 25 organic fruit trees; a luxurious pool, spa, and poolside pergola; a custom Jack Kramer Nova Pro tennis court; and a flexible space on the northern end of the property that is currently utilized as a gym, complete with a powder bathroom.

A true paradise, this incredible, ocean-view, Mediterranean estate is a thesis on beauty, design, elegance, and the utmost quality construction and will continue to define the best of Montecito living for generations to come.

photo by Blake Bronstad

photo by Jim Bartsch

Offered for $19,995,000

by Riskin Partners Estate Group of Village Properties photo by Jim Bartsch

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TUSCAN MASTERPIECE ON GIBRALTAR

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his Tuscan-like villa boasts four bedrooms and five bathrooms, perched on a five-acre parcel with gorgeous ocean views. With tiles imported from Tuscany, antique fireplaces from France, and Baccarat crystal chandeliers throughout, this property offers a quintessential location for those who wish to marry timeless architecture with modern day comfort.

Mesmerizing views of the Pacific are centered through prodigious windows, framing the dining area, spacious kitchen, and den, which share an open floor plan and feature retracting glass doors leading to the outdoor terrace. The chef’s kitchen features dual Wolf ovens, Sub Zero, Miele, and Fisher & Paykel appliances, and a hand-painted ceiling.

Carefully curated finishes include Venetian plaster walls, radiant flooring throughout, Italian Scabos

tile, Santa Barbara stone, and more. Bedrooms and bathrooms have been carefully designed to embrace a luxurious lifestyle; the primary bedroom includes a balcony with beautiful ocean vistas and a bathroom fit with a soaking tub, rain shower, dual sinks, and walk-in closet. The two additional ample-size bedrooms feature doors leading to the exterior grounds and rose gardens. The stunning property features a heated infinity pool, spa, loggia with a fireplace, and an orchard with avocados, lemons, and orange trees.

Listed for $6,495,000 by Maureen McDermut of Sotheby’s

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IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN

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amous Santa Barbara architect Jeff Shelton has left quite a mark on Santa Barbara architecture, designing a handful of unmistakable commercial buildings and residential homes in downtown Santa Barbara and beyond. Custom-designed and built in 2001 for the current and only owners, the Pistachio House beautifully exemplifies the intricate artistic details combined with seamless indooroutdoor living.

Constructed above a super-sized 860+/- square-foot high-ceiling garage, the living areas consist of a main bedroom plus large den or second bedroom on the second level, with the living room, dining room, and kitchen on the upper level for maximum light and views. There are a total of seven distinct finished exterior terraces and deck areas – also all highly decorated with gorgeous artistic touches, which flow easily from the inside to greatly expand the living spaces and to enjoy the beautiful Santa Barbara year-round climate. There is an elevator from the garage level to each of the upper two living levels, and a bonus area on the entry level that has been fitted with an additional bed/bath suite.

The home was thoughtfully constructed on the rear portion of the parcel, off State Street. Currently the offering includes the three commercial spaces fronting State Street, offering a buyer an investment as well as a residence, or a new owner may choose to pursue the possibility of a lot split or using one commercial space as an extension of the residence.

The downtown location is also only four blocks to the Pacific Ocean, beaches and waterfront recreation, and within a few blocks of dozens of restaurants, boutique retail, wine tasting, three major performing art theaters, museums, and parks. This is an incredible opportunity to purchase an irreplaceable truly original home plus investment in one of the world’s premier coastal communities.

Listed for $4,950,000 by Ken Switzer of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services

photos by Jim Bartsch

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OCEAN VIEWS FROM MODERN MEDITERRANEAN

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cean views throughout illuminate this stunning contemporary Mediterranean open-concept home, providing a picturesque gathering space in a quiet Riviera neighborhood. Enter into the main level with a cozy living room, gourmet kitchen, dining room with expansive ocean view, family room flanked with edible gardens through French doors, laundry room, and half bath. Close by is the first of five bedrooms, which offers a full bathroom, fireplace, and access to the back garden through a private patio.

Four more bedrooms are on the upper levels, which are filled with abundant natural light streaming from skylights and balconies, and offer breathtaking views. Privacy awaits on the lower level with an attached studio with kitchenette, full bath, and sun terrace. The main floor was fully remodeled in 2014, with additional updates throughout the home.

Located at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, this premier Riviera home also boasts four gas fireplaces, high-end appliances and air conditioning, detailed millwork, carefully selected ironwork and finishes, and a beautifully terraced backyard.

Listed for $2,950,000 by Gary Goldberg of Coastal Properties

photos by Reed Fish

BLANK SLATE IN HOPE RANCH

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ne of the last, undeveloped ocean-view parcels in the exclusive community of Hope Ranch is currently for sale on Via Esperanza, primed and ready to build a dream estate upon.

Santa Barbara-based firm Anacapa Architecture has imagined a modern family compound on the gently sloped 2.35 acres with conceptual fivebedroom, six-bath, two-story modern home with a dramatic two-sided infinity pool, functional single-level living, and 6,000 sq. ft. of living space. Further complementing the space, there is a proposed two-bedroom guest house, optional pool house and either a three- or six-car garage. The idyllic location offers one of the most coveted locations in Hope Ranch, enjoying a wonderful microclimate and easy access to the privately accessed beach, tennis courts, miles of bridle trails, La Cumbre Country Club, and excellent State Street shopping and dining.

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Offered for $4,495,000

by Daniel Zia and the Zia Group of eXp Realty California renderings by Roy Hathon and Anacapa Architecture

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HOPE RANCH EXCLUSIVITY

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elcome to Casa Paloma, an exclusive opportunity to own one of the supremely rare, large bluff-top parcels in Santa Barbara’s Hope Ranch. The 13-acre property is majestically perched along nearly 400 feet of oceanfront with awe-inspiring views of the ocean, islands, and mountains. Included in this mid-construction legacy offering is a permitted design by Tom Meaney Architects consisting of a 7,400+ sq. ft. fivebedroom Andalusian Spanish farmhouse, a three-bedroom guest house, pool and pool cabana, tennis court and pavilion, eight-car collector’s garage with office and half-bath, a 720sq. ft. accessory structure, vegetable garden and animal pens, plus organic orchards of avocado and lemon trees.

Every conceivable luxury has been thoughtfully integrated into the conception of Casa Paloma, while still giving a future homeowner unmatched freedom to customize the home.

Casa Paloma represents the ultimate California dream to live, work, play, and retreat in one of the most desirable waterfront locations in the world.

Listed for $33,950,000

by Dusty Baker of Sotheby’s International Realty

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FOOTHILL FARMS, OJAI

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his beautiful, turn-key estate was built in the Tudor Revival style of architecture fashionable in Southern California in the 1920s. Designed by noted architect William A. Edwards, the residences have been impeccably updated and restored to preserve their historic character while tastefully bringing everything up to modern-day standards. photo by Jim Bartsch

photo by Jim Bartsch

Known historically as The Perkins-Baker Residence, it was designated by the City of Ojai as a Historic Landmark in 2020. The primary residence has dramatic pitched ceilings, exposed wood beams, arched doorways, pristine oak floors and a semi-circular room. It includes a luxurious main bedroom with separate dual bath and dressing rooms, a dining room, a large living room, a gallery, a wood-paneled office, a butler’s pantry, and a gourmet kitchen featuring an AGA stove.

A charming guest cottage and an additional music/photography studio match the integrity of the main home. The grounds include mature trees, a chicken coop, a detached garage, and a pool that fits with the architectural balance of the property. This is a rare historical gem that is completely finished and ready to be the centerpiece of a luxurious, creative, and social lifestyle.

Listed for $6,450,000 by Patty Waltcher of Liv Sotheby’s

photo by Logan Hall

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RANCHO EL MORRO

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ou’ll find ultimate seclusion on this 200-plus-acre Santa Ynez Valley ranch within the heart of Central Coast wine country in northern Santa Barbara County. The 7,900-plus sq. ft. custom-built main residence is strategically situated to maximize privacy yet take full advantage of the picturesque views of the valley and mountains beyond.

The main residence was completed in 1999 with three bedrooms, three full baths, and three half-baths. The design allows plenty of possibilities for expansion or conversion for additional bedrooms and the property is ideal for addition of a separate guest residence.

The California style ranch includes a spacious master suite with large dual baths, a separate guest wing (two bedrooms, sitting area, and large bath), living room, formal dining room, library-media room adjacent to full bar, beautiful kitchen open to breakfast area with a butler’s pantry, atrium with koi pond, a total of five fireplaces, and a three-car garage. There is a separate Ranch Manager’s quarters with two-car garage and a storage container barn.

Located just five miles to the hip little town of Los Alamos and its culinary gems, 12 miles to the boutique tasting rooms of Los Olivos, and a beautiful 50-minute drive to the coast of Santa Barbara. For those seeking a finely crafted estate in an extraordinary Central Coast wine country setting, Rancho El Morro makes for the ultimate California retreat.

Listed by Santa Ynez Valley Real Estate for $8,490,000

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photos by Jim Bartsch

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RURAL RETREAT AT JALAMA

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or those seeking the ultimate in privacy and tranquility, there is a rare opportunity to own a legacy ranch on beautiful and highly coveted Jalama Road in Lompoc. Located just an hour from Santa Barbara and two and a half hours from Los Angeles, this is the perfect getaway for respite from the bustling city.

The 309-acre ranch offers many amenities that other ranches in the area do not: two water wells, two homes, electrical panel/service, ranch offices, three barns, large show barn, and 45 acres of flat AG-2 farmland, as well as numerous corrals. The property is located in close proximity to world class wineries, the Santa Ynez Valley, and Jalama Beach. It truly is a family compound to be enjoyed for generations.

Offered for $6,288,000 by Jason Siemens of Sotheby’s

photos by Tom Ploch

BUENA TERRA CANYON RANCH

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efined by panoramic ocean and mountain views, unrivaled privacy, and an unpretentious spirit merged with timeless luxury, Buena Terra Canyon Ranch offers a rare combination of architectural, agricultural, and equestrian excellence nestled in the foothills of the Santa Ynez Mountains. Set on approximately 22 prime acres, the lush, terraced grounds share a custom-designed Mediterranean-inspired residence, multiple outdoor entertaining spaces, a pool, and fully appointed 6-horse barn with apartment.

As befits a ranch of this stature, the meticulously maintained equestrian facilities have been home to some of the world’s most recognizable horses and include nine covered pipe paddocks, an extra-large riding arena, 12 sheltered pastures/turn-out areas, and a 60’ covered and lit round pen.

Set in a sun-drenched valley that’s known for its exclusivity, this extraordinary haven feels worlds away but is only a 15-minute drive from the best of downtown Santa Barbara, the airport, UCSB, and Goleta Beach. Feel swept back in time yet enjoy all the modern amenities of today in an idyllic setting that embraces a peaceful, honest lifestyle with a back-to-basics simplicity and offers endless opportunity to create your dream escape along the coveted Santa Barbara coast.

Listed for $12,500,000 by Kelly Knight, Knight Real Estate Group of Village Properties

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We are floral designers working exclusively with orchids from our collection.  Since 1989  We have grown, maintained, delivered, and installed our collection of orchids in private homes, hotels and businesses.

Currently serving locations along the central and southern California coast, from Santa Ynez Valley to the Newport Beach area. www.InBloomOrchids.com | 805-566-4797 Inbloomorchids

R A N C H E S & V I N E YA R D S

WINE COUNTRY GETAWAY

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he ultimate wine country dream in the heart of Paso Robles, this picturesque 120-acre property offers it all from a classic farmhouse and historic vineyard, to a vibrant garden with a beautiful barn, ideal for a lucrative event venue or winery/tasting room.

Plus, there’s a permit in place to develop a winery.

The inviting three-bedroom, three-bathroom farmhouse is 2,303 sq. ft. and features a classic layout with timeless bead-board, plus a stunning wraparound porch to soak up scenic vineyard views. There are plentiful lemon and olive trees on the grounds, along with a number of fruit trees, adding the scenic ambiance.

The organically-farmed 40-acre vineyard includes 20 acres of historically significant Cabernet Sauvignon as well as 20 acres of recently replanted vineyard with a productive well on-site. Premium varieties also include: Chardonnay, Albariño, Malbec, Syrah, and more. Quiet and private with panoramic views of Paso Robles wine country, the Cross Canyon retreat neighbors Villa San-Juliette Winery along the Pleasant Valley Wine Trail.

Whether you’re seeking to start a signature winery in the prestigious Paso Robles AVA or a peaceful vineyard retreat for a getaway or to call home, there’s never been a better opportunity to bring your vision to life in Paso Robles wine country.

Offered for $2,495,000 by Jenny Heinzen Real Estate

photos by Triston Loppini

FIGUEROA FARMS

T

his exquisite property is situated in prestigious Happy Canyon, a coveted area in the Santa Ynez Valley offering an unparalleled lifestyle set amongst rolling hills, orchards of olive trees, and meticulously maintained vineyards.

This 106+/-acre paradise is crowned by the magnificent Main House inspired by the fine country homes of the Mediterranean region. With 25-foot, beamed ceilings, multiple fireplaces, and walnut French doors leading to photo by Jeremy Ball the courtyard, this home is grand in stature yet tastefully appointed to exude a level of luxurious comfort. The kitchen features walnut cabinetry, custom tilework, and Viking appliances. The primary suite also opens to the pool, and features a custom bathroom and dual closets. There are multiple office suites that can be converted to bedrooms, that overlook the striking main living area.

Additionally, there is a guest house, Foreman’s House with pool, 4,300-tree olive orchard, and 40+/- acres of valuable south-facing land primed for viticultural development. Rhône and Bordeaux style varietals have flourished in this Happy Canyon AVA. This magical estate transports you to a Mediterranean countryside surrounded by unparalleled beauty as far as the eye can see.

Listed for $12,250,000 by Carey Kendall of Village Properties photo by Jim Bartsch

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4 Championship Rebound Ace Pickleball Courts

4K Dolby Atmos Movie Theatre with 21 velvet reclining chairs

Bocce Ball Court with LED lights and crushed oyster shells

3 Championship Rebound Ace Tennis Courts

2 Bowling Lanes and Arcade with pinball/games and laser light technology

Private Dining Room featuring handcarved Moroccan walls and ceiling

Kid’s Club with wall-to-wall Lego Room

2 Temperature-Controlled Wine Rooms

2 Indoor Virtual Golf Simulators 25,000 sq. ft. Pool Facility with views of the Pacific Ocean and Channel Islands 2 Rim Flow Lap Pools and Beach Entry Pool with an Island Whirlpool and Kid’s Splash Pad 6,500 sq. ft. state-of-the-art Fitness Center and Movement Studio with Matrix, Peloton and Keiser machines

Batting Cage equipped with state-of-the-art slow and fast pitching machines Spectacular Indoor and Outdoor Dining with firepit overlooking the Pacific Ocean, Channel Islands, and Santa Barbara Harbor

Handmade Italian Outdoor Wood-Fire Pizza Oven