Posted by paulrivas on: Mon 29th Sep, 2008

Rivas Cultural Services spied the one and only Coach Pimm at Saigon In and Out on State Street Friday night. That's Jerry Pimm, Coach, the man who led UCSB's celebrated men's basketball teams of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Prior to the men's soccer team's rise to prominence and 2006 national championship, the big basketball wins of Coach Pimm's days were probably the high point in the history of UCSB athletics, in terms of national recognition (and attendance). Even today, with the men's soccer team's present success now coming as expected, people recall the glory days of the basketball program, which came under Pimm.

I hadn't seen Coach Pimm since his first days as an athletic department administrator following his retirement from coaching. Back then, he looked beat, but Friday at Saigon In and Out's downtown location, he looked never-better, probably 10 years younger than he looked 10 years ago. (In fact-checking for this story, I learned that Coach Pimm's mother recently passed away aged 99.)  Coach's granddaughter, Gina, was in my third grade class at Foothill School.

I very nearly got up and greeted him, to give him his due props and thank him for first putting UCSB athletics on the map, but it's a delicate operation over there at Saigon In and Out, and one finished diner crossing the room to great another diner just about to sit down may well have brought the whole place crashing down. Saigon In and Out (not Saigon by KMart - never been there) is Clare's and my favorite restaurant these days. We get pho and chicken curry noodles, a Dragon and Angel brand beer and a Diet Coke for about $24.

The food is delicious, and they have a chrome rickshaw that would make any of the local low-rider bros take a second look, but what we love about is is how the very short women on the staff scream hello and goodbye unseen from the far end of the restaurant as soon as a customer crosses the threshold. Such is the hospitality at the downtown location. The staff bend over backwards to be welcoming and helpful, all the while laying conversational booby-traps that are at best startling and at worst the potential for disaster. When Clare ordered both the pho and the chicken curry noodles one time, without saying that we'd share the two dishes, the 90-pound waitress shouted, "It's too much food for you!!!" If a diner tries to order something before the waiter is ready to field the order, or speaks before the waiter has finished speaking, the whole transaction comes to a crashing halt, often necessitating an entire do-over. So you can see how I just couldn't stand up and traipse across the restaurant floor, willy-nilly, and start shaking hands with the customers, even for Coach Pimm.

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Tags: Coach Pimm, Saigon In and Out

Posted by paulrivas on: Fri 26th Sep, 2008

Six weeks ago, I learned the word "raconteur". I'm not sure where I saw it first. About a week later, during happy hour at the Brewhouse, I saw a poster for a band called the Raconteurs playing at the bowl. I said to myself, "What a clever name. I think I'd like to see a band called the Raconteurs." A few weeks later, I heard KCSB giving away tickets in their usual way - to the first caller - while saying that the Raconteurs featured Jack White of the White Stripes. I counted this as a plus, and decided to put some attention toward winning tickets. I did this, and won two tickets last week.

Before the White Stripes, whose music I first heard played in Europe in 2003, "Jack White" was the name of a boy my younger sister Laura went to elementary school with who lived on Pintura. He was always present in my mind because I once heard him exclaim, "This one has more gription," in reference to one mini basketball that was easier to grip than another. It was the only time I've ever heard the word "gription" spoken seriously, and pre-dated the next reported instance of the word by two years, when the Life Artist Bubba Ray Robison heard 1996 New York Mets First Round Draft Pick Robert Stratton say, "This ball doesn't have any gription on it," shortly before becoming a millionaire.

Last night, Rivas Cultural Services introduced a Mexican exchange student to two Santa Barbara classics: Lilly's Tacos and the Santa Barbara Bowl. The pinche mexicano, as he is affectionately known, ate five "tacotes" at Lilly's, a total he later decided was 67% more than he needed. (How many tacos did he need?) He had two asada, one adobada, one maciza and one lengua. He preferred the asada to all, but also complimented the adobada. He said the lengua was okay but earned his lowest rating of the four varieties sampled. Once at the Bowl, Rivas Cultural Services and client picked up the free tickets, schmoozed the bigwigs, and had two free drinks apiece bestowed on them.

It was only a few days before the show that I realized that "raconteurs" sounded like "rock on tours". I'd like to thing this was unintentional on the part of the band, because there's nothing worse than a pun, unless you're in Mexico, where puns are king, but I had my doubts after seeing them play. After carefully considering White's Heath-Ledger's-Joker-inspired-sick-and-twisted-meets-Johnny-Depp-aloof look, and the other guitarist's mustachioed ridiculousness, I could only assume that the joke was on us. Well, not "us" exactly. Not on Rivas Cultural Services, to be sure, and not on the pinche mexicano, but certainly on everyone who paid to see an uninspired and at best occasionally interesting show.

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Tags: raconteur, pinche mexicano, Lilly's Tacos, Jack White, Robert Stratton, Rivas Cultural Services

Posted by paulrivas on: Mon 22nd Sep, 2008

Now that I'm living deeper in Goleta than I've ever lived in my 30 years in Santa Barbara, I've been frequenting my favorite Goleta joints more than usual and discovering new neighborhood favorites. I've been in the Mercury Lounge more times in the last month than I had previously since returning to Santa Barbara at Christmas.

Last Thursday, finding myself in downtown Goleta and needing a haircut, I make a bee-line for Goleta Barbers, which I had passed by on a previous trip to the Paperback Alley and identified as the perfect neighborhood barber shop. (Rivas Cultural Services refers to the area around Hollister Avenue between Kellogg and Fairview as "Downtown Goleta", not "Old Town Goleta".) Goleta Barbers is not Fairview Barbers. Fairview Barbers was a white man's barber shop in the Fairview shopping center. Goleta Barbers is a brown man's barber shop on Hollister, a few doors up from the Paperback Alley.

It was 5:15 when I walked in and saw the sign saying the place closed at 6:00. Both barbers were busy and there were at least two guys waiting for haircuts, but I decided to take a chance on the barbers not wanting to turn down last-minute customers, and sat down. One of the guys waiting - the only white guy in the place - turned out to be none other than Jeremy Anderson, my third grade classmate. Each of us was genuinely glad to see the other, despite the fact that we probably only ever really exchanged words on a few occasions throughout elementary, junior high and high school. When Jeremy got off the chair, he extracted some well crumpled bills from his the right front pocket of his blue Dickies, turned to the barber, and said, "Thanks for cutting my hair, homes."

The only guy who came in after me, and validated my already questionably late arrival, was Hector Guerrero, who is bros with Ray Lopez, who is my friend Bubba's sister Kara's husband. We hadn't seen each other in years either, and Goleta Barbers provided the perfect space for a catch-up conversation between two Santa Barbara locals who never really had much to do with each other due to being several years apart in age, despite being good friends of the famous Robison family.

In addition to the barbers and paying customers, there were also a few high school kids hanging out that afternoon. These guys seemed to be happy in their daily routine of passing a few free hours at the barber shop, chilling with their bros and occasionally hopping into a barber chair for a free touch-up during any breaks in the paid action. These guys all had shaved heads. They had shaved heads, and they were getting haircuts. This made me feel soft. My hair was longer than anyone's in the shop, as I knew it would remain even after my turn in the chair. (Hector's hair looked sillier than mine, but only because he'd insisted on maintaining a combing regimen that had proven to be incompatible with his current hairdo, grown-out as it was.) I imagined the others in the room classifying me as the least hard in the room, due to the length of my hair. I also assumed they were more curious about me than anything, being that I'd never been there before but walked in sure that I'd come to the right place. In my mind, I proved my worthiness as an honorable local customer by being a lifelong schoolmate of the only white guy in the room, and being a long-lost associate of the Mexican-American most in need of a haircut in the whole place. It was a very Rivas Cultural Services moment.

Rivas Cultural Services backs the Goleta Barbers. They're a friendly, accommodating bunch of barbers who obviously take tremendous pride in their trade, as well as tremendous pride in the role they play in the community.

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Tags: Goleta Barbers, Downtown Goleta

Posted by paulrivas on: Wed 17th Sep, 2008

Rivas Cultural Services plays 91.9 KCSB at work and 107.7 Radio Bronco in the car. We are also fascinated with all questions of race. This morning, the male host of the show was butchering the Mandarin language while quizzing his two female colleagues. One of his colleagues insisted she could do better. She did, and explained that she went to school with a few "chinitos". Whereupon the third speaker bested her by declaring that she was schooled with "chinitos, güeritos, negritos..."

Lately, I mean way, way before this morning, I've been wondering what the FCC does about regulating obscene foreign language speech on the air. If I get on the radio and cuss a bunch of people out in some foreign slang that no one can understand, are there likely to be consequences?

And incidentally, they love to call people güeros on Radio Bronco. A few weekends back, I was driving two friends in my bocho. My friends asked what the Radio Bronco DJ was saying. At that moment, as the comedy gods would have it, the DJ was sending out a shout-out to all the güeros out there who might be listening, even though they don't understand.

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Tags: chinitos, güeritos, negritos, Radio Bronco, race

Posted by paulrivas on: Mon 15th Sep, 2008

I explored two parts of Santa Barbara County formerly unknown to me this weekend. Both excursions were funded by Ambient Event Design. In addition to building beautiful lighting setups for events, Ambient sponsors the exploration of hard-to-get-into local spaces.

Saturday, Rivas Cultural Services checked out the Bacara Ranch, on the other side of the freeway from the Bacara proper. If you turn onto Vereda Leyenda, north of Winchester Canyon, and go way back until the road ends, the gate to the ranch is there. Then, it's a trip of several minutes along a dirt road, heading probably due north, with a lemon orchard bordering the road on the west side, further back into the canyon, until you come to a glorified picnic area. Apparently, Bacara guests have the privilege of hanging out in this secluded version of Kiwanis Meadows at Tucker's Grove. It's probably the farthest you can be from civilization in Goleta without being up on a mountain. My friend since third grade, Ryan Hernandez, rented a room off Vereda Leyenda for a while, and I remember the night feeling very dark way back there. Well, this Bacara joint is miles deeper than that. The hillside at the edge of the meadow is completely burned. I expect that it was intentionally burned as a preventive measure, and not the result of the fire coming all the way down the hill, but I don't know for sure, haven't investigated, and didn't bother to get close enough to see for sure. You get what you pay for here, I'm afraid.

So we spent a few hours at the site taking down a whole bunch of lighting that had gone up the day before. It was a nice sunny day, and not too hot. The only drawback was that the whole area was absolutely thick with flies. Overall, however, I received great benefits from the moneymaking and weightlifting highs I experienced while schlepping heavy lights and cables in remote surroundings. I have here the key to history, in Marx's words: satisfying work; which may or may not compare favorably to the moneyspending and boozeguzzling highs the partyers felt the night before.

Sunday, Rivas Cultural Services partnered with Dyrenforth Acquisitions on another Ambient strike. This time we were at the Gainey vineyard, where Mr. Gainey himself's secretary asked me to do the vineyard a solid and cut down two bits of string that were hanging from a pipe and annoyingly visible from the conference room, which I did while pretending to not speak English. As far as wedding locations go, Gainey struck me as a very nice place to host maybe 50-60 people. It really is cool to sit around and drink a bunch of wine, or take down a bunch of lights, right there at the very edge of the vineyard.

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Tags: Dyrenforth Acquisitions, Bacara Ranch, Winchester Canyon, Ryan Hernandez, Gainey Vineyard

Posted by paulrivas on: Thu 11th Sep, 2008

When Radiohead tickets went on sale at 10am a few months ago, I was able to buy one ticket, by phone. That was at about 10:20, and the guy on the other end said there were none left. I later discovered that in another part of town, my friend James Garza, kept at it and successfully bought two tickets online at 10:45. Ni modo.

When the concert date rolled around, Rivas Cultural Services was able to get my beloved Clare a last-minute free pit ticket, but due to being tired after a too-long day of work, she understandably bowed out. If I myself hadn't changed my mind 99 times about whether or not to go with my one ticket, I would have had a difficult time believing the woman I love would turn down a free pit ticket to see Radiohead right here in Santa Barbara.

The Bowl is quite a schlep for us now that we're living off Fairview as opposed to Anapamu. Not to mention less comfy now that the lawn is concrete, and more expensive every time. At Radiohead, it seemed to me that nothing remained of the old days, when I could count on there being 20 people I grew up with chatting desultorily in the pit. This time around, it was all south coast freeway dwellers. While I know there were several friends of mine in attendance, I spied none, whereas Rivas Cultural Service's star Spanish student's mom said she saw plenty of people she knew who live in L.A.

Now, great show aside - does anyone not think it was a great show? - I was so disappointed by the the band members' apparent $1000 haircuts and $600 t-shirts, I almost went out and spent a bunch of righteous indignation dollars, the kind Bill Hicks warned of. What, did the band stop at Blue Bee Donkey on the way to the Bowl? I understand that Radiohead is a top act worldwide, and I'm willing to concede that their not dressing themselves is part of the price of their achieving greatness. But if Santa Barbara hadn't been the lost stop on the North American tour, and the band hadn't been as inspired by this fact, the joke would have been on us, folks.

[Painfully honest disclosure/hypocrisy: I own two Blue Bee t-shirts, each bought for $24 at a 50% off sale.]

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Tags: Radiohead, $1000 haircuts, Bill Hicks, Blue Bee Donkey

Posted by paulrivas on: Tue 9th Sep, 2008

Driving south on North Fairview this morning on my way to UCSB, I heard a promo for the Chumash casino on Radio Bronco, 107.7 FM. In the ad, the announcer refers to Chumash Casino Resort as "El Chumash Casino y Resort". It sounds like, "El SHOE-mosh Caw-SEE-no e Re-SORT."

During Rivas Cultural Services' nine-month partnership with Trusted Translations, Inc. (who refer to themselves as "TROOS-ted Trans-LOT-e-ohnz" in Spanish), I learned that translating proper names isn't done and makes no sense, and I believe this still. But what piqued my interest wasn't the grammar - the grammar on Radio Bronco never inspires confidence. (Only moments earlier, one of the personalities lamented to an unreachable contest winner that, "/Se te fueron un par de boletos/.," where /se fueron/ is plural but /par /is singular - no good.)

What piqued my interest was that the announcer pronounced the "Chu" in Chumash as "Shoe", even though "ch" is a letter of the alphabet all its own in Spanish and Spanish-speakers commonly use the "ch" sound for the English "sh". It seems that someone at Chumash wants to be sure that Mexicans use the preferred pronunciation. I've heard both "Chumash" and "Shoemash" in English, but I'm calling 2-out-of-3 on this one, I for one am going to start emphasizing this majority pronunciation by heretofore referring to "The 'Mash" as "The Shoe". The Shoe. Furthermore, I submit that anyone who doesn't follow suit risks offending the Chumash gaming gods and deserves what he or she gets.

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Tags: Chumash Casino Resort, The Mash, The Shoe, Chumash gaming gods

Posted by paulrivas on: Mon 8th Sep, 2008

Rivas Cultural Services - my life as a business name - occasionally contracts with Ambient Event Design. This weekend I was on the take-down crew for a Best Buddies fundraiser at Hearst Castle. Best Buddies is a charity run by Maria Shriver's brother. The Black Eyed Peas played. The party was down on the Rancho Piedras Blancas, but the VIP reception was up at the castle. The Ambient crew had installed lights on Thursday and Friday for the event. A guy who worked on-site for Ambient Saturday night got to jump into the Neptune pool.

It was the first time I'd ever been to Hearst Castle, although I didn't check really it out other than the area around the pool and the taxidermy in the ranchhouse. Nevertheless I left fully satisfied. Working on that landscape made me feel very California Royale. We first struck the lights around the pool and VIP tent, then went down to the ranch and struck those lights. The party rental and stage rental companies were still going strong when we left at 6 pm.

We had a filling dinner at El Chorlito in San Simeon afterwards. El chorlito is Spanish for "snowy plover".

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Tags: Rivas Cultural Services, Hearst Castle, Ambient Event Design, California Royale, Black Eyed Peas, El chorlito, snowy plover