This "The El Greco" is not a painting but an apartment building in Isla Vista
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During this Old Spanish Days time of year, when white people are more inspired than ever to eat Mexican food, cultural understanding is at a premium. This Fiesta, Rivas Cultural Services has asked Santa Barbara Man About Goleta to explain, once and for all, why some people insist on saying Fiestas, plural, when talking about Fiesta, singular, as in, "It's Fiestas!" or "Are you going to Fiestas tonight?"
What's their deal? Why can't they just say Fiesta like the rest of us? And why does it seem to be only Mexicans and their associates who can't get it right?
In Spanish, fiesta generally means "party". Dos fiestas means "two parties". (Tres fiestas is a desmadre, but that's neither here nor there.) However, the word fiestas in the plural, all by itself or when followed by an adjective describing the nature of the parties to be celebrated, usually refers to a widely celebrated day or period of parties. Fiestas navideñas are Christmas-season celebrations, and fiestas patrias is the general term for the national celebrations that take place in Latin American countries around their various independence days. For example, Mexico's fiestas patrias are September 15-16. That's why some people (Mexicans, mostly) say Fiestas instead of Fiesta.
Regarding Santa Barbara's Fiesta, the beautiful, talented and highly intelligent young woman pictured above is one of your Santa Barbara Man About Goleta's 30 cousins from the Mexican-American half of the family. Her name is Mercedes, a Spanish word often meaning "mercies". The Lompoc native is named after our Mexican great-grandmother, but our family pronounces her name like the name of the luxury automobile brand, which quickly led to her more often-heard nickname of Sadie, which brings to mind American hillbillies.
Mercedes will be dancing in the various Fiesta events around town on Saturday listed below. If you check out her show, tell her that Cousin Paul says "hi" and that you're down with Fiestas!
10am - Children's Parade
Noon - El Paseo
2:30pm - Courthouse
3:45pm - MacKenzie Park
5:15pm - Our Lady of Guadalupe
8pm (tentative) - Courthouse
(Photo by India Madden)
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On Argentine Independence Day, 2009, in Santa Barbara, California, the history of the gaucho as UCSB mascot and South American cowboy was published on the cover of The Santa Barbara Independent. The story features photos of Argentine gauchos by Clare Nisbet and will be on newsstands through Wednesday. It's also available online, but this is a Rivas Cultural Services joint best enjoyed in print.
(Photo by Clare Nisbet)
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"Go ahead, give yourselves a hand!" said moderator Craig Smith, the local blogger famous for chronicling the News-Press meltdown. And with that, the packed house of journalistic heavyweights, concerned citizens and armchair activists, like your Santa Barbara Man About Goleta, indulged in an inspirational and self-congratulatory round of applause, alternately saying to ourselves in our heads, "We want our news!" "We're on the correct part of the spectrum!" or "¡Muerte a los ricos!"
The moderator and five panelists were all nationally renowned in their respective fields. The crowd included nearly everyone who is worthwhile in local journalism, a lot of very clever local luminaries, plenty of us everyday slobs and even a few News-Press goons. And yet solidarity reigned, as all who had gathered enthusiastically agreed that nobody knows what the future of journalism is but that something must be done.
"I write about this stuff all the time, and I don't have a clue," began LA Times man Jim Rainey. What's certain is that the days of department stores dropping 75 grand on a full page of bra ads are over. Those were, however, good times. "Not to mention uplifting!" Craig Smith chimed in, and the crowd went wild.
Susan Paterno was sued by Wendy McCaw for her article on the News-Press situation in American Journalism Review. She won her case and the case even set a legal precedent, but the American Journalism Review is now on the verge of financial ruin after going up against McCaw's billions of dollars and will to destroy. Paterno emphasized that journalism as we knew it is definitively behind us, and that the murky future lies somewhere out there on the Internet.
Explaining the ins and outs of the Internet as a medium for journalism was old-school newsman Jerry Roberts, whose family has also been financially bludgeoned as a result of his being sued by McCaw. Roberts described the virtues of blogging and citizen journalism with the enthusiasm of a beginner. Himself an example of the niche audiences that have proliferated and replaced the mass general interest audiences on which paper news relied, the first thing Roberts reads every morning now is a utilitarian political news site full of annoying ads called Rough & Tumble, whose owner is making money but only by working 12 hours per day on it. "The question is how to marry the public interest or public trust of journalism with the Wild West of the Internet."
With the facts well established, top local journalist Nick Welsh was free to steal the show. "When journalists get together now," Welsh opened, "the first thing they ask each other is, ‘Are you alive?'" He reckoned it will take four or five years before we really know the fate of newspapers. He was quick to admit that newspapers have never been infallible, but maintained that there is no substitute for having a paid news reporter cover strange and twisted events like School Board meetings that normal people rightfully find unbearable: "It doesn't get any more insane than that!" Believe it or not, The Santa Barbara Independent is now the seventh largest weekly newspaper in the country. However, in the early 1980s, the Independent's predecessor the News & Review could barely manage to pay its workers anything other than local business trade coupons. "I was going around with no pay in my pocket," Welsh recalled, "but I was wearing $200 sunglasses!" When Welsh stated simply, "Wendy McCaw and Marianne Partridge: both strong women who are named after birds," the crowd laughed as though this thought had literally never occurred to anyone before.
Dick Flacks (pictured, photo by City2.0 founder Warren Schultheis) came on to rally the crowd with a fist-pumping finale. He reminded everyone that the Independent, the Daily Sound and Noozhawk employ a total of fewer than 10 full-time news reporters, as compared to the 55 people in the News-Press newsroom back when Jerry Roberts still worked there and it was still a legitimate outfit. Something will have to fill this news gap locally, and it's up to local people to determine how to support efforts in this direction. He cited NPR, PBS, Democracy Now!, ProPublica, the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Center for Public Integrity as good examples of quality newsgathering operations that are contrary to the mega newspaper model.
Following the conclusion of the program, and probably either still high on activism or just joking, Flacks called Santa Barbara Man About Goleta, "the best blog in America." He also said that as soon as he heard that I was coming he knew it'd be a full house, whatever that means.
For more coverage of this event, see Matt Kettman's recap on independent.com. Kettman was the crack editor of your barbareño por Goleta's recent gaucho story and is an associate of Rivas Cultural Services. Noozhawk.com also covered the event, and in their lead photograph the Santa Barbara man about Goleta's right arm is clearly visible. This City 2.0-powered summary was written with the express intention of supplementing these articles by highlighting the funny stuff they didn't see fit to print.
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I'd always thought of Fairview Barbers as a white man's barber shop: Gaucho Joe O'Brien used to say that the Fairview Barbers did the only good flattops in town, and when Herr E.F. Dyrenforth went there recently and asked for a "high and tight", "the peckerwood behind the chair didn't hesitate for a second."
Although your Santa Barbara Man About Goleta is as white as he is Mexican, as a matter of custom I like my barbers Mexican, or at least as Mexican as I am, like fellow half-Mexican John Salvador of Amigos Haircutting, who cut my hair from age 0-29. Lately, I've been partial to the all-Mexican Goleta Barbers, where only the hardest and downest white boys go.
Yet when I found myself in the Fairview center the other day and needing a haircut, perhaps feeling extra white after a running shoe purchase at SB Running and an ultra-soft toilet paper purchase at Vons, I didn't hesitate to head straight for Fairview Barbers. There I was welcomed by not only three good white barbers but also a token Mexican one, and what I presume to be the lowest regulation haircut prices in town at $14.
Seeking to establish my credibility as a local, if not a regular in that place, I regaled those gathered in the little shop with tales of some of the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta's more colorful adventures. The subject of baseball arose, prompting the Head White Barber In Charge (HWBIC) to consult the publication formerly known as Santa Barbara's local paper. He found what he was looking for, but it gave him no pleasure: "Here it says these boys played together since Little League! Well no they haven't - they don't play Little League in Santa Ynez, they play Pony League."
"You're damn right," I said. "And as a former member of the Pony League Mustang Division all-star team that stomped the Santa Ynez boys 11-5 in the summer of '88, I take offense to that! Little League, sheeeit!"
"Atta boy!" the barber said. "You can take a leadoff in Pony League, which you can't do in Little League..."
The conversation continued for the duration of my haircut and even into the standard Oster handheld massager shoulder massage that has always come free with every trip to Fairview Barbers. Afterwards, whites, browns and half-breeds alike thanked each other profusely, each glad for this intersection with the other's world, and promised to keep keeping it real, Pony League style.
[Other members of that Mustang all-star team: Brian Lopez, Charlie Van Dyke, Dino Campanella, Ryan Lopez (white), Tony Zuniga, Everett Schroeder, Joey Cordero, Adam Webster, Carlos Lopez, David Amerikaner, Joey Holguin and Ben Owen]
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Like John Thyne III of Goodwin & Thyne and legendary Coach Jerry Pimm, Rivas Cultural Services occasionally takes meetings at Saigon In and Out downtown. So, too, evidently, does fringe mayoral pretender Justin Michael, aka Justin Slatkin aka JMike! aka Mr. Santa Barbara, Jr. aka JBama!
Although the two had never met, the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta has long been friends with Justin Michael on Facebook and recognized him immediately upon seeing him Friday night: accompanied by two associates, the man formerly known as Little Justin Slatkin was eating phở with a fork and spoon at the table closest to the restroom.
On her way back from peeing, my fiancée - a former classmate of Justin Slatkin's - greeted JMike! and mentioned being engaged, to which the candidate replied with alarmingly heartwarming sincerity, "Good for you!"
In later conversation with friends outside the restaurant, I was speechless to suddenly find the man who calls himself Mr. Santa Barbara, Jr. looking me straight in the eye.
"Fiancé," he said, and then he shook my hand and slunk off as everyone went back to doing what they were doing.
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Here are the 10 pieces of advice (paraphrased) that Bill Bryson shared with all those suckered by UCSB Arts & Lectures into paying $20 to hear a writer tell a couple stories and hear a bunch of superfans ask a lot of stupid questions. Bryson said the items were adapted for an American audience from a commencement speech he'd given in England a couple years ago. Bill Bryson's a nice guy, and Rivas Cultural Services enjoys his books, but the lecture circuit is patently not his forte. This closing advice was the highlight of the evening.
1. Take a moment to remember you are alive.
2. There are 6 billion other people out there. Don't think yourself special.
3. Kill people who don't say thanks to those who hold doors open for them.
4. Be good and say thank you.
5. Try stuff.
6. Don't surprise someone from behind.
7. Be modest.
8. Always buy all my books in hardback.
9. Stop complaining.
10. Never go on too long.
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The Santa Barbara Man About Goleta loves the Multicultural Center (MCC) at UCSB. In fact, when he interviewed for a job in the UCSB Department of Communication, he cited the MCC's Wednesday film series, with its cool topics and free coffee, as something no undergraduate should miss. The three white interviewers' response was to look at each other expectantly and shrug. MCC? Multicultural? Never heard of it.
However, this Wednesday's film, Hijos de la guerra, which the MCC flyer (the MCC produces more flyers than China does Chinese food) billed as, "a multi-award feature-length documentary film about the world's largest street gang: the Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13", is an example of exactly what the MCC should not settle for: movies that win awards not because they're good movies but because they're movies about good topics. Yes, MS-13 is a fascinating topic with many facets, but no, the film did nothing to explain anything beyond what could have been learned in five minutes on Wikipedia.
The film was very well attended, with about 40 people being forced into an overflow room beside the packed MCC theater, among them your Santa Barbara Man About Goleta, Rivas Cultural Services associate Shane Amaya, and the latter's mother, ex Santa Barbara News-Press reporter Melinda Burns.
My interest in the film was twofold. At a crackhead park in South L.A., Goleta native and life artist Bubba Ray Robison teaches P.E. at a charter high partially populated with MS-13 members. And in downtown Santa Barbara, my beloved and I lived next door to a house that our landlord said housed Mara Salvatrucha.
I'd been hoping for some kind of hint at what my old neighbors might have been up to in there, or what relationship MS-13 has with the Crips or Bloods or Echo Park Mexicans, or how exactly MS-13 grew to be the world's most violent motherfuckers, but none of that was in the film. There were a few gang killings caught on tape, and some scenes of deplorable Salvadorean prison conditions, and some interviews with the gang's founders and the US law enforcement agencies trying to destroy MS-13, but all very common sense and predictable and lacking insight.
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It is Rivas Cultural Services policy to avoid Isla Vista, but the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta made an exception last Saturday night on the occasion of fellow 1997 San Marcos High School grad Nick Spears performing stand-up at a Laughology event at UCSB's Embarbadero Hall in IV. Spears is an Orange County comedian and the voice of "The Machine Videos", a series of silly pro-Sasha Vujacic videos recently featured on NBC.com and the best Yahoo! Sports "Ball Don't Lie" sports comedy video of 2008 made by Garrett Lynn, who I believe was once a teammate of mine on the GYBA Clippers.
Spears did 10 minutes as a last-minute fill-in as one of four openers for the half-Filipino half-Jewish Brent Weinbach. The Santa Barbaran started with a Fast and Furious bit and closed with a story of driving with an open container to the Dark Knight premiere. As he explained to me after the show, Spears happens to be in a feud with another of the comedians who performed Saturday night. Evidently, the latter rounded up his entourage and walked out on one of Spears' previous performances in frustration at Spears being given higher billing, so Spears himself walked out on homeboy Saturday night. The Santa Barbara Man About Goleta hereby assures Nick Spears that he didn't miss anything - that other guy wasn't funny.
The headlining Weinbach was impressive. He's been called "post-multicultural", which you good people will know is exactly what the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta is all about.
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If you missed the first half of this discussion, here it is.
The Santa Barbara Man About Goleta believes that the familiar old “Goleta – The Good Land” license plate frames were inspired by the title of this book. The title was selected from a great many submissions in a 1965 Santa Barbara/Goleta-wide contest to name the local history, which was commissioned by the Goleta Amvets. The phrase originally appeared in a Spaniard’s 18th century assessment of the Goleta Valley, which stated, “It is all a good land.”
Having finished the book over the weekend, your Santa Barbara-born Goleta blogger has spent this week telling UCSB stus how lucky they are to live in his town and regaling them with historical anecdotes gleaned from this historic work, such as:
1870s – San Francisco streets were paved with asphalt mined on the More ranch, owned by T. Wallace More, the Scotsman for whom More Mesa is named. More’s son-in-law, C.A. Storke (the father of the publisher), said, “the three greatest men who ever lived were Jesus Christ, Abraham Lincoln and T. Wallace More.”
1870s – So many Scots emigrated to Goleta that a ginormous “Scottish-American Picnic” was held every fourth of July in Tucker’s Grove, the oldest park in Goleta. This tradition ended when World War II broke out.
1890s – The Vieux Carré in New Orleans was paved with tar from a deep shaft mine located on the present site of the UCSB Drama/Dance building.
1890s – Yaple Avenue, where my classmate Jim VanBlaricum grew up, was the site of an experimental farming project where spineless cactus were grown for use as cattle feed.
1899 – The Naples viaduct (that train bridge on Dos Pueblos Ranch) was built in five days.
1900 – The population of Goleta was 500.
February 1942 – A submarine said to be Japanese sat off the Ellwood shore and for a full 40 minutes fired 29 shots at the Ellwood oil fields. All but a few of the shells were duds, and the attack caused a total of $500 damage. An hour later, a blackout was declared from Monterey to San Diego. Two hours after than, US planes finally showed up and dropped flares. And here Tompkins makes the point that given that Goleta’s defenses were withdrawn from the Marine base just one day before the attack, and that the alleged Japanese sub was sitting in plain sight and firing away without any reciprocity by American forces, the sub was more likely American than Japanese, and the apparent incompetence of the attack was intentional in order to stir up support for the war effort.
World War II – Bill Hollister keeps 300 Nazi prisoners of war on the Archie Edwards ranch beyond Dos Pueblos. The Nazis were put to work harvesting crops, and the old POW camp fences were still visible when Tompkins wrote the book.
1948 – The population of Goleta was 1500.
1952 – Tomás Ygnacio de Aquino, the last full-blooded Canaliño (Chumash) Indian of the 12,000 living in Goleta when the Spanish arrived in 1769, dies penniless in the hospital.
1962 – The General Plan for the Goleta Valley called for rapid transit on the existing train tracks or a monorail running parallel to Highway 101 in order to alleviate traffic.
That was 1962, and we still aren’t even close to having anything like that anywhere between L.A. and San Francisco!
That’s it for Goleta: The Good Land. The Santa Barbara Man About Goleta hopes you’ve enjoyed these historical bits, and gives the book his highest recommendation.
Rivas Cultural Services associate and Goleta hero Mike Fitzgerald, himself a descendant of the famous Sexton and Doty families mentioned several times in Goleta: The Good Land, recommends Fourteen at the Table, another Tompkins classic.
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This Rivas Cultural Services acquisition was commissioned by the life artist Bubba Ray Robison, who intends to wear the hat once and sell it for $4000. The hat was purchased for $10, pins and all, from a "17% off" case at the antique store in downtown Goleta. The underside of the white felt is inscribed with the name "LUGO" in faded black magic marker.
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Cruising downtown Goleta last week, I happened into the antique store on Hollister. For sale in the display case immediately to the left of the front entrance is a copy of the 1966 local classic Goleta: The Good Land, by Walter Tompkins, in its original cellophane, for $175!
Would the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta shell out 2000 Mexican pesos for the bona fide piece of the local historical record? Or would he bid on the already-open $5.99 copy currently for sale on ebay? The answer, as regular readers will already have guessed, is none of the above. In lieu of paying anything at all, I went straight to the Goleta Library history section and checked the sucker out for three weeks, free of charge.
To show my unbridled enthusiasm for Goleta: The Good Land, which I'm only one third through yet, here are a few highlights through the 1870s:
1833 - the first baby born in Santa Barbara to American parents pops out.
1840s - Juan "Flaco" Brown, the Californian Paul Revere, covered the 630 miles from L.A. to Monterey on horseback in four (4) days to warn of an American attack on Mexican installations, a record Tompkins claims had never been equaled.
1859 - The only simoon ever recorded in North America hit Goleta, causing the temperature to rise to 133 degrees Fahrenheit and birds to drop dead in midair.
1862 - The Reverend Thomas Starr King, for whom the storied local nursery school of which the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta is a proud graduate is named, married Col. Hollister and wife Annie, for whom Glen Annie is named.
1860s - The first saloon is at Hollister and Fairview, causing this budding village to be known as Whiskey Flats, in contrast to the other budding village at Hollister and Patterson called Old Goleta, which was populated exclusively with abstainers.
And my favorite, from the 1870s - Ellwood Cooper, for whom all the many Ellwoods around town are named, was himself named after an English writer who read for the blind poet Milton. In a letter to a relative, Cooper advised:
"The people who have come here are rather above the average, and most have means. There are very few squatters. In fact, that class cannot get on here. This is no place for poor people, and I would discourage all such from coming."
Goleta has been economically out of reach of the lower classes since at least the 1870s! Talk about no nacos!
UPDATE: Read Part II
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Browsing at the Goleta Library the other day, your Santa Barbara Man About Goleta came across a DVD of Peril and perseverance: a history of disasters in Santa Barbara. The documentary was produced by the City of Santa Barbara for CityTV Channel 18, and promised, "fires, floods, earthquakes, landslides, toxic spills, and even tsunamis", not to mention wild stories by real-life old-timers and a little disaster preparedness on the side.
Ever wonder why Santa Barbara is in love with Spanish architecture? The answer's in the film! Every wonder how many gallons of water per person per day you should squirrel away in preparation for The Big One? The answer's one (1), and it's also in the film! Do you know Chris Zwicke? Well his wife Christy is the host of the documentary!
At the very least this is a worthwhile hour of locally produced infotainment that anyone who knows anyone who was bummed about our recent fires should check out. At its best, it's an important piece of the historical record, collecting local people's reactions to our area's history of natural disaster in a nicely watchable little hour.
"Peril and perseverance" is currently available, right now, at the Goleta and Montecito branches of the Santa Barbara Public Library. The Carpenteria, Downtown and Eastside branch copies are currently checked out, but you can reserve a copy online for 50 cents.
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In Santa Barbara and Goleta, there are Mexican restaurants that last less than six months that no one bothers to keep track of, and there are Mexican restaurants that have been around for years that everyone knows. And then there's El Rincón Bohemio, which has been around since 1989, seemingly without customers.
Have you ever even heard of anyone going to El Rincón Bohemio? Do you have the slightest idea where either of its two locations is? Can you believe there's a Mexican restaurant in Santa Barbara called "The Bohemian Corner" that isn't overrun with ladies of leisure lunching in $2000 wannabe Frida Kahlo skirts?
Of course not! It's inconceivable! Why, the Santa Barbara Man About Goleta himself just discovered the downtown Goleta location last week! It's on Pine Avenue, one block off Hollister, hiding in plain sight in a building I don't have the architectural vocabulary to describe properly, but that resembles a hobbit house built into a hill. The other one is rumored to be buried somewhere in the El Mercado center on upper State Street.
In the heart of Mexican Goleta, a deserted-looking building in an empty parking lot, El Rincón Bohemio is a summarily Mexican joint. The food is delicious, the portions are enormous and many of the beverages listed are unavailable. Before I could ask if the management was concerned that a restaurant that was impeccably decorated yet starkly devoid of customers might be considered suspicious, in a front-for-Mexican-drug-trafficking-money sort of way, the young woman behind the counter blurted out that I shouldn't be alarmed at being the only customer because the nice old lady who owns the restaurant makes good money renting out the back patio for events (no music) and catering fine Mexican dining for 500 people (she's done this twice (in almost 20 years!)).
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Paul Rivas never wears hats.
