Mobile Post: Sky Love You
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Eventually read, "I <3 U David". But it's kind of a rough day for skywriting..
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Eventually read, "I <3 U David". But it's kind of a rough day for skywriting..
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September 11, 2011.
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Either my mind is in the gutter or there's a very odd theme going in the harbor lots.
Each got it's own heartfelt "really?!" from my compatriots.
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Several people have been sending in their videos of the smoke plume from the Vasari Fire in the Funk Zone. Here are three more:
Thanks to (City2 blogger) Mike Harrington, of StoneYard Building Materials for the view from his yard on Garden & Yanonali, and to reader Carrie Barnes for the Grey St. perspective (photo and second two videos).
Video Courtesy of (City2 blogger) Mike Harrington (aka Mikey's morning surf report)
Video Courtesy of City2 reader Carrie Barnes
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Vasari Plaster at 121 Santa Barbara St, burned down this morning around 10am today (Monday). Owner Alex Conrad was said (by folks I talked to) to have escaped with minor burns. His dog, Spider also escaped with only light injuries. No one else was injured. The building, a 1930's WWII era quonset hut collapsed in under an hour. More photos and video to come soon.
UPDATE:
Here is some video of firefighters working on a persistent hot spot.
Official Press Release from the SBFD
SANTA BARBARA, CA – 6/6/2011 – At approximately 10:33am Santa Barbara City Fire crews responded to a report of a working structure fire at 122 Santa Barbara Street. The first engine arrived on scene at approximately 10:36am and due to the amount of smoke and flame immediately requested a second and third alarm. The first in crew determined based on the type of construction of the approximately 3000 square foot commercial structure that fire personnel were going to need to attack the fire from a defensive mode. This means that they have determined the structure to be unsafe for entry by firefighters and the strategy will be to protect all surrounding structures and attempt to contain the fire to the building of origin. There was a partial collapse of the structure. Firefighters were successful in containing the fire to the building of origin and controlled the blaze at approximately 11:30am.
A civilian adult male sustained burn injuries and was taken to the hospital. None of the injuries are considered life threatening. Additionally, one Santa Barbara City Firefighter sustained a back injury and was taken to get medical attention. There was also a dog that was rescued from the blaze.
The total response to this incident included 6 Santa Barbara City engines, 1 Montecito engine, the Santa Barbara City Fire Ladder Truck, 4 Chief Officers, and the Santa Barbara City Fire Hazmat vehicle.
MORE PHOTOS:
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This would have been a mobile post if I wasn't already downtown with my computer. I have never seen such a perfect and vivid sundog. Here are what few photos I could take with my iPhone. If you're reading this around 1:30pm today (Friday June 3) stop reading my stupid post and go outside. It's really something.
[more photos below]
For the curious, here's more on Sundogs:
"Sundogs are made commonly of plate-shaped hexagonal ice crystals in high and cold cirrus clouds or, during very cold weather, by ice crystals called diamond dust drifting in the air at low levels. These crystals act as prisms, bending the light rays passing through them with a minimum deflection of 22°. If the crystals are randomly oriented, a complete ring around the sun is seen — a halo. But often, as the crystals sink through the air they become vertically aligned, so sunlight is refracted horizontally — in this case, sundogs are seen.
As the sun rises higher, the rays passing through the crystals are increasingly skewed from the horizontal plane. Their angle of deviation increases and the sundogs move further from the sun.[2] However, they always stay at the same elevation as the sun.
Sundogs are red-colored at the side nearest the sun. Farther out the colors grade through oranges to blue. However, the colors overlap considerably and so are muted, never pure or saturated. The colors of the sundog finally merge into the white of theparhelic circle (if the latter is visible)." - from Wikipedia
Here's a video:
And some more photos:
So THAT happened.
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Taken from Goleta where you can see the steam coming up off of the wood fences in the sunlight.
Even smells like snow.
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Jonathan Richman has apparently played both Soho and the Ventura Majestic in recent years. I hear that both visits were poorly publicized, and that he played to sparse (criminally sparse) crowds. I also managed to miss both shows, only hearing about them days later, and then feeling..unhappy and stupid.
This time Jeffery of Club Mercy got the booking (who tends to do a great job no matter what) and made a perfect choice. The Mercury was nicely filled (if not sold-out).
Wedged between the wall and some old mid-century couch with a bunch of friends, popcorn and a Hefeweisen was the perfect way to watch (a legend like) Jon Richman do his thing. Very happy day.
Aly Comingore (who I keep seeing everywhere that is good) should have a proper review up on the Indy soon.
In the meantime, here are two videos to make you feel bad that you didn't go.
That Summer Feelin'
And the tail end of 'I was dancing in a lesbian bar'.
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Just a few pictures of Santa Barbara and Goleta from the window of my plane (bound for Denver) the other day. Nice visibility and some cool clouds hanging over the mountains.
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On Tuesday night I went to the newly re-opened drive-in with some friends to see 'The Other Guys' (the new Will Ferrel/Marky Mark flick). Our friends in their car, my girlfriend and I in mine. While sitting there, over-dosing on Good 'n Pletny's, green tea, and Junior Mints (don't ask why), I realized that - aside from my self-inflicted sugar nausea - drive-in's are awesome.
First Reason: Almost complete control. You get to manipulate your own environment much more than you would in a regular theater. We determined our volume, temperature, food, company and distance from the screen. I am not sure if I've ever sounded this American, but it was pretty swell.
Second Reason: People are fun. When we pulled in the first movie, The Last Exorcism was still wrapping-up. After parking and turning off our lights, we noticed several dark shadows get out of a car and creep up on another vehicle nearby. We then heard a 'RAAARH!!' followed by a shriek and a 'I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU BRIAN! GODDAMNIT JACOB!!". As the shadows retreated giddily back to their Civic, everyone applauded.
Third Reason: Making out. Yes. That's right. I made out with my girlfriend during a chase scene. Shoot me. Oh wait, you can't. I'm in my car. With my girlfriend. Making out.
Fourth Reason: It's cheap. We paid $4.75 each (tuesday special). Most nights adults are $6.75.
Fifth Reason: Making Out. Still worthy of a being the fifth reason. Don't argue with me.
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Fast forward to Thursday. I was at my desk, procrastinating and thinking about something I had heard, about the drive-in only staying open for this summer as 'an experiment' to see if it was viable venture here in Santa Barbara.
I figured I'd call the parent company that owns West-Wind.
I had a nice conversation with Tony Maniscalco (VP of Marketing) at Syufy Enterprises (the San Rafael Company that owns the place) this afternoon about the future of my new favorite spot.
Before answering, he gave me a quick rundown on the history of the drive-in. Here is my version:
1966: Theatre opens, my parents are teenagers, showing some knee was scandalous. People made-out in their cars and watched movies like the Endless Summer.
1967-1991: Lots of happy drive-in customers. Psycho, Easy Rider, Blade Runner, Lobster Man from Mars, Buckaroo Bonzai and the 8th Dimension.
1991: Metropolitan Theaters, who ran the place for Syufy decided it was no longer worth their while (lot's of cool stuff died in the early nineties) and the place went dark but continued to be used as a venue for the local Swap Meet.
1992-2009: Lot's of locals like me were deprived of their all-american coming-of-age snogg at a drive-in movie.
2010: SMHS (go Royals!) senior Niqui O'Ne ill pitched a screening of Ferris Bueller's Day Off as a benefit for Haiti Earthquake relief. Syufi agreed, and after a bit of fixing and fiddling with the projector room and equipment, and a new coat of paint on the screen (thanks to Niqui and friends), the drive-in was once again operational.
After an overwhelmingly positive response from the community (and raising almost 4k for Haitian earthquake victims), she started the "Re-Open the Santa Barbara Drive-In" Facebook group, which after swiftly swelling to thousands of members, prompted Syufy Enterprises to re-visit the logic that persuaded them to let it close in 1991.
Santa Barbara Drive-In re-opened in the late spring/early summer of 2010 and has been showing first-run movies all season.
Tony also did his best to answer my question about whether or not the drive-in would remain open after this summer. He said that based on the positive response from the community, the theater will 'absolutely' be open next summer. As for the fall and winter, he said that they're "playing it by ear". " We're going to see how it goes" Suggesting hopefully that that though attitudes towards movies have changed since the 60's..people in other parts of the state attend drive-in's in the 'weather'. "We aren't yet sure if folks in Santa Barbara would go see a movie in the fog or the rain-" I interrupted him to say that I could think of a reason ( if you aren't clear on why, see #'s 3 and 5 above). He laughed, "I'm not going to comment on that."
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Also: You may want to check out Santa Barbara Drive-In's (free/open to the public) Customer Appreciation Night on September 30th, which sounds pretty awesome. I'll update this post with the exact time later today :)
More on the Drive-In via the Indy.
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My brother has been nursing a hummingbird since it smacked into a window at my parents house (near Goleta). Here are a few shots my dad just sent of him holding it up to get some nectar. It's currently camping out in a little shoebox with some sugar-water. So hopefully the little guy recovers, though his wing looks pretty smashed up.
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Unexpected awesomeness last night (video at bottom of post).
Around 11:30pm on Sat (last) night, as my wife and I were walking home after an art show and a movie at Paseo Nuevo, we heard music coming from De La Guerra Plaza. We'd missed most of Fiesta this year for various reasons, so we walked over towards the noise hoping we might catch a few minutes of live tunes and a churro.
Though the vendors were starting to pack up, there was a sweet latin band playing in the old Casa (De La Guerra) courtyard behind the beer garden fence. To our surprise, only a few people were dancing in the center of the crowd. After standing there for only a few minutes we noticed that the small crowd doing the dancing was growing, and, before we knew it (zombie attack?) there was a full-blown (impromptu) group dance of at least 50-60 people going off on in the middle of the street outside the beer garden wall. It was like stars - and a dude with a whistle - aligned perfectly.
Easily the best fiesta moment I've had in years.
Here's a video (it gets good towards the 1/3 point) I took with my iPhone of the last song. It only partially captures the collective upwelling of happiness and spontaneity from the crowd.
Anyway. Watch it. And try not to smile.
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Interesting spot to watch the parade from. Something about the openness of the street and the relative lack of spectators makes it feel old.
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Decorations going up everywhere. Locals, brace for impact ( I'll be taking evasive maneuvers myself). I am now fresh out of pathetic Star Trek fiesta isms. Have a good day.
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I just snapped this picture of a partial rainbow over Santa Barbara. If you don't know why I'm typing in all caps about a rainbow..It's because you probably haven't seen the (below) video making the rounds on YouTube this week, where a guy, possibly high on a little more than life, has a meltdown when a rainbow appears in front of his house. It's gone viral enough to have been re-mixed into various songs - embedded below for your viewing pleasure.
Original Double Rainbow Video. I kind of envy how deeply he feels it. Though there may be a little more than a little medication involved.
Here's the Double Rainbow Song (awesome).
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Local culture, happenings, news, art, and other miscellany.
