IN TIMES OF WAR
The Pentagon had its fingers crossed this week in hopes that a scheduled test of a ground-based missile interception system didn’t go awry, as has often occurred in the past.
Year: 2006
Citizen’s Alert
Thu., Aug. 31
Homeless Housing: Celebrate the grand opening of El Carrillo homeless apartments. 11am. 315 W. Carrillo St.
Pacific Pride Foundation: Hosts its weekly gay and bisexual men’s therapy group. 6-7:30pm. 126 E. Haley St., Ste. A-11. Call 963-3636 x235.
Hitting the Books
The New School Year Ushers In Old and New Concerns
Monday marked a return to academia for thousands of students throughout the combined Santa Barbara School Districts. From Santa Barbara High School on Anapamu Street to Monroe Elementary on the Mesa, school buses jockeyed with minivans and SUVs in the early-morning hours as backpacked, binder-toting kids prepared for day one of the 2006-07 school year.
Tourist Trivia
Tourist Trivia (Quiz)
Quote of the Week
‘Any district that has declining enrollment has to have an eye toward school closures.’
-Superintendent Brian Sarvis, on the diminishing enrollment at local elementary, junior high, and high schools.
LOCKER TALK
Arguably the biggest polo event in North America concluded in a brutal championship match at the Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club in Carpinteria last weekend. National media and more than 1,000 spectators were on hand for the final game of the Pacific Coast Open as team Duende squeaked by Windsor Capitol 13-11.
Living the Arctic Meltdown
An Inuit Community Struggles with Climate Change
When polar explorer Will Steger comes to town to visit Montecito philanthropist Virginia Castagnola-Hunter at her 1919 Reginald Johnson estate, he likes to sleep on the back lawn. Granted, it’s a pretty great lawn. But it’s nothing compared to the home’s posh interior. To Steger, though, maintaining a connection to the natural world is more important than luxury, largely because it represents humanity’s best hope for combating global warming.
YOUNG BLOOD
The new Hollywood sports movie The Gridiron Gang chronicles the efforts of former Santa Barbara resident Paul Higa to redirect the energies of hard-core juvenile offenders in Los Angeles from criminal behavior to the football field.
LAND AND SEA
In response to the discovery of Oriental fruit flies in the Hope Ranch area last month, the pesticide Dibrom (a trade name for naled) was applied for the third time to trees and telephone poles in the region.
Spins Art
You may have already seen the paper versions of these clever postcards around town. Iconic beach town images get the graffiti, mustache-on-the-“Mona Lisa” treatment. But it’s the virtual versions of these images currently displayed on the Santa Barbara Conference and Visitors Bureau Web site that really say it all. Through the miracle of modern digital animation, we see these wholesome images go cutting-edge as the animated overlay appears and spreads before our eyes: a 1940s-era sunbather appears and is then covered in tattoos. A clean-cut Gidget-era surfer sprouts a Mohawk and stylized licks of flame. The images were designed to promote Off-Axis, the big new contemporary art festival coming to town this month, and the caption for all of them reads the same: “Edgy. Progressive. Mind-blowing. Not the adjectives you’d necessarily expect from Santa Barbara.” Exactly.