Cover Story
New Santa Maria cultural and art center makes a home for the Latino community and artists everywhere
At the heart of the city, on Broadway and Main Street heading west, there is a building that reminds one of a bygone era. Entering the site under a distinctive black awning, visitors are greeted by a two-tiered staircase with intricate molding and craftsmanship. Corazón del Pueblo Cultural and Creative Arts Center of the Santa…
PCPA’s production of The Addams Family is hellishly heartwarming
Morbid and madcap all at once, the Pacific Conservatory Theatre (PCPA)’s latest musical endeavor is a masterpiece of the macabre. Based on cartoonist Charles Addams’ classic characters (probably best known for the ’60s TV series, or the ’90s films to later generations), The Addams Family follows the perilous plights and pleasures of Gomez and Morticia…
Brunch at the Santa Maria Inn’s Century Room makes everything else in life seem utterly inconsequential
How are wars still happening when we live in a world where brunches like this exist? I seriously don’t get it. What are we fighting about? Oil, that goopy black garbage? For God’s sake, there are two rows of tables in Santa Maria where every Sunday, all manner of delicious food from heaven is artfully…
Local author Deborah Tobola reflects on teaching creative writing and theater at the California Men’s Colony
Poet, playwright, and author Deborah Tobola is probably best known as the founder of the Poetic Justice Project—the country’s first theater company made up entirely of formerly incarcerated actors—but it’s her teaching career that earns the spotlight in her latest work, Hummingbird in Underworld: Teaching in a Men’s Prison. The book is set to be…
Bob’s Well Bread Bakery in Los Alamos hosts one-day still life exhibition, Peintures de Pain
Creating still life paintings for Peintures de Pain, an upcoming group show in Los Alamos, proved to be quite a challenge for local artist and teacher Mary Kay West and her students—since their subjects were at risk of being devoured at any moment. “It was hard to avoid the temptation to eat the still life…
Lompoc Civic Theatre hosts staged reading of ‘Red’
Lompoc Civic Theatre presents a staged reading of John Logan’s Red at Stone Pine Hall, with performances taking place on Friday, July 26, and Saturday, July 27, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, July 28, at 2 p.m. Director Larry McLellan helms this rendition of the 2010 Tony Award-winning play, which follows artist Mark Rothko as…
PCPA resident artist selected for exclusive master class
Pacific Conservatory Theatre (PCPA) Resident Artist Kitty Balay is one of the 10 performers selected by Ten Chimneys Foundation to participate in the Lunt-Fontanne Fellowship Program, an annual week of master classes headed by a renowned professional each year. Actors and acting teachers are chosen from an exclusive list of nominees from only 10 national…
Pops on the Lawn features Cafe Musique at the Santa Maria Country Club
Unlike the barbecue lunch included as part of their upcoming performance, the eclectic quintet Cafe Musique can’t be put in a box. Known for blending gypsy, tango, swing, and their self-defined genre, “wild classical,” this Central Coast-based group is performing on the lawn of the Santa Maria Country Club on Sunday, July 21, starting at…
After city opposition, LAFCO approves minimal changes to annexation requirements
After some cities strongly opposed significant changes to the Santa Barbara County Local Agency Formation Commission’s (LAFCO) open space and agricultural land policies, the commission instead opted to pass a less consequential amendment at its July 11 meeting. LAFCO began reviewing its existing policies last year. In late March 2019, commission staff sent a letter…
Cuyama passes pay-to-pump groundwater sustainability structure
Cuyama landowners will soon have to pay to pump groundwater, a decision that some say will place the burden of Cuyama’s dwindling water supply largely on farmers’ shoulders. At a board of directors meeting on July 10, the Cuyama Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency voted to approve a pay-to-pump funding structure, in which landowners are charged…
County supervisors tighten commercial cannabis ordinances
Close to a year after its original cannabis ordinances went into effect, Santa Barbara County has made substantial changes to its regulations and is poised to make more. At its July 9 meeting, the county Board of Supervisors unanimously approved expanding the noticing requirements for when a commercial cannabis operation application is submitted to the…
Santa Maria offers free bus passes to students
Santa Maria kids can now apply for free monthly bus passes through the city, a program that was initially conceptualized and pushed for by a group of high school students who noticed that their peers’ transportation needs weren’t being met. On July 15, the city began accepting applications for its 1,129 free monthly city bus…
Spotlight on: Proposition 68 grant funding
Parks in Santa Maria and Lompoc could receive overdue updates if the cities are successful in securing millions of dollars in grant funding from the state. In June 2018, California voters approved a $4 billion bond referendum that funds, among other projects, parks in low-income neighborhoods. According to state documents, projects are only eligible…
Coastal Commission votes against proposed limits to vehicle riding in Oceano Dunes
Niklas Hugosson rode an ATV for the first time as a child on Thanksgiving Day of 1992, and he was instantly hooked. He and his family were on a vacation at the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, and that first time, he rode for so long that the palms of his hands bled. …
Dunes people vs. dust breathers; episode 968
Here I am, talons to keyboard, at a loss for what to write about the age-old, drop-dead, knockout fight over the Oceano Dunes. That’s probably because everything there is to say has already been said (or shouted) thousands of times over literal generations. The California Coastal Commission heard more of the same—much more than it…
Lompac City Council members’ egos gone wild, lack of decorum cost police chief his job
The budget-busting trio of Councilmen Jim Mosby, Dirk Starbuck, and Victor Vega has a funny way of saving money. You would think that the trio would do everything it could to save the money for the essential things of government, but it just depends on their personal agenda. In January, Police Chief Pat Walsh was…
Oceano suffers environmental injustice because of dunes recreation area
The Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area does not provide a safe, healthy, and sustainable form of recreation but it unleashes an unchecked lust for entertainment and diversion that is destroying Oceano, its beach, and dunes. I have been a resident of Oceano for over 30 years. I have seen neighboring towns become cleaner and…
Political Watch July 18, 2019
• The state is looking for 14 Californians to serve on its 2020 Citizens Redistricting Commission, the group of citizens charged with re-establishing the state’s boundaries of Congressional, state Senate, state Assembly, and state Board of Equalization districts. The redistricting is done every 10 years to reflect new population data and shifting demographics noted in…
