Cover Story

With the swoosh of a wand, the Sun fairy godmothers would like to help poof nonprofit wishes into reality this holiday season. And unlike Cinderella, the wishes granted won’t disappear at midnight and won’t come in the form of a pumpkin carriage and some glass slippers—unless for some reason that’s on this holiday season’s wish […]

Some of us buy the self-deception that we do better under pressure, and thus come out guns blazing at the very last minute to complete a given task. Nowhere is it more apparent how hazardous this outlook is than in the act of gift giving. A gift tells the receiver much about the amount of […]

The morning of Sept. 2, 2014, started out like any typical harvest day. Bins of newly picked pinot noir grapes had just arrived on the crush pad at Arcadian Winery’s facility east of Lompoc, where Chris Bratcher makes Bratcher Wines. This was his seventh wine harvest in Santa Barbara County, so the 48-year-old has experience […]

Consider the following scenario: A man walks into a 7-eleven store with the intent to steal and walks out with a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, and a bar of soap that he didn’t pay for. He gets arrested and charged with second-degree burglary. It was what’s known as a “wobbler” crime; it […]

A wise animated crab once said: “The human world, it’s a mess. Life under the sea is better than anything they’ve got up there.” He was biased, of course, but nonetheless, there are some land-roaming humans who might agree. In the waters off the Central Coast, 13 different species of whales and dolphins come to […]

A coastal breeze made its mid-morning rounds on Nov. 2, and Dave Baker breathed in the aroma of fresh, wet dirt. Wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, cargo shorts, and work boots, Baker stood on top of a 12-foot mound inside the nearly completed River Bend Bike Park in Lompoc. From the tallest point in the […]

A skull is always smiling. While people all over the world recognize the skull as a sign of death (when else do you see one?), not everyone shrinks away from the sight. A celebration known as Dia de los Muertos—the Day of the Dead—actually looks to the human skeleton as a symbol of the people […]

There’s one section of the Santa Maria Animal Center dedicated to sick dogs. While animals with contagious diseases are often isolated, this section of the facility has a few indications that the virus being contained is a bit more serious than most. One telltale sign? A tub of bleach and water, with which visitors must […]

Guadalupe City Hall’s expansive walkways echo with footsteps that reverberate off bare walls with high ceilings as you make your way from one end to the other. The historic building’s halls are wide, tiled, and largely empty. The u-shaped former-grammar-school campus contains only the basics: city administrative offices in the middle, a police department on […]

He was 6 years old, and he stood up on his desk with a pair of scissors, threatening to stab his classmates and teachers. Then, suddenly, he was on the ground, with two teachers restraining him. Corina Gomez, witnessed the scene as it unfolded. “It looked barbaric to me. I know they weren’t doing it […]

Editor’s note: The people in this story have had their last names omitted due to the sensitive nature of the information they disclosed. Defeat seemed inevitable. The Pathway’s sober softball team is made up of local men who are in recovery from alcohol and drug addictions. It’s named after the sober-living home they stay in, […]