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About lesliedinaberg

When she's not busy working as an editor on a variety of magazine and book projects, Leslie Dinaberg writes feature articles, columns and grocery lists.

Noozhawk Talks: Leslie Dinaberg Sits Down With Spencer Barnitz

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Spencer Barnitz, aka Spencer the Gardener, says his music is “shaped by the ocean, the rhythms of the world and pop music from my life.” (Lara Cooper / Noozhawk photo)

Spencer Barnitz, aka Spencer the Gardener, says his music is “shaped by the ocean, the rhythms of the world and pop music from my life.” (Lara Cooper / Noozhawk photo)

Spencer Barnitz‘s unique pipes and idiosyncratic perspective have entertained music fans for most of his life. His new wave band The Tan began when he was barely out of Santa Barbara High, eventually followed by a still-active cover band, The Wedding Band, and for the past 21 years, Spencer the Gardener, a sound the band describes as “California sun-kissed, Latin-tinged, genre-bending, big-band surf mariachi indie pop.”

Leslie Dinaberg: There’s something really unique about your music, whether you’re singing a pop song or in Spanish and even now with your kids’ album, “Organic Gangster.”  What do you think it is that makes something a Spencer song?

Spencer Barnitz: My songs are really shaped by the ocean, the rhythms of the world and pop music from my life. As a kid I listened to the Supremes but I loved Brit pop too and Mexican stuff, Salsa music, so it’s kind of a fusion in a way of a lot of those different things, which has been great and has been bad. It’s kind of a blessing and a curse in a lot of different ways.

LD: Is it different playing kid’s music?

SB: It’s funny having a CD like that. It’s cute and it has a good message. … For me it’s such a different thing because I’ve been doing pop music for so long. It’s still pop music but it’s just a different manifestation.

LD: How did you decide that you wanted to do this?

SB: Well it was kind of interesting because my girlfriend sells worms; she’s the worm girl. Last year they did a short it was in the green shorts festival. … I said you want a song? I’ll write a song for it.

I loved it! I had done the “Gobble Song” a couple of years ago, which became sort of an Internet sensation, every Thanksgiving it gets tons of hits. So there were a couple kid’s songs and I thought you know what, I should just try to keep going because everything I wrote was really fast and fun.

I did it very fast. Like one day I was reading the horoscope and it was talking about a mountain chicken frog. I was like there’s no way there is a mountain chicken frog. I went and looked it up and there it was. It’s in danger of becoming extinct. I just quickly wrote a song about it and loved the song and I love the fact that that’s how I found it. … So it’s been kind of fun and it’s been educational for me in a way.

LD: Talking to kids you get to-or have to be-so much more on the nose than you are when you are talking to adults. You do have to really say things in a different way and it’s not always easy.

SB: Because you have to sort of know what you’re talking about. (Laughs)

LD: I’ve been listening to your music since I was 16 or something and now my son got to hear you sing at his school. I love that.

SB: You know there was somebody there at the spaghetti dinner at the school and the dad had been aware of the Tan since he was 14. So it was kind of like oh wow, I don’t know if I should say thanks or sorry. Now his daughter is listening to it, so that is just an insanely long generational thing, which I like that for myself, it makes me happy. I don’t know if it makes other people happy (Laughs).

LD: Oh absolutely it does.

SB: I think I’m past the point of … sometimes you get to a point where they’re like wow they’re still here. And then you go beyond that point and it’s like wow, they’re still here.

LD: Plus you do such a wide variety of stuff Do you write all the music for Spencer the Gardener?

SB: I do except for we did put out two years ago we put out a record called “Fiesta” and I didn’t write any of that, those are all cover songs. I’ve wanted to do that record since I was a kid. Probably the reason I speak Spanish is because I grew up singing Spanish, which has a lot to do with Santa Barbara. Fiesta was just always a part of things. So I did that record because I wanted to and I’ll probably do another one at some point.

I remember I had a class at Santa Barbara High School, Mr. Hall was my Spanish teacher, and every Friday he would have everybody sing, which was just terrifying in high school.

LD: Why?

SB: I didn’t do that yet. My sister was always a good singer. She’s actually on this record.

LD: I saw that.

SB: And she’s the principal at Ellwood School. So my sister had sung a lot but I wasn’t a singer, but I would surf and I was going to Mexico so in high school on Friday afternoons you could just see everyone go oh no, but it was fun, but it was terrifying. But for these young kids it’s really fun. They’re young, they’re singing, they’re laughing. They don’t have the self-conscious thing that you do when you’re in high school.

LD: I remember your sister from junior high. That’s cool that she sang on your record.

SB: She’s got a great voice. When she got out of high school she left Santa Barbara and didn’t come back for a long time. She went to Berklee School of Music, she sang on the East Coast and so she is a very good singer.

LD: How did you guys get so musical?

SB: I don’t know. My dad died young so I don’t really even know that whole side of the family. But my sister and I, when she came back into town and she was singing she was doing some weird hand movements and I was looking at her like those are mine. They’re not my mom’s or my dad’s, they’re mine, but they are hers too. And she speaks fluent Spanish, she actually speaks a couple of languages and its like wow this is so weird, there are two kids who do these things. She just started to surf. We both do these things that are completely separate from both of our parents. … it’s just kind of some mix, maybe some weird hybrid.

LD: So tell me about how you got started in music?

SB: Well Brad (Nack) went to Europe in 1978 and … he came back and said you know we should start a new wave band. I was 18, and he was 20 … it was like we thought maybe girls would like us and it was something to do besides surfing (Laughs) and all of those same reasons that everyone does that. … I said that sounds fun, let’s go to Mexico I’ll teach you how to play guitar and we’ll write some songs and start a band.

LD: Why Mexico?

SB: Mexico has been an interesting part of my life. For some reason no matter where I go it’s like something ends up having part of Mexico in it. Mexico is because we surf for one, so that’s always a thing. If you live in California and you surf, usually you take some trips to Mexico because it’s close. For me it is a lot more than because like I said, I grew up singing in Spanish and I’ve just always spent a lot of time in Mexico. Perhaps that was one of the reasons too is just because we started the band there. We were gone for three months and then came back and started the Tan.

We were even thinking of doing a new Tan record and going to Mexico to do it.

LD: After seeing all of those people who showed up at your reunion show last summer, I think you’d have a market.

SB: There are a lot of justifications and rationalizations for doing things like going to Mexico. Yeah let’s go for six months. We need to do this. This is what we need to do (Laughs). This is really going to be a good thing for us. And it is always a good thing for me. I mean it’s been it’s been rejuvenation, escape, it’s been all kinds of things I suppose.

… We went to Mexico on a surf trip with the idea of learning to play guitars and writing songs and that’s exactly what we did and came back and started the Tan. And for a while it was fun but it was like we were definitely counter culture at that time and then somehow or other we got into the mainstream and I somehow ended up being in music for the rest of my life (Laughs).

LD: Did you ever think when you and Brad were wandering off to Mexico to learn to play guitar that this would become your life’s work?

SB: Not in the same way that I do now. There’s the beauty of youth which is you just think everything you do is going to be great. So yeah, sure, we thought we would be retired by 26 and have all the money in the world (Laughs). It was kind of a brutally rude awakening that that wasn’t going to happen. But it’s been a pretty fun ride. A good one. Music has given me a lot. It’s taken me all over the world. I mean it’s probably not for everybody because it is not real stable; there are highs and lows. It’s left me in far corners of the world too.

LD: To sing your way home?

SB: Yeah. But it’s gotten me there.

LD: Have you always stayed pretty much rooted in Santa Barbara?

SB: Yeah. I lived in LA for a little while. We moved to London with the Tan for a couple years but more and more it doesn’t matter where you are now because everything is so easy to get somewhere else. Santa Barbara is, I mean this is a great place. It is it has so much out of the world of what you want, at least what I want. It’s beautiful, it’s warm, and it’s convenient. It’s expensive but a lot of places are expensive.

LD: I read that you had a pretty serious car accident years ago?

SB: 1991. I broke all of the bones in my face. I still have plates in my face. The worst thing about that was that was right after we put out two CDs, we were on fire, and everyone was just like waiting for what the next thing with us was going to be. We had a management company and it just seemed like there was no stopping us, except for maybe a head-on, death-defying car accident, which put us out of commission for a year.

And the musical landscape changed. Our management company and us severed ties and then we just blindly kept going because I was stubborn. So yeah, that changed, that reshaped probably a lot of my future.

LD: It’s interesting though to look back on things like that because you’re making very different music now than you did back then.

SB: The stuff I do is always slightly quirky so I mean in that way if you listen to the first Spencer the Gardener CD and the one that I’m about to do, it’s still similar. Or if you listen to the first one and the kids’ one, it’s still crazy, wacky funny.

LD: Do you ever feel a kind of push and pull between art and commerce?

SB: (Laughs) Yes I do. I wish that my stuff sold like crazy!

You know I think it’s funny now because everything is so much easier. Everybody can do things but there are so many more people doing it and everything is pretty good you know, and I bind myself into that. It’s not like it’s world changingly earth shatteringly fantastic. There are a lot of fairly good bands out there, so it’s hard to kind of like sneak through and end up where you are basically have broken though where your art and commerce intersect in a beautiful way.

LD: What else do you do when you’re not working?

SB: I like to surf, play basketball, salsa, those are probably tops, jump high, run fast.

LD: If you could pick three adjectives to describe yourself, what would they be?

SB: Wow this is a really interesting question because now you’ll dealing with what do you want them to be or what are they. This is one I’m going to actually think about for a while … (Spencer sends an email to Leslie several days later) I have been perplexed by adjectives all week, so I guess self-absorbed would have to be one of them … calm and sarcastic, then, depending on the day, they change directions lazy, driven, witty, dull, thrill seeking, couch laden, etc. I doubt if you meant for me to give it this much thought…

I was thinking adventurous but no that’s not really true anymore. That was true at one time. I’ve changed over the years in different ways. That would have been something that I would have loved and would have said and would have believed and probably not so much anymore.

LD: Well there are all kinds of adventure. You could certainly argue that pursuing a life as a musician is an adventurous path.

SB: Yeah, either that or just kind of ridiculous. If you mix whimsical, adventurous and difficult together you might get ridiculous. … It’s funny because we used to have a song in the Tan called “young, strong and free.”

LD: I like that.

SB: Which would have been really the way we described ourselves. I would still say fun. Because that’s a word I overuse. Stubborn, determined and what does Einstein say when you keep doing the same thing and expecting different results.

LD: That’s the definition of insanity (Laughs).

SB: Yeah, unfortunately that seems to fit with me a little bit too.

Vital Stats: Spencer Barnitz

Born: September 14 in Santa Barbara, CA

Family: Father deceased, mother Mercedes, sister Liz

Civic Involvement: “I’ve done just a whole mess of benefits over the years for a lot of different organizations. I’m not actively involved with anybody right now.”

Best Book You’ve Read Recently: God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre by Richard Grant; Shadow of the Wind. 

Originally published in Noozhawk on May 11, 2010.

Drive-in Delights

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Courtesy Santa Barbara Drive-In and Public Market

Courtesy Santa Barbara Drive-In and Public Market

The Santa Barbara Drive-In Theater reopens tonight after a 19-year intermission and I can’t remember when I’ve been so excited.

I can, however, remember a lot of great times at the Drive-In.

We moved to Santa Barbara when I was in kindergarten and some of my earliest memories are of my sister Pam and I, bundled up in our footie pajamas, in the back of our parents’ old, Aqua Velva blue Ford Pinto. We’d get to the Drive-In early so we could play on the playground slides, seesaws and swings. My favorite ride was always the spinning Merry-Go-Round-an important rite of childhood, which today’s insurance carriers, and probably a few broken limbs and blows to the head, have all but exterminated. The only thing better than the world of indescribable dizziness the Big Spinner provided was the sugar buzz we got from the assortment of Pop Rocks, Razzles, Bottlecaps, Atomic Fireballs, Grapeheads and Twizzlers our parents let us use to wash down the popcorn.

After all that candy we inhaled, they probably shouldn’t have been surprised that I managed to stay awake well beyond the family-friendly first features like “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks,” into the racier, late night fare. Despite my mom’s command that I, “Go to sleep. It’s way past your bedtime,” I still remember seeing large, incredibly inappropriate chunks of “Carnal Knowledge,” “Dirty Harry” and “Deliverance” at a very tender age.

As I edged into my teen years the Drive-In was still a favorite place to hang out, but by then it had nothing to do with what movies were playing. It was all about seeing friends, being seen, and knowing who was steaming up their car windows in the back row and who was breaking up behind the snack bar. It was all about how many friends you could hide under the cargo hold in the way back part of mom’s station wagon, how many people you could pack in the trunk, or-if you could resist the urge to giggle, and have you ever seen a pack of teenagers who can actually do this-how many pals you could fit under a blanket in the back seat.

Sneaking people in was part of my teenage fun of the Drive-In. For some inexplicable reason, I even remember doing this on the nights when they were charging a flat fee per carload just to keep up with the tradition.

Traditions die hard in this town and the Drive-In theater has been sorely missed.

It’s actually thanks in large part to the efforts of a far more motivated teenager than I ever was, 17-year-old San Marcos High senior Dominique O’Neill, that the next generation of moviegoers will get to go to the Santa Barbara Drive-In.

Last month Dominique organized a fundraiser at the Drive-In to benefit Direct Relief International. It was so successful and so many people wanted to return and share the Drive-In movie experience with their friends that she started a Facebook page to show the current owners, West Wind Drive-Ins, how much public support there was. In just over a week approximately 6,500 people joined the Facebook group (including yours truly) to pledge their support.

“I expected people to want the Drive-In to reopen, but I was astonished by how many people joined so fast,” said Dominique, who wanted to recognize the people who helped her with the Direct Relief fundraiser and spurring interest in reopening the Drive-In. “None of it would have been possible without the help of West Winds Drive-Ins and Public Markets, especially Ken Krummes, Mitch Moore of M&M Painting, Bob Shoppe of Milpas Rental, Kirk Morely of Morely Construction, Clare Moore, Emily Knuutinen, Shelby Zylstra, Maren Walker, Danielle Gruenberg, Whitney Caldwell, and most importantly my mother, Mary O’Neill.”

Awww! What a sweet Mother’s Day present for Dominique’s mom, and a great thing for all of us to celebrate this weekend. I can’t wait!

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The first movie to open at the Santa Barbara Drive-In (907 South Kellogg Ave. in Goleta) is “Iron Man 2,” which runs from May 7 through May 13 and shows at 8:00 p.m. and 10:25 p.m. nightly. After that all screenings will be double features. Tickets are $6.75 and children 5-11 are only $1, with special discounts on Tuesday nights. Visit www.westwinddi.com to sign up for weekly emails with the upcoming movie schedule.

Bring on the popcorn! Leslie would never be so rude as to check her email during a movie, but when she’s not at the Drive-In she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com.Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on May 7, 2010.

Kindergarten Screening

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photostock freedigitalphotos.net

Playing “tour guide” for the parents of incoming kindergarteners this morning, I couldn’t help feeling a little nostalgic. It wasn’t that long ago that I was holding a tiny, nervous hand in my bigger and more nervous one, as we made our way to the first in a long series of school tests. Sure, they call it a “kindergarten screening” but make no mistake-the kindergarten screening is your child’s first official test as he enters the world of elementary school.

What? He’s taking a test already? He hasn’t even started yet. Aren’t you supposed to teach him something first? Nope.

While dad is checking out the other incoming kindergarteners, trying to spot the redshirts who are already nine years old and have read the entire Harry Potter series-in Mandarin-and mom is looking around for other moms to be her new best friends, the teachers are evaluating your little angel’s motor ability, conceptual knowledge and language skills, not to mention his vision and hearing.

Talk about nerve wracking.

When Koss was pre-K they had the parents go into the evaluation with the children, but they’ve since wised up and now have the children go in on their own. Having a bunch of anxious parents hovering over them doesn’t exactly inspire natural behavior in most kids.

Hence the introduction of the PTA-provided tour of the school to help distract the nervous parents while their children are (hopefully, please, help me out here kid and I’ll give you a cookie) making wonderful first impressions on their new teachers.

Kindergarten does make a big impression, that’s for sure. It’s been 40 years and I can still remember my own first day of school like it was yesterday. It’s been almost seven years and I can still remember Koss’s first day of kindergarten like it was yesterday. I can’t remember yesterday, but that’s a whole different story.

The parents on my tour asked some great questions about parking and the playground, the cafeteria, cubbies and the computer lab. They asked about volunteering, donations, daycare and enrichment classes, but I neglected to share with them some of the things I remember about Koss’s kindergarten year.

He learned about the “bossy E,” who was simply silent when I went to school. He learned about raising his hand to get attention, and about taking turns and waiting patiently, although he still sometimes has issues with that one. He learned about spiders and wolves and coins and backpacks. He also learned about homework and projects and dioramas and which parent is better with counting and which parent is better with a glue gun. If you ask Koss, he’ll say the best thing that happened in kindergarten was he learned to love to read, surely a marvelous thing for any child, but especially for one without siblings.

If you ask me, the most important thing of all that Koss learned in kindergarten was to love going to school. He adored his teacher. I’ll never forget the dejected look on his face when I explained to him that he would have a different teacher for first grade. Thankfully he’s loved first grade, second grade on up through this year’s fifth grade with almost the same kind of relish. But kindergarten is special. Whether it was their first child to enter kindergarten or their last, I’m pretty sure that all of the parents were marveling that somehow their babies had reached that stage.

I know I’ll be feeling that way again before I know it. Junior High is right around the corner.

When Leslie’s not marveling at how quickly time flies, she’s usually at her keyboard wishing her fingers flew a little more quickly. Email her at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on April 20, 2010.

Forging Friendships

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A certain amount of loose behavior is required to forge a close friendship. You’ve got to let go of your inhibitions and take a risk. Plus, the window of opportunity for personal revelation is small-if you do it too quickly you’re a promiscuous slut who has exposed too much too soon-but if you wait till the 12th date in the relationship, then your friends are likely to feel bamboozled, like they don’t really know you at all.

As easily as women bond on the surface-most of us have no problem chatting up ladies in Pilates class, the carpool lane or the supermarket line-our friendship dance is as complicated and tricky as any Paso Doble you’ll see on “Dancing with the Stars.” As a parent I’ve found that it’s not at all unusual to spend hours and hours with people who have kids that are the same age as yours, are in the same activities or at the same schools, and realize at some point that you have nothing else in common. Sometimes I wonder if this isn’t why I rarely forge deeper connections with people I know socially-because if I know for a fact where they stand on religion, politics, and country western music, then I know I won’t respect them in the morning.

Unfortunately, between this admittedly snobbish attitude I have toward people who disagree with me, and the sheer busyness of my life and the lives of my dearest and closest friends, this means that my truly substantive conversations are few and far between. As a journalist I find that I frequently have more in depth talks with the people I’m interviewing than I do with my own family members-a fact which I find both deeply disturbing and also somewhat titillating. There’s something almost magical about getting to know someone based on a shared confidence, even if the connection is short-lived.

But there’s nothing better than a long, close friendship forged over time and a shared history.

My best friend lives in Texas now, and when we do manage to get together (unfortunately rarely), the primary thing we do is talk. We don’t need to do anything else. Unlike our days as college roommates, where we spent hours and hours just hanging out and talking about anything and everything, now we both realize what a luxury it is to have deep discussions once you get to be an adult. It’s strange that as you get older you have so much more perspective and experience to offer in conversations, yet so much less time to actually have them.

I definitely treasure the opportunity to have substantive heart-to-hearts whenever I can, yet rarely do I make the first move. I’ve always believed that intimacy isn’t something you can force, but I had an interesting experience last week that made me think about it in a different way. Sitting at a luncheon with 12 other women, only three of whom I actually knew at all, instead of leaving the occasion to whither into typical chit-chat, our hostess asked us to pick conversational topics out of a bowl.

Some of the questions were silly (What’s the item in your house that you are most embarrassed to own?) and some of them were enormous (What is the most passionate, driving force in your life?), but all of them were most definitely excellent conversational fodder. At the end of the day I left feeling sated in a way I don’t think I’ve ever felt before at a party where I didn’t make out the guest list myself. I’m hoping that experience will inspire me to be a little more promiscuous with my chatter, and perhaps take a few more conversational risks.

The next time I see you let’s talk-for real.

Share your thoughts about friendship and conversation with Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on April 23, 2010.

Laundry Lessons

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My friend Erin turns 40 today. She doesn’t want any presents; she just wants me to tell her the meaning of life.

That’s all. The meaning of life. Just a simple, little gift. I don’t think she’ll accept “no,” “42,” or even “swordfish” as an answer.

Doesn’t she know that I don’t really know what the meaning of life is? I’m not THAT much older than she is. Though I do know from personal experience that you can’t find the meaning of life in any store. Not even the shoe department at Nordstrom.

It’s not in a glass of wine or a tree or a yoga pose. And contrary to what some people say, I never learned about the meaning of life in kindergarten.

But I do know one thing I can share with her: You can learn a lot about life by doing laundry.

On the surface it may seem like a never-ending, redundant chore-whites, brights, darks, lights, towels, sheets, rinse and repeat. Again, five, six, seven, eight, whites, brights, darks, lights, towels, sheets, rinse and repeat. You can never catch up with the laundry. The moment that you match that last clean pair of socks, another soiled and sweaty duo shows up in the basket to take their place.

You’re never done. There’s always another day and another pair of dirty socks.

Of course anyone who does a lot of laundry knows that there’s really no such thing as being able to make all the socks match up in perfect pairs. Sure they start out that way when they’re new and fresh from the factory. Those socks are unscarred and optimistic because they’re too young and naïve to know any better. They walk down the aisles of Target in perfect harmony, believing that plastic staples and a shared manufacturer will bind them blissfully together forever.

Little do they know that once they hit that laundry basket life is full of surprises. The lucky pairs will stay in the same cycles, dancing around separately by day—while one rendezvous with a favorite t-shirt, the other attaches itself to a sweet smelling sheet—only to reunite in a cozy drawer for the night.

It doesn’t matter how many clothes you have or how often you wash them, every load of laundry is familiar, but if you look carefully enough you’ll always find surprises. Some weeks are full of grays and some are full of color. Some clothes, like some people, thrive in hot water, while others prefer it to be chilly. And try though you may to keep your dainty delicates away from the dryer, sometimes they attach themselves to a muddy pair of khakis or a stinky sweatshirt with an old college logo and they’re never quite the same after that.

An errant burr might worm its way into your sole leaving a scar on your heel that only you can see but you feel it every time you take a step. Buttons fall off and disappear into the ether. An errant purple crayon makes its way out of a classroom to permanently mark its territory on your favorite pink tank top. Things don’t always come out the way you think they will in the wash. That’s why they invented tie-dye.

The rinse cycle is good for cleaning off the grime, but sometimes you have to repeat—rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And there are some things that never come completely clean no matter how many soaks you give them and some that are always a little rumpled some matter how carefully you iron them.

Another thing you’ll come to realize after doing lots and lots of laundry is that not everything grooves to the same timetable. Those thick, thirsty Egyptian cotton towels turn out to be high maintenance, but worth the extra minutes in the dryer, while that Irish linen blouse demands more TLC than you have the patience for. So what if it was $59.99 (on sale!). Do enough laundry and you’ll learn that some things are just not worth the aggravation.

Sometimes the laundry can enrich you in more than just wisdom. I once made $2.87 in change and immediately went and bought myself a Slurpee. It was the coldest, sweetest, brain-freezing Slurpee in that summer full of Slurpees in a life full of Slurpees. I closed my eyes and wanted to savor every slurp of that special Slurpee. I opened my eyes and saw that I spilled some on my shirt.

And once again it’s back to the laundry. You toss and you tumble and try to sort through things and you clean them and they get messed up and you clean them again and again.

Whites, brights, darks, lights, towels, sheets, rinse and repeat. You’re never done. There’s always another day and another pair of dirty socks.

And another chance to clean them.

Share your laundry lessons with Leslie at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on April 16, 2010.

 

Ho Ho Holiday

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‘Tis the Season in Santa Barbara

By Leslie Dinaberg

Say bah, humbug to the snow. Our warm-weather winters offer plenty of opportunities to fill your calendar with holiday cheer. Whether you’re looking for glittering lights, glitzy trees and glow-in-the-dark Santa Clauses, or more refined merry making, here are some of our favorite ways to celebrate the season, Santa Barbara style.

Historic Casa del Herrero’s Holiday-Themed Tour

Step back in time to the 1930s and enjoy the ambiance of Casa del Herrero (House of the Blacksmith), one of the finest examples of Spanish Colonial Revival Architecture. Reservations are a must for the special holiday-themed tours featuring classically elegant holiday decorations and special refreshments, alongside this historic landmark Andalusian-style country house and its lavish grounds and gardens.

Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, December 9,11,12,16,18 and 19th at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Tickets are $20. Children 10 and over are welcome. For reservations call (805) 565-5653 or email casatour@silcom.com. 1387 East Valley Road, Montecito. www.casadelherrero.com.

Holidays at the Historic Stow House Ranch

The Stow House, dating back to 1873, will be dressed in a full festive array of finery for its annual holiday open house, featuring oodles of decorations both inside and out. Photo opportunities abound with Santa and his rein-goats offering a warm lap to visitors old and young; tours of the beautifully decorated house, where an old-fashioned toy train circles the base of the living room Christmas tree; crafts, including cookie-baking and decorating for the kids and live music.

December 12 and 13. Free admission. Call (805) 681-7216 or email dacia@goletahistory.org for more information. 304 N. Los Carneros Road, Goleta. www.stowhouse.com.

10th Annual Trolley of Lights Tour

Enjoy an incredible show of holiday light artistry when you take this 90-minute trip through town on the Trolley of Lights. Both the young and young-at-heart are sure to enjoy this dazzling display of decorations, as well as the hot apple cider and holiday treats. This tour is a local holiday favorite that always sells out, so make your reservations early.

From mid-December and throughout the month meets at 6:30 p.m. nightly at Stearns Wharf Dolphin Foundation, intersection of State Street and Cabrillo Boulevard. For more information call (805) 965-0353 or visit sbtrolley.com.

Originally published in the winter 2009/10 issue of Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine. See the pdf version here.

 

Bag Lady

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It’s taken me a while to get to this point. I’ve struggled and the results haven’t always been pretty, but I can now admit, loudly and proudly, that I’m a bag lady. The weight of my big fat carbon footprint has been keeping me up at night for years-not to mention all those agonizing times I’ve had to resolve the eternal debate between paper and plastic-but this year on Earth Day I’ll have a little more spring in my step because I’m finally, consistently doing one environmentally-friendly thing right.

I’m a bag lady.

I’ve got a lightweight, foldable, little chartreuse green number tucked away in my purse, ready to pull out at the pharmacy or the video store or library. And my car’s trunk is loaded with a vast assortment of canvas bags to be used for grocery shopping, picnics and all of the random sports equipment that seems to attach itself to my son.

Inside the house we’ve got tradeshow swag bags advertising products no one’s ever heard of, reusable bags with dividers to hold wine, insulated bags to keep beer and sodas cold, and a scary number of canvas bags with the names of my employers who have long since gone out of business.

Note to the Daily Sound: do not give me a bag with your name on it.

It took a while for me to make the bag lady transition. I started accumulating reusable grocery bags a few years ago, keeping them in my trunk so that they’d be ready whenever I went shopping. I can’t tell you how many times I left Ben and Jerry melting in the cart while I ran outside to get my canvas bags. Despite the fact that we should all be equally invested in preserving the environment, I’m sorry to say the people behind me in line didn’t really take a global view of that particular situation.

Rather than further alienating Mother Earth by risking an altercation, I decided to start purchasing a canvas bag every time I forgot to bring my own into the grocery store. Kind of like my own personal, environmental tax. This is what finally made me make the change for good-it had to hit me in the wallet before I got in the habit of actually taking the bags out of the car before I walked in the store-my own personal tax.

Now I understand that some people think “tax” is a dirty word, so if you’re one of those people you can substitute “benevolent donation to the environment” for “tax.” Our local city council recently bagged on an effort to put a bag tax on the ballot, after some members of the public were fit to be tied over the $23,000 they were planning to spend to survey the issue (though I hear they’re going to “study it” again this summer). Personally I think the council would have had more success with a “benevolent donation to the environment” campaign than a bag tax, but I’ve got an even simpler suggestion: stores should just stop stocking disposable bags. Use up what you’ve got and don’t order more.

This seems to work just fine in France, where they’ve got some of the chicest bag ladies around.

Don’t have a bag? Sorry, you’ll have to purchase one. That’ll cost you a dollar. Eventually your purse and your trunk and your garage will be so full of bags that you’ll have to start bringing them with you when you shop. Talk about an easy way to change people’s habits. San Francisco sacked plastic bags a few years ago after a study found that each bag represents a 17-cent local expense for cleanup, disposal, and lost recycling revenue. This January, Washington, D.C. (where “tax” apparently isn’t a dirty word) started charging a nickel for each disposable paper and plastic bag and their use went down 86 percent in a month. Imagine what a buck a bag would do?

We’d have some pretty chic bag ladies running around Santa Barbara in no time flat.

When Leslie’s not carting her canvas bags around town, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on April 9, 2010.

Note to my Younger Self

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You know all that gibberish older people always spout about wishing they had smelled the roses, stayed out of the sun and flossed more when they were younger? Forget that. If my older self could fly back in time and give one worthwhile piece of advice to my younger self it would be this: Have your picture taken in a bikini every chance you get. In fact, take naked pictures if you can rustle up the nerve. Just don’t put them on the Internet or on a cell phone. Seriously, use some common sense.

I’ll say it again – take pictures in a bikini. Wear a bikini to work if you can. Spend as much time as possible in a bikini. You won’t regret it.

When I think of how many times I threw a towel over my perfectly tanned and toned tummy, or how many times I tried to cover up my non-veined and not-the-least-bit-thundering thighs, I want to slap that young girl upside her head and scream, “Flaunt it while you can, you look great.” All of that toxic self-consciousness was so stupid.

I’d tell her to enjoy those looks – in fact I’d tell her to revel in them – because they won’t last forever. You might not know it now but one day you’re pretty hot-whether you realize it or not-and the next day you wake up and you’re just plain pretty-as long as you’re wearing makeup-and before you know it you’re a mature woman and the only men who flirt with you are homeless and hoping you’ll spring for a meal.

The painful evolution from Miss to Ma’am will strike so quickly you might mistake it for a hot flash. You’ll be looking in the mirror looking for yourself instead of at yourself. That girl is gone, leaving a reflection you barely recognize. On a good day she’s a cross between some distant relative and Herman Munster. Hunt for that has-been-hottie all you like, she’s gone. You’ll find yourself hunting for your lost looks the same way you must constantly hunt for your lost keys or that lost Post-It note with the name of that great dermatologist that whatshername told you about. Sure you can find traces of that young girl at the gym or the salon, but they’re fleeting traces.

Enjoy your looks while you’ve got them. Someday you’ll look back on the reflection of your fading, younger self and wonder how you could possibly have ever had a moment of anxiety about your looks. Silly girl. What were you thinking? Someday you’ll squint in the mirror at your rapidly aging self and wonder why you never paid attention when all those old people told you what a cruel trickster time was.

The truth is that inside every older person is a younger person wondering what the hell happened. Remember that.

When a saleslady tells you how flattering your driver’s license picture is, you’ll want to slug her-until you look in the mirror and realize that while your eyes are closed and your hair is cattywampus, the photo was taken ten years ago and look how nice your skin looks. You had no age spots, no crow’s feet, and no gray hair. Talk about lowering the bar.

It’s humbling to know that-if I’m lucky to live long enough-one day I’ll look back on today’s picture and think how marvelous -looking I was, how little gray I had and how great my skin looked. I read a great quote from Suzanne Braun Levine the other day: “Imagine how many good laughs we would miss if our bodies weren’t giving us so much hilarious material.” She’s right of course, but I would still tell my younger self to laugh while she was wearing a bikini.

When Leslie’s not looking for her car keys or her old self in the mirror, she can be reached at Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on April 2, 2010.

Taking a Gander at Gender Selection

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Sometimes I look at the dirty, rowdy, brilliant, clueless, sweet, sensitive, unpredictable bundle of otherness that is my son and marvel-he truly is everything I never knew I always wanted.

It’s not that I didn’t always want to be a mom. I did, for as long as I can remember. When I played dolls, or put on little shows with my friends, I always wanted to be the mommy. One of my earliest memories is rocking “my baby” doll alongside my mom rocking my baby sister.

But when I pictured me rocking my baby someday, I always pictured a girl. Lucky for me I’ve got nieces to turn to whenever the tutu envy starts to overtake me. Being the mom of a boy has been-like most of the best things in life-one of those things I never realized how much I wanted or needed until I got it.

Baby gender selection has been in the news a lot recently. Australian fertility doctors have been rallying to try to get the government to rescind its ban on sex selection technology, which is currently legal in the U.S., where dozens of Aussies travel each year and spend thousands of dollars to choose the sex of their children. G’Day, mate.

Meanwhile, a University of Missouri study was released which found that the food that women eat during the very early stages of pregnancy can influence the sex (and health) of their unborn babies. Apparently bacon and big breakfasts are for boys while fasting favors girls-I’m sure a feminist theorist will have a field day with that one at some point.

Then MSNBC did a poll about the phenomenon of “gender disappointment,” asking whether people were disappointed when they discovered their baby’s gender. About a third of the people admitted that they were, although more than two-thirds of that group said they got over it quickly. I guess that means that one-third didn’t get over it. Time to buy little Bob a new tutu.

The random convergence of these three stories about baby gender selection-and happened to land in my inbox on the same day-inspired me to ask my friends: “If you could have chosen the sex of your child would you?”

Simply posing the question inspired vehement objections from many people, like my friend M, who said, “No way! We THOUGHT we wanted a boy, and ended up with our beautiful daughter.”

“All three of mine (two boys and one girl) are miracle babies,” said L. “I’m still amazed that they are here when by all reasoning I should be childless. I’m just grateful they are here and proud of each of them.”

“After my son was born, I was hoping for another boy and I was terrified to find out my next two were girls. I did not think I would know what to do if I ended up with a ‘girlie’ girl,” said P. “Now I am so glad to have a ‘boyish’ boy and two ‘girlie’ girls to teach me so much about life. I am so grateful not to have been able to choose-plus, three active boys would surely kill me!”

D was also glad she didn’t have to choose. “That would have made me insane for sure. I had a difficult time enough choosing a stroller, bouncer and colors for the nursery.”

Interestingly enough not only did most of my friends not want to choose the sex of their baby, a lot of them said they didn’t even want to know if it was a boy or a girl until the child was born.

“There are not many things in this world that are a true surprise. Why waste this one,” said B. “I loved hearing ‘it’s a girl’ (twice) and ‘it’s a boy’ (the third time).”

“I didn’t even peek to see what I was having before I had them,” said R. “I thought I wanted a girl and then a boy, but I’m thrilled to have my two girls. Sometimes it’s best to see what nature gives you,”

“Not only would I not choose,” said A, “but I still believe that “finding out” what you’re having takes something away from it all.” “I didn’t even find out what I was having while I was pregnant!” said S. “It’s the not knowing what you’re getting, what you’re in for that makes raising children the adventure it is-daily-no matter if they are a boy or a girl.”

For the record, I found out in advance that my son was a boy because I had to have an amniocentesis, and I figured if the doctor knew about the sex of my baby then so should I. But I do agree with S about the adventure of not knowing what you’re getting when you have a child. To this day one of the most fascinating things about being a parent is the way that you can be so close to this little person-they literally lived in your body at one point if you’re a birth mom-and yet they are separate people with ideas, preferences, vocabularies and really dirty fingernails that are all their own.

So if you could choose the sex of your child, would you? Tell Leslie@LeslieDinaberg.com. For more columns visit www.LeslieDinaberg.com. Originally published in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound on March 26, 2010.

City Spring Activities: Mother’s Day Treats

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Mother's Day Treats, originally published in the spring 2010 issue of Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine.

Mother’s Day Treats, originally published in the spring 2010 issue of Santa Barbara Seasons Magazine.

It can be challenging to come up with a sensational way to celebrate the woman who birthed you, clothed you, fed you, nagged you and dragged you to get you on the path to where you are today—all in the name of motherly love, of course.

This Mother’s Day is your turn to put her on a pedestal for a change. Here are some of our favorite mom-worthy ways to honor yours.

Whisk your mother off to the charming secret garden of Enchante Cottage Spa in Solvang. This sweet white cottage was converted into a mini-day spa where guests are greeted with tea and homemade scones before being pampered with pedicures, deep tissue or hot stone massages and other princess-like treats. Owner Deborah Paxton also serves a delicious lunch with advance reservations.

Why send flowers when you can treat mom to a “First Bloom” tour of Rose Story Farm in Carpinteria? Owners Danielle and Bill Hahn have 18,000 stunning rose plants in 150 different varieties. Don’t miss the White Tranquility Garden with more than 1,000 white roses grown together with white companion plants. Call in advance to make reservations for tours, which take place every Wednesday and Saturday.

The roses are also in bloom at the A.C. Postel Memorial Rose Garden. Just across the street from Mission Santa Barbara, this is a great spot to toss a frisbee, have a picnic or just relax with mom on her special day.

Treat your mom like the Queen Mum with high tea at the ocean-view Bella Vista at Four Seasons Biltmore Resort. Traditional British treats like finger sandwiches, miniature pastries, teacakes and scones are served with an assortment of teas or a “spot of sherry.”

Andersen’s Danish Bakery & Restaurant brings a touch of Copenhagen to the traditional English tea service. Marzipan is a specialty and we recommend the Sarah Bernhardt, a marzipan cookie dipped in dark Ghirardelli chocolate.

Enchante Cottage Spa, 385 Alisal Rd., Solvang, 805/693-1231, http://www.enchantecottagespa.com

Rose Story Farm, 5950 Casitas Pass Rd., Carpinteria, 805/566-4885,
www.rosestoryfarm.com

A.C. Postel Memorial Rose Garden, Los Olivos and Laguna streets, Santa Barbara, 805/564-5418

Four Seasons Biltmore Resort, 1260 Channel Dr., Montecito, 805/565-8237,
www.fourseasons.com/santabarbara

Andersen’s, 1106 State St., Santa Barbara,
805/962-5085, www.andersenssantabarbara.com

Santa Barbara Seasons Spring 2010 cover Originally published in the spring 2010 issue of Santa Barbara Seasons. To read the story as it appeared in print, click here: Sea_SP10_074