Street Smarts: Foley’s hotel purchase means his wine bar leaves Bacara
Let the luxury hotel wine bar wars begin.
Now that financier-winery proprietor-Golden Knights NHL team owner Bill Foley owns the Hotel Californian, he’s moving his The Foley Food & Wine Society from the Ritz-Carlton Bacara in Goleta to his newly purchased digs near Santa Barbara’s waterfront. The club will be located at the hotel’s Djinn bar until a new tasting room opens early next year, according to a news release.
Ritz-Carlton Bacara is taking it in stride. It is firing a slapshot back at Foley, announcing a vintner-in-residence program, showcasing four area winemakers on a weekly rotation, beginning in November. The Ritz-Carlton Club Lounge will be the venue for the meetups and the Bacara Tasting Room is getting a post-Foley upgrade. Game on.
CASA PACIFICA FESTIVAL RETURNS
Casa Pacifica hosted its 28th annual Angels, Wine, Food & Brew Festival on Sept. 26 at the CSU Channel Islands campus near Camarillo. The sold-out festival raised critical funds for Casa Pacifica Centers for Children & Families, which must raise 10% to 12% of its operating budget annually, or about $5 million this year.
Highlights included the Mission Avocado Bar and Conejo Photobooth. Spottings: Harold Edwards, Mike Powers, Kelley Long, Oded Fehr.
WORKING FOR FAMILIES IN SLO
The San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce is teaming up with First 5 of SLO and the county of San Luis Obispo to offer a free family-friendly “Workplace Accelerator” program, which will provide resources and support to all SLO County businesses to foster values that strengthen family-friendly workplace policies. Christina Lefevre Latner, a Cal Poly lecturer with more than 20 years of experience in the public, private and nonprofit sectors, will join the SLO Chamber to lead the effort.
SANTA BARBARA MUSEUM COMBINES ART, MUSIC
Grammy Award-winning musician and composer Ted Nash will lead a group of Santa Barbara City College musicians in a concert of original music on the front terrace of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, on Oct. 9 at 2:30 p.m. The pieces are all inspired by or are musical interpretations of works from the museum’s collection.
NEW WEST BACK ON STAGE
In Thousand Oaks, the New West Symphony, led by artistic and music director Michael Christie, returns to the stage in October. Delights and Dances is a 70-minute program of well-known works and a few surprises. With patrons’ safety in mind, the programs will be presented without intermission, and proof of vaccination and masks will be required. A full season of programs is slated for December.
NEON NIGHT IN SANTA BARBARA
Santa Barbara artists Chris Gocong and Rod Lathim team up for the Oct. 9 launch of Neon Night Art Show and Sale in a new art collaboration. Gocong launched a career in the arts after playing in the NFL. Their first event will take place at Commen Unity in Santa Barbara’s Funk Zone.
NEW NURSERY AT BOTANIC GARDEN
The Santa Barbara Botanic Garden kicks off the fall planting season with a nursery located just inside the Garden’s gate. Nursery manager Matt Straka said the native planting season fare includes standards like buckwheat but also a few exotics like salvia cedrosensis or “Baja blanca.”
IN MEMORIAM
We take a moment to remember Dr. Lois Jovanovic, a relentless researcher into Diabetes and former head of the Sansum Diabetes Research Institute in Santa Barbara, who died on Sept. 18, 2018. Sansum paid tribute to her last month, on the three-year anniversary of her death. At a time when issues related to women’s empowerment are making headlines, it is worth noting that Jovanovic’s work at Cornell, New York Hospital and elsewhere showed that with monitoring and normalization of blood glucose, diabetic women could have healthy babies.
FINAL SCENES…
• BREAK ON THROUGH: The CyberSecurity Breakthrough Awards program has named Valeo Networks as Managed Security Service Provider of the Year in the Cloud Security category. Valeo Networks is the managed services unit of Camarillo-based Saalex Solutions.
• SCORE CHAIRS: Bob Hyde, a retired environmental engineering executive, and Tom Thompson, a retired CFO with public company experience, are the new co-chairs of the SLO County SCORE chapter.
• TAKE A BOW: The Carnegie Hero Fund Commission has recognized Zachary Salce, a Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department deputy, who rescued a 55-year-old-woman from a fire in her apartment in Lompoc back in 2018. Salce, who lived on the second floor, kicked in her door and dragged the unconscious woman to safety.
