State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing [Outside Geneva, Switzerland: July 4, 2012] The one-and a-half-minute patchwork video seems to be someone’s idea of a highlight reel. Physicist Joe Incandela is […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing On the evening of November 25 I stood in our condo complex driveway and stared like a Cro-Magnon Dimwit at the fire sweeping the […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I am a jug-eared jackanape of 7 years old. My close-cropped air force brat haircut reveals a misshapen head like a lopsided jelly bean. […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing When the invitation arrived we were excited by one of its particulars. The hosts, our dear old friends the Smiteepupps (names have been changed […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Francis Ford Coppola—writer, director, producer, Brando-wrangler—is a raving fan of the short story. In 1997 (for instance) he launched the much-garlanded literary and art […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing It’s said that in all the vast panoply of living things on Earth, only the human animal is conscious of the fact that death […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Oh the memories. Look at this grand old photo. Once upon a time! Me clutching a baseball glove! Under that sweet baseball cap there […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Yeah, it’s a weird scene. A young Santa Barbara longhair in slightly timeworn blazer and freshly ironed slacks is being shown around an L.A. […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing On 9 November, 1989, East Berlin’s longtime Communist party boss Günter Schabowski is giving a press conference and stammers out a note he’s been suddenly […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing When I was about 15 my sister, Jill—a trophy-festooned equestrian—took me horseback riding. I was uneasy with the whole deal because I’ve always been […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Between bites of bagel, Joe Schneider—late of Schneider Autohaus—is patiently explaining why it’s so hard to land a spaceship on the moon. “One of […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing How to describe the indescribable? Lotusland is a horticultural fireworks display, a kaleidoscope with roots. Lotusland’s aesthetic embrace has the playfully mesmerizing palette of […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Spring has arrived. Our unfortunate fealty to the numbing Age of Reason precludes our playful use of the word “Miracle”, even as we dance […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing What is Life? The two competing theories are at odds. Intelligent Design supposes we are the deliberate invention of a Supreme Creative Intelligence outside […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing She doesn’t tiptoe in. She runs into Arjen’s room, or walks briskly, anyway. It’s probably too breathless to write “She bursts into Arjen’s room!” Though the […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I remember very little about winning my Academy Award®. The evening was a blur and I sometimes wonder if it really happened. I vaguely […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing The Universe giveth, and the Universe taketh away (to paraphrase), as has been seen. John Ridland, UCSB Professor Emeritus of English, can say a word […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing At this writing a fire yet rages. Begun as a smoldering spark somewhere in the woods near St. Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula, […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing One sunny afternoon in the deeply-felt 1970s, I broadsided a light pickup truck driven by a school acquaintance named Bud. I was driving home […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing “Sometimes in stars or the swift flight of seabirds I catch a moment of you. That’s why I walk all alone, searching for something […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I take no pride in confessing that when I first heard of England’s King Henry VIII, I thought he was named after the Herman’s […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Imagine the pantheon of classic film as a beautiful, vaulted cathedral. Its gently lit interior is neatly populated with marble statuary representing famous movie […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing When Olga Duncan disappeared from her Garden Street apartment, her newish husband Frank wasn’t terribly concerned at first. We were less prone to anxiousness […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I moved to Santa Barbara in 1986 with a band. There, I said it. That was long ago and far away. In the interim […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing [The management would like to introduce this week’s essay with a clarifying aside. The theme of the piece is “Jeff’s return to the gym […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Some years ago our white Honda station wagon died. Well, not exactly. A mere 72 hours of curbside quiescence and she was expensively tagged […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Yeah, baby. You’ve probably seen me promenading about this American Riviera in my ill-advisedly tight black tee-shirt and ancient Chuck Taylors, strutting down State […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing “Writer’s Conference”. This horror-term is enough to break the spirit. Whisper these two little words to the most intransigent prisoner in the joint and […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing So I finally checked my privilege. What do you think happened? That’s right; they threw it onto the wrong plane and it ended up […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing 6:30p – Brian Wilson, our own acid-washed Beethoven and an older man now, is touring his misbegotten Pet Sounds album for the last time. […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing So I get a message from my pal Eddie. Our high school reunion is coming up in October. Did I get the e-mail announcement? […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Santa Barbara. The American Riviera. Selfie-by-the-Sea. Our natty little village goes by many names and has, over time, worn many guises, from Spanish colonial […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing When Juliane Heyman and her parents and brother walked up into the Pyrenees Mountains one night, the object was not a moonlit picnic in […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing In the turbulent weeks before D-Day—the massive allied coastal invasion that heralded the beginning of the end of WWII—a Royal Air Force Stirling bomber […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing In the very heart of our domed Xanadu-by-the-Sea, there exists a publicly beloved green idyll; a sun-dappled shire of exotic flora laced by twisty […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing The interview was going better than I could have hoped. The 30-something kid had taken a shine to me—a real shine. “Well…” he said, […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Something truly indescribable is happening in downtown Santa Barbara. That was the rumor, anyway. As any local knows, something indescribable erupting in downtown Santa […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing The Patty Duke theme says it best: “Meet Cathy, whose lived most everywhere, from Zanzibar to Berkeley Square. But Patty’s only seen the sights […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Right; 2017. Who do you think you’re kidding? Hey, I’m all for Time’s Inexorable Passage and the ghastly wearing away of my physical being […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Religious conviction is a tough game. Given the strangeness of what we are asked to believe (let alone give our lives to), it’s all […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing (Terrific photo above is ©Fritz Olenberger) About a year and a month ago, I was driving my 13 year-old daughter and her longtime ballerina […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing In 2015, Kerry Witzeman decided to stop in at the doctor to see what the deal was with a nagging little urinary tract thingy […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing By the time we arrive in the late afternoon, honey-colored autumn sunlight is slanting into the Santa Barbara Courthouse’s grand arched breezeway, painting the […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing In the 80s they revived The Twilight Zone for a little while. The new series wasn’t as stridently dread-inducing as Serling’s original, and the […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing The summer of 1967. Hoo boy. They called it the Summer of Love, because even then the Branding geniuses in the National Archives knew […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Dave and I meet one evening at the Famous Fish Warehouse or whatever it’s called, a few blocks up from the beach. It’s one […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing These questions haunt our age: Why do men with bushy Friedrich Nietzsche moustaches torment us by eating eat ice cream cones? By what strange […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I love to fly and it shows. The big screen and its cheery hieroglyph at the front of my section of seats shows the […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I haven’t always been this badass, powerfully attractive finger-snappin’ older gentleman riding the beach town vibe with mad panache. In 1973 I lived […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Day 1 – The Ascent As we head north to Big Sur from Santa Barbara along Historic Highway One, the famously serpentine route winds […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Why does the country seem to become more interestingly spiritual as you move from east to west? Out east you have Plymouth Rock and […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Dear visitors from across the Pond; here comes summer, and your opportunity to visit world famous California during its high season! Yes, everything you’ve […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing The human race can just get over itself now. On the other hand we are the exalted inventors of the Lunar Lander and Franco […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Kinky Friedman is recumbent on a floral couch in Karen Jones’ dimly lit, pleasantly cluttered living room on a Saturday night in Santa Ynez […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I’m an NPR guy, okay? Yeah, I got beat up by the bike rack in 7th grade like most nascent liberals, earned my […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Kimmie Dee; Stand-up comic. Impresario. There’s a lot going on. For one thing, she’s nonstop. One is tempted to call her a dynamo, […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing From sea to shining sea, the republic is taking a cold shower. And whether one partakes of said shower to snap […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing The known universe, for all the cosmological head-scratching it engenders, is essentially a very large, mostly empty void in which rocks of various sizes […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Love is in the air. What’s worse, civil authorities have warned that, thanks to prevailing winds, this free-floating toxic event is headed our […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I turn in my seat to watch as they quietly enter the Arlington’s half-light in whispering twos, threes and fours, peering through the […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing There was a time when your teacher of classical dance and your teacher of classical piano were of a like taxonomy, so to speak. […]
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing When Spock reports a distress call from Starbase 11, the easily distracted USS Enterprise takes another whimsical warp-speed detour from her 5-Year Mission […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing The driver today is Nick. His wrinkled ‘At Your Service’ piece of paper, above the driver’s seat and to the right in an […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing December (sometimes called “The Holidays”) is rife with strange rituals made familiar through repetition. A large pine tree in the living room here, […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Oh, and here comes the holiday season like a runaway Edsel, excuse me. It’s always a little surreal how suddenly it shows up. Another […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Paul Williams. You know him. Hai Karate aftershave, Lancer’s sparkling wine. His name and brand are adrift back there in the soft-focus, Foster Grant […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing At 6am on an otherwise dull Monday morning in 1968, a group of 12 black students strolled without ceremony into UCSB’s Computer Center in […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing >> There is no biological basis for our whole, endless, enhanced consciousness. It is rooted in a non-local space. – Dr. Pim van Lommel: […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Here’s a lighthearted, summery question to get the season’s beach theme going; are we history’s pawns, or its masters? The occasion of my asking […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing On Father’s Day in 1996, my new son Sammy was a 9-month-old blob with a bright orange, vaguely reptilian tuft of hair atop his […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Living in Santa Barbara, one receives a lot of visitors (he began unpromisingly). For years I’ve been a regular habitue of Santa Barbara Airport […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing My mother-in-law is visiting from Holland, an unlikely country spread across an undersea declivity from which the water, over the centuries, has been ingeniously […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Are we blessed creatures, or only a self-impressed residue of the Big Bang? Is life sacred? These questions tend to bring out the worst […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing In the buzzing, vibrant center of the beautiful UCSB campus sits a squat concrete box. This is Kerr Hall. Simultaneously cube-like and angular (not […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I occupy a very particular demographic; balding 50-somethings who don’t know how awful they look in skinny jeans. We are many. It’s nearly an […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Santa Barbara, celebrated the world over as a vacation paradise, planted by the Gods of Commerce ‘twixt mountain and sea, is awash in […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I visited the Temple this past weekend. We needed milk. “Oh, we LOVE Trader Joe’s!” someone hissed with enthusiasm by the unsalted peanut butter. […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing I am reminded of all the strange cowboy television of my youth, of how approximately we recreate the past, and most acutely of my Barbara […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing ‘The Elderly’ seem hesitant to embrace their brand. When you pat them consolingly on the cardigan and yell at them that it’s time for […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Mitchell Kriegman had a big problem. He’d been summoned to the office of Jean Doumanian, newly anointed Executive Producer of Saturday Night Live, deep […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing My mother’s name is Aloha. That’s just the beginning. She’s had an interestingly nomadic life; born into the Army and later married into the […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing It will surprise some to learn that the Saint Barbara after whom our fair town is named is not Streisand, but a reportedly beautiful […]
State Street Scribe by Jeff Wing Three thousand miles away from California’s Santa Ynez Valley, the Manhattan Racquet & Tennis Club’s members comprise the tippity-top of the East Coast’s cork-sniffing […]