The first time I saw Tom Curren surf was at Hammond’s Reef in Santa Barbara, right around 1980. I was with my brother, Steven, we’d arrived in the morning with...

In normal times, September would be the month of the Monterey Jazz Festival. But like so many of the events we look forward to in summer, it has been cancelled...

Henry Diltz was the photographer; Gary Burden was the art director. Their collaboration brought us some of the greatest album covers of all time. Henry is now 81 and lives...

          “Dance is what you see, what you smell. It’s what you hear. It’s how you bring your consciousness and awareness to your experience. So if I...

Some years back, on a road trip up the Northern California coast, we passed a stretch of rolling hills. In the distance, hidden in the trees, were clusters of rustic,...

In my youth there were many oranges. There was the Orange Julius on Ventura Boulevard. There was the book “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch” on my dad’s...

I first read Joan Didion’s “Where I Was From” about five years ago. My immediate reaction was: This should be mandatory reading in California high schools and colleges. Having grown...

It’s a bright Sunday in 1949 and you’re on the beach at Hermosa. The sun is shining. The sea is sparkling. There are swim caps, and umbrellas, and far less...

From 2002 to 2004, Christian Beamish worked as a handyman at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse, about thirty miles north of Santa Cruz. Built in 1871 to guide ships on the...

In California is a new monthly series where we shine a light on things that are quintessentially Californian, or that could only have come out of California. Case in point: Tom Waits...

In California is a new monthly series where we shine a light on things that are quintessentially Californian, or that could only have come out of California. This first installment is a...