No other Monterey Peninsula city has as many nicknames as does Pacific Grove. A sampling: “Butterfly Town, USA,” “Pagrovia,” “A Piney Paradise,” “God’s Kingdom by the Sea,” “The Last Hometown,” “A Dreamy Seaside Sanctuary” and “The Most Romantic City in the U.S.” Those are the Chamber of Commerce-style monikers…most local residents refer to the cheerful town simply as, … [Read more...] about The Good Old Days, Every Day
The King of Cool
Just like car designs, movie stars come and go. Some are destined for the bone yard of obscurity like the Chevrolet Vega, AMC Pacer and the Yugo. Others, such as the Mercedes 300 SL gull-wing, the Shelby Cobra and the Porsche 911, live on and gain fame, popularity and cache as the decades pass. Steve McQueen sits firmly in the latter group. He’s an American icon, a true … [Read more...] about The King of Cool
The Cars We Love
Geographically, socially and culturally, the Monterey Peninsula is like nowhere else on Earth. And that holds true on the area's highways and byways as well, where on any given day of the week it's possible to see a rare, top-of-the-marque example of automotive art cruse by. We've become perhaps a little jaded, barely glancing at a vehicle that would cause a pile-up of … [Read more...] about The Cars We Love
Raising the Standards
The 2014 Monterey Jazz Festival lineup includes some old friends, some new blood and plenty of musical surprises. So what else is new? The longest continuously running jazz festival on Planet Earth certainly didn’t get that way by being stodgy, boring or predictable. This year, Artistic Director Tim Jackson has put together a stellar three-day program, running September 19-21, … [Read more...] about Raising the Standards
Big Sur Magic
It's a vast paradox... a landscape breathtakingly beautiful yet unsparingly harsh; a climate equally bucolic and brutal; a community simultaneously insular and warmly welcoming; a spirit both ruggedly realistic and dreamily ethereal. It’s Big Sur. If ever a region were appropriately named, this is it. It’s huge, encompassing some 75 miles of California coastline extending … [Read more...] about Big Sur Magic