Ventucky SantaCon 2: Singing in the Rain?
Subject: Save Santa! A SantaCon Bicycle Ride in the rain?
This is NOT a Santa Skunk ride (you know how you get that stripe down your back when you ride a bike when it’s been raining?)
So here’s the latest SantaCon plan: meet near the Pier/Promenade Playground around 1pm. Then we’ll be prowling or music and mayhem and protection from the rain if necessary. Our agenda includes Taco Hut (that’s where we’ll have lunch), Eric E’s, Aloha, the big hotel, then along Main. The Watermark has music from 2-5pm and we’ll see where else we can find music to dance to.
If the weather permits, we’ll ride up Ventura Ave and over to Art City.
Download and bring your own copy of the Santacon Carol Book here: http://santarchy.com/other/santacon-carol-book.pdf
(AND YES, you MUST wear a costume. NO, you can NOT get by with a red shirt and Santa hat. It’s about the FUR!! See in the picture of us from 2009? Fur! White Fur! Lots of it!
BE CREATIVE, ya lazy bum! Jeans, in particular BLUE jeans, will be removed and destroyed without warning. Don’t tempt us. Red jeans might make the grade.
Bring innocent toys to hand out to kids and naughty toys to give to adults.
IT IS YOUR CIVIC DUTY TO MAKE PEOPLE WONDER WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON.
Santa doesn’t get arrested. Always remember the four F’n rules of Santarchy:
(1) Don’t f* with kids.
(2) Don’t f* with cops.
(3) Don’t f* with security.
(4) DON’T F* WITH SANTA!*)
Please RSVP and comment to let us know if we should watch out for you and whether you’ve been naughty or nice.
Enjoy the photos by Daniel Boggs iPhone from the First Friday SantaCon; hopefully they will motivate you!
xxxxooooxxxx from Ms Claus
PS Yes, you Santa, you do need to wear the monkey suit…
Here are some previous blog posts with more advice:
Must Be SantaCon Part 1: Photos From Save Santa First Friday ArtRide December 2010
It wasn’t as cold as the North Pole on First Friday December 2010, but it was cold enough for this group of Santas to bundle up in our Santa best for our third First Friday ArtRide and SantaCon. Here’s a few photos by me and the story; more photos by Daniel Boggs to come!
We gathered as usual for our FFArtRide on the Ventura Beach Promenade and California Street. Some Santas watched the sunset while others watched their drinks empty at Aloha’s bar.
Our first stop was the Artists Union Gallery, conveniently located next to Aloha. From there, we broke with tradition and rode up California Street to the gas station at Thompson for a quick air stop and to wave at the people trapped in their cars on this beautiful clear night.
Next we went to the “new” classy Photon Gallery on Santa Clara and California where we oohed and aahhed at Claudia Pardo McFayden’s luminous clouds and admired the iPhone photos as well as those of owner Peter Duffy. We’d been trying to get in there for several rides and finally it was open when we were there!
We cruised Main and stopped at Fox Vintage for cupcakes and Lynne Okun’s art, then near the Mission we visited Sylvia WHite’s pop-up gallery where we were stoped in our tracks by unusual ceramic art and to take some photos.
We then rolled on to Bell Arts where there was lots to see and buy including the annual holiday ceramics show and beautiful handmade scarves and hats by Dawne Fowkes Cushing–I bought two hats and matching scarves, one set in purple and the other in periwinkle, olive, and mango!
Our next stop was Art City where Jeremy was djing. Lots of young people were there enjoying the music and the amibance; here we are with Jeremy and his wife Michelle.
Time to head home–on we went to WAV, then Keven Eckhart-Smiths, then home!
Along the way, we lost Santas to food, fun and frolic–also to one broken arm from a tree climbing accident at Bell Arts! This was a first real calamity on a ride (beyond costume failures and flat tires –which we haven’t had since we stopped going to Stoneworks…)
We hope you’ll join us for our next ArtRide Sunday December 19–Save Santa SantaCon Sunday December 19. Our next First Friday ArtRide is a Tweed Ride January 7 followed by a Think Pink ride in Febrary with an afterparty in the El Jardin Courtyard hosted in part by Kama Sutra–perfect for Valentine’s Day!
Know what’s happening with the San Buenaventura ArtRiders by subscribing to this blog and liking our page on facebook!
All photos here taken with my trusty iPhone; next up, photos by Daniel Boggs from HIS trusty iPhone to get everyone in the mood to ArtRide with us Sunday Dec. 19!
San Buenaventura ArtRiders Bicycle & Social Club in the news
Extra! Extra! Read all about it!
Alex Wilson of the Ventura Country Reporter joined the San Buenaventura ArtRiders “Revenge of the Nerds” ArtRide in November and wrote about the rides and our mission in this week’s paper!
Save Santa! Ride your bicicyle with us in a holiday themed SantaCon ArtRide Sunday December 19! We’ll be making mayhem at the Pier playground and promenade around 1pm! Just look for Santa!
PS Pouring rain cancels…drizzle may see us simply riding to downtown for music and mayhem. Follow @artpredator on twitter for the latest news.
Tonight at 730pm, award winning poet and publisher J.P. Dancing Bear will read from his new collection of poetry, Inner Cities of Gulls (Salmon Poetry) at the Artists Union Gallery 330 S. California St. Ventura, CA.
J. P. Dancing Bear is widely published: his poems have appeared in over a thousand publications including Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, Cimarron Review, Poetry East, North American Review, Atlanta Review, Verse Daily, Poetry International, Marlboro Review, Hotel Amerika, Seattle Review, Permafrost, Controlled Burn, Cranky, Rattle, and Slipstream.
His chapbooks include What Language, winner of the 2002 Slipstream Prize and three full-length poetry collections: Billy Last Crow (Turning Point, 2004); Conflicted Light (Salmon Poetry, 2008); and Inner Cities of Gulls (Salmon Poetry, 2010).
According to his website, “Dancing Bear’s poems have been nominated ten times for Pushcart Prizes, for the Foreward Prize, and four times nominated for Best of the Web awards. In 2003, he was a finalist for the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America for his manuscript Gacela. Bear’s manuscript, Lines Cast, was a finalist in the 2008 National Poetry Series.”
A resident of the Santa Cruz/Monetery Bay Area of California, he is the host of “Out of Our Minds” a local weekly radio show for public radio station KKUP featuring some of today’s best contemporary poets. He is the editor of The American Poetry Journal and the owner of Dream Horse Press, which publishes the Orphic Prize and APJ Book Prize series.
An open mic follows the featured reading. I will be there tonight reading from my new poetry collection Middle of the Night Poems From Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son (en theos press 2010) and some of my students will be there reading too. Join us to listen or to read your own work!
Poem for Today’s Geminid meteor showers
What follows is a poem I wrote last summer during the August Pleides meteor showers. I wrote it soon after my mom died, on the night of what would have been her 73 birthday.
The poem and people’s strong positive responses to it influenced my choice of the cover art by Alan Sailer for my new poetry collection, Middle of the Night Poetry From Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son (
which you can order from en theos press in a limited edition of 108 signed and numbered chapbooks; soft cover to come soon).
via art predator
For more Poetry, catch the Monday Poetry Train!
Wish Upon A Star: Stay Up for Geminid Meteor Showers Monday
Monday night, December 13, the Geminid meteors will once again delight sky watchers with shooting stars after the waxing half moon sets (about midnight here on the western Pacific coast.) Last December, Bjørnar G. Hansen took this photo of a Geminid meteor with the northern lights and it was posted on NASA’s APOD site.
Aurora Shimmer, Meteor Flash
Credit & Copyright: Bjørnar G. Hansen,
Explanation: Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, haunted skies over the island of Kvaløya, near Tromsø Norway on December 13. This 30 second long exposure records their shimmering glow gently lighting the wintery coastal scene. A study in contrasts, it also captures the sudden flash of a fireball meteor from December’s excellent Geminid meteor shower. Streaking past familiar stars in the handle of the Big Dipper, the trail points back toward the constellation Gemini, off the top of the view. Both aurora and meteors occur in Earth’s upper atmosphere at altitudes of 100 kilometers or so, but aurora are caused by energetic charged particles from the magnetosphere, while meteors are trails of cosmic dust.
NASA’s APOD site is very cool and full of amazing images, mostly of the heavens but I am fond of the ones that connect heaven and earth like this one or these images which depict winter solstice sun. In case you’re wondering, APOD stands for A Photography of the Day. Learn more about APOD here.
1 Day Holiday Boutique CSUCI Gallery
Come by and pick up a copy of my new poetry chapbook, check out my broadsides, see what the other 20 some vendors have to sell, enjoy art, and share your “#pinotmoment! Learn more below!
via The Write Alley
I thought I was going to be able to be in two places at once…kind of. You see, I was already committed to my students to have a publication party on Tuesday Dec.7 at the Artists Union Gallery. But since that didn’t start until 730, I thought I’d go early to the Linchpin gathering at Candlelight, then slip out and join the reading at the AUG.
Unfortunately, the publication is still being bound at the college. There were some complications and confusions and the upshot is that they just didn’t get around to binding it and now, well, now I had to make a tough decision. The truth is, I’m a Linchpin when it comes to my students and my publication. I have to do this for them; if I don’t, it won’t happen. Attending the gathering of Linchpins is something I’d like to do for me. But I’m truly not as indispensible to that group as I am to my students.
And if you’re wondering what in the world I’m talking about, what is all this Linchpin stuff and who is the world is Seth Godin, then just follow the link and read some post about it over at The Write Alley. You’ll be glad you did–because I have a strong suspicion that if you’re a reader of this blog, you too are a Linchpin. (And if you are, please say so in the comments!!)
via The Write Alley
Tomorrow night, Tuesday Dec. 7 at 730pm, please join me at the Artists Union Gallery for an amazing evening of poetry, art and music followed by an open mic which will include readings by me (from my new book) and my students from our class publications. And some of these students are really good!
Dottie Grossman and Michael Vlatkovich will do a call and response performance; continue reading to see a video sample and for more details.
You Must Go See Documentary “Inside Job” says reviewer Ron Wells
LA Times reviewer Kenneth Turan says Inside Job will leave you thunderstruck. Why? Read guest blogger Ron Wells review and see for yourself. Or just see the movie. Please.
“It’s a Wall Street Government.” from Inside Job
Charles Ferguson’s powerful and extremely important documentary, “Inside Job,” dissects the financial industry which led to the collapse in 2007-2008 of the economic system of the United States and many countries around the world.
This is a terrifying and infuriating film, for it shows that a cancer has been injected into the entire body of that which we call America, and this cancer has spread everywhere and is continuing to spread due to men, and some women, who have no conscience, no morals, no God, except for the God of unfettered millions of dollars which they pray to on a daily basis. Read more…
art predator 