1. B & The Hives—Henry Miller Library, Friday

Over Labor Day weekend, the 2019 Monterey County Fair offered all of the classics—lots of fried food on offer; performances, including the Macias Family acrobats on tour from Mexico; lots of carnival games with stuffed animals as prizes; spinning rides that lit up the night sky; kids' activi…

As the tents come down and car haulers turn their tail lights on Monterey County, the results are starting to filter in. And—as always—there are winners and losers.

“I ask that question, too.”

The Season 2 finale of Big Little Lies was the complete opposite in suspense and drama from its Season 1 predecessor. The one bright spot: At least this slow-moving season is over.  

As the audience forms in this parking lot, a misty drizzle forms in the air. Thursday night’s showing of La Cortina de la Lechuga, the latest play written and directed by Cristal Gonzalez, is performed outdoors at El Cerritos Townhomes in Castroville. 

The once plain, white wall on the side of a Fremont Boulevard building is now home to a large humpback whale.

Seaside’s 73rd annual Obon Festival—a centuries old Japanese festival to honor the dead—was an awesome amalgam of community, culture and food. Parking was scarce around the Monterey Peninsula Buddhist Temple, but that didn’t stop the community from coming out in droves, an estimated 3,000 or…

With just one episode to go before Season 2 wraps, the Monterey Five are gearing up for their final showdown with calculating mother-in-law/grandma/meddler Mary Louise Wright (Meryl Streep). (A note: spoilers for episode six follow.)

Between marriage counseling, visions of drowning and legal custody battles, episode five of Big Little Lies shows how fragile the central lie—about how Perry Wright (Alexander Skarsgård) died—remains for the Monterey Five. (A note: Spoiler alerts for episode five follow.)

Mark Arax, of Fresno, worked for a long time as an investigative reporter for the L.A. Times, until he had a falling out over his story about the Armenian Genocide (his father’s family is Armenian). He’s punctuated his career with a series of books that explore different aspects of California.

The Monterey Five are breaking into pieces and using dress-up parties as a band-aid to cover a much bigger problem in Sunday’s episode of Big Little Lies. 

Graphic novelist Khalid Hussein tends to tackle heavy political content in his work. In The Case for Revolution, his graphic novel adaptation of Dennis Loo’s Globalization and the Demolition of Society, the subject revolves around “the historical and ideological development and underpinnings…

Sunday’s episode 3 of Big Little Lies builds up all of the drama so far this season to a climax of cover-ups, lies, loose ends and drama that may seem like the end of the world for the Monterey Five. It’s also a big week for Meryl Streep’s character, Mary Louise, who is new this season and a…

When Ann Hampton Callaway steps onstage in Studio 105 this weekend, it will mark the completion of a trek which began last January, when nasty weather forced numerous flight cancellations that preempted her arrival for a scheduled gig here.

When the former Osio Cinemas closed down and declared bankruptcy in 2015, former employees rallied to reopen the place. Through a Kickstarter campaign, they raised more than $76,000 from 621 donors and reopened as Osio Theater. 

The 33rd annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. March and Celebration in Seaside wrapped up on Monday, Jan. 21. As it does every year, the city shuts down portions of Fremont Boulevard and Broadway/Obama Way for the march. That creates little incongruities in the regular flow of traffic and comme…

It's a huge file, for best viewing click on the full screen icon. Prints available at http://viewing.mcdowellphoto.com/gallery/mcweekly/. Thank you, Glen McDowell.

Author Julie Otsuka grew up in Palo Alto for her first 9 years, then Palos Verde for the next 9 years, and she says her upbringing influenced her subsequent writing voice.

Bertie Bialek Elliott made headlines in February when she donated $106 million to Montage Health, the nonprofit that operates Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula, to build a mental health treatment center for youth in Monterey.

Anthony Lane was true to his word.

The collective buzzing of tattoo machines echoed through the Monterey and Salinas rooms all weekend long at the Monterey County Fairgrounds. The constant work of tattooists adding permanent and personal art to visitors has come to be expected at Ink at the Bay, which hosted its seventh annua…

Paul Richmond and his former art teacher Linda Regula co-founded the nonprofit You Will Rise Project in Ohio as an artistic haven for kids who are being bullied to express their feelings in paint, song, poetry, drawings, film, whatever medium they need.

The Salinas City Council found a way to give Fox Theater owner Anthony Lane a little more time to fend off abatement proceedings for the downtown facility, shuttered since April 12 due to code violations.

Books and chocolate go together, apparently.

Up-and-coming dancer and choreographer Cameron McKinney, just 26 years old, founded the eight-person Kizuna Dance company in 2014 with the mission to create work inspired by Japanese language, culture, history and especially its gloomy and avant-garde Butoh dance form. He’s devoted years of …

Last week the Weekly published a story about three film festivals that were starting up the same week—the Carmel Jewish Film Festival, BANFF Mountain Film Festival and LatinX LGBTQ+ Film Festival.

The premise of NBC's Rise is a bit like Disney's High School Musical. Except the teens probably are less stereotypical (think "jocks" and "theater geeks,") and more relatable, and it focuses less on a battle of the cliques and more on the power of community. In particular, the power of a an …

ABOUT

Shelley Alden Brooks Brooks teaches 20th-century U.S., California, and environmental history at the University of California, Davis, works for the California History-Social Science Project, and serves on the statewide Environmental Literacy Steering Committee.

Heidi Zamzow is the communications director and outreach coordinator for Sustainable Pacific Grove, acting as a liaison on legislative issues, hearings, media and official statements. She’s been with the organization for its decade-long incarnation.

The board of the Pacific Grove Art Center has announced that it has voted to dissolve the position of executive director, held by Teresa C. Brown, as of Dec. 8, 2017 in order to sustain the financial health of the organization into the future.

From the Soberanes Fire to the Mud Creek slide and the closure of Pfeiffer Canyon Bridge in the past year—plus the more gradual increase of bigger and more tour buses—the coast of Big Sur hasn't been the same place for locals for a long time.

It can be difficult, if not outright impossible, to quantify sculptor Steven Whyte's work.

FX tv series Atlanta is one of the hottest—and most different—shows out there. It’s set in today’s Atlanta hip-hop scene, where college dropout Earnest “Earn” Marks is trying to break into the biz off the imminent success of his rapper cousin Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles, while navigating relati…

On the bright blue Sunday afternoon of Oct. 22, a group of 60 or so people gathered in a parking lot next to the Army cemetery in the Presidio of Monterey. From there, the Pacific Ocean could be seen through curtains of Monterey pine and eucalyptus trees. Although most of the gathered were c…

It’s a tense time to be of Mexican descent in America. Powerful politicians spread negative stereotypes, immigration raids break families apart and institutions celebrating Chicano culture are under attack.

Bookworms of Monterey County, time to unite. The annual Friends of Harrison Memorial Library book sale is happening, right now, and the pickings are good. (See the Weekly's print story.)

Do you like books? Then read on, dear reader. 

The Carmel Bach Festival’s last concert of their two-weeks-long summer “season” is the traditional Best of the Fest. It’s an almost informal roundup by all the festival players and artistic leaders, of what they and the audience have deemed the most loved pieces most deserving of a second listen.

Lexi is a 17-year-old UConn freshman, struggling to navigate the ups and downs of her first year of college. Having left California behind for the East Coast life, she confronts classic difficulties including an unsympathetic roommate, homesickness, and clashing with her longtime best friend…

When old-timer thespians and emerging directors Paul Davis (founder and president of Paraphrase Productions) and Andrew Marderian (previous stage manager, The Addams Family) set out to fill Paraphrase’s’ summer slot, they didn’t realize they would end up with two equally gorgeous, evocative …

The golden mid-June to early-July days of summer may be the best times for festivals around the county. BaconFest sizzled a couple weeks ago; BeerFest went down like a frosty pint last weekend; Monterey Pop returned in full glory for its 50th anniversary in mid June. And last week Sunday, th…

Pink Flamingo's current play is actually a combo package of three one-act plays called An Intimate Evening With Eleven Women. So here are three short reviews of each part. It runs 7:30pm Friday and Saturday, and ends after this weekend. 

Paul Contos, the longtime education director for the Monterey Jazz Festival, has been awarded the 2017 DownBeat Magazine Jazz Education Achievement award.

Tandy Beal & Company, based in Santa Cruz, is one of the most kid-friendly dance companies in the region. They smile in publicity photos. One of their signature pieces, Mixed Nutz, looks like a children's version of Cirque du Soleil. In another piece, the dancers playfully play babies in…

He won't be asked to spell any acronyms like ESPN or DC, but both will figure in as Monterey County's spelling bee champion, Paul Hamrick, heads to the national finals today.