NB: This article is very long, so it may be best read on the website.

Fans of the silent era probably know slapstick companion Luke the Dog and action star Rin Tin-Tin. If you’re a fan of films from the 1930s, you know Skippy (aka Asta from The Thin Man), Terry (aka Toto from The Wizard of Oz), and of course Lassie. But you might not know about Jiggs1, although if you’re a silent film fan, I’m willing to bet you have seen him in at least one film. Dubbed the “Caniniest of Canines,” Jiggs was a Boston Terrier, although he is often referred to as a “Boston Bull” and a “Bull Dog” in fan magazines. Described in the February, 1928 issue of Picture Play Magazine as “a veteran of the screen whose successes are too numerous to mention,” Jiggs likely began their career in the 19232. In the 1926 Standard Casting Directory, Jiggs’ owner is listed as Jack Ewing3.

Although I had seen Jiggs in a few films, which I will mention in a bit, I had never heard the name before until I came across an image in the October, 1926 issues of both Photoplay Magazine and Picture Play Magazine, which shows Jiggs holding a lipstick mirror for actress Pauline Starke4. I immediately wanted to know more about this pupstar.

What I have discovered is that during the silent era, Jiggs appeared in over a dozen films, including the drama film Bread (1924)5, Fifth Avenue Models (1925) starring Mary Philbin, the Bebe Daniels’ comedy Miss Brewster’s Millions (1926); the action thriller The Fire Brigade (1926)6; the lost action serial The Fire Fighters (1927); the lost comedy Her Father Said No (1927); the crime caper Ladies Beware (1927), the lost film The Coward (1927) produced by Joseph P. Kennedy; the drama Women’s Wares (1927) starring Evelyn Brent; John M. Stahl’s In Old Kentucky (1927); the lost comedy Ritzy (1927); the Leo McCarey shorts Flaming Fathers (1927) and What Every Iceman Knows (1927); the Roscoe Arbuckle directed Eddie Cantor film Special Delivery (1927); and The Understanding Heart (1927) opposite Joan Crawford.

Jiggs also appeared in William A. Wellman’s Best Picture winning war epic Wings (1927), Ernst Lubitsch’s The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1928), and the lost comedy A Certain Young Man (1928) starring Ramon Novarro, Marceline Day, Renée Adorée, and Carmel Myers. I also found a reference to Jiggs appearing in the boxing serial The Leather Pushers, which would actually put the dog’s screen debut as 1922. Some of these credits I have been able to verify, others not so much.

In Wings, Jiggs plays the dog of Richard Arlen’s character David, who, as he bids farewell to his family to head off for the WWI trenches in Europe, also gives his loyal pup a lovely goodbye kiss. Although Jiggs was known for his tricks, he isn’t asked to do much here other than sit and be sweet. If you look closely, it appears that Arlen has some treats in his hand in order to elicit a goodbye nuzzle from his beloved pup.

With the advent of sound, Jiggs made the transition into the talkies seamlessly. His first major role was co-starring opposite Maurice Chevalier in Ernst Lubitsch’s pre-Code comedy The Love Parade (1929). In this film Jiggs plays Chevalier’s loyal dog companion. When Chevalier’s character must leave Paris after one too many scandals, he bids his farewell to the ladies of Paris. Jiggs is given a similar scene, barking his goodbyes to his canine comrades. Along with helping his master with his shenanigans, Jiggs also flirts with Queen Louise of Sylvania (Jeanette MacDonald)’s poodle. Later in the film, Jiggs is Chevalier’s only friend, and the two share a sweet scene in the garden, under the moonlight. Here Jiggs gets a great close-up and a moment to showcase his ability to do tricks on command.

Later in 1929, Jiggs appeared with several other dog talents in a series of shorts originally called Hot Dogs!, later renamed the Dogville Comedies. A piece entitled “Hollywood Goes To The Bow-Wows” by Marie House found in the December, 1930 issue of Screenland profiles how Zion Myers (brother of star Carmel Myers) and Jules White conceived and co-directed the series, which were often short, melodramatic parodies of popular films.

These “barkies” were cast by combing through all the trained dogs listed in various talent directories. From what I have read, Jiggs was always described as a hard-working professional. In House’s piece she writes, “But you must know Jiggs. Jiggs really has a movie reputation. Why he’s been in pictures for years. . .Jiggs is one of those aloof, high-brow personalities. Remember him as Phido Vance in Who Killed Rover? — he’s a Ronald Colman or William Powell, sort of— or maybe even Greta Garbo, you might say. Silent. Mysterious. Aloof.”

House also claimed that Jiggs can walk, that he has a “psychosis about mice” and loves to chase them, and that Jiggs often doubles in shots for dogs that cannot walk on two feet. The piece also “interviews” Jiggs, where the dog says they like movies, but that they live very quietly outside, never goes out socially, doesn’t care for the ladies7, and that his favorite food was hamburger. Allegedly, Jiggs could also say the words “hamburger” and “Mama.”

Although Jiggs was a male dog, in these barkies he often played female roles, as profiled in a January, 1930 issue of Picture Play Magazine. In this piece Jiggs is described as the first “pup female impersonator.” In the January, 1930 issue of Photoplay, the dog is described as the heroine of the Hot Dogs! series. In the series’ second film, entitled Hot Dog (1929), a parody of courtroom dramas like the Ruth Chatterton melodrama Madame X (1929), Jiggs plays a female character who ends up in a love triangle that results in a scandalous trial.

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In the November, 1930 edition of Motion Picture Classic an article entitled “They’re In The Barkies Now” by Helen Louise Walker describes how Jiggs receives “voluminous fan mail” and sends out photographs to admirers all over the world. The piece goes on to describe Jiggs as a versatile actor who can play “old men and young flappers with equal verve and enthusiasm.” Allegedly, Meyers and White had thousands of costumes for these shorts and the dogs knew their own costumes. White is quoted as saying, “You should see the fireworks, if we try to put one dog’s costume on another! They can smell the difference, you know. And how they resent it!”

One of the last films that I can confirm featured Jiggs is Norman Taurog’s pre-Code comedy Skippy (1931). This film is notable for its Oscar trivia: along with being nominated for Best Picture, its 32-year-old director Taurog was the youngest Best Director winner in Oscar history until Damien Chazelle won for his 2016 musical La La Land. Also, the film’s nine-year-old star Jackie Cooper is still the youngest nominee for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Jiggs appears late in this film, hanging out with one of the film’s other young stars, Robert Coogan, whose more famous brother Jackie Coogan8 you may recognize from Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid (1921).

Jigg’s obituary appeared in the September, 1932 issue of Photoplay, where he was described as “that famous talking bull dog of the movies.” After listing various credits, the obit goes on to say that Jiggs “always gave an outstanding performance” and that he was eleven years old when he died. The pup was buried in a “tiny redwood casket made especially for him” and that one of his puppies died on the same day. The obit ends by insisting that the “movies will miss good old Jiggs. It will be a long time before his place can be filled.”

In 1936, Jiggs was one of the many dogs profiled in Gertrude Orr’s book Dog Stars of Hollywood. Unfortunately, I could not find a digital copy of the book and on eBay it is going for $145! After his death and the publication of Orr’s book, it seems, like many silent film stars, Jiggs faded into obscurity. I’m sure he was a good dog.

I started an Instagram account for my love of the silent era, so if you’d like more micro-doses of silent film daily, give ✨ Nitrate Dreamland ✨ a follow.

The mood in the air isn’t so good. You know what I’m talking about. Call it cynicism, call it disillusionment, call it fear, call what’s causing it even worse than that, this is the world we live in right now and things don’t seem like they’re getting any better. How different this is from the cynicism of other times is tough to pin down but the feeling has certainly been around before. It was there back in the ‘70s, even if that was a very different era and one thing which set it apart was how much so many of the films could be a true reflection of what was going on, which you can’t really say now to that extent. By 1978, those things were beginning to change as if the very idea of a ‘70s film had peaked, maybe it was in November ’76 when ROCKY opened only days after NETWORK, so a few of the most popular films of the year—GREASE, SUPERMAN, ANIMAL HOUSE, JAWS 2—didn’t have such things on their mind and feel like they were already looking forward to what the flashier, shallower ‘80s became. CAPRICORN ONE, which opened in June of ‘78, isn’t as known today as you’d expect possibly due to rights issues and feels like it falls into a middle ground between the two decades, exploring the paranoia and mistrust in the air that was such a part of the time while also trying to be a slick, enjoyable popcorn thriller where you shouldn’t think too much about those things. The film was written and directed by Peter Hyams, a longtime genre journeyman of the sort we don’t really have now, one who made so many films and even later served as his own director of photography, that it’s hard not to admire such a body of work even if the results didn’t always match his ambition. There are at least a few films directed by Peter Hyams which have substantial followings that I honestly wish I liked better but, on the other hand, there are others where I’m still pleasantly surprised at how effective they are so let’s just say there are some which will go unnamed here that you might like more than I do but maybe I like THE RELIC and his remake of NARROW MARGIN more than you do. Sometimes what a film is going for, even if those aims are modest, hits the mark just right. We’ll leave it at that. CAPRICORN ONE is a slick, entertaining film but I always find myself wishing that I liked it just a little bit more, unable to shake that the feeling that it could use more to chew on in the narrative, the way it provides a rush of excitement but still plays like it’s missing a certain something to give it all some extra weight and make it completely satisfying. Either way, it’s still one of the most impressive ever made by the director, right up there with 1974’s BUSTING which, like CAPRICORN ONE, also starred the great Elliott Gould and was at least as cynical, maybe even more so. CAPRICORN ONE is impressively mounted even while raising a lot of questions that it doesn’t spend enough time exploring, all the way up to an ending that brings out a ‘…so what happens now?’ response in practically everyone who sees it like few other films ever have. On each return viewing through the years I keep wishing there was a little more to it all, but the film still manages to be enjoyable in an old-fashioned popcorn thriller way and that at least counts for something. Only moments before liftoff of the first manned crew to Mars known as Capricorn One, the three astronauts onboard are rushed out of the space capsule and whisked away to an unknown location as the empty spacecraft takes off. When the astronauts, Charles Brubaker (James Brolin), Peter Willis (Sam Waterston) and John Walker (O.J. Simpson) arrive at what appears to be an abandoned military base, NASA head James Kelloway (Hal Holbrook) informs them it was recently discovered that the life-support system on the spacecraft was faulty which would have meant their deaths within weeks. And to keep funding for the space program alive, as well as public interest, he has arranged to fake the entire landing on Mars entirely on a makeshift soundstage that has been set up there, using a threat to their families as an assurance the astronauts will take part in the coverup. Meanwhile, NASA technician Elliot Whitter (Robert Walden) has noticed irregularities from his console while monitoring but when he mentions the suspicions to his friend, reporter Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould), he immediately vanishes, sending Caulfield on the trail of what has happened to him. But while the fake Mars landing goes according to plan, months later a faulty heat shield causes the empty ship to burn up on reentry, which leads the three astronauts to realize there’s no way they’ll be allowed to live. They make their escape and soon crash in the desert with Kelloway sending men after them to finish the job as Caulfield continues his investigation, getting closer to something he knows is very wrong about the entire Mars mission. Practically the first lines of dialogue in CAPRICORN ONE are delivered by Lou Frizzell, a familiar aw, shucks type of character actor born in Missouri who died of lung cancer just after his 59th birthday a year following the release of this film, his last, although there were multiple TV appearances in between. Here he plays the small role of Horace Gruning, a NASA technician who tearfully informs the astronauts how proud he is to be even a small part of this historic mission that his whole life has been building up to as he hands over a bible for them to have on their journey. He alone in this film seems to represent the optimistic, naive belief of the American public in the dream of looking up at the stars and going to space, a belief the movie undercuts only moments later in various ways like how even the Vice President attending the launch isn’t that interested in what he’s getting to witness. Watching the film now is a reminder of how much CAPRICORN ONE was a product of a time of that particular sort of cynicism, a feeling is made clear impeccably in the lengthy speech that Hal Holbrook’s mission head gives which lays out the public indifference to the space program and what he feels needs to be done about that to keep it alive by any means necessary. Even the reporters covering the launch played by Elliott Gould and Karen Black don’t seem too impressed by what’s going on, instead focusing on the drudgery of their lifestyle and whether Gould’s Robert Caulfield should keep trying to flirt with her, no idea of the big story that’s really going on right at that moment. “There’s nothing left to believe in!” Holbrook shouts at James Brolin to justify perpetuating a massive fraud on the public. Only lies can keep the dream alive in the USA. Starting there, CAPRICORN ONE has what feels like a perfect setup that only partly gets followed through on and the film becomes not so much about the deception which it slightly rushes through or how to sell that story to the unknowing public as it does keeping such a conspiracy going through whatever nefarious means necessary, all done with a plot structure that almost feels schematic as if working out the story was determined by how many filming days some of the actors would need to be available for. After their initial shock at the situation, the three astronauts mostly brood while instead of providing details about the conspiracy to pull over this fraud on the public feels like it’s left entirely on faith. Blanks aren’t filled in, even with all the dialogue Hal Holbrook gets there’s not enough we’re being told about the machinery behind all this to believe it. It’s hard to swallow that only one technician in all of Mission Control notices anything wrong but there’s apparently an endless amount of people involved in the coverup whether employed by NASA, and it’s kind of crazy that NASA cooperated with this film, or some men in black-type outfit. All this at least looks forward to THE X-FILES but a more skillful approach might find a way to deal with the plotting so it’s not an issue, good dialogue to wave some of that away and get it to work but the film doesn’t spend enough time trying to do this. As much cleverness as there is to the staging and dialogue, it’s the details needed to have the story fully work that are missing, just as there are likely more than a few flaws in the science to the supposed Mars mission presented as well, and it all makes me want to read the book this is based on that doesn’t exist to fill in some of those details. The cynicism of the time may have been an inspiration for Hyams but it feels like too much of a comic strip approach, THE PARALLAX VIEW for kids who read Dynamite Magazine. But even with all the flaws that run through it, Hyams clearly knows how to keep the intrigue of the story going and the way he shoots it is always effective like the eeriness to the makeshift Mars set that’s been constructed or how the dark, almost ominous look of mission control prefigures the way his visual style got more extreme, and much darker, as the years went on, as if trying to see how far he could go and still have an image. All of CAPRICORN ONE is richly well-photographed by Bill Butler, one of the most underrated cinematographers of the ‘70s, giving each scene a flavor which captures the various locations in the right way and always finds just the right angle on the actors as they rattle off some of their endless speeches. The individual sequences almost always have a kick to them, whether the POV of Elliott Gould’s car when it goes dangerously out of control without any brakes or the way the film cuts between the astronaut’s breakout and Hal Holbrook’s speech to the press memorializing them. And the invigorating, full-bodied score by Jerry Goldsmith which is likely one of his best of the period, adds immeasurably to the excitement and growing suspense right from the moment it begins during the opening credits. Along with this, any movie where Elliott Gould becomes the one guy to depend on to save the day is something I’m going to all in favor of and the more his storyline becomes the focus of the film the more the tension seems to rise. Gould’s scenes with his co-stars throughout like Karen Black as the fellow reporter he flirts with, Brenda Vaccaro as Brubaker’s wife and David Doyle as Caulfield’s boss are all written in a somewhat mannered way, dialogue that becomes about the dialogue they’re rattling off at each other which in theory should be annoying but still gives the film an energetic lift that it doesn’t otherwise have. Hyams clearly loves giving his actors long, colorful speeches to chew their way through, which makes the more stoic approach taken to the astronauts a little disappointing since it feels like James Brolin could use one of those rather than just looking upset all the time. Sam Waterston does crack jokes which helps and is pretty much his main characterization while O.J. Simpson as the third is basically just there. When the three of them separate to attempt an escape and Brolin says, “There’s not enough time, there’s too much to say, so let’s go,” it’s a good moment with appropriate gravity but I still wish he could take the moment to say a little more. When their plane crash lands in the desert and one of them compares it to arriving on to Mars it’s a funny observation but the scenes of the astronauts trying to make their way through the landscape becomes too repetitive and when it spends five minutes of screentime on James Brolin fending off a rattlesnake, I find myself wishing we could get more details about the coverup and Elliott Gould’s investigation instead. But so much of the film keeps moving, maybe faster than you’d expect in the first hour, and after slightly rushing through the machinations to the faked Mars landing and the aftermath it becomes about the race to cover all this up as fast as possible. All the paranoia makes sense when the government is depicted as conspiring to murder its best and brightest, with the idea that the film prefigures a world when certain entities would be too big to fail buried under all the chases, even if NASA isn’t what anyone has to worry about these days. On the DVD audio commentary Hyams talks about how audiences at the time would cheer when news cameras turn to capture a certain sight in the final scene but I’m not sure we can count on the media for that in the real world anymore and maybe we couldn’t even then. At least the momentum is there as the film builds to the climax and when Elliott Gould enlists the help of crop-dusting pilot Telly Savalas there’s a confidence in the way the comedy of the moment is played between the two men, which suddenly feels like it’s ok to just sit back and enjoy the movie at this point. And there are far worse things a film can do than provide an awesome helicopter chase in the climax, especially one as good as this. I still wish there was more to the end gets me to imagine the epilogue of the book that, again, doesn’t exist and which makes the film feel incomplete. Enjoyable, but still incomplete. The Billy Wilder screenwriting rule that says, “Don’t hang around” at the end doesn’t work here, not when the beat it ends on without more details isn’t entirely satisfying. Still, there’s a reason why I come back to this every few years, maybe because I’m hoping to like it a little better, maybe because I already know I’m going to like it just enough. Or maybe because we’ve gotten to the point where the movie isn’t cynical enough about the way things are and it’s become comforting to revisit what people thought was possible at another point in time. Elliott Gould is top-billed and though he enters the film too late to be called the main character (the final shot seems to indicate who that is, I suppose) he still brings a delightfully off-kilter feel to his everyman, getting deeper into the conspiracy even though he doesn’t even know what it is for a long time and the energy the actor brings to it makes the film that much more endearing all by himself. James Brolin is dependably serious and the way he presents himself you believe that he is someone who has always believed in the ideals he strives for, that he wouldn’t know how to be sarcastic about something if he tried. Hal Holbrook is so good in his long speeches that he almost gets us to believe in the outlandishness of the entire plot with so many memorable phrasings like the way he says, “I can understand if it was a new Lucy show…” when bemoaning people complaining about television coverage of past moon missions which sometimes comes to me in the dead of night. Brenda Vaccaro brings the right sort of humanity to her unknowing wife, Sam Waterston gets to steal each moment he has a bad joke to deliver and it may as well be mentioned that O.J. Simpson is there too as the third astronaut but it’s easy to forget about that since I can’t think of anything he does in this that ranks with handing the cat over to Fred Astaire at the end of THE TOWERING INFERNO. Among the many familiar faces, David Doyle looks like he’s never had more fun in his life than when he gets to bark his way through those lengthy speeches he gets to say to Elliott Gould. Telly Savalas yelling “Perverts!” plays like this film’s version of Keenan Wynn in DR. STRANGELOVE, James Karen is the Vice President, James B. Sikking in the base control room keeping an eye on the astronauts holds a pipe in his mouth just like he does in POINT BLANK and playing the oddly named Judy Drinkwater, the interplay Karen Black has with Gould in her ‘special appearance’ about how much they want to jump each other is enjoyable enough to make me imagine sequels where they investigate other government coverups and it leans even further into the whole Nick & Nora thing by making her a co-lead. I’ve imagined far worse movies that never got made. To get into a specific memory from the past year, back in October 2025 there was a day on the TCM Classic Cruise when the ship made a stop at Castaway Cay at Lighthouse Point where we went to the beach, did a little snorkeling, had lunch, then on the way back got caught in a sudden downpour which soaked us only since we were in the middle of a very long bridge that led to the ship and had nowhere to go. Once we got back and dried off the two of us went to a screening of CAPRICORN ONE featuring one of the guests of the voyage, Brenda Vaccaro. I mean, of course we did. Maybe this was the best day of last year. Maybe I’d like to be back there again right now. At least I got to experience it all that one time. And incidentally, she had some problems with the ending too but that’s what happens when you see CAPRICORN ONE for the first time. As for Vacarro, who really is the emotional center of the film, she was a terrific guest on the cruise and seems like a real trip, recalling a few details like Hyams’ background as a war photographer during Vietnam and that the director came up with the emotional scene where she reads Dr. Seuss to her kids during production because he wanted to give her more to do. I did not get to meet her myself but one other person on the cruise told me that she gladly talked to him about SUPERGIRL for twenty minutes, so Brenda Vaccaro seems ok in my book. During her talk I also kept remembering how the film’s gentle love ballad on the Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack album is named after her character, titled “Kay’s Theme”. But to get back to the film itself, CAPRICORN ONE is film that I’ll always have fondness for even as I wish it were as good as the one that I want it to be. I’m still glad it’s there to return to and remember certain dreams we have, whether it’s going to Mars or the idea that Elliott Gould really can save the day. That’s definitely something we can believe in and such a dream is just as important now as ever.

In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.

By Wyatt Reed and Max Blumenthal / The Grayzone

Jeffrey Epstein personally recruited an 18-year-old girl from New York to serve “in one of the elite IDF units,” email records show.

Epstein’s request came in a June 29, 2011 email to Anat Barak, the daughter of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In the message, the financier described the girl in question, “Tali,” as an 18-year-old who’d been accepted to Columbia University’s Barnard College and had “been to Israel more than a dozen times.”

His young female friend had spent a summer hiking the so-called Israel Trail and another “working as a counselor at a summer camp in Dimona Israel for children who are victims of terrorist attacks,” and would therefore “be a great asset to any unit,” Epstein wrote.

Tali, he said, would continue serving Israeli interests long after her placement in the Israeli army. Upon her return from military service in Israel, Epstein wrote that “she would be a fantastic ambassador for Israel” at what he called “one of the more important college campuses in the country, Columbia.”

A few hours later, Barak fired back an email saying that Tali “sounds like an amazing girl” and informing the lecherous billionaire: “I’ll be in touch with her, and we’ll take care of her.”

The senior Israeli politician’s daughter then sent an email of her own to Tali, explaining that “Jeffrey Epstein told me about you and about your plans to join the IDF this summer.”

“This is absolutely wonderful,” Barak gushed, adding: “Kol Ha’kavod!,” a Hebrew expression meaning “much respect!” She requested to speak with Epstein’s young associate over the phone, adding, “if there’s anything you might need while you’re in Israel please don’t hesitate to call me.”

A review by The Grayzone of public records indicates that “Tali” is Talia Lefkowitz. Her father, Jay Lefkowitz, worked as Epstein’s lawyer and helped negotiate the billionaire’s sweetheart deal with then US Attorney Alex Acosta. At the time, her father argued that Epstein was “not in any way a typical sex offender.” 

Talia Lefkowitz did not respond to an email from The Grayzone requesting comment on her relationship with Epstein, and his role in advancing her pro-Israel crusade.

According to her LinkedIn profile, Talia went on to serve as a sergeant in a “Special Forces Paratrooper Unit” – likely Israel’s 35th Brigade. The 35th Brigade is an elite unit of the IDF’s 98th Division, which was responsible for the destruction of large swaths of the city of Khan Younes during Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza in 2024. Its commanders were documented burning civilian homes and leaving behind graffiti taunting their former residents.

When she returned to study at Barnard after her time as a ‘lone soldier,’ she quickly emerged as a vocal advocate for Zionism, penning op-eds for prominent Israeli media outlets. In one such piece in the Jerusalem Post, Lefkowitz tearfully recalled taking shelter while volunteering at the camp mentioned by Epstein, declaring: “We are the kids of the bunker.” In another, published by The Times of Israel, Lefkowitz accused Columbia of “support… for a one-state solution” because the university failed to reserve a space for Zionists to protest against an anti-apartheid exhibit set up by Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. 

At that point, Lefkowitz had become heavily involved in the Columbia-Barnard chapter of Hillel International, a global Jewish youth organization which supports Israel unequivocally. Her branch, she wrote for the Jewish Telegraph Agency, was “a magnet for students from Orthodox backgrounds, many of whom begin college after spending a gap-year in Israel.”

Lefkowitz later returned to Hillel, serving on its board from 2020 to 2022. Currently, however, Lefkowitz is employed as a “philanthropy advisor” to the Areivim Philanthropic Group, which says it aims to “impact the next generation of Jews through formal and experiential Jewish, Hebrew, Zionist, and Israel education.”

According to her bio at Areivim, Lefkowitz “worked for five years for The Paul E. Singer Foundation,” which ultra-Zionist billionaire Paul Singer has used to support neoconservative media outlets and pro-Israel causes. Singer is a top donor to the presidential campaigns of both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio, and currently owns Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum, securing it in a fire sale through his Elliott Capital Management Fund.

While Lefkowitz’s exploits in the upper echelons of the Zionist movement are public, it was unknown until now that she received assistance from Jeffrey Epstein, who despite having no apparent military or special forces experience himself, was seemingly able to arrange her acceptance into “one of the elite IDF units.” The emails between Epstein and Anat Barak raise serious questions about nepotism in the Israeli military’s recruitment process. 

They also highlight Epstein’s involvement in Zionist lobbying efforts within the US, both on and off campus. As proposed by Epstein, Lefkowitz appears to have served as an unofficial “ambassador for Israel,” engaging heavily in Zionist activism at Columbia. Her recent tenure on the Hillel board enabled her to take her campus crusade onto the global stage.

While Epstein is best remembered as a well-connected financial dealer who solicited young women and girls for assorted sex acts, his gift as a recruiter for Israel’s genocidal occupation army is just becoming known.

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ICE helps clear apartment complexes and evict tenants while incarceration buildout throws a lifeline to commercial real estate.

On Wednesday, in the small Palestinian shepherding village of Mukhmas, a masked Jewish settler armed with an M16 shot and killed a 19-year-old Philadelphia native named Nasrallah Abu Siyam. It’s highly likely that the gun was supplied by the United States. At least four other local Palestinians were wounded by settler gunfire during the invasion of the village, including another young man whose foot may be amputated. Some were shot while carrying the wounded to safety. Many others were severely beaten with metal rods. Israeli soldiers, who accompanied the settlers into the village, responded to the shooting rampage by firing stun grenades and tear gas into the residential area, burning an elderly man. When it was over, settlers walked off with more than 300 of the village’s sheep and goats under the military’s watch. It was the first full day of Ramadan. As of this writing, no one has been arrested.

Two days after the attack, I spoke with eight young men who had been there, several of them injured, some among those who carried Nasrallah to a car and drove him toward the hospital. Teenagers and men in their early twenties. At least one of them had braces—Nasrallah had them, too. Not hardened fighters; students, farmers, and shepherds. They looked exhausted. A few had fresh wounds on their faces. They startled at sudden noises, repeatedly springing up to peer out the window. I am protecting their identities, as retaliation in cases like these is common.

In all likelihood, no one will be held accountable for this killing, but it is important to bear witness and to leave a record of what happened. What follows is a reconstruction based on the account of these eight witnesses. To be clear, I did not obtain the settlers’ version of events, though if I had their contact information, I certainly would have tried. The IDF did not respond to my request for comment. The testimony presented here is consistent with reporting in major Israeli and Palestinian outlets, available video evidence, the patterns of state and settler violence that shape daily life in the West Bank, and my own experience there over the past several years.

Before turning to their account, I want to situate what happened within the broader system that produced it. Late last year, I wrote two pieces unpacking Israel’s machinery of annexation in its current form, based in part on an op-ed from a settler leader and unusually candid testimony from within the Israeli military. The picture that emerged was of a system in which settler leaders and military officers work in close collaboration to map target areas for land seizure and establish illegal outposts under army protection, from which settlers launch pogroms on vulnerable Palestinian communities, often with military escorts, in an effort to terrorize them into leaving.

Sometimes that pressure alone is enough—over 80 rural Palestinian communities have been abandoned since October 7. Other times, the military declares a “closed military zone,” clearing Palestinians from their land under the pretense of preventing further violence. In some cases, settlers provoke a confrontation that is then used to justify further military action. One way or another, the relentless settler attacks function as the spearhead of a state policy of ethnic cleansing, with the government managing the aftermath and absorbing the gains. Through this process, vast stretches of Area C—where Israel exercises full control—have been emptied of Palestinians, while settler incursions are increasingly pushing into Areas B and even A, nominally controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

The broader vision, articulated openly by settler leaders and their allies in government, is to force Palestinians to emigrate, and to concentrate those who remain into a handful of urban enclaves—Jenin, Tulkarm, Nablus, Ramallah, Jericho, and Hebron—while annexing the rest of the territory. “The principle of sovereignty is maximum land and minimum population,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said while outlining the plan.

There is another angle to this story—that yet another American citizen has been killed by Israelis, with no expectation that anyone will be held accountable—but I’m going to leave that for another time. For now, I will say only that I learned of the killing from Kamel Musallet, the father of Sayfollah Musallet, who was beaten to death by settlers in July.

For generations, a Bedouin encampment known as Khallat al-Sidra—a cluster of tents, cinderblock shelters, and animal pens—sat on the edge of Mukhmas. The land belonged to the village, but a mayor many decades earlier had invited the Bedouins to settle there, to plant olive trees and graze their livestock. Over the years, the community also served as an incidental buffer between the village of Mukhmas and the most violent settlers descending from the hills. While Mukhmas residents were regularly attacked in their fields, they were typically safe in the village itself, as Khallat al-Sidra absorbed the worst of the attacks. In part, this was a matter of basic geography. But the Bedouin encampment and surrounding farmland also lay in Area C, making them far more vulnerable to settler violence than the built-up village of Mukhmas, which sits in Area B.

When settlers raided Khallat al-Sidra, Mukhmas residents often came down to help protect them, but after October 7, that became nearly impossible. A new ring of outposts went up around the area, and the settlers’ proximity allowed them to strike fast, often in the dead of night, launching attacks before the village could even be roused.

In a period of just over three months between late October and late January, settlers descended on Khallat al-Sidra and torched homes on three separate occasions. Each time, the community rebuilt, only to see it burned again. I was present the morning after one of these pogroms, and toured the charred structures with men and their traumatized children as settlers circled us on their ATVs, many with machine guns slung over their shoulders. Two activists had been sent to the hospital.

In a January attack on Khallat al-Sidra captured on video, the settlers split into groups, moving methodically from structure to structure, burning the whole village to the ground in minutes. Settlers blocked a man and a woman from escaping from their burning home, beating them when they finally escaped. Videos circulating on far-right social media celebrated the pogrom, set to the beloved settler anthem, May Your Village Burn.

After the most recent attack in late January, the Israeli military, rather than arrest the settlers responsible and evacuate their outposts, declared the area a closed military zone and forcibly expelled the Bedouin community. This was, of course, a tragedy in its own right. It also meant the frontier shifted overnight—from Khallat al-Sidra in Area C to Mukhmas in Area B—exposing the village to the same tactics used to clear the surrounding hills.

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On Wednesday at 2:35 pm, a shepherd from Mukhmas, grazing his sheep and goats in the village’s farmland, was surrounded by settlers who harassed him and attempted to steal his livestock. He managed to escape with his flock and ran back toward the village, just outside the girls’ school, where a group of local men gathered to form a defensive barrier. Many of the settlers wore masks, but the villagers recognized several from previous attacks. Among them was a settler named Amir, a security guard for one of the nearby outposts. He claimed he was there to help, firing his M16 into the air and ordering Mukhmas’s residents to retreat, promising he would escort the settlers away without incident. The villagers knew that if they withdrew, their livestock would be taken.

Minutes later, more settlers arrived, accompanied by soldiers—the same platoon, villagers said, that routinely appears during these incursions, likely assigned to this particular settler gang by the IDF’s Central Command. Now there were roughly 30 settlers and five soldiers at the edge of Mukhmas. The troops joined Amir in ordering the Palestinian men back into the village, assuring them the animals would not be touched. But as soon as the villagers began to withdraw, settlers opened the enclosure and started driving the livestock out.

At 3:27 pm, the first physical violence broke out as several Palestinian men moved to retrieve their livestock and were beaten back by settlers and soldiers. Troops fired tear gas and stun grenades into the village; an elderly man was badly burned by a canister. In footage from the incident, women and children can be heard screaming from inside their homes. Settlers pushed deeper into the residential area in the chaos, opening additional enclosures and driving off more sheep and goats.

A group of villagers broke off and took a back route, hoping to intercept the settlers driving off their animals—their primary livelihood. One of the men was seized and surrounded, settlers beating him with metal rods as he lay unconscious on the ground. Others rushed forward to attempt to pull him free. The settlers hurled stones to drive them back, and the villagers threw stones in return.

At 3:48 pm, a settler raised his M16 and began firing into the crowd rushing toward their wounded fellow villager. Four or five others followed suit, gunning down the Palestinians on their own land. Five men were hit, including the brother of the wounded man. Nasrallah was shot in the thigh, the bullet severing his main artery. Settlers crowded around him after he fell, striking him with rods. At least one of the gunmen dropped to a knee in a military firing position, taking deliberate aim at those carrying the injured to safety. As the shooting unfolded, the army, just down the hill, continued gassing the village.

When the shooting ended, the army did not stick around to provide medical assistance to the men lying wounded with gunshot injuries. Instead, they withdrew from Mukhmas alongside the settlers, who walked off with more than 300 of the village’s sheep and goats—a crippling economic blow to three shepherding families.

The villagers called an ambulance, but it couldn’t get past a nearby army checkpoint, so they loaded the wounded into several cars and began driving toward the hospital in Ramallah. Traffic was gridlocked near the checkpoint, and as word spread, other drivers tried to clear a path, waving vehicles aside and shouting for space. Nasrallah was bleeding heavily in the back seat, his pulse fading. When the cars could move no further, the men lifted him out and carried him on foot toward a waiting ambulance on the other side. By the time he reached the hospital at 5:30 pm, nearly two hours had passed since he was shot.

For four and a half hours, doctors attempted to save his life. But he had lost too much blood. At 10 pm, 19-year-old Nasrallah Abu Siyam was pronounced dead.

Later that night, settlers returned to Mukhmas, revving their engines and shining lights into homes. The men came out again to protect their village, this time in even larger numbers, and the settlers left without incident.

When I returned home from the West Bank after last year’s olive harvest, I found it difficult to articulate the feeling of sheer terror in Palestinian villages subjected to regular settler attacks, where I spent many sleepless nights. There is nothing quite like the real fear of physical danger, knowing it can arrive at any moment, and that you are completely defenseless. (In communities across the West Bank, residents know that if they take up arms to defend themselves, their village may be wiped from the map—as has happened in Jenin and Tulkarm, long associated with militant activity.) I, of course, could leave whenever I chose; for the Palestinians, this is daily life.

I can only imagine it as something akin to the atmosphere Black families described in parts of the Jim Crow South, where the Ku Klux Klan rode at night, the law often on their side, delivering warnings in fire and blood. Lynchings were staged to strike maximum fear into the hearts of entire communities—to enforce racial hierarchy, crush political participation, and drive families from land and livelihoods they had built. The message was unmistakable: you have no protection here, and whatever you have can be taken.

Today, in the West Bank, giant Stars of David jut from the ground, lit at night like flaming crosses. The assailants often arrive with military-grade assault rifles capable of ending a life in an instant. Again, I am lost for words trying to describe the feeling of a belligerent teenager aiming one of these death machines right at you. They operate not with tacit protection from the law, as the KKK did, but with the visible backing of soldiers and a state apparatus whose purpose, in practice and in stated policy, is to assert dominance over every aspect of daily life. To make you disappear.

Many of the most violent settlers and their leaders are well known to local Palestinians, activists, journalists, and Israeli authorities alike. Several participants in the Mukhmas attack have already been identified by activists, and I have previously written about the settler leader Amishav Melet, whom I believe orchestrated the Turmus’ayya assault I documented in October. If major news organizations devoted to this historic campaign of violence the same investigative resources they apply to other conflicts, I have no doubt they could map the settler terror infrastructure and chain of command much as they do clandestine militant groups elsewhere. Israeli authorities almost certainly possess such intelligence already, but the pattern suggests it is used to manage and protect these networks rather than dismantle them.

In other words, the Israeli reign of terror in the West Bank is not an inevitable force of nature. It can be stopped. Allowing it to continue is a series of choices—by the Israeli government, by its backers in Washington, and, more tacitly, by a mainstream media ecosystem that largely treats it as a peripheral regional conflict, surfacing only when the violence becomes too graphic or politically destabilizing to ignore.

On Saturday, the U.S. State Department broke its silence, failing to condemn the killing or mention the assailants: “We can confirm the death of a U.S. citizen in the West Bank on February 18. We extend our deepest condolences to the family and expect a full, thorough, and transparent investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death. U.S. Embassy Jerusalem has been in direct contact with the family to provide assistance.”

Ambassador Mike Huckabee, for his own part, has been in crisis mode—though for different reasons—firing off 31 tweets in two days defending his calamitous interview with Tucker Carlson, during which he asserted Israel’s biblical right to claim all the land between the Nile and the Euphrates, triggering a diplomatic crisis.

Nasrallah Abu Siyam is at least the seventh American killed by Israeli settlers or soldiers in the West Bank since October 7. No one has been arrested in any of the cases. No one has been held accountable.

If you’d like to support farmers in the West Bank, consider donating to Roots of Resilience.

The 12 blocks of State Street between Sola Street and Constance Avenue are remarkably diverse, which may be why no specific visual pops up when I think of the “Mid-State” area. Another factor is that I rarely ever walk more than one block at a time; it’s a part of town where you’re more likely to drive directly to your destination.

Starting at Sola, I headed up the east side of State and down the west. One point of differentiation from lower State Street quickly became clear: the open space—mainly for parking lots and gardens—makes the area feel less dense, and therefore less urban. Moreover, the placement of parking lots at the street, rather than behind buildings, pushes the atmosphere in a suburban direction. Take the Welch-Ryce-Haider funeral home (named for three individuals, as we learned during the Arts District walk), and the U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

The suburban feel kicks up a notch at the Community West Bank and IHOP. In a city desperate for housing, downtown properties like these seem so ripe for redevelopment.

The handsome Trinity Episcopal Church took me back to my college days at Duke—because of the Gothic architecture, and also because it essentially has a quad to the north.

The huge garden at 1436 State Street, home to a Village Properties office, would make a lovely public plaza. The shield shape on the facade has me thinking that the building might have been a financial institution at one time.

The open space is occasionally in the middle of a lot, as is the case with the Orange Tree Inn and Presidio Motel.

Speaking of hotels, every now and then inquiring minds ask me why the Mission Inn, between Islay and Pedregosa, is taking so long. It certainly is a maximalist affair, even more remarkable when you consider the location overlooking a gas station. Someone on site recently told me that the rooms are basically finished, and the hotel should be open in six months or so. I’m still hoping for a tour.

The back of the hotel is less frosted. Don’t let the entreaty to “shake hands with beef”—er, pass—distract you from the trio of side-by-side doors.

Another work by the same artist/poet.

The Courtyard by Marriott Santa Barbara Downtown—a name optimized for search engines, not mouthfeel—does indeed have a courtyard with a pool, as well as an expansive rooftop terrace.

The weirdest hostelry? The short-term rentals at 1524 State Street. Being in a unit toward the back wouldn’t be so bad, but the room right on State is another story. In a perfect world, these would be apartments, but given the way city politicians treat landlords, one can hardly blame developers for choosing hotels over housing.

Another distinguishing characteristic of the area: houses, often converted to commercial use. The single-story buildings are especially charming when a paseo threads through or between them.

I love the L.M. Caldwell building at 1509 State. It was a pharmacy; the Independent and Noozhawk covered the business’s 2017 closing in starkly different ways.

Bigger buildings hog the spotlight, of course. There are some doozies, like the aforementioned U.S. Bankruptcy Court and 1722 State (below), which could pass for a Masonic Temple and brings up three thoughts: 1) The freestanding arch in front is a fascinating folly—it reminds me of a small fish being eaten by a big one; 2) the use of “arts” in regard to medicine always makes me a little nervous—I like my science straight up—but it’s more apt in this case (plastic surgery); and 3) the bench on the south side of the building sure is a pleasant spot to ponder the mechanicals.

PayJunction‘s headquarters at 1903 State is also a mishmash, with vestigial doorways. Was it once an inn? Or another funeral home? (If you were wondering, “The PayJunction platform simplifies the integration of payment processing for developers and businesses, enabling them to accept payments with no-code.” Cleared it right up, eh?)

Last I heard, in early 2023, the midcentury building at 1919 State, along with its neighbors at 1913 and 1921 State, is being converted into a 73-room self-service hotel (i.e., any staff is not necessarily on site and reachable via text). It’s another lot that could’ve/should’ve been housing—and maybe even would’ve been housing, if the city made the prospect more appealing.

One one hand, 1704 State earns credit for putting the parking lot in back. On the other hand, the corner (Valerio) got short shrift. Corners are an opportunity! They deserve better than a maintenance closet.

And let’s put some effort into that devil’s strip.

Attention must be paid to the building’s extreme cornice and massive sconces.

Buildings, buildings, buildings…. There were so many to ponder that I must’ve gotten a little bleary because I didn’t notice the sculpture adorning the facade of the sprawling El Dorado building at 1900 State until I returned home and looked at the photo. (A few days later, while on the way to a dentist appointment, I grabbed a shot of the artwork. It’s much more rewarding up close.) The owner of the building didn’t have any info on the artist, so I asked Nathan Vonk of Sullivan Goss gallery. “According to the public art map that I helped create last year, it was made in 1963 by Janis Mattox,” he replied. Its title is “Santa Barbara.”

Also, I missed the sculpture the first time because I was busy trying to guess what some of the tenants do based on their name. Casa Serena treats addition in women; Bay Kinetic helps cannabis farms with compliance.

There are also quite a few standout buildings. Take 1801 State Street, as engaging in profile as it is straight on.

And the Hawkes Building at 1847 State, with its oversize arched gate to the south. “Est. 2019” is on the front, and the name refers to the developer, the late Emmet J. Hawkes, Sr. (The current tenant is architect Tom Ochsner.)

And the First Congregational Church at 2101 State. Look at the way the cross separates the two doorways! I even like the old-school metal canopy on the side.

Wouldn’t it be nice?

More great buildings: 1811 State Street, with its scalloped roofline (although the fenestration looks off, like the windows want to be enlarged or raised higher up).

1625 State, which I assume is a house that has been converted to commercial.

1628 State Street, which doesn’t look all that amazing from across the street but really charms up close.

La Torre at 1532 State Street, with its tower, balcony, and arches.

The little area next to the driveway is depressing, though. Take care of that plant or kill it already.

I even like 1936 State Street, despite two tenants that aren’t my jam, as no one says anymore. The filled-in archways in the middle would look so much better as windows, and if they have to be filled in, do it with more panache—perhaps referencing the striping at the 7-Eleven’s entrance.

Oh la la, 1421 State! Designed by Carleton Winslow, it was built in 1919-1920 for the Santa Barbara Clinic. It’s a Santa Barbara Structure of Merit, and deservedly so. From the Historic Significance Report submitted to the Historic Landmarks Commission:

The white-washed walls, red-tiled tower, and arcade immediately place the building into the Spanish Colonial Revival Style. The recessed main entrance with a regal iron work door imitates the thick adobe walls common to Spanish and Mexican homes of colonial California. However, the rest of the details place the building in another category of Spanish Colonial Revival itself.

Santa Barbara’s Spanish Colonial Revival style is based primarily on Spain’s Andalusian architecture, which is simplified, vernacular, and pastoral. 1421 State Street is anything but pastoral—the classic Doric columns, the recessed entryway’s sandstone quoining and floral design below shields, and the arched windows of the second story suggest a higher form of design. You wouldn’t find this kind of building in a small Andalusian village.

Instead, the building exhibits characteristics of Plateresque style. Plateresque, or Plateresco in Spanish, translates to “Silversmith-like” and was the dominant architectural style of Spain and its American colonies in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Facades were richly ornamented—as if decorated by an adept silversmith—with floral motifs, heraldic escutcheons, sinuous scrolls, and clusters of jewelry-like patterns (“Plateresque”). Out of Santa Barbara’s many Spanish Revival Buildings, 1421 State Street is the one that references Spanish architecture of the late Gothic and early Renaissance urban styles with Plateresque detailing.

We can see this especially in the second-story façade fitted with gem-like stones. Extravagant seals with scrollwork and dentils can be found above the central window and above each of the arches of the arcade. The decorative balcony features bite-sized Doric columns, supporting Gothic or Moorish arches that abut paneled squared piers. These small intricate and exuberant details place the building firmly in a Plateresque interpretation of Spanish Colonial Revival, making it architecturally significant.

I got lost in the font while trying to figure out what’s written in Latin on the emblems on the facade, so I ran them by a friend. His answers: “ars obstetrica” (the art of obstetrics), “ars medica” (the art of medicine), “chirurgia” (surgery), “radiologia” (radiology).

This sign, however, is an aesthetic mismatch and in need of updating. Reicker Pfau is a law firm; CompuVision and Vision Communications are tech-solution companies that have merged into a new entity called Converged.

And it could go without saying—but won’t—that there is also a fair bit of architectural dreck in Mid-State. That wall on the right really kills the first building below. As for the second one (1815 State), in 2022 there was a plan to convert it to residential—specifically, “a new 16-unit, four-story residential development [that] would remodel the existing commercial building fronting State Street, demolish the existing rear commercial building, convert the front building to four residential units, and attach a new 12-unit residential building and a new 16-space parking stacker.”

Some buildings aren’t what I could call obvious successes, but at least they have their own distinct character. The second one below includes four apartments; the penthouse (7 E. Arrellaga Street) sold for $3.85 million in January 2025.

Enough with the buildings! (For now.) I did this the walk between Christmas and New Year’s, when holiday decor could still be found here and there. The runner-up: Goodwin & Thyne, where the Santa made a stronger impression in real life than it does in the photo. And I also admired the cute garage building off to the side.

The winner was obviously Members Only Barber Shop, a.k.a. MOBS. Check out the little patch of “snow” on the sidewalk.

The lower half of Mid-State is predominantly commercial, and many of the businesses are old-school—a neighborhood market, a diner, a copy shop, a postal shop…. (Props for the latter’s sign, by the way.)

There’s even a newspaper (or was, because I think the Independent has moved to E. De La Guerra.

Speaking of which, when do we get to get rid of them? They’re an eyesore.

Back to the businesses. Mid-State was also home to a gun shop…

…and is still home to a wig shop. The brunette bob—and the accompanying facial expression—remind me of when my friend Tim would dress up as “Nadja.”

In December 2023, when House of Rio opened, I told them I’d swing by sometime. Another promised fulfilled! The shop has a lot of nice stuff. I can’t decide whether my preferred scent is Trophy Wife or Ranch Hand.

I still think Achilles Prosthetics and Orthotics has the best name in town.

More tenants! Casa Azteca does a little of everything: “Whether you’re an individual seeking tax advice, a business owner in need of comprehensive financial solutions, or someone looking for hassle-free DMV services, you can count on us.”

1727 State runs the gamut: precious metals; tax prep; hypnotherapy and life coaching; bookkeeping; makeup artists (HGM stands for Hello Gorgeous Models); cremation (“Low Cost Simple Cremation Arrangements Via Phone, Fax and E-Mail”); house painting; glass tinting; land surveying; and more.

At 1825 State, I had to resist the urge to ring the bell for Private Penthouse.

Again with the arts.

Is this sign part of the eye exam? Because two of those Ts are not like the others.

Above Mission Street, State Street shifts to predominantly residential. There are some apartment complexes and duplexes…

…but mostly houses. And a lot of them are really lovely. I didn’t focus too much on the east side of the street, because I had covered that when I walked the Upper Upper East. Nonetheless, 2304 State (at the corner of E. Pueblo), with its marvelous roof, warrants a second mention.

Here’s a photo dump of the other homes that caught my eye.

These two are undergoing renovations. I’ll have to check back.

Where there are nice houses, you’ll often find nice gates.

Surely David Shelton’s work.

I could use some R&R, but it must’ve been beyond the boundaries of this walk. As for the second shot, any guesses? I think the first line says “no sleep.”

Every walk has to have a Little Free Library, although this one didn’t include anything worth noting. And I think the cart was free, but without a sign, you’re taking a risk.

Speaking of signs, there were ones both amusing and sad.

I would’ve liked to have been there when the maker of this one decided to tilt the numbers.

And here’s one of my very favorite address markers in town. It’s so good.

Every downtown walk also includes moments featured in Where in Santa Barbara…?, like the mosaic at the corner of State and Padre.

And every walk everywhere brings up questions—like what happened here?

And at what point can wayfinding signs get removed?

And why didn’t the city put left-turn lanes in the State Street Parkway between Mission and Constance? The double yellow lines always make me wonder if I’m supposed to turn from the driving lane.

And why is the word “handicap” still acceptable in this usage?

And what is this thing? I don’t think I’ve seen one anywhere else.

And, finally, were the streets above Mission Street once numbered?

They were! The good folks at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum directed me to a 1995 Santa Barbara News-Press article explaining how (in the museum’s words) “a section of Santa Barbara’s streets was originally numbered; but city leaders in the late 1920s changed the numbered street names to names that were tied to people, places, events, etc. in Santa Barbara’s Spanish and Mexican history.” From the News-Press article:

Second Street became Los Olivos. Third Street turned into Pueblo. Fourth Street was rechristened Junipero. Fifth Street became Quinto. […] Los Olivos referred to ‘the olives’ for the nearby mission olives introduced here by early missionaries, according to Rosario Curletti in her book, Pathways to Pavements.

On March 11, you can ask historian Neal Graffy about it when he gives a talk at the museum about Santa Barbara street names.

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Walk With Me…

Downtown Santa Barbara
• The Arty Heart of Downtown Santa Barbara
• Downtown and a Little to the Left
• The Gritty Glamour of the Funk Zone
• The Upper Upper East Is Busting Out All Over
• The Presidio: In the Footsteps of Old Santa Barbara
• Brinkerhoff, Bradley, and Beyond
• Mixing Business and Pleasure in East Beach
• It’s Only Milpas Street (But I Like It)
• The Haley Corridor Is Keeping It Real
• The Small Pleasures of Bungalow Haven
• Is There a Better Neighborhood for a Stroll Than West Beach?
• E. Canon Perdido, One of Downtown’s Best Strolling Streets

Eastside
• Where the Eastside Meets the Lower Riviera

Oak Park / Samarkand
• The Side Streets and Alleyways of Upper Oak Park
• The Small-Town Charms of Samarkand

The Riviera
• The Ferrelo-Garcia Loop
• Scaling the Heights of Las Alturas
• High on the Lower Riviera

Eucalyptus Hill
• On the Golden Slope of Eucalyptus Hill
• Climbing the Back of Eucalyptus Hill

San Roque
• Amid the Saints of South San Roque
• Voyage to the Heart of the San Roque Spider Web

TV Hill / The Mesa
• Higher Education on the Mesa
• The Metamorphosis of East Mesa
• The Highs and Lows of Harbor Hills
• Walking in Circles in Alta Mesa
• West Mesa Is Still Funky After All These Years
• A Close-Up Look at TV Hill

Hidden Valley / Yankee Farm / Campanil
• Campanil is a Neighborhood in Flux
• An Aimless Wander Through Hidden Valley
• The Unvarnished Appeal of Yankee Farm

Hope Ranch / Hope Ranch Annex / Etc.
↓↓↓ A Country Stroll on El Sueno Road

Montecito
• The Westmontish Region of Montecito
• East Meets West on Mountain Drive
• A Relatively Modest Montecito Enclave
• Strolling Under a Canopy of Oaks
• Out and Back on Ortega Ridge
• The Heart of Montecito Is in Coast Village
• Quintessential Montecito at Butterfly Beach
• Once Upon a Time in the Hedgerow
• Where Montecito Gets Down to Business
• In the Heart of the Golden Quadrangle
• Up, Down, and All Around Montecito’s Pepper Hill
• Montecito’s Prestigious Picacho Lane
• School House Road and Camphor Place

Summerland / Carpinteria
• On Summerland’s Western Fringe
• A Stroll in the Summerland Countryside
• Admiring the Backsides of Beachfront Houses on Padaro Lane
• Whitney Avenue in Summerland

Goleta / Isla Vista
• In the Shadow of Magnolia Center
• A Tough Nut to Crack in Goleta
• Where the Streets Have Full Names
• The Past Is Still Present in Old Town Goleta
• Social Distancing Made Easy at UCSB

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