••• “I visited the Frog Grotto with my grandkids today and it’s totally changed,” reports C. “Scores of frogs have been removed, with the remaining sanitized ones displayed like an interior designer was called in.” I don’t drive on Paterna Road often enough to have a good sense of how different it is, but a Riviera resident said someone has been working on it for months now. Anyone know more?
••• A reader reports that 19 Blue Salon at 19 W. Ortega Street (State/Chapala) will close in January, but the salon has not confirmed it.
••• Booker T. Jones plays the Lobero Theatre on March 28.
••• The New Year’s Day Polar Dip is back on this year—this time, at Leadbetter Beach, rain or shine. “The group dip is at 11:30 a.m., but arrive early to allow time to park and partake in pre-Dip activities. Participants need to sign up and fill out a waiver at sbpolardip.com. There’s no obligation.”
••• Press release from the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History:
A three-inch-long spider was spotted lurking in the manicured landscaping at a high-end coastal business in Santa Barbara County this fall. Although harmless to humans, the Joro Spider (Trichonephila clavata) is a potentially invasive species, as there is some evidence it can outcompete native orbweavers in southeastern North America.
The Joro Spider is an orbweaver native to east Asia. Their webs can be as wide as 10 feet. The species was observed around homes in Georgia in 2014, the first reported sighting in the United States. Since then, it has spread west as far as Oklahoma and north as far as Maryland. The discovery of one in Santa Barbara County marks the first report west of the Great Plains. […] The female spider was immediately adjacent to an area where shipments of flowers and plants are received, which likely explains how it got there. No other webs were found near the spider, which probably arrived alone inside some plants shipped from another part of the country.
••• Opening January 2 at Sullivan Goss: Oskar Fischinger: A Deeper Look. Pictured: “Blue Square Cluster” from 1937.
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I had heard complaints from someone that lived on Dover about what a mess it had become and I know they cleared out stuff that was on paper and would disintegrate in the rain. It is kind of sad that it’s become a little bit too cleaned up and sterile, but people may start adding frogs to it again.
Yes! My parents live nearby and we got the scoop. The frog wall frontage had to have some trees replaced, and the owner had to individually move all the frogs. They put many of them back, but a lot of them (especially the soft ones) had become soggy and too friendly for rats – they were nesting in them. Yuck. So those got the heave-ho, but we heard the homeowner kept some of the other frogs so they can cycle them out throughout the year. Super thoughtful.
As a neighborhood resident with kids, seeing how much has been removed is sad. The claims of soggy frogs is overstated. 90% of the frogs removed were durable and plastic, maybe faded and weathered by seasons, but ones added by the community over the years. Hopefully the homeowner recognizes it’s not “theirs” to control – it’s a community destination that many people love. Allow the frog wall to grow organically as it did in the past.
I see this a new chapter that feels more like a fun opportunity: Bring on new frogs, new memories and more wonderful quirkiness.