 The Monterey Peninsula Toy Box |
Art &
Entertainment
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"Hot damn, we don't have this back in Lubbock!"*
This place has tremendous cultural diversity, with some sort of special event almost every week. If its not one of our famous music festivals, you may come upon an art fair, holiday celebrations, or any number of other things. The chances are good that there's something on the local calendar to interest you.
We have two weekly publications which provide up to the minute information on local events. The first is the Monterey County Weekly, which can be found at nearly any streetcorner, gas station, grocery store, or hotel lobby. The other is a tabloid insert in the Monterey County Herald called GO. Both publications come out every thursday, telling everything you need to know for the weekend and beyond. Similarly, Blog Monterey provides weekly updates on quality events, big and small.
First, the Entertainment:
The Big Exciting Places:
- Sunset Center is located in Carmel on San Carlos between 8th and 10th and is the most prominent performing arts facility on the Monterey Peninsula. Built originally as a school, Sunset Center includes a spectacular civic auditorium that features concerts, a variety of big name entertainers, and many community events. The auditorium was rebuilt and reopened in August 2003 and is now a world-class concert hall with amazing acoustics. With just over 700 seats, it is big enough to make an impression, but intimate enough that the stage feels close to everyone. Sunset Center is the headquarters of the world famous Carmel Bach Festival and the Center for Photographic Art (see below).
Click
the photo for a wide view of the Sunset Center auditorium.
- Monterey County Fairgrounds
can be found on the eastern side of
Monterey one block south of North Fremont Boulevard. Throughout the
year the site hosts a wide variety of events including music and art
festivals, and even horse shows. The
most famous events include the Monterey County Fair, the Monterey Bay Blues Festival, Monterey Bay Reggaefest, and the
Monterey Jazz Festival among many others. In 1967 it was the site of the legendary Monterey Pop Festival, and its appearance today remains much as it was during that historic event.
- Golden State Theatre is located at 417 Alvarado Street in downtown Monterey. With some 1,200 seats, it is the largest and grandest auditorium ever built on the Monterey Peninsula. Originally constructed in 1926 as a vaudeville and movie house, the theater is the last surviving example of movie palace architecture on the peninsula. Over the decades it suffered from neglect, but continued as a first-run movie theater. Several years ago an entrepeneur named Warren Dewey bought the theater and restored it. He operated it for a few years as a performing arts facility, but the tough economic times has slowed down the activity considerably. It is currently operating as a church, though a handful of live music events still make it onto the stage from time to time.
We
have music all over the place. There are bands of
all types, symphony orchestras, choral groups, opera and more.
In Carmel, the aforementioned Sunset Center, brings in entertainers of all types, big names and small names, from all over the world. Now and then there'll be a concert at the Carmel Mission. Mr. Toy especially enjoys the Christmastime choral programs there, for which the building's acoustics are especially well suited.
Then there are the annual festivals. The Monterey Jazz Festival (September) and Carmel Bach Festival (late July - early August) are the biggest and most famous. There's also an annual Dixieland Monterey Festival (March), the Monterey Bay Blues Festival (June), a Christian music festival called Spirit West Coast (July), and the Monterey Bay Reggae Fest (also July).
If you're here for New Years Eve, our First Night Monterey celebration is the place to be, with countless choices of entertainment scattered throughout downtown.
There are also plenty of smaller events throughout the year, too numerous to mention here.
The Monterey Jazz Festival also sponsors an annual Next Generation Jazz Festival, a high school jazz competition, in April. The music is every bit as good as the big festival in September, but all the events are free! The winners of the competition will appear at the regular festival in September.
Throughout the year a number of exceptional jazz musicians perform at a variety of venues. We would caution that few of these are real nightclubs. Most are cramped eating and drinking establishments with a musician crammed into a corner as an afterthought. The aforementioned Monterey County Weekly and GO can give you the specifics in the clubs listings.
Getting Here
Driving
You Crazy
Tourist
Attractions
vs.
Real Life
If
live theatre is your cup of tea, this is the place to be. We
have a number of excellent theater companies on stages big and small.
Mr. Toy has attended and enjoys the following spots. This is not a
complete list by any means.
- Carmel's
Forest Theater has been in business since 1910,
making it the oldest outdoor live theater west of the Mississippi.
Towering Monterey Pines frame the stage, the heavens form the ceiling.
They put on some great live productions and they have outdoor movies,
too! The fire pits will help keep you warm on foggy nights, but you
will want to take a jacket. You also might want to take a cushion as
the rustic wooden benches can be a bit hard on the backside. A popular
tradition is to arrive early with your dinner in hand to eat while
waiting for the show to begin. You'll find it on Mountain View Avenue,
just east of downtown. For tickets call the Forest Theatre Guild's
office at 831-626-1681, or order on-line. An on-site box office is also
available for spur-of-the-moment decisions.
- Monterey Peninsula College.
On the campus at Fremont and Aguajito in Monterey. Big productions that
rival the big city shows. Very flashy, very well done.
- Pacific Repertory Theatre. Headquartered
at the Golden Bough Playhouse in Carmel on Monte Verde between 8th
& 9th. Pac-Rep continues Carmel's long-standing theatre
traditions. The theater building includes a 300 seat main auditorium
plus an intimate theatre in the round at the rear of the building
facing Casanova Street. It's right smack in the middle of a residential
neighborhood. The theatre was there first, the houses came later. Get
there early for good parking. Now and then Pac Rep also performs at the
outdoor Forest Theater (see above).
- The Bruce Ariss Wharf Theatre. Located on Fisherman's Wharf. Small town community theatre at its best.
Now the Art:
Carmel
is loaded with art galleries. There are several galleries in
Monterey and Pacific Grove too. Most of them are commercial businesses,
which is OK, because even artists need to make a living.
Although Carmel got its start as an artist's colony, be aware that galleries featuring local artists are becoming harder and harder to find. Regrettably, the days are long gone when an artist's income was sufficient to prosper in the Carmel lifestyle. The sad fact is that extreme real estate prices have driven most of the artists away.
Many larger galleries, especially in Carmel, are part of chains. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, since these chains usually have a limited number of outlets in places like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Carmel. They bring the sophistication of the big city without the smog outside the door.
There are some important differences in the sales tactics of galleries, though. Some of them know that most of the people who visit are merely browsing to enjoy some beautiful works. Salespeople at such galleries are willing to let you view them in peace. They are available to answer your questions, and hopefully make a sale. Other galleries are staffed by career salespeople who act like used car salesmen. It won't take you long to figure out which are which.
If you find something you'd like to buy, be cautious. Some pictures at first glance look like original paintings, but are actually mass produced prints with paint dabbed on the surface. One local artist (who shall remain nameless here) has made an art of selling massive quantities of his reproductions, not just locally, but across the country as well.
In recent years a printing process called "giclee" (pronounced gee-clay) has become popular. Giclee prints can reproduce the original colors of a painting with exceptional accuracy. However, they are basically glorified ink-jet prints which cost very little to produce, but in galleries they will sell for thousands of dollars. Based on accelerated aging tests, galleries claim they will last for about 80 years without fading, but the process hasn't been around long enough to prove that in real-world conditions.
What we're trying to tell you is before you plunk your credit card on the salesperson's desk, be sure you know exactly what you are getting.
A quirky and unexpected area to find local artists is in the tiny industrial town of Sand City near Seaside. Among the auto body shops, warehouses and cement plant you'll find a few interesting studios and workshops.
Here are two galleries featuring local artists exclusively:
- The Carmel Art Association is located in Carmel on Dolores between 5th and 6th. Its one of Carmel's oldest institutions, run by local artists for local artists.
- Venture Gallery in Monterey is also run by local artists. It's on the lower Alvarado Street mall, next to the Portola Plaza Hotel. You can enter it from the mall or the hotel lobby.
There are a few non-profit galleries and art museums:
- The Center for Photographic Art is located at Sunset Center in Carmel, San Carlos and 9th. The center honors Carmel's great photographers of the past and promotes new generations of artists.
- The Monterey Peninsula Museum of Art
has two locations in Monterey to serve you: The original place is on
Pacific Street between Jefferson and Polk, right across the street from
Colton Hall. The second place, called La Mirada, is located just off of
Fremont Street on Via Mirada. It's just west of Monterey Peninsula
College.
Will you be here with your sweetheart around Valentines day? This definitely isn't for everyone, but an erotic art show is held every year about that time. Minors are prohibited. The Monterey County Weekly will have the details on time and location when the date approaches.
*NB: The quote at the beginning of this page was inspired by a friend of ours who, many years ago, upon first visiting the central California coast, made that very comment every time he saw something new, even though he was not from Lubbock. No offense is intended towards the fine town of Lubbock. In the event Lubbock residents manage to take offense anyway, please note that Mr. Toy does not subscribe to any form of political correctness and thus will make no accommodation for them. He expects that true Texans, if they are as thick skinned as they claim to be, would agree that it is not worth wasting time over.