Features & Essays

KCSB: The Station Behind the Fun-Drive

KCSB’s goal isn’t just to provide entertainment, but also to provide training in radio, educational outlets and community unification.
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Graphic Voices Showcases New Media

Last weekend, Feb. 20-21 the Limitless Coalition (with the generous help of the Film and Media Studies Dept.) hosted the second annual Graphic Voices conference, dedicated to linking together students...
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Sam Crane Live at the Batcave

Aside from the occasional hungover student biking to the overloaded library or a bird cawing overhead, it’s quiet on campus on Sundays. Life—the buzz of students chatting with friends or bikers pe...
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A Graduating Editor’s Final Words

Let me tell you a story about a 19-year-old who came to UC Santa Barbara with a dream of being an anchorwoman. She wanted to take over for Katie Couric one day, she told her friends, who were disappoi...
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In Loving Memory of Lita Stone

This year, our campus and the Nexus suffered a tragic loss with the passing of Artsweek writer and CCS literature student Lalita Stone. I did not know Lita well outside of working together. She wrote ...
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Live at the Batcave: Pookie

Pookie. The word means “vagina” in Tagalog and is slang for a heroin pipe. In Isla Vista, it’s the name of a loud garage band that refuses to describe their genre, piping that anyone who asks ...
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Demi Anter: A Not-So-Starving Artist

  At 10 after three, a girl wearing a flowing white blouse and silver sunglasses made her appearance at a table in front of the Coffee Collab. Her reddish hair framed her face perfectly, with blu...
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Waka Flocka Flame Declares Presidential Candidacy

Well, the tragic news is out, people are trashing their campaign signs, putting the caps back on their spray paint cans and undreading their hair: Waka Flocka Flame is only 28 years of age and has mul...
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Camping at Coachella: A Packing List

Ahh, Coachella: those three days of magical music bonding in Indio, California where the Spicy Pie is eaten by thousands and Tupac appears from the dead, albeit by hologram. It’s the place where Bey...
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Live at the Batcave: The Crash Landings

Meet The Crash Landings. This local Isla Vista punk collaborative exists for one purpose — to fight the infestation of ska and reggae with high-pitched shrieks, disorganized anger, mosh pits, songs ...
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Art Shall Live: ‘The Catalyst’ Launch Party Literary Arts Magazine Shines Spotlight on Lucidity, Tribe Ties and More

Love, the sublime and creation would be virtually unimaginable without their offspring: the arts. The art of Isla Vista is a penetrating reminder of how fortunate we are to live here, able to enjoy ou...
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Student Documentary Gets Selected for SBIFF: Blue Horizons Students Dive Deep with “Mussel Man”

Out in the open ocean past the Santa Barbara harbor, the mussel man drives a self-designed boat at 4:30 a.m. to the harvest ropes. Using a fisherman technique rarely found in the U.S., he pulls up mor...
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Utah Report: I Went to Sundance and It was Awesome

Every January, Hollywood descends upon (or ascends to, technically) the picturesque snow globe that is Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. Since its founding in 1978, Sundance has been a f...
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The Nutcracker Principle

As Christmastime draws to a close, so does the annual “Nutcracker” season. For many ballerinas, it is the four-month long period of never-ending Tchaikovsky and footwear malfunctions. For everyone...
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‘Catalyst’ Hits Stride in Launch Party

Greeted by a refreshing, chilly night, hundreds of students and locals gathered in the parking lot of the Isla Vista Food Co-op last December during dead week. The normally asphalt wasteland was trans...
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