By the Way Big City Heart Beats in Monterey Not very many areas this size have the cosmopolitan nature, the array of restaurants, the world-class things to do that we enjoy. Are we spoiled?

by Dan Shafer

Before we moved to Monterey, my wife and I had spent our entire married life together in the Silicon Valley. When we wanted to experience something culturally wonderful, we’d head up to The City (which is and always will be San Francisco despite the fact that San Jose was closer and had the larger population). We attended theater, wandered through art galleries, shopped at national stores like Nieman-Marcus, enthused over the Christmas window displays at Gump’s, and enjoyed some of the finest dining in the world. We also both enjoyed the multi-lingual, multi-cultural aspects of The City. We find it boring to live in places where most of your neighbors are just like you, where everyone speaks the same language in the same accent. Even in larger Silicon Valley cities, we found that too often to be too true.

Frankly, when we made the decision to move here, we didn’t have the slightest inkling that we would find ourselves living in a region that was, on its own scale, every bit as cosmopolitan, multi-cultural and artistically rich as the Peninsula has turned out to be. Equally frankly, I think we — and probably a great many of our fellow Peninsula dwellers — are a bit jaded and take such qualities far too casually.

There’s not enough room here to list all of even my favorite snippets of ideas, so you’ll have to settle for some samplings and meanderings. My hope is that you’ll discover or re-discover at least one new trait of our beautiful peninsula that will re-ignite the joy of living here.

So Many Students

One of the things that isn’t immediately obvious about Monterey to a visitor or a newcomer is the number and kinds of institutions of higher learning we have here. Not only are there a number of these, but they are in many ways more diverse than almost any other educational institutions you’ll find anywhere else in the country.

Institutions include Cal State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB, with a heavy emphasis on Latino students and studies), Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS, with a wildly diverse population of students from dozens of countries throughout the world), the Defense Language Institute (DLI, with servicemen and women from our Armed Forces and those of allied forces as well, taking instruction in more than 20 languages), and a number of other smaller, more specialized institutions. Not to mention Peninsula College, the two-year junior college that serves the Peninsula. And I haven’t even strayed over into Salinas where there are even more colleges and students.

I remember clearly a day when I was sitting in Plume’s, a local coffee shop hangout with free Internet access, working on an article for this magazine, and I happened to look up from my ritual chai lattÈ. Two tables away were four young people: a dark-haired Caucasian man, an Oriental woman, an African-American woman, and a tow-headed, freckle-faced blond guy. As I watched them, it became clear they were students at MIIS and DLI, all studying different languages and comparing their specialties. On my way out, I stopped and chatted for a moment and found that these four people — all under 30 — were fluent in no fewer than 11 languages.

Arts Galore

The Pacific Repertory Theater in Carmel (aka PacRep) has a national reputation for excellence in performances it offers at three local venues. From La Cage Aux Folles and Peter Pan to Macbeth and Midsummer Night’s Dream, this is one of the finest rep theaters in the country. There’s something going on there almost all year.

A couple of years ago, Dewey Warren bought out the old and historic Golden State Theatre on Alvarado Street. The showplace features a gorgeous old-fashioned Wurlitzer organ, classic films, and live performances from the likes of Hal Holbrook doing his one-man Mark Twain show and The Smothers Brothers. The completely restored art deco theatre has restored a lot of buzz and activity to downtown Monterey.

And of course there are the art galleries and art museums. Carmel seems to have a gallery on every street corner, each one more unusual than the last and all jammed with artwork of all kinds to suit all tastes. The Monterey Museum of Art dazzles visitors. Its current special exhibition (through April 29) is “Artists at Continent’s End: The Monterey Peninsula Arts Colony, 1875-1907.”

What did I leave out? Email me at dan@65mag.com and share your favorite with me. I don’t want to become jaded!

Dan Shafer
Associate Editor
dan@65mag.com