Show Your Significant Other Some Love With a Weeknight Excursion Southern California is imbued with romance and beauty everywhere you look, so why should a candlelit dinner be reserved for only the weekends? Not only are there less tourists and crowds at your favorite restaurant on a Tuesday night, but dates during the week are a great way to both invoke magic into the mundane and fall back in love with where we live all over again. We’ve picked our top 12 spots in Orange County for weekday dat

Ayun Halliday’s hand-drawn comics and illustrations for Narratively are rife with slapstick comedy, raw vulnerability and undeniable camp, garnering giggles and gasps from start to finish. Readers who enjoy those are bound to react similarly to Ayun’s other work. A Northwestern graduate with a background in theater; a prolific graphic novelist; a mother of two; and the purveyor of an award-winning mini-magazine, or zine, The East Village Inky, Ayun is a master of doing her own thing. Since The East Village Inky’s first issue way back in 1998, Halliday has chronicled her meandering journey as a mother and native New Yorker with her signature zany sketches. She talked to Narratively about how learning to embrace what makes her a misfit ultimately helped her find her creative voice.

How This OC Non-Profit Is Changing People’s Lives Imagine a workplace free from employment discrimination; a place that hires anyone who wants to find and keep a job regardless of their mental health diagnosis, developmental disability or criminal record. Imagine a community that dismantles these barriers by accommodating every worker’s unique need, permitting them to work and live with a newfound autonomy and dignity. That place exists in our own backyard—Goodwill of Orange County, a non-profi

A young girl was transferred to yet another foster home the day she turned 12 years old. As it dawned on her that her last four birthdays had gone uncelebrated and forgotten, her eyes welled up with tears—until her new foster father surprised her with a birthday box. Birthday Box Underprivileged Children The gift box, ornate and festive, and packed with toys for a girl her age, was from Project Giving Light, a non-profit organization. Founded in 2017 by husband and wife Harry and Kim Bagramian,

2020: the year that drove a stake in the heart of the music industry. One has to ask themselves how something so essential can be taken away from us so easily. For as long as I’ve lived, I’ve thought life without music was not worth living. Evidently, this was not true and came from a place of privilege. We’ve all had a little bit of privilege taken from us this year. Some more than others, but everyone got checked. If 2020 can teach us anything, it’s that life is worth something even in the mo

Karim Shuquem is always reaching for something: sometimes a trumpet or a microphone, other times a paintbrush or a black block. Far more often, however, he’s reaching for things less tangible. The tag Shuquem painted in alleyways as a teenager still aptly describes his chronic condition: “A-N-X.” Angst. “There’s this thing that’s been bugging me about myself,” the multimedia artist and musician admits. “When examining my motives, I wonder: ‘Why do I feel the constant need to do something?’” Do

In a time that seems to fray the very fabric of our social lives, Andy Schiaffino finds comfort in the hiss of a disintegrating cassette tape. Body / Negative is the transgressive solo project of the 23-year-old non-binary artist and producer, who utilizes minimal equipment, multimedia experimentation and creative camaraderie to actualize their haunting, abstract soundscapes. Drawing on their own journeys through the dark and dire, Andy delivers a primal, sensitive and serene seven-track album,

This seemingly never-ending season in quarantine has been a sly saboteur for health and wellness journeys everywhere, and after several months of this new lifestyle, restarting your wellness routine can feel insurmountable. That’s where Renaissance ClubSport in Aliso Viejo comes in: self-care is their specialty. From a full spa and yoga classes to healthy, customizable meals, the careful re-opening of Renaissance ClubSport is a wellspring of help when it comes to safely reinvigorating your me time in order to heal your body and mind. Here are six ways Renaissance ClubSport can help you get your self-care routine back on track.

Los Angeles has always had an obsession with death. Our city’s celebrities and socialites have a habit of perishing in the most dramatic and mysterious fashion, Rozz Williams of course being no exception. It’s no surprise that from out of punk rock would come a death obsessed, black clad, sorrowful, mournful form of expression and rebellion known as deathrock. To celebrate the launch of Mikey Bean’s new 600 page encyclopedia of deathrock called Phantoms: The Rise of Deathrock From The LA Punk Sc

Looking for the most memorable way to kick off the new decade? Well, look no further. Whether you’re on the hunt for black-tie and bodacious or family-friendly and free, we’ve rounded up the finest NYE dinners, parties and celebrations happening all over Southern California. What: A Black, Silver & Gold Affair | NYE 2020 at the westdrift Hotel When: Dec. 31, 9 p.m.-2 a.m. LOCALE Magazine,

2019 was a year full of fresh faces releasing undeniable breakout albums and veterans making their returns to grace. Even though it may seem like singles are the logical way to release music in 2019, it would turn out that people want full and cohesive artistic statements with emotional twists and turns. Don’t believe the hype, all the devices we’ve surrounded ourselves with and all the information flooding our minds, we’re still human, the nature of our hearts has not changed much. Artists like

Hey, thrill-seekers—are you in search of a real-deal haunting this Halloween season? If so, then the historic ocean liner, the Queen Mary, welcomes you aboard for her 10th annual Dark Harbor extravaganza. Here are five unearthly delights that will surely send shivers down your spine. Hailed as one of the most haunted places in America, the Queen

I make it a point to never miss a Cold Waves event whenever they rear their heads in Los Angeles. I only wish you all did the same. You do realize this is the country’s premiere industrial music festival, don’t you? Taking place in the heart of that genre’s American upbringing… you get that right? For some reason, I feel Cold Waves never get their due in Los Angeles. Maybe industrial isn’t as popular as metal or punk around these parts but come on, if you’re into fast, loud, heavy music and don’

Sometimes the songs that speak to us the most are devoid of words at all. In a time where we are incessantly bombarded with others’ words, instrumentation, with its ever-changing intensity, velocity, texture, and tone, has the potential to be far more evocative and emotive. The chamber music of Explosions in the Sky that imbued the Hollywood Palladium’s walls on September 12 epitomized this idea. Starting on September 11, the Austin-based quartet Explosions in the Sky (E.I.T.S.) launched an ann

An anonymous donor from Orange County gave $1 million to Orange Coast College’s astronomy program in 2013 to go toward a new astronomy village. Today, the Astronomy House’s construction is complete and its doors are open to Orange Coast College faculty and students.

Museums like the Bowers in Santa Ana are at the forefront in transforming their spaces, from cabinets of curiosities to spaces of open dialogue and public awareness. “First Americans: Tribal Art of North America,” is the Bowers’ newest exhibition and features more than 100 pieces of artwork of native people from the Arctic North, the Northwest Coast, California, the Southwest and the Great Plains. [...] “We hope to bring a simple awareness to the beautiful complexity and diversity, the relevance and reality, and the joy and layered story of the first American nations with this exhibition,” Emily Mahon, senior director of education at the Bowers Museum said at the exhibition’s opening on April 7.

Walk into a dispensary, slide your ID under a bulletproof glass window and voilà, you’re buzzed into a room filled with dozens of pot products and greeted by “budtenders” ready to consult you on cannabis. Budtenders — marijuana dispensary workers knowledgeable on an array of pot products — are often young people working long hours to make a living. Since the legalization of recreational marijuana in January, working in the cannabis industry has become an increasingly common job for students.

Environmentally conscious vendors and exhibitors will be in the Quad Thursday from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. as the campus comes together for Orange Coast College’s 13th annual Green Coast Day. “It’s our 13th anniversary and we’ve gotten a lot of different exhibitors to attend this year,” said Chihiro Kajiura, a 20-year-old economics and sociology major and Green Coast Day student coordinator. “So this will be our biggest Green Coast Day yet.”

Surrounded by the historic buildings and glittering skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles, tens of thousands gathered on Saturday, galvanized and united by outrage over gun violence. Demonstrators of all ages joined in the nationwide March for Our Lives, a student-driven movement in the wake of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., which left 17 dead, to demand legislative action on gun control. In Washington, DC, March for Our Lives organizers estimated that 800,000 people flooded the streets, while hundreds of thousands more gathered in more than 800 sibling events across the country.

A first-time retrospective art exhibition of the late Southern California artist Jim DeFrance will open in Orange Coast College’s Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion Thursday. The exhibition, titled “Jim DeFrance: Light, Space, Materials,” is curated by former Orange Coast College art history instructor, Tom Dowling and former Frank M. Doyle Arts Pavilion Director Trevor Norris. The display will chronicle nearly 50 years of DeFrance’s career, with works reflecting several different styles throughout his life. The exhibit will showcase some of DeFrance’s early pieces from 1965, the pinnacle of the Op Art movement, such as the acrylic on birch painting, “Dazzler.”