A Garden, Plus Variety
Where can you stop to smell the roses on your way to the theater? The Chancellor’s Rose Garden, outside the Irvine Barclay Theatre on the UC Irvine campus.
Before the show, you can drop by the UCI Bookstore and check out its theater, dance and music books to bone up on what you’ll be seeing.
If you’re hungry before or after the show, visit any of the numerous restaurants in the University Center at UCI, formerly Irvine Marketplace. Take the bridge across Campus Road, and you won’t have to dodge traffic.
Perhaps you’d prefer a sylvan glade in which to meditate on your arts experience. In that case, take a walk through Aldrich Park in the center of campus.
A Sweet Idea Blossoms
The Chancellor’s Rose Garden was just a bit of grass until April 1996, when a few far-sighted people decided to plant an attractive cross-shaped garden of roses. Their idea blossomed. Now there are about 370 roses representing 92 varieties.
The roses bloom 10 months a year, peaking in early May and June, but many plants are blooming now. They’re all hybrids, and duplicate specimens have been placed next to each other to ensure a bigger splash of color--reds, yellows, pinks, whites and combinations.
You’ll find such varieties as Betty Boop’s, Ingrid Bergman’s, Blue Girls, Old Timers, Kaleidoscopes, Red Fires, Just Joey’s and Tournament of Roses, among others.
But you won’t find any explanatory plaques or tags identifying which species are which because the plaques are stolen almost as quickly as they’re put in, says School of Engineering lecturer Joseph W. Foraker, who tends the site lovingly, with the help of a handful of other volunteers. The garden guardians have stopped trying, so you’re on your own.
One sign does remain, however--a warning not to pick the roses. They’re there for everyone’s enjoyment. Please be courteous and comply. Plus, you can damage the plant by trying to tear away the blossom from the stem.
Future plans for the garden include placing a few benches and a large arbor at one end.
You can find two other rose gardens on the UCI campus: One in front of the McDonnell Douglas Auditorium and one in front of the Rockwell Engineering Center. These are smaller, with about 150 roses at the two combined.
The Chancellor’s Rose Garden is open 24 hours a day.
Song and Dance and. . .
Irvine Barclay Theatre (4242 Campus Drive. [949] 854-4646) opened in 1990. This gem of a theater provides a wide range of offerings--plays, musicals, chamber music concerts, ballet, modern dance programs, lectures and things beyond.
It can offer all of this because it’s an independent nonprofit organization that serves as a public-private partnership between the city of Irvine, the university and the private, Irvine Barclay Theatre Operating Co.
Each of the partners provides its own programming, and the three partners combine funding and land for it all.
Built for about $17.6 million, the 750-seat theater is named for Richard Barclay, an Orange County philanthropist who gave the leading gift for the theater’s construction. The Cheng Hall Auditorium is named for Newport-based philanthropists, Dr. George and Arlene Chen. Arlene Chen is also a member of the board.
Some 215 events are offered yearly by the theater management company, UCI and dozens of community presenters and producers. The theater has hosted more than 800,000 people at over about 2,000 events since it opened. It’s expecting its millionth customer any day now. You could be the one, but no one is officially tracking who crosses the line.
Some of the upcoming events include:
* Nov. 12-20: UC Irvine production of the Broadway musical “Guys and Dolls.”
* Nov. 22: The Los Angeles Piano Quartet will play music by Mozart, Dvorak and Brahms as part of the chamber music series at the theater jointly sponsored by the Laguna Chamber Music Society and the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.
* Dec. 1: Handel’s “Messiah,” performed by the San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, vocal soloists and the John Alexander Singers, all led by early music-specialist, Nicholas McGegan.
* Dec. 10-24: Irvine-based Ballet Pacifica dances “The Nutcracker.”
* Jan. 8: Stratford (Canadian) Festival Shakespeare actor Brian Bedford presents his one-man show, “The Lunatic, the Lover and the Poet,” reading some of the Bard’s sonnets and speeches drawn from the plays.
* Jan. 11: The Takacs Quartet performs string quartets by Haydn, Dvorak and Bright Sheng as part of the Laguna Chamber Music Series.
* Jan. 14-15: Shanghai Kunju Opera Theatre of China performs scenes from the 400-year-old Kunju style of Chinese theater and from the more familiar Peking (Beijing) Opera.
* Feb. 1-2: The Canadian dance company La La La Human Steps presents the U.S. premiere of “Salt” as part of the theater’s seventh Contemporary Dance Series season
Take note of the small memorial fountain to the left of the theater’s box office windows. It is a dedicated to Michael Lee Lewis, a founding board member who died in 1998, about 10 months before the theater opened.
The fountain, completed in 1993, was paid for by private donations, led by a major gift from the Koll Co., where Lewis had been the vice president of marketing. He initiated the significant water elements and large public sculpture projects at many of the company’s properties in Orange County.
This modest, meditative fountain was designed by Langdon & Wilson Architects.
Loads of Books
The 40,000-square-foot UCI Bookstore moved to its present location (off Pereira and West Peltason drives, in the University Center) in 1990. It houses about 10,000 textbooks, which change every academic quarter, plus about 60,000 books of interest to the public.
These include books on literary criticism, philosophy, foreign languages, English and writing, reference and a host of computer-related materials.
There is also a computer sales and service store for Macs and PCs. The store is an Apple-certified technical support store.
Other parts of the store include art supplies, greeting cars and UCI emblematic clothing and gifts.
The store is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. It hosts a noontime author series in which writers read from and sign their books. Next up is poet Tony Barnstone, author of “Impure” and other books, on Nov. 30. Barnstone teaches creative writing at Whittier College. Call (949) 824-2665.
On Dec. 1, UCI Extension business professor Mark Alch will be on hand to talk about his book, “How to Become a Millionaire.”
Read, Relax or Compute
Daniel G. Aldrich Jr. Park is a 21-acre oasis dating to UCI’s planning days in 1962. It has large trees, rock outcroppings and sweeping lawns ringed by impressive academic buildings.
Formerly called Campus Park, it was renamed in 1984 to honor the university’s first chancellor. The site is used for graduation ceremonies, concerts and special shows. In the afternoons, you can see students relaxing, reading or even working on their laptop computers (signs of the New Age).
The campus originally consisted of nothing more than native grasses, scrub brush and cacti. An initial grove of 12 eucalyptus grandis trees from Australia was planted in 1964, the first time these trees had been used in landscaping in North America.
Today, the park includes about 11,000 trees representing 40 species--33 varieties of eucalyptus, six of pine, two of coral, cherry, carob and others. Many of the varieties were new to Southern California.
Aldrich Park is open 24 hours a day.
Across the Bridge
There are many shops and restaurants across the bridge at the University Center at UCI.
Sample an exotic drink such as a Wou-Wou (vodka, peach schnapps and cranberry juice) or a Rumba Punch (a trio of rums, plus peach schnapps and banana liqueur) at The Trocadero (4237 Campus Drive, B-165. [949] 854-5599. Hours: Monday-Thursday, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m.; Saturday, 5-11 p.m.; Sunday, 4-9 p.m.; Happy Hour, Monday-Friday, 4-6 p.m.) While there, tackle a plate of Baby Back Ribs ($13.95), Grilled Salmon with a pesto Alfredo linguine ($11.94) or Alaskan Halibut encrusted with sun-dried tomatoes and balsamic port wine sauce ($11.95). Alternatives include a variety of pizzas, salads, sandwiches and pasta dishes.
The Steelhead Brewing Co. (4175 Campus Drive at Bridge Street. [949] 509-2977) makes handcrafted beers on the premises (tours can be arranged; call to make an appointment). You can sample all the current ones on tap for $5. (Daily, 11:30 a.m. until about 10 p.m. for food; drinks as late as 1:30 a.m.) Specialties include straw-yellow Hefeweizen; deep reddish Steelhead Amber; dark gold Bombay Bomber India Pale Ale, and other seasonal brews. Selected wines are available.
For edibles, try the Steelhead Fish Tacos (corn tortillas wrapped around beer-battered Alaskan Halibut, $8.95) or Barbecue Chicken Pizza ($9.25).
This is only one of five Steelhead Brewing Co. sites. The others are in Eugene and Portland, Ore., Burlingame, Calif. and Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
Chinatown Restaurant and Bar (4139 Campus Drive. [949] 856-2211) is a popular with people wanting to try adventurous and reliable samples of Mandarin, Shanghai and Szechwan cuisine.
One of the restaurant’s signature dishes is aromatic shrimp ($15.50). Other favorites include Fresh Pork with Spicy Wild Black Bean Sauce ($6.50) and Ten Ingredients Fried Rice ($7.50). Other items stimulate the visual senses with evocative titles such as Rolling Lettuce Chicken ($10.95), Gold Coin Beef ($13.50), Gunpowder Scallops ($16.95) or Heaven, Sea and Earth ($16). Ask for explanations.
Other places in the University Center to nosh, nibble and drink include Diedrich Coffee, Noah’s New York Bagels, Mrs. Fields Cookies, Denny’s and In-N-Out Burgers. Walk around to discover even more.
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IF YOU GO
Getting There: Exit the San Diego (405) Freeway at Jamboree Road; go south. Turn left onto Campus Drive. The theater is on Campus Drive near West Peltason Drive, across from the University Center mall.
Sights: If you’re lucky, you might spot in the Irvine Barclay Theatre audience such celebrities as Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Della Reese, Drew Carey, Fiona Apple or Armistead Maupin.
“Most of them are aware that their presence creates a stir, and will do things to minimize that,” said Theater Director of Communications Karen Drews.
Asides: What you won’t find at the UCI bookstore are recordings. It once stocked 15,000 CDs and cassette tapes (with CDs outnumbering cassettes 3 to 1). Many were single copies. But they’re all gone. The store stopped stocking them about three years ago because of a lack of customer interest, says associate director Dan Dooros.
