Weekend Reads: Nov. 5-7
A baby seal mystery, falling back (again?), and 8 other stories to consider in your quest to understand the Golden State
Happy Friday! Greetings from What is California? HQ, where we’re bracing for the time change this weekend the only way we know how: Grumbling and pouting and making sure our affairs are in order before falling back inevitably rips our last breath from us in a freefall of fatigue. Anyway, how was your week?
This week’s podcast episode featured an intriguing chat with Sonja Trauss, the YIMBY leader and Bay Area housing advocate who walked us through some of the challenges—both philosophical and political—of building new housing in California:
I hope you’ll check that episode out! And I hope you'll consider checking some of these out if/when you are so inclined:
Why California continues to change the clocks—despite 2018 daylight saving time vote - David Mendez, Spectrum News 1
Don’t forget to set your clocks to fall back this weekend! And if you’re like me, don’t forget to complain about it to anyone who will listen, and maybe even a few people who won’t—like our elected officials who just basically ignored the will of the people to get right with circadian rhythms and either A) end daylight saving time or B) make it permanent. This story goes out to everyone who feels like their brains are being squeezed into applesauce with every idiotic, needless time change—spring, fall, whenever.
From the back to center stage: Latinos take starring role in Lodi wine scene - Benjy Egel, The Sacramento Bee
It’s always nice to see a story about healthy trends toward inclusion that don’t spin out of control into a swamp of culture-war recriminations. It’s just cool stuff happening to cool people in a cool California town—in this case, Lodi. ”It’s this new generation that’s not being timid, that doesn’t need to be in the background ... that’s trying to put its stamp on the industry,” says one winemaker. You love to see it.
Web of corruption: Explore the cronyism, lies, and federal crimes at the heart of San Francisco’s government - Will Jarrett and Joe Eskenazi, Mission Local
It’s easy to get jaded or overwhelmed by the scope of corruption, iniquity, venality, self-dealing and all-around malignancy in San Francisco politics. And this extraordinary story isn’t necessarily going to make you feel any better or more empowered to fix it. But at least this interactive, well-reported chart of SF leaders and officials enmeshed in webs of criminal activity and suspicion shows the reader what’s at stake when so many leaders and officials are tainted. Remember it on Election Day and the campaigns leading up to it. This stuff touches everything. I’d love to see this for L.A. and Sacramento, too.
Oroville moves to become a constitutional republic - Jennie Blevins, Chico Enterprise-Record
This week’s Oroville City Council meeting was just another day at the office for leaders in the small Butte County city: Renew the software service contract… observe Runaway Prevention Month… prepare for Veterans Day… declare a “constitutional republic” ostensibly unanswerable to state lawmakers and public health officials. “Mayor Chuck Reynolds said that a republic is what the city is under,” Blevins reports. “People and representatives make decisions for the community.” Note that this is the same Oroville City Council that just last year voted unanimously to declare a state of emergency during the North Complex West Zone wildfires, looking to state and federal agencies for millions of dollars of relief amid an influx of refugees and a downpour of ash into the sewer system. I’m so glad to know they’ve figured out an independent path forward and won’t require state intervention next time they face humanitarian and infrastructural ruin.
Labs With No One to Run Them: Why Public Health Workers Are Fleeing the Field - Anna Marie Barry-Jester, California Healthline
Michael Lewis’ latest book, The Premonition, chronicles a pocket of public health officials and their attempts to fight COVID-19 against the maddening, gale-force headwinds of local, state and federal bureaucracy. A year and a half later, the situation hasn’t gotten better for California: “Public health departments are losing experienced staffers to retirement, exhaustion, partisan politics and higher-paying jobs,” Barry-Jester writes. And to add insult to injury, San Francisco Giants great Buster Posey retired this week, too. Must we lose everybody? What the hell is happening??
Architect Resigns in Protest over UCSB Mega-Dorm - Tyler Hayden, Santa Barbara Independent
What’s that? Another plutocrat gassing up California’s dystopian rocket to the future? Charles Munger, a 97-year-old billionaire, donated $200 million to build much-needed student housing at UC Santa Barbara. The catch? The dorm must be built exactly to Munger’s (untrained) architectural specifications, with no changes. Those specifications will result in a sprawling monolith with artificial light and ventilation amounting to “the eighth densest neighborhood on the planet, falling just short of Dhaka, Bangladesh.” UCSB consulting architect Dennis McFadden quit his post, calling the $1.5 billion project “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.” Meanwhile, Munger—remember, he’s 97—has shrugged off McFadden and other naysayers, touting the adjustable LED “windows” in each room: “If you want it romantic and dim, you can make it romantic and dim,” he told the NYT. “When in your life have you been able to change the sun? In this dorm, you can.” Naturally, cash-hungry, image-conscious campus administrators are tripping over themselves to accommodate Uncle Charlie’s airless student warehouse, with UCSB Chancellor Henry Yang lauding it as “inspired and revolutionary.” Barf.
He Unleashed a California Massacre. Should This School Be Named for Him? - Thomas Fuller, NY Times
The UC Hastings School of Law is currently named after its founding donor Serranus Hastings, the state’s first chief justice and one of California history’s cruelest underwriters of genocide against the Indigenous population. According to one researcher, “expeditions carried out at Mr. Hastings’s behest killed at least 283 men, women and children, the most deadly of 24 known California state militia campaigns.” After four years of activists and officials alike pushing for change, and within a week of this story’s publication (with a stirring postscript from Fuller), the UC Hastings board announced it would recommend a name change to the state legislature and Gov. Newsom. More about the decision here. Journalism works.
Four Seasons Hotel in Napa Selling for Near Record Valuation - Craig Karmin, Wall Street Journal
Did you know that hotels and resorts are valued by a “price per key” (i.e “price per room”) metric? It makes sense: According to this story, this method “enables them to compare properties with different size and room counts.” This is a very big deal for the Four Seasons in Napa, a luxury getaway that may have only 85 rooms but nevertheless is set for a $175 million sale to an investment group. That pencils out to $2.1 million per key—still shy of the record $2.5 million-per-key valuation fetched earlier this year by the (merely) 59-room Ventana Big Sur.
Hope after wildfire: Tiny sequoias could grow into giants - Brian Melley, Associated Press
The headline says it all. I needed this lift. I’ll take all the good news I can get—especially good news that will outlive and outlast me.
And finally…
Baby seal saved from cars on San Rafael roadway - Roland Li, San Francisco Chronicle
Meet “Ivy,” an adorable baby northern fur seal rescued this week from Bay Area traffic—and also an emblem of one of the most perplexing mammalian mysteries the state has seen in a while. ”Two officers responded to mistaken reports of an otter on the roadway,” Li reports. “The rescue was assisted by volunteers from the Marine Mammal Center, where the seal is now under care. It’s unknown how the seal ended up on the roadway.” It was only about, uh, 600 miles from where northern fur seals are customarily found, well off the coast of California. 🤷🏻♂️
Thanks for reading, and have a safe, happy weekend! 🐻 ❤️
-Stu