Archive of: Features

Eat Drink Play Love

By Hillary Louise Johnson and Leilani Marie Labong; Photographs by Jeremy Sykes

Eyes in the Sky

This is flight club. More than ever, drone photographers are lighting up Instagram feeds in cities across the globe with seemingly impossible perspectives of landmarks and landscapes. And with their cameras’ unmatched ability to capture “nadir imagery”—looking straight down while hovering in place—from as high as 1,000 feet, even the most familiar sights can be rendered in strangely beautiful ways. Prepare to fly over Sacramento and see it as you’ve never seen it before.

White Gold

Call it farm-to-chopstick. Not only does nearly every bite of sushi rice in the United States come from California, but almost all of it—97 percent, to be exact—comes from the Sacramento Valley. And when it comes to ultra-premium Japanese-style rice (yep, there’s a difference), Yuba City’s Montna Farms is the American gold standard.

A League of Her Own

Rebecca Lowe’s colleagues at the NBC sports desk refer to her affectionately as “Mother of Dragons”—such is the fierceness of the 36-year-old London native’s passion for English Premier League soccer, which she covers for a growing American fan base. The broadcaster—who lives in El Dorado Hills with her husband Paul Buckle, head coach of the Sacramento Republic FC, and their 1-year-old son, Teddy—shares the inside scoop on how she manages her dual roles as a soccer guru and soccer-loving mom, and why there’s nothing quite like rooting for the underdog.

By Jessica Rine

A Welcome Home

From Los Angeles to London, civic leaders are searching for creative ways to combine technology and high design to shelter their cities’ growing homeless populations. In Sacramento, where tent villages have brought unwelcome national headlines, a home-builder-turned-councilman and an ambitious MIT-trained developer believe they may have the answer to solving the housing predicament.

By Hillary Louise Johnson

Best of the City 2017

Greener Acres

By Leilani Marie Labong

Hot New Hoods

By Elise Craig, Hillary Louise Johnson and Kate Washington; Photographs by Jeremy Sykes

Troubled Waters

On Feb. 7, following heavy storms, a massive crater was discovered in the main spillway at Oroville Dam, the tallest in the United States, which led to the use of a second, emergency spillway. Days later, over 180,000 people in the region were forced to evacuate amid threats of the emergency spillway’s collapse. Photojournalist Max Whittaker chronicled the crisis as residents fled to seek safety and shelter.

The Place Maker

If you felt the pulse of the city quickening the last time you spent an evening out dining, shopping or gallery hopping in midtown, Oak Park or the R Street Corridor, Ron Vrilakas likely had a hand in that.

By Hillary Louise Johnson