2006 

 THE O.G. SACTOWN HQ 2006-2009

Our first office occupied the top two floors of the 1926 Elks Tower. We loved the architecture, the views and being in the heart of the city at 11th and J streets. Fun fact: It was once the home of rock station KZAP too.

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM

Here are Sactown founders and editors-in-chief Elyssa Lee and Rob Turner in their least favorite situation—posing for a photo. They’re holding mock covers of the magazine, in front of a poster touting the first cover story they ever wrote together—soon after they got married—for Inc. magazine.

DAMN DEADLINES

Our first issue was supposed to be Nov/Dec 2006, but like many other launches, ours arrived fashionably late. So we began a month later instead with the Dec/Jan issue, which awkwardly straddled two different years. It took a global pandemic to realign our issue pairings nearly 14 years later.

CRAP, WE FORGOT THE COVER

We were so consumed with producing stories for our first issue that we didn’t think about, well, the cover, until the last minute. Luckily for us, Sara Albert—a Davis native who was a finalist on America’s Next Top Model and made our inaugural (and, as it turns out, our final) “Hot List”—had just happened to finish a photo shoot, and we were able to work with her team to publish images from that session. Our founding art director (and concert poster artist extraordinaire) Jason Malmberg conjured the eye-catching typographic treatment. Our magazine logo was created by Fuel Creative Group. The font is Clarendon, and fun fact—the “n” is actually an upside-down “u.”

PREMIER VERSUS PREMIERE

The Bee reviewed our first issue, and while they said many kind things, they also claimed that we had misspelled “Premier” on our cover. We had not. A retraction was snarkily denied. (But we’re totally over it now. Yup.)

THE KITCHEN SINK

Our first issue was nothing if not eclectic. We had features on both mid-century modern designer Ray Eames and then-Kings star Ron Artest. We had a gorgeous photo essay of the Sacramento Ballet’s Nutcracker tryouts by our senior contributing photographer Max Whittaker. And we even commissioned a design contest for a new “Welcome to Sacramento” sign.

Read our profile of Ray Eames: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman; and our Nutcracker photo essay: Tiny Dancers

A COVER COVER-UP

It was only after our Dec/Jan launch issue came out that we realized that the holiday gift guide cover line would look dated in January. So we printed round stickers (pictured at right) touting the Ray Eames profile and ran all over town covering up the gift guide line on thousands of newsstand copies. D’oh!

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 2007 

OUR SINGLE MOST TALKED ABOUT PHOTO FOR YEARS

For our very first issue (and virtually every one since), we borrowed an idea from Sports Illustrated to kick off each issue with large, two-page photos that capture moments in our region. Here, from our second issue, this image by photographer Max Whittaker became our most award-winning—and talked about—photograph for years. Max captured it during Arnold Schwarzenegger’s inaugural celebration at the Capitol the night before he was sworn in as governor. It shows Maria Shriver and her mother Eunice Kennedy Shriver in profile, producing an almost surreal image where each of them seemed to be looking through time at the other.

 THE STARS ALIGN

To this day, we still don’t know how director Joe Carnahan—then a rising Hollywood director who still lived part-time in Fair Oaks—saw our first issue, but he called to tell us about his new film Smokin’ Aces starring Jeremy Piven (then riding high on HBO’s Entourage). We immediately asked for an interview and a cover shoot with both of them and, improbably, they agreed.

Coincidentally, we had already reached out to former Sacramentan and thirtysomething star Timothy Busfield for a Q&A about his new show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, as well as the B Street Theatre that he co-founded here with his brother Buck.

Toss in our photo essay of Schwarzenegger’s star-studded inaugural gala, and our “Why Not Here?” idea for a Sacramento Walk of Fame, and poof—we had a completely unscripted Hollywood ending for our second issue.

THE COVER THAT MADE THE GUV GUFFAW

We were thrilled that Maria Shriver and EGOT winner Rita Moreno agreed to be on the cover of our fledgling magazine to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the California Hall of Fame. But excitement quickly turned to fear when we were told we had only 10 minutes to shoot the cover at the California Museum. Happily, we got 45.

Weeks later, while covering the Hall of Fame event, editors Rob Turner and Elyssa Lee saw Maria, who grabbed Arnold to introduce them. Rob and Elyssa had a copy of the new issue on hand, which Arnold instantly asked for and held up, recounting how funny he thought Rita’s head looked floating next to his then-wife, given Rita’s black outfit against the black background.

We were later told he commissioned an art piece with Maria on various magazine covers for a spot adjacent to her Capitol office door, and this cover ended up being one of them.

Read our Q&As with Maria Shriver and Rita Moreno

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 2008 

SPEAKING OF RESTAURATEURS…

In the 17 years we’ve been publishing Sactown, we’ve never seen a collection of A-list local chefs gather in one place like this. The occasion was precipitated by the near-eviction of Corti Bros. grocery store after 38 years at this East Sacramento location. The rallying cry of the community paid off, and Darrell Corti still runs his family’s grocery that dates back to 1947.

THE PRINCE OF AMERICANA

Sacramento singer-songwriter and musician Jackie Greene holds the unique distinction of being the only person we’ve profiled twice in our first 100 issues—here in 2008, and a decade later in 2018. This first feature was about the young 27-year-old star-in-waiting who was fielding praise from Rolling Stone and The New York Times (which said that he “could be the Prince of Americana”), appearing on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and joining the surviving members of the Grateful Dead for the first of many tours. Even back then, we knew he’d be around for a long time. We’re glad we were right.

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 2009 

BEST & WORST COVERS OF THE YEAR, BACK TO BACK. OK, MAYBE OUR WORST COVER EVER. OK, NOT MAYBE.

It was 2009—the depths of the Great Recession. Everyone was concerned about the economy, so we decided to devote a cover story to the subject. Not a bad idea. Just really bad cover execution. We were so worried about how an issue like this would sell on the newsstands that we loaded it up with way too many cover lines, and the colors and composition were, let’s just say, as bad as the economy. Contrast that with the very next issue. From our office atop the Elks Tower, we looked out the window and found inspiration—the Crest Theatre, which was set to undergo a massive facelift. Photographer Jeremy Sykes literally held a 6-foot tripod over his head to get the perfect angle. And our art director Jason Malmberg masterfully Photoshopped the hell out of it to turn the word Crest into “Best” and “City.” It’s still one of our all-time favorite covers.

THE LAST SIX INTERVIEWS WITH OUR MOST NOTORIOUS SERIAL KILLER

It was one of the most brutal crime stories in Sacramento history. A 59-year-old woman named Dorothea Puente was running a boardinghouse on F Street and, as it turned out, had been poisoning her tenants, burying them in her garden, and pocketing their government assistance checks. Sactown senior editor Martin Kuz started writing to Puente in prison about a year before our story and was amazed to get a response one day inviting him to visit. Martin ended up visiting with her six times (including Valentine’s Day) in about six months, and conducted detailed interviews from many others in Puente’s orbit at that time. She never confessed, but Martin’s interviews were the last she ever gave. She was defiant until the end. “I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks,” she told him. She died two years later. To this day, it remains our most-read online story ever.

Read Martin Kuz’s profile: The Life and Deaths of Dorothea Puente

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 2010 

THAT TIME DAVID GARIBALDI WAS OUR ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE

When it came time for our very first Fall Arts Preview issue, we turned to local artist David Garibaldi for both the cover and the illustrations inside. For a few days, David set up shop in the Sactown offices to work on sketches and brainstorm ideas. Then he headed to his home studio to make the magic. In contrast to his better known speed painting, it was amazing to see the deliberate and detailed work he did on this cover and the pieces inside, bringing the arts alive with every stroke of the brush.

THE RED-EYE FALL FASHION SHOOT

Our 2010 Mad Men-themed fashion shoot took place at the airport’s retro Terminal B from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., helmed by photographer Christopher Kern. Look close and you might recognize future actor Ryan Guzman (the Step Up franchise, The Boy Next Door with Jennifer Lopez, and now 9-1-1 with Angela Bassett), who was then 23, opposite the lovely Brooke Grebe, then 19, from Grass Valley.

A SCRATCH ’N’ SNIFF COVER GOES GLOBAL

It started with a beautiful cover by our art director Jason Malmberg. And because we included the Mountain Mandarin Festival in the issue, we featured an orange slice on the cover. Then came the idea. What if you could smell the orange? We grew up loving scratch ’n’ sniff stickers. After a huge amount of research by our intrepid publisher Steve Childs, we found out it was possible. Not only was it our first viral hit in the social media age, but it was picked up by The New York Times and beamed around the world. The only downside: Soon after, we had a cover story on chocolate (pictured below), and readers were disappointed it didn’t smell like chocolate.

CHOCOLATE AND CAKE

Fittingly, our cover story on chocolate (another favorite cover design) featured a profile on the Sacramento-bred band Cake by Marc Weidenbaum—a longtime editor at Tower Records’ Pulse! magazine. Max Whittaker took the portrait. Design by Jason Malmberg.

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 2011 

BIBA CAGGIANO: THE QUEEN OF ITALIAN CUISINE

We asked writer Rick Kushman to profile the legendary Biba Caggiano in 2011 to mark the 25th anniversary of her iconic Sacramento restaurant that changed the local dining scene forever. None other than Darrell Corti had declared her 10-layer Lasagne Verdi alla Bolognese “the single best dish in Sacramento.” For our story on her, we commissioned artist Jason Mecier, who grew up in North Highlands and Grass Valley, to render her portrait made entirely of pasta, beans and corn. Sadly, we lost Biba in 2019, at age 82. “I have been so lucky in my life,” she told us when she was a mere 74. “Honest to God, I know I should let go a little bit, but this place [to me] is like I gave birth to a child.”

Read our profile of Biba Caggiano: La Dolce Biba

SACRAMENTO NATIVE DAUGHTER JOAN DIDION ON HER STRONGEST MEMORIES OF HER HOMETOWN

Joan Didion’s 2005 book The Year of Magical Thinking was about life after the recent deaths of her husband and daughter. In it, she describes a panic attack she had at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, and how the only way she was able to cope was by thinking back “to Sacramento, high school dances at Christmastime. This felt safe. I thought about the way we danced, close. I thought about the places on the river we went after the dances. I thought about the fog on the levee driving home. I fell asleep maintaining focus on the fog on the levee.”

When we had the chance to interview her in 2011, we asked about the power of the rivers for her. “I learned to swim in the Sacramento River, and the American. I spent a lot of time on the rivers, swimming and rafting and just doing stuff … I would have to say the rivers are my strongest memory of what the city was to me. They were just infinitely interesting to me. I mean, all of that moving water. I was crazy about the rivers.”

Read our conversation with Joan Didion: Where She Was From

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 2012 

LINA FAT: CULINARY PIONEER

We love this issue for many reasons, but looking back, it means so much to us because of Lina Fat. She was the matriarch of the legendary Fat family and, though trained as a pharmacist, she became the culinary force who molded Sacramento’s oldest restaurant—Frank Fat’s, founded by her father-in-law in 1939—into the modern culinary destination it is today, winning the prestigious America’s Classics Award from the James Beard Foundation in 2013. She passed away in 2019, and leaves behind an extraordinary legacy.

Read our look at Lina Fat’s incredible story and place in Sacramento cuisine: East Meets Best – Chef Lina Fat

THE ECSTASY AND THE AGONY OF OUR SAN FRANCISCO 49ER STAR, FORREST BLUE 

He was a top draft pick by the 49ers in 1968 and spent his last decades as a Sacramento businessman. But a career filled with concussions led to Forrest Blue’s premature death in 2011 at 65. The cause was CTE—a fatal disease linked to repeated traumatic brain injuries that was just coming into the spotlight as writer Tim Swanson was reporting this powerful story in our Feb/Mar issue, about a man whose past fractured his relationships with his most important fans—his children.

Read our 2011 story of Forest Blue, his family and the growing understanding of CTE: The Hollow Man

THE INDIANA JONES OF FOOD & WINE

We love to read—and publish—deep, well reported profiles on interesting people. But there’s one sub-category that we particularly love, which are stories about people like Darrell Corti—people who you may think you know, but really don’t. In this case, most people think he’s a grocer at his store Corti Bros. And he is. But what most people don’t know is that he’s one of the most respected tastemakers anywhere, traversing the globe to unearth the best of the best. If that sounds hyperbolic, just listen to Ruth Reichl, former editor of Gourmet magazine. As reported in our story by Rick Kushman, Ruth recalled that in 1978, Colman Andrews, co-founder of Saveur magazine, told her that Darrell “knows more about food and wine than anyone else in America.” Her comment to us: “He still does. He’s the most under-appreciated resource in the food world.” And Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse? “Before anyone, he was importing things from Europe that were unimaginable before then. Olive oil, prosciutto, even truffles. He was the original one.” Surprised? Mission accomplished.

Read our profile of Darrell Corti: The Tastemaker

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 2013 

INTRODUCING… VIVEK 

To most Sacramentans in 2013, the new managing owner of the Kings, Vivek Ranadivé, was a mystery. Sactown was fortunate to land the first local profile of the man who assembled the group of investors who would ultimately keep the NBA team in Sacramento. Writer Anita Chabria wrote in the piece, “He is genuinely confident he will achieve his goals, and yesterday’s problems are in the past. He has a conviction that carries its own charisma—it makes the people around him feel like if they follow, they will be part of the victory. Because there will be a victory.” After the extraordinary season the Kings just finished, he might finally be right.

Read our profile of Vivek Ranadivé: The Game Changer

FINDING HIS RELIGION 

Our 2013 profile of essayist Richard Rodriguez, beautifully written by Stu VanAirsdale, was prompted by the release of his then-new book Darling. In it, Richard, who was also a contributor to PBS NewsHour, was attempting to reconcile the contradictions between his Catholic faith and his sexuality. But the roots of his spiritual journey started in the pews of East Sacramento’s Sacred Heart church (shown here in a portrait by Max Whittaker) and perhaps the unlikeliest of places—in the glow of the silver screen at the majestic Alhambra Theatre.

Read profile of Richard Rodriquez: Finding His Religion

THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE FIRST MASS SHOOTING OF SCHOOLCHILDREN IN AMERICA

On a clear blue day on Jan. 17, 1989, a man whose peripatetic life included years as a troubled Sacramento youth, walked onto a playground in Stockton and shot 34 children, killing five. In the span of only a few minutes, the act marked the first mass shooting of schoolchildren in American history.

In the decades since, school shootings in this country have skyrocketed. Our hope in doing this story as the 25th anniversary of the shooting approached, was to explore the long-term effects on the survivors, their families, and the political forces that shape gun policy in California and the nation.

Writer Stu VanAirsdale spent months interviewing dozens of people, including Cambodian immigrant Khorn Ing, seen above holding a photo of her daughter Sokhim An, who was killed that day at the age of 6. She had run to the school upon hearing of the shooting, and fainted when she saw her daughter.

“Ing presents the wallet-sized portrait along with a 3-by-5-inch snapshot of Sokhim’s dead body,” Stu wrote. “She offers them matter-of-factly. They are less mementos to Ing than proof to her visitors of who was lost. In the latter photo, Sokhim’s black hair darts over her forehead, and a crimson bloodstain blossoms from the puncture in her sky-blue sweater.”

Read Stu VanAirsdale’s full story about the tragedy and the anniversary: Trigger Effect

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 2014 

BEHIND THE SCENES WITH GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER’S SPEECHWRITER

Sacramento is a political town and so covering politics is a must, but as a bimonthly magazine, it’s not about breaking news. It’s about storytelling. So we were thrilled to have longtime Sacramento Bee reporter Gary Delsohn, who worked as Gov. Schwarzenegger’s speechwriter from 2006-2009, give us a behind-the-scenes look into one of the strangest gigs in all of politics—writing for the biggest celebrity politician on the planet. A sample: “As for my concerns about the truth, the challenge was to square my background with my new vocation. As a journalist, you know from the start: you don’t lie or exaggerate. Accuracy and honesty are everything. Now I was writing for a politician, and one from Hollywood at that. It was a job, I soon learned, that sometimes required obfuscation. ‘We don’t lie,’ a Schwarzenegger political operative once joked. ‘We tell the truth very slowly.’ ”

Read Gary Delsohn’s full essay: Between the Lines

BUILDING A BETTER CITY

There is arguably no one who has impacted the built environment in our region in such a monumental yet meaningful way as Mark Friedman—from audaciously luring billionaire Richard Branson to Sacramento (launching one of the first Virgin Megastores in the U.S. here in the ’90s), to adapting historic structures into modern dwellings (playing landlord to Gov. Jerry Brown), and developing the Golden 1 Center and adjacent Kimpton Sawyer hotel. In 2014, as the developer took on the latter projects, writer Anita Chabria profiled him, quoting his then director of design, Stephen Jaycox, who said, “Mark is motivated by a really core belief that design has the power to make people’s lives better.” Mark, he says, constantly asks, “What is the consequence for the city? Does it move the city in the right way?” At a time when hopeful Kings fans chanted, “Here we stay,” here Mark Friedman built.

Read our profile of Sacramento’s prolific developer: Here He Builds

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 2015 

HANKS FOR THE MEMORIES 

There have been a lot of fun moments in our first 100 issues, and this was definitely one of them. In 2011, native Sacramentan Colin Hanks (son of Tom) and Sean Stuart announced they were crowdfunding for a new Tower Records documentary, All Things Must Pass. We immediately reached out and told them we wanted to do a big story on it. They said it was at least a year off. So we tried again in 2012, and 2013, and 2014. In late 2014, with 48 hours’ notice, Colin and Sean invited our team to Tower Records founder Russ Solomon’s home for their final day of interviews with Russ. Marc Thomas Kallweit got great pictures, Stu VanAirsdale penned an amazing story, and Jason Malmberg nailed the cover. In fact, when Colin saw the cover on Twitter for the first time, he tweeted, “That’s pretty damn cool.” By the time the story came out in 2015, it had taken four years, and was worth every moment.

Read our profile of the All Things Must Pass documentary: A Long, Strange Trip

THE GODFATHER OF MODERN SACRAMENTO DINING 

Had a great meal lately? There’s a decent chance it can be traced back to Randy Paragary, the man who set the proverbial table for generations of restaurateurs. As Anita Chabria reported in 2015: “His kitchens have been the training grounds for generations of Sacramento chefs. Like [Patrick] Mulvaney, Rick Mahan—chef-owner of renowned restaurant The Waterboy—worked for him for years, as did Chris Nestor, chef-owner of Ink Eats & Drinks and Capitol Mall’s House, Ella’s current executive chef Rob Lind, and literally dozens of others. In turn, they’ve trained their own batch of professionals, as is the custom in the industry. ‘It’s sort of like the genealogies of Scripture,’ quips [Darrell] Corti. ‘So and so begat so and so who begat so and so.’ ” Randy passed away in 2021, but his legacy lives on.

Read our profile of Randy Paragary: Host of the Town

FROM RANCHO CORDOVA TO ROCK CENTER

We first interviewed NBC News’ Lester Holt back in 2012 when he was the weekend anchor of the Nightly News. But when the Cordova High and Sacramento State alum got the top job in 2015 after Brian Williams’ departure, we knew it was time for a deep dive into Lester’s Sacramento years as well as his new high-profile role.

Not only did writer Stu VanAirsdale spend time with Lester in Sacramento, but he also joined the anchor for an editorial meeting (where Lester and Andrea Mitchell debated whether Biden would jump into the 2016 presidential race) and a taping of the Nightly News at Rock Center in New York (where Lester keeps a bass guitar in his office that he bought in a J Street pawn shop in 1976).

From Stu’s profile: “No one has ever said a bad word to me about Lester Holt,” says Brian Stelter, the [former] host of CNN’s media show Reliable Sources. “This is the television business! People have bad things to say about everybody. It just says so much about who he is that there’s such universal love and support and affection for him. ‘Love’ is not a word often heard about television anchors.”

In addition to Stu’s deeply insightful story, we also love the portrait that Jeremy Sykes got of the journalist in KCRA’s studios (where Lester started as a cub reporter), and Jason Malmberg’s picture-perfect design treatment.

Read our behind the scenes profile of Lester Holt: Ready for Prime Time

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 2016 

MIGHTY RUTHIE CLAIMS HER POWER

She won two NCAA division titles, two Olympic gold medals, made the cover of Sports Illustrated, and played eight seasons as the Sacramento Monarchs’ original franchise player. In Hillary Louise Johnson’s revealing profile of Ruthie Bolton, she discovered a woman who had, for so many years, lived two lives—one as “Mighty Ruthie” on the basketball court, and one as a victim of domestic violence.

As Hillary wrote in our Oct/Nov 2016 issue:

“When you’re in it, you can’t see,” says [Bolton]. “Most women in that situation get to the point where they think they deserve it. ‘I don’t deserve to get out. I don’t deserve more.’ You get so used to it. [It’s only after you] put someone there you love—your niece, your daughter, your sister—that you’re like, ‘Wow, I could never see my sister go through this. I could never see my daughter go through this.’ Now it makes more sense. You have to put a frame around it.”

Does Ruthie miss playing the game that gave her so much of that sense of control in her own life? “I miss it every day,” she says. But that doesn’t mean she’s not up for what comes next. What’s different about Ruthie today is that she’s learned to reach out and take chances, rather than keep her head down and power through. In doing so she’s found reserves of strength—and flexibility—that the old iron-willed “Mighty Ruthie” might not have known she possessed. She is facing a future she has yet to fully figure out, but to which she’s ready to bring her A game. She even has a new mantra: “Claim your power. Your power becomes your purpose, and your purpose becomes your peace.”

Read more in the full story: A Mighty Heart

THAT TIME WE INVITED SEVEN ARCHITECTURE FIRMS TO DESIGN A NEW OBSERVATION TOWER FOR DOWNTOWN SACRAMENTO

For our 10th anniversary in 2016, we published our first-ever “Future Issue.” We filled it with renderings of proposed projects, exciting ideas from other cities, and much more. But we also invited seven amazing architecture firms (all of which are based here or had some connection to the city) to conjure visions for a new observation tower in or around downtown Sacramento—the best way to appreciate the rivers and the dense tree canopy that makes us the City of Trees (and to add some visual panache to our largely lackluster skyline). We were floored by the creativity and energy they all brought to the table. The tallest of the proposed towers, at 1,000 feet, was designed by AECOM, the international firm that designed the Golden 1 Center. We’d be thrilled with any of the extraordinary designs, and will continue to hope that someday, a visionary out there takes our city to new heights.

See all seven designs in our 2016 feature: Top of the Town

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 2017 

AS SOCCER SOARS, ONE OF ITS GLOBAL STARS IS RIGHT AT HOME 

Yep, that was El Dorado Hills’ Rebecca Lowe—the host of NBC Sports Premier League coverage—in season three of Ted Lasso. And like Lasso’s AFC Richmond, she’s prone to believe—in her case, that Sacramento’s dreams of Major League Soccer will eventually come true. As she told us in 2017, “There’s just no better place for MLS. The team is ready, the city’s ready, the stadium will be ready—everything is set. You just need to come to one game here [to see that] MLS is written all over this city. We’re good to go—we just need that green light.” From her lips to commissioner Don Garber’s ears.

Read our Q&A with Rebecca Lowe: A League of Her Own

HOMECOMING QUEEN

You all know the story by now. Indie actress Greta Gerwig makes her debut film, the semi-autobiographical Lady Bird, about growing up in Sacramento. The New York Times calls it “perfect.” And the film wins best picture at the Golden Globes, where Greta accepts the award, saying, “I want to say thank you to my mom and dad and the people of Sacramento who gave me roots and wings.”

Cue waves of civic pride.

Our writer, Leilani Marie Labong, interviewed Greta over lunch in New York, “blotting tears from my eyes,” moments after seeing a screener for the film. We published her profile in December 2017. An excerpt:

On the evening in October 2016 when the movie crew shot the innocent frolic between Lady Bird and Danny in the McKinley Park rose garden, the one where the lovebirds waltz through the rose bushes and name a star in the sky to commemorate their new romance, Gerwig’s friends and family gathered to watch, including her brother and sister-in-law, who live in Land Park, [high school boyfriend Connor] Mickiewicz’s sister and nieces, and [high school drama teacher Ed] Trafton, who said of the experience, “We were in the present, seeing a story inspired by the past, and witnessing something incredible about Greta’s future. It was time travel.”

Gerwig, whose long history with the park includes countless hours spent in its library, competing in swim meets at its pool, and the aforementioned shenanigans in the rose garden with Mickiewicz (forevermore, the dark-pink Precious Moments rose will be “their” rose), concurs that the night was very emotional. “Shooting that scene was one of those crazy, full-circle moments that don’t come along very often,” she says. “It couldn’t have happened anywhere else.”

To think that financiers—shunning our agrarian bohemia—actually suggested that she shoot in Canada. (Also known as “Hollywood North,” the country offers significant tax incentives to filmmakers.)

“No, no. It needs to be in Sacramento,” Gerwig said.

“But it’s a universal story,” they argued.

“It’s not universal because everybody had a childhood,” Gerwig retorted. “It’s universal because people know what it means to be from a place, and I only know what it means to be from Sacramento.”

Read more in the full profile: Homecoming Queen

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 2018 

THE STEPHON CLARK PROTESTS 

In March 2018, hundreds of people took to the streets to protest the fatal shooting of Stephon Clark by police. Though the rallies were largely peaceful, emotions flooded churches, freeways and City Hall as Sacramento became the latest community to struggle with the death of a young, unarmed Black man. For the six days that followed, Max Whittaker powerfully chronicled the clashes and conversations that unfolded.

See the full photo essay: Six Days in Sacramento

THE TOP CHEF WHO FEEDS OTHER TOP CHEFS

In 2014, we published a cover story entitled, “Where the Chefs Eat.” We asked dozens of the region’s top chefs where they go for a good meal when they’re not working. Kru, owned by chef Billy Ngo, was cited more than any other restaurant in the city. “Billy is probably the best chef in town,’ said Chris Nestor, chef-owner of House Kitchen & Bar and Ink Eats & Drinks. “He is just an absolute genius,” added Allora chef-owner Deneb Williams. As chef Randall Selland explained in Leilani Marie Labong’s 2018 feature profile on Billy, “[He] has a genuine desire to be the best at what he does. Not just for show, either, like a lot of other chefs, but because something inside him demands it. Call it an insatiable curiosity, call it drive. Whatever ‘it’ is, it’s strong.”

Read our 2018 profile of Billy Ngo: The Boy with the Dragon Tattoo

IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT (AND HE FEELS FINE)

William T. Vollmann is arguably the most celebrated writer ever to live in Sacramento. Sure, Joan Didion became one of the biggest literary icons of the last century, but after she left. Raymond Carver lived here, also before he broke big. And we have other acclaimed authors. But only two Sacramentans ever won the National Book Award—the top prize of the literary world. And amazingly, it was Vollmann and Didion on the same night in 2005—he for fiction; she for non-fiction.

And as our writer Hillary Louise Johnson discovered when she profiled him in 2019, there are those who believe he’s got a realistic shot at the Nobel Prize in Literature. She spent time with him on the occasion of the publication of his then-new two-book series called Carbon Ideologies, about climate change. A short excerpt:

“It’s interesting to think how Sac will be over the next 100 years,” he says brightly. “We might be in one of the few sweet spots. We have two rivers, so we might not suffer from drought the way the rest of California will.” The optimism doesn’t last long. “But then we have floods,” he says. “Eventually we’ve got to be underwater.”

This is the key to Vollmann’s particular brand of witness-bearing. It may seem impossible to the casual observer that anyone could move so fluidly between gentlemanly householding in Land Park and squatting in squalor on the riverbank—an everyman in an everytown—and could genuinely purport to see no particular difference in the human qualities of either lifestyle. But from a post-apocalyptic perspective—which is where William Vollmann truly lives—either option is an earthly paradise to be savored and adored compared to what yet may come.

Read more in our profile of the enigmatic author: The Curious Case of William T. Vollmann

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 2019 

OUR FIRST SACRAMENTO-BORN PRESIDENT? UNLIKELY, BUT WE’RE PROUD TO CALL HIM ONE OF OUR OWN AND SO IS HE

You may have heard the news by now. Sacramento native Cornel West says he is running for president of these United States (at least as of press time in mid-June). He’s certainly advised many presidents. He’s also been a longtime professor at Harvard and Yale. Oh, and he inspired The Matrix trilogy, too.

Our writer, Hillary Louise Johnson, interviewed Cornel at his mother’s South Land Park home in 2019. His lovely mother Irene B. West was the first Black teacher in Elk Grove and later a principal. She passed away in 2021, at 88. An excerpt:

“I always say that I am who I am because somebody loved me,” he says. “And my first loves, at the age of 4, were in Sacramento: Mom and Dad and Shiloh Baptist Church. Anytime I give a speech, I can’t tell a story about who I am right now without telling a story about Sacramento and its impact on me. I’ve been away for 50 years, but I’m Sacramentan to the core. People will say, ‘Well, you seem to be tied to multiracial solidarity, a more humanistic orientation.’ And that had everything to do with Sacramento.”

Read more in our profile of Cornel West: True West

THE INSPIRING STORY OF A JOURNALIST WHO BECAME AN EVANGELIST FOR HEALING

This story was more personal for us than most. Sactown editors Rob Turner and Elyssa Lee go way back with Melinda Welsh (pictured above), the founding editor of the Sacramento News & Review, and her husband Dave Webb, a relationship that started when Rob landed at SN&R in 1991 right after graduating from UC Davis.

In 2015, Melinda was given devastating news. After battling cancer for a year and attacking it with chemo, radiation and surgery, it had progressed to Stage IV, and her doctors told her she had six to 12 months to live.

But in late 2018, thanks to the advances in immunotherapy, she received equally stunning news: The cancer had disappeared. She shared the amazing details with us, and we immediately asked her if she would write about it for us. As a journalist, she already had a big head start. We hope you’ll read her incredible essay at sactownmag.com.

The response to her story was overwhelming, and one of the letters that it prompted is worth reprinting again. It’s probably the only letter to the editor that we’ve printed twice.

“I am a PhD candidate in cancer biology at the UC Davis Medical Center,” wrote Hannah Petrek. “I lost my mother to cancer just over three years ago. Some days I feel my work is in vain. I imagine this disease as a daunting monster that we can’t seem to defeat. But I forget about the patients, the individuals, who are counting on my late nights and painstaking experiments. I leave work in the dark, but I look up into the lit rooms of the hospital and think about the people waiting on my next discovery. Every time I receive a sample from the hospital to implant into a mouse, I silently thank the patient for their contribution to moving the science forward and I promise them that I won’t stop fighting with them until we find better treatments.

“I am writing this to thank you for reminding me why I do what I do. I may not have been able to save my mom, but I am doing everything I can to help people like you and make sure no other daughter has to lose their mother. Tomorrow I will go to work renewed with a new passion knowing the efforts of scientists have made a difference in at least one person’s life. Thank you for inspiring me.”

Read Melinda Welsh’s original piece: The Big Sick

THE BEST WAY TO STOP A BAD GUY WITH A GUN IS A GOOD GUY WITH A GUN RESEARCH CENTER

His story is almost impossible to believe. An ER doc at UC Davis, Garen Wintemute realized that the only thing better than treating victims of gun violence was preventing the violence from happening in the first place. So he created the California Firearm Violence Research Center (in part by donating millions via his salary, very frugal living—no dining out, no TV—and some inheritance), recruiting researchers and doctors to impact legislation aimed at doing just that. He helped get both the state and national assault weapon bans enacted in the ’90s, though the national one sunsetted in 2004, resulting in a horrific spike in mass shootings. Still, he’s made an impact in countless other ways and, in 2019 at age 67, he told writer Kate Washington that he’ll never retire. “Hopefully five, 10, 20 years from now, I’ll still be in the game.” We hope so, too.

Read our profile of Karen Wintemute: Armed with Knowledge

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 2020 

THE SACRAMENTO 49ER

Raised in Elk Grove and a standout player at Pleasant Grove High School, Arik Armstead was selected in the first round by the San Francisco 49ers in 2015. The team reached the Super Bowl in 2019, only to lose in the final minutes, but Arik has become a star for the team.

When Covid hit in March 2020, Arik jumped into action in his hometown, working to incentivize people to order from local restaurants who were suffering from the sudden loss of business. He also spent time working on childhood education and other causes in the Sacramento area.

Our writer, Stu VanAirsdale, sat down with Arik in downtown Sacramento soon after he and his wife Mindy moved back to town, and just weeks after the murder of George Floyd.

Stu: You’ve spoken pretty evocatively about tearing up while watching the video of George Floyd’s death in May—feeling helpless, feeling frustrated, feeling angry, as well as motivated. What social changes do you want to see as a result of ongoing protests against racism and police brutality?

Arik: I think we’re seeing them. I’ve been motivated by the unity and the humanity shown by so many people coming together in solidarity—being fed up and protesting. I think what I would want to see is conversations change in households. I would want to see people start rebuking racism and speaking out against it even more. It’s been far too long, and I think a lot of people are fed up. I want to see change from the local and the national elections. I want to see [elected officials] who are progressive and speak out against racism and are for breaking down and dismantling systemic racism. I want to see people like that in power. I don’t want to see people who are bigots and promote racism and use it for personal gain or political power. I want to see people like that out of these positions of power.

I think we’re going to get there. If we continue to work on ourselves individually, go out and use our voices and vote in local and national elections and put people who are speaking out against racism in these positions, then I think we can go far as a country.

Read the rest of our conversation with the local sports hero: NFL Star Arik Armstead Has a Few Things to Say

THE FALL AND RISE OF TRESA HONAKER

Tresa Honaker started 2012 on a high note. The local aerial artist and the troupe she founded were performing to sold-out audiences, creating mesmerizing vignettes with bodies wrapped in billowing ribbon up to 60 feet in the air. Then a terrible accident left her paralyzed below her mid-spine, suddenly grounding the lifelong dancer. But Tresa refused to stay down.

As Leilani Marie Labong reported, years after losing her ability to walk, Tresa gave a TEDx Sacramento talk in 2015 at the Community Center Theater:

“[My accident] definitely was a life-changer. What I kept thinking was that I sustained an injury and there’s got to be a way I can regain more than what I have right now,” she told a rapt audience. Company members Joe Simms and Marni Marshall performed an aerial routine before Honaker took the stage, perhaps to provide a sense of what was at stake, and what had been lost. For the finale, they loaded her into an aerial net for a solo performance in which the troupe leader proved that you can take flight again, no matter how long you’ve been grounded.”

Read about Tresa Honaker’s extraordinary journey in our profile: After the Fall

OUR FINAL INTERVIEW WITH A TRUE LEGEND

Our 2020 Q&A with Wayne Thiebaud took place shortly before his 100th birthday, and he would pass away the next year, at 101. Due to Covid, Max Whittaker took this portrait in the doorway to Wayne’s studio, where the artist briefly pulled down his mask. When Hillary Louise Johnson asked him what advice he’d give to young artists or his younger self, he answered, “I’d give the advice that I teach. The basis of that essentially is something they never want to hear, and that is to work your head off, and work harder than you think you need to work. Work when everyone else stops. The students who stay after class, who come on days when they don’t need to come, who do work outside, who ask more questions—those are the ones that are interesting. And that interest is what produces interesting work.” A teacher until the end.

Read our 2020 Q&A with Wayne Thiebaud

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 2021 

RESTAURATEURS TACKLE THE MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS IN THEIR INDUSTRY

In 2018, Patrick and Bobbin Mulvaney, owners of Mulvaney’s B&L, founded a mental health program called “I Got Your Back” in response to a rash of restaurant-worker deaths due to suicide and drug overdose. And then the pandemic came along and mental health became an even bigger issue. A short snippet from Leilani Marie Labong’s 2021 interview:

Patrick: It’s a big, hairy, audacious goal, but we’d like mental health to be part of the conversation in every workplace, in restaurants—most importantly in our own—in a way that’s intentful. It is part of our conversation here, but not as intentful or as effective as we’d like it to be. I was thinking of the analogy of a sponge—we’re pretty wrung out, right? There’s no bandwidth. But the hope is that as the pandemic comes to an end, that space opens up and allows us to refocus: What does “I Got Your Back” look like in Sacramento in an intentional way? And how do we reengage the community?

Read more from both Patrick and Bobbin Mulvaney in our full feature: Stronger Together

THE NUT TREE AT 100

There are few stories we’ve published that have struck an emotional chord with our readers like this one. In fact, of all 100 issues that we’ve published, none have come close to the number of back-issue requests as the one containing our Nut Tree cover feature. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Nut Tree on I-80 in 1921, we asked writer Leilani Marie Labong to dive into the fanciful world of this unlikely roadside attraction. While the Nut Tree we grew up with was mostly dismantled decades ago, the memories run deep for those of us who had stopped by this magical oasis for generations before then. 

And under the guidance of visionary Don Birrell, the former director of the Crocker Art Museum who went on to serve as the design director of the Nut Tree from 1953 to 1990, this Disneyland of the north flourished. Julia Child ate there. Walt Disney stopped by to ride the train. Wayne Thiebaud was inspired by its displays of candies. The Nut Tree chefs even fed the Queen of England.

One of the best compliments we received on the story came from longtime director of administration Tom Kassis who, then 82, emailed us from his home in Carmichael after the story was published. “For me, it is clearly the BEST article that I have ever seen about Nut Tree,” he wrote. “I will be forever grateful.” Trust us, Tom, for all of us who experienced the world that you and your colleagues created, the feeling of gratitude is entirely mutual.

Read our look back at the one-of-a-kind park: Nut Tree Forever

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 2022 

OUR COVER THAT WAS DELAYED BY COVID FOR ALMOST TWO YEARS

This image was about a week away from being our April/May 2020 cover. As you can see, it was all about food festivals in Northern California—aka very large gatherings of people—and we had worked on it throughout February. We were just wrapping it up in early March when Covid began to spread throughout the country. We started calling the festivals, and one by one, all those in the spring were already cancelling.

So with a week to go in our two-month schedule, we pivoted. We shelved the story, and the wonderful cover by illustrator Larry Hausen, who lives in Cool, just outside of Auburn. He’s been doing the Mountain Mandarin Festival posters for years and each one is amazing.

Festivals slowly started coming back in 2021, and by 2022, they were back in full force, and we finally got to run Larry’s beautiful cover and realize the, ahem, fruits of all our labor.

With most returning each year, take a look at the fests we were so excited for: 16 Fun Food Festivals in 2022

HASAN MINHAJ COULD TALK KINGS ALL. DAY. LONG. 

For our Nov/Dec issue, we landed an interview and shoot with Hasan Minhaj. We had interviewed him before, in 2016, when he was on The Daily Show, but he’d since risen to new heights—hosting his own show Patriot Act, helming 2017’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and about to debut his second Netflix special, The King’s Jester (his first was Homecoming King, filmed at the Mondavi Center in 2017).

Stu VanAirsdale interviewed Hasan—a Kings superfan—for us in September, just weeks before the NBA season:

How do you keep your Kings enthusiasm after so many years of futility and failure?

“I want the Kings to be good so badly. When I see Drake fly back to Toronto for [the Raptors’] playoff runs, that’s the feeling I want. I want to book a flight from JFK to SMF and be at the [playoff] game. You know what I mean? Wear my jacket from 1992 and bring it back to 2022 and be like, ‘This is my city!’ ”

[Yep, he was there at Game 7 on Apr. 30. We have a feeling he’ll be back next year.]

Read more about Hasan Minhaj in our full profile, including why he still has a Davis phone number: Forever (530)

THE LAST OF THE BEAT GENERATION BEATS ON 

Securing an interview with Gary Snyder—the Pulitzer Prize winner and last living member of the fabled Beat Generation poets—clearly wasn’t going to be easy. “I want to get work done, not chat,” he said early on. “They can tell stories after I die.” Happily, the 92-year-old former UC Davis professor acquiesced to an interview over a very long lunch with writer Hillary Louise Johnson, and her profile of him—which just won the award for best profile at the National City and Regional Magazine Awards in early June—revealed a truly extraordinary life. She chronicled his earliest days with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, to his environmental efforts and how he even inspired the release of the Pentagon Papers. The story, like his work, is pure poetry.

Read our profile of the Gary Snyder: Man. Verses. Nature.

IN THE NAME OF HIS FATHER

Martin Kuz has covered war, but this was different. In February 2022, as Russia prepared to invade Ukraine, Martin traveled from Sacramento—home to the largest concentration of Ukrainian immigrants in the U.S.—to his father’s homeland, not only to cover the war, but as a son hoping to better understand the forces that shaped his father’s life. Upon his return, he wrote, “I resolve to change. Our region’s already sizable population of Ukrainian refugees will swell in the months and years ahead. In tribute to Eugene Kuz, and in solidarity with his homeland’s proud, valiant people, I will join volunteer groups to aid and support them. I will greet them with Slava Ukraini!, the national salutation that means ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ I will seek to make sure they never feel alone in their new country as they forever yearn for the one left behind. I will honor my father. I will embrace my identity.”

Read Martin Kruz’s full essay: The Long Way Home

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 2023 

THE LIFE AND ART OF MIKE HENDERSON

After retiring in 2012 from UC Davis, where he was an art professor for 43 years—and on the eve of a solo show at the Manetti Shrem Museum—Mike Henderson reflected on shining shoes as a young man in Missouri, seeing his soul in Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters, believing he had lost decades’ worth of paintings in a fire, and securing his place in one of the greatest university art departments ever assembled.

Read our profile of Mike Henderson: “By Any Means Necessary, I Will Keep Being an Artist.”

JULIE YOUNG IS IN HER ELEMENT

Inspiring. Persuasive. A unicorn. An artist. A modernist. A collector of rare humans. These are just a few of the words that people who know Julie Young use to describe her. She is far from being one of the largest developers in town, but she is certainly one of the most creative—both aesthetically and strategically. Her tenant mix—comprised of local, talented, groundbreaking dreamers—is carefully curated; her sense of design is exquisite; and as one of the few women in the biz, she’s not afraid to push to get what she needs to see her vision through. We’ve profiled many of the city’s most visionary developers over the years—Mark Friedman, Mike Heller, Bay Miry, Ron Vrilakas—so we were thrilled, through the words of Hillary Louise Johnson and the lens of photographer Josh Wool, to finally tell Julie’s extraordinary story. And we hope there will be many chapters more.

Read our profile of Julie Young: Younglandia

OUR FIRST EARTH ISSUE WILL INFORM OUR NEXT 100 ISSUES 

We learned a lot from making our 99th edition—our first-ever Earth Issue. 

While we’ve increased our coverage of environmental issues in recent years as the effects of climate change have become more pronounced, the act of focusing on the subject has taught us we need to do even more.

Climate change is very much a local issue. Sacramento summers are getting hotter and this winter was the most extreme we remember—uprooting over 1,000 trees, and producing enough snow in the Sierra that the threat of flooding looms large.

The good news is that we can all make a difference, and so many amazing people in our region are doing just that.

We’re grateful that so many of you have evolved with us on our journey, and we look forward to continuing that journey with you.

Discover all the eco-themed stories in our Earth Issue