Amidst an ongoing expansion that also includes new sculptures, lighting and more, this Capitol Park memorial continues to serve as a beautiful dedication, earning a spot on our list of the people, places and things that we’ve loved this year. Here's one of our picks for Best of the City 2026.
It’s Davis native Hasan Minhaj versus former Daily Show colleague Ronny Chieng at Thunder Valley, acrobatics and life-size puppetry take the stage in Water for Elephants at Broadway Sacramento, Doja Cat lights up the Golden 1 Center, and more. Here are 15 events across the region to check out this fall.
According to a study recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine, fewer American adults smoke cigarettes than ever before—now only 9.9%. But in the 1960s, nearly half of us smoked. So perhaps it’s not surprising that businesses everywhere used to heavily invest in their matchbooks—hiring artists, designers and writers to craft memorable ephemera that today tell the story of our region in ways that few other mediums can. These pocket canvases (many of which have been stripped bare of their flammables and pressed flat by avid collectors) shine a “light,” if you will, on the ambitions, energy and vibrancy of an era long gone. Allow us to illuminate.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, this free observatory has shared stellar views of the night sky for countless stargazers, rocketing it onto our list of the people, places and things that we’ve loved this year. Here's one of our picks for Best of the City 2026.
Dusty Baker is only a year away from almost certainly becoming a first-ballot Hall of Famer in a sport that wasn’t even his favorite growing up. And that is an irony that just about perfectly suits Baker’s sprawling, at times messy, and thoroughly enlightening life journey. “I love baseball because baseball is everything,” the 77-year-old Baker writes in his new memoir, Crossroads. “It brings out everything in us, at one time or another, and it can teach us just about anything, if we pay attention long enough.” A four-sport star at Del Campo High who now calls Granite Bay home, Baker opens up about playing and living through an openly racist era, what his mentor Hank Aaron taught him, and why Sacramento, at its heart, is a baseball town.
Talk about coming in hot. Devyn Defoe may have just published her debut novel, but already she’s attracting the attention of everyone from Publishers Weekly to Pulitzer Prize nominees. The Sacramento-born author of Burnside talks about finding inspiration in local literary greats Joan Didion and William T. Vollmann, returning to her hometown after her Lady Bird moment, and how keeping her day job at Beers Books helps stoke her creative fire.
The team behind East Sacramento’s Allora brings the heat with the launch of their new downtown live-fire restaurant. With its open flames and cross-cultural cuisine, Aiona serves up everything from souvlaki skewers to grilled branzino to smoky gnocchi.
