If there’s one thing we’ve learned during the pandemic, it’s that the human spirit perseveres through the darkest times. The dozens of Sacramentans featured here—struggling like all of us over this past year and a half—have found ways to shine some much-needed light into our lives, whether with charmingly anachronistic TikTok videos or a winning French pastry made with Top Ramen or an eco boutique that’s trying to help save the planet one bottle-free shampoo bar at a time. They bring smiles to our faces, good food to our bellies and taps to our toes. And if you haven’t already met, we’re thrilled to introduce you.
Patrick and Bobbin Mulvaney are arguably Sacramento’s First Couple of Farm to Fork. With Sacramento celebrating our region's agricultural bounty in September, we sit down with the owners of Mulvaney’s B&L to talk about the impact of the pandemic on the restaurant industry, the life lessons learned from Bobbin’s bouts with cancer, the controversy surrounding local caviar purveyor Michael Passmore, the importance of openly discussing mental health issues in the workplace and the community, and their efforts to lend a helping hand, one loving spoonful at a time.
Auberge alums and Milestone owners Nick Dedier and Alexa Hazelton team up again to launch Mom & Pop Chicken Shop. The result? Twenty-hour-brined chicken with 20 herbs and spices that’s finger lickin’ great.
To borrow from the Bard, it has been, by all measures, the spring, summer, autumn and winter of our discontent. Every theater shuttered, each seat unfilled, preview posters of musicals never performed hung in frames like broken clocks. But make no mistake, the stage is set for the arts to come roaring back as the curtains rise again this fall. So cue the music—it’s time to sit back and enjoy the shows.
On Sept. 15, after going dark in the spring of 2020 due to Covid, Broadway Sacramento (which produces Broadway on Tour and Broadway at Music Circus) will finally raise the curtain on its first show in a year and a half, the 11-time Tony Award-winning Hamilton—and in a newly renovated theater to boot. Here, Richard Lewis, the CEO and president of the arts organization, whose strong penchant for musical theater is hereditary—his father co-founded Music Circus in 1951 and his mother was a stage performer—addresses the pandemic elephant in the auditorium, reveals the best seat in the (new) house, and gives a pro tip for Hamilton first-timers that’s super, well, sonic.
Sacramento’s annual Wide Open Walls mural festival is upon us. But in many cities around the country, people are looking down on public art—about 5 to 6 feet down. It’s time to wash that gray right out of our streets.
