Davis
Steering the Ship in the Early Days of Disney
Walt Disney may have created the House of Mouse, but bringing Disney magic to the big screen took a pixie-dusted village. For his recently released book, Directing at Disney: The Original Directors of Walt’s Animated Films, longtime Davis resident and Disney historian Don Peri teamed up with Pixar’s Oscar-winning chief creative officer Pete Docter to tell the story of the forgotten pioneers of animated movies.
The Art of Gratitude
When his wife embarked on an arduous cancer journey, Dave Webb—a Davis-based multimedia artist—walked alongside her, processing his emotions through film, images, words and music. A new exhibition at the Pence Gallery, the grateful chair, chronicles the couple’s shared experience of going to the brink and coming back.
Q&A with Distance Runner Fiona O’Keeffe
Most rookie marathoners might finish their debut race with some blisters and a souvenir T-shirt. Fiona O’Keeffe, on the other hand, crossed the line of her first marathon in February with a new U.S. Olympic trials record and a spot in the 2024 Paris Games this summer. The 26-year-old hometown phenom—who earned her distance-running stripes at Davis High before going on to an illustrious career at Stanford (O’Keeffe was named the Pac-12 Women’s Cross Country Athlete of the Year in 2019)—speaks about getting the racing bug in elementary school, the challenges and opportunities of the Paris marathon route, and the mantra that helps her plant one foot in front of the other for 26.2 miles.
Rock Star
Legendary rock climber Beth Rodden has navigated sudden success, endured a high-profile divorce and survived a traumatic kidnapping. As she releases her candid new memoir, the Davis native talks about learning the ropes as a kid at the Rocknasium, the perils and pitfalls of fame, and finding grace in the cracks of mountains and life alike.
Forever (530)
Davis native Hasan Minhaj wears his hometown pride on his sleeve—or sometimes on his sleeveless Kings jersey signed by ’90s-era point guard Bobby Hurley, which he proudly keeps in his New York office. The former Daily Show correspondent and Patriot Act host also filmed his first Netflix comedy special, Homecoming King, here at the Mondavi Center in 2017, and steadfastly refuses to part with his 530 Davis area code number. With his new one-man show, The King’s Jester, now streaming on Netflix, he talks to Sactown about honing his comedy chops at Laughs Unlimited and Punch Line, loving the new vibe of midtown Sacramento, feeling the lingering pain of the Kings’ crushing Western Conference Finals loss 20 years ago, and bringing that “I gotta make up for 2002” energy to NYC.
Best of the City 2022
From Old Sacramento’s new incandescent signage to luminescent lanterns hand-assembled in Newcastle to a just-opened microcinema in midtown and merciful cyclists with big hearts, we present our highly subjective, small-batch, 100% locally made list of our favorite people, places and things right now. We know it’s been a rough couple of years—here are 22 bright spots that are lighting up our town in 2022.
Q&A with Sci-Fi Author Kim Stanley Robinson
The Davis-based New York Times best-selling author is celebrated for epic sci-fi novels, including his classic Mars trilogy about terraforming the Red Planet and The Ministry for the Future about solving the climate crisis, which former President Barack Obama named as one of his favorite books of 2020. But in his new memoir The High Sierra: A Love Story, which comes out on May 10, Kim Stanley Robinson takes a turn for the terrestrial, covering a half-century of writing, thinking and adventuring across our altitudinous backyard, tracing the origins of both backpacking and environmentalism. He talks to us about entering the God zone while hiking, being a “utopian science fiction writer,” and why despite a certain tech billionaire’s predictions, we won’t be living on Mars anytime soon.
A Life of Crime (the Perfectly Legal Kind)
John Lescroart became an “overnight” success at 45, and the Davis author has since published 19 New York Times best-selling legal thrillers, with his 30th novel due out in late March. Meet the man with his ink-stained finger on the pulse of American crime stories.
Capitol Intrigue
The California governor’s granddaughter is kidnapped, a killer leaves playing cards at the crime scene, and a deadly shoot-out takes place across the street from the people’s house. They’re all connected, but how? This and other mysteries get solved piece by piece in All That Fall, a new novel set in Sacramento by longtime Capitol insider Kris Calvin.
Q&A with Vanity Fair ’s International Correspondent William Langewiesche
He’s one of the biggest names—literally and figuratively—in journalism. But whether William Langewiesche is writing at his Davis home or reporting in Kosovo, the globe-trotting Vanity Fair scribe, author and two-time National Magazine Award winner keeps his feet on the ground. Unless, that is, he’s in the cockpit of his two-seat plane in the “aviation paradise” of Northern California, savoring the view of the Sierras and “the golden era” of nonfiction.
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