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In 2009, Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano heckled Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a gathering in San Francisco, shouting “You lie!” and telling the Republican leader “kiss my gay ass!” Later, Schwarzenegger sent a letter to lawmakers vetoing a bill that Ammiano had sponsored. But it was accompanied by another message. The first letters at the start of seven…

Al Arnold was an unlikely candidate for a sports hero. He was athletic as a young man in the 1950s Bay Area, but later settled into a sedentary life making electrical devices. Nearing 40, he was overweight and out of shape. Then, jolted by a glaucoma diagnosis, he started running. Hobby grew into obsession. He…

1One of the most popular tourist attractions in San Luis Obispo is a downtown alley with walls covered by half-chewed gum. Bubblegum Alley’s origins are murky, but some historians say it evolved from a prank by students in the 1950s into a full-fledged landmark. Visitors wander along a kaleidoscope of stickiness that stretches across both…

1Discarded sofas are commonplace on Los Angeles sidewalks. But where some see trash, Andrew Ward saw something strangely poignant. His photo project “Sofas of L.A.” began as an Instagram hobby, then grew into an obsession that has earned critical acclaim. Andrewward.com | Tumblr Sunset in the East Bay hills. The image was among those selected…

The California historian Kevin Starr placed the Central Valley in the lineage of great irrigated cultures that gave rise to civilization itself. Its rich land yields more than 230 crops — including pistachios, peaches, asparagus, garlic, grapes, apricots, kiwis, and cabbage. That diversity faces a creeping threat. California officials and scientists have been sounding the…

Buried deep in the California sand, about 150 miles from Hollywood, is one of the film industry’s strangest legends. It began 95 years ago, when the director Cecil B. DeMille chose a remote dune ecosystem near the sleepy Central Coast town of Guadalupe to stage his silent epic “The Ten Commandments.” For the set, he…

Less than two years had passed since the attack on Pearl Harbor when a strange mist settled over Los Angeles. People’s eyes and throats stung. The haze dimmed the sun, seeping everywhere like a “beast you couldn’t stab,” as one account put it. Panicked, some residents piled into cars and headed for the foothills. In…

In 1985, a California man made a travel blunder so epic that it put him 6,600 miles off course. Michael Lewis, a 21-year-old college student from Sacramento, was returning home from a vacation in West Germany. He arrived aboard Air New Zealand’s London-to-Auckland flight at Los Angeles International Airport, where the passengers disembarked so the plane could…

The world’s largest tree by volume is a giant sequoia in the Sierra Nevada called General Sherman. But a nearby settlement once knew it by a different name: the Karl Marx Tree. In the 1880s, a group of timber men conducted a grand experiment in utopian socialism known as the Kaweah Colony. Its leader, Burnette Haskell,…

Fingers of rock jutting from California’s coast have devoured thousands of ships over the centuries. Among the most voracious has been Point Reyes. The cape, diabolically, is the windiest and foggiest place on the West Coast, thrusting 10 miles out to sea just north of San Francisco. Countless lost passenger liners, schooners, and other vessels rest…

1. San Francisco Bay and the adjoining delta comprise the largest Pacific estuary in the Western Hemisphere. Depending on whether sub-bays are included, it covers about 550 square miles, roughly 50 miles long and 12 miles wide. It was formed during the waning of the last ice age, when rising seas spilled into the valley…

1In the 1990s, rave culture blossomed in Los Angeles. Before long, the ravers’ look — visors, pacifiers, phat pants — became a de facto dress code for dance parties across the country. The photographer Michael Tullberg was there from the start, capturing the thumping, blissed-out gatherings in thousands of long exposure pictures. He curated the…

San Diego is a natural paradise of tree-lined streets, lush parks, and homes covered in trellises of roses and bougainvillea. But the port city was once largely barren and brown. The genesis of its transformation arguably came in the winter of 1884. That’s when a young teacher named Kate Sessions arrived in town. Sessions grew…

Public shaming has been having a moment in California. In the last few months, a drumbeat of viral videos has subjected people behaving obnoxiously, at best, and abusively, at worst, to the internet outrage machine. There’s been, among other cases, the Sacramento man who accosted a Laotian senior citizen for wearing a camouflage shirt; the…

The territories of the Bureau of Land Management have sometimes been overlooked by nature lovers. The best spots, the thinking goes, were snapped up long ago by homesteaders or the more glamorous forest and park services. Yet the B.L.M. oversees roughly 15 percent of California’s landmass — more than 23,000 square miles — which includes…

1. On Highway 99 between Merced and Fresno, a peculiar pairing of trees rises from the center median. A palm tree and a cedar tree stand side by side, like companions, the only two trees along a stretch otherwise filled with oleander shrubs. The origin story of the trees is murky. But some researchers think…

The Gold Rush fizzled in the late 1850s. The California economy sagged into depression. Then, in the spring of 1859, two destitute Irish miners in the mountains east of Lake Tahoe hacked into a layer of crumbly blueish-black rock. The chance find was the apex of the richest vein of gold and silver ore ever…

1 The boisterous sounds of Latin American jungles echo across California. They come from flocks of brightly colored parrots of at least 10 different species that have made an unlikely home in the arid state. Their origins in California date back as far as the 1940s, when parrots arrived via the pet trade. Over time,…