Good morning. It’s Friday, April 5.
- Doubts raised about Gavin Newsom’s baseball resumé.
- Oakland A’s plan to play three seasons in Sacramento.
- And the Prince Tree erupts in color in Citrus Heights.
Statewide
1.
Throughout the political rise of Gov. Gavin Newsom, public biographies have touted his baseball career: He was a high school standout, the narrative goes, recruited to play at Santa Clara University before an injury forced him to find a new purpose. But Newsom never made the Santa Clara roster and his recruitment was facilitated by his father’s powerful friends, an investigation found. Some former players have resented Newsom’s failure to correct the record over the years. “He didn’t earn it. He didn’t earn the right to say it,” said Kevin Schneider, a former Santa Clara pitcher. CalMatters
2.
California’s new $20-an-hour minimum wage for fast-food businesses is complicating the staffing of the state’s public school cafeterias, which adopted universal free meals during the pandemic. Some districts have already responded by lifting wages; Sacramento Unified plans to pay food service workers $20 an hour starting in July. But others say they don’t have the revenue to compete with the fast-food wages. “They are all very worried about it,” said Carrie Bogdanovich, president of the California School Nutrition Association. A.P.
Northern California
3.
Stanford tapped the university’s business school dean, Jonathan Levin, pictured above, to be its next president after former president Marc Tessier-Lavigne resigned amid questions about research misconduct. Levin, 51, the son of former Yale president Rick Levin, is a renowned economist who also engages in public policy, serving on President Biden’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. He’ll take the helm as Stanford navigates bitter fights over free speech and intolerance. In a statement, Levin pledged to “foster the principles of openness, curiosity, and mutual respect.” Wall Street Journal | Bloomberg
4.
The Oakland Athletics announced that the team would make Sacramento its home for at least the next three seasons as they await the construction of a new stadium in Las Vegas. The A’s will play at Sutter Health Park, home of the minor league River Cats, after the expiration of their Oakland Coliseum lease later this year. News of the move, which ends a 56-year tenure in the East Bay, was met by renewed dismay in Oakland and jubilation in Sacramento, which has harbored dreams of having a major league club. “I am over the moon for my city,” Mayor Darrell Steinberg said. Sacramento Bee | Mercury News
5.
Andres Freund may have just saved the internet. A 38-year-old software engineer for Microsoft in San Francisco, Freund was doing routine maintenance last week when he found malicious code hidden in a piece of software that is part of Linux, an operating system used by banks, governments, and Fortune 500 companies. The discovery made Freund an instant internet folk hero, hailed by tech leaders and cybersecurity researchers. It’s all very bewildering, he a told a reporter: “I’m a fairly private person who just sits in front of the computer and hacks on code.” N.Y. Times
- Here’s how the backdoor hack unfolded. 👉 The Intercept
6.
Shortly after Prince died in 2016, artist Christine Stein painted a 6-foot-tall mural of the musician’s face and propped it against a shrub in the front yard of her home in Citrus Heights. Eight years and several rounds of media attention later, the Prince Tree is a pilgrimage site for fans that reaches its fullest expression each April, when the red-tipped photinia behind the mural breaks out in color. Good Day Sacramento paid a visit on Wednesday. YouTube (~4 mins)
7.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman chatted with Bonnie Portnoy, granddaughter of the celebrated California impressionist Tilden Daken and author of a new biography of his life, “The Man Beneath the Paint.” Portnoy talked about how Daken, famous in the early 1900s, saw art as a medium for daring exploits. “Painting in the middle of winter in a snowstorm in the Sierra, painting underwater in a diving bell … I mean, his life was adventure,” she said.
Southern California
8.
The discount retailer 99 Cents Only Stores announced that it would wind down the business, shuttering all 371 of its stores across California, Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. The company, founded in Los Angeles in 1982, cited the economic shock of the pandemic, shifting consumer demand, inflation, and other pressures. “This was an extremely difficult decision and is not the outcome we expected or hoped to achieve,” said interim Chief Executive Mike Simoncic. L.A. Times | Bloomberg
9.
Officials are planning to relocate Wayfarers Chapel, an iconic glass church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son in Rancho Palos Verdes. Built in 1951, the cliffside church was closed this winter after heavy rains accelerated a landslide under the structure that has been moving gradually for years, cracking walkways and panes of glass. “We will not be able to restore the chapel on our current property. That seems firm,” said Dan Burchett, the chapel’s executive director. He said there’s no location in mind, but they hoped to remain in Rancho Palos Verdes. L.A. Times
10.
California isn’t in the path for a total eclipse on Monday, but regions south and east of Los Angeles are expected to get the state’s best views of an impressive partial eclipse, weather permitting. For skywatchers across much of Southern California, the moon will obscure at least half of the sun around 11:15 a.m. local time. (In San Francisco, it will be about a third). See what the eclipse will look like in your city. 👉 National Science Foundation | Washington Post
11.
Deep in the Mojave Desert outside Needles, the desert floor is groomed in evenly spaced lines as if a giant dragged a comb across the landscape. Best appreciated from the sky, Topock Maze is as mysterious as it is striking. For decades, popular accounts held that the patterns had prehistoric spiritual origins. But an archaeological survey in 2011 concluded that Toprock almost certainly originated from gravel raking during railroad construction in the 1880s. The study’s author nonetheless argued for the site’s cultural significance in the lore of the American West. A travel reporter went for a look. YouTube/ABC10 (~2:30 mins)
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past couple weeks:
- The former editor of San Diego Magazine consulted with local tastemakers to create a list of nine must-do experiences in Southern California’s quintessential beach city. National Geographic
- California lilacs have painted the hills surrounding a lake 25 miles north of downtown San Diego in shades of brilliant purple. The photographer Vishwas Lokesh captured some fantastic drone shots of South Park Lake in San Marcos. @shotbyvish | Fox 5
- Stanford professor Andrew Huberman has become the world’s biggest pop neuroscientist by peddling advice on how to live a healthier life. Journalist Kerry Howley revealed that he did so while simultaneously cheating on at least five girlfriends. New York magazine
- People are transforming old newspaper boxes into free Blockbuster lending libraries. The project began in 2019, when Brian Morrison, a film and television producer in Los Angeles, painted Blockbuster’s blue-and-yellow logo onto an old box and filled it with DVDs. N.Y. Times
- Find a Blockbuster box in California.
- A four-decade-old vision to create the nation’s longest rail trail came into clearer focus with the release of a draft master plan on the proposed route. The Great Redwood Trail would trace an abandoned rail corridor from the San Francisco Bay Area to Humboldt Bay. S.F. Chronicle | Lost Coast Outpost
- See a map of the proposed trail.
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The California Sun is written by Mike McPhate, a former California correspondent for the New York Times.
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