Good morning. It’s Friday, March 6.
- The New York Times hails an underappreciated wine region.
- Police say Cal State coach moonlighted as a pimp.
- And San Diego teens become a garage band sensation.
Statewide
1.
A last-minute attempt by California’s top Democratic official to thin the party’s crowded field for governor “emphatically flopped,” the Associated Press wrote, as eight Democrats formally entered the race ahead of a Friday deadline. That means their names will appear on the June primary ballot alongside just two GOP frontrunners, with the top two vote-getters moving on to the general election, regardless of party. As of Thursday, an election oddsmaker projected the chances of a Democratic shutout at around 26%. L.A. Times | A.P.
- See who’s running for governor. 👉 N.Y. Times
2.
While California’s wine industry faces a period of retrenchment, one of the state’s newest appellations is establishing itself as a place for great wines. The winemaking history of the San Luis Obispo coast dates back more than 200 years, when Spanish missionaries planted grapes. Yet only in the last decade has the region begun to gain recognition thanks in part to the arrival of highly talented growers and winemakers. The New York Times profiled “the new California wine region you should know.”
3.
Before the photographer Carleton Watkins helped bring Yosemite into America’s homes, an artist named Thomas Almond Ayres sat in a Sierra Nevada valley in the summer of 1855 and drew what he saw. Ayres’ “The High Falls, Valley of the Yo Semity, California,” pictured above, became the source for the first published image of Yosemite, shaping how many people saw the American West. On Thursday, the Library of Congress announced that it had acquired the sketch. S.F. Chronicle
Northern California
4.
Toward the end of 2025, BART police officers circulated a deepfake video that depicted one of their Sikh colleagues with a semiautomatic pistol in his turban. Sources told the San Francisco Chronicle that the sergeant who admitted making the video was now back on active duty after a period of administrative leave over the incident. The officer in the video, one of three Sikhs on a BART force of roughly 200 sworn personnel, remained on stress-related leave as of this week.
5.
The discovery that human compost was being used on conserved land along the San Joaquin River has set off a political firestorm. An alternative to burial or cremation, human composting involves turning bodies into soil that can help plants and trees grow. Garry Bredefeld, a Fresno County supervisor, said he was “shocked” to learn about its use. “The stupidity is breathtaking,” he said, vowing to force the compost’s removal. Sharon Weaver, director of the trust that manages the property, attributed the pushback to “fear and confusion about death and dying.” Fresno Bee | GV Wire
6.
The Pentagon made good on its threat to blacklist Anthropic on Thursday, saying the artificial intelligence company was formally notified that its products were deemed a risk to the U.S. supply chain. In a letter to U.S. lawmakers on the same day, a group of former defense and intelligence officials said the purpose of the designation is “to protect the United States from infiltration by foreign adversaries.” They continued: “Blacklisting one of America’s leading AI companies — and requiring its thousands of contractors and partners to sever ties as well — does not strengthen our competitive position. It weakens it.” Bloomberg | CNBC
- In a leaked memo, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said his company was being targeted because “we haven’t given dictator-style praise” to President Trump. Sam Altman, of rival OpenAI, “has,” he wrote. Daily Beast
7.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Geoff Davis, the chef owner of Burdell. The acclaimed Oakland soul food restaurant was recently swept up in an online tempest over its automatic 20% service charge, which it explains on receipts with reference to the racist roots of tipping. Davis argued that the tipping custom reifies class barriers. “This idea of diners wanting to have agency on how much they pay — nothing else in our society works that way,” he said.
Southern California
8.
An assistant basketball coach at Cal State Bakersfield led a double life as a pimp, police say. In August, a woman emailed the school’s athletic department alleging that Kevin Mays, who played for Bakersfield between 2014 to 2016 before being hired, had trafficked a woman for months. A subsequent police investigation led to a stunning set of criminal charges, involving guns, meth, child pornography, and pimping. As the case reverberated on campus, both the basketball coach and athletic director left their roles. ESPN
9.
Britney Spears was arrested Wednesday night in Ventura County on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. California Highway Patrol officers pulled over the pop star’s black BMW after getting reports of the car being driven “erratically at a high rate of speed,” the agency said. A representative for Spears, 44, called her behavior “inexcusable.” Once a symbol of bubble-gum pop, Spears has seen her image overtaken by personal struggles. In recent years, police have conducted regular wellness checks at her home in Thousand Oaks. L.A. Times | A.P.
10.
Four teenage brothers from suburban San Diego have built a massive following on social media playing songs that, by their standards, are oldies: “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls, “This Love” by Maroon 5, “Buddy Holly” by Weezer. Trueblood is Ethan, 13, a bassist; Mason, 15, a singer and guitarist; Dylan, 16, lead guitarist; and Cameron, 18, a drummer. Filmed in their dad’s garage, their TikTok music videos get tens of millions of views. The New York Times wrote about the band proving “that members of Gen Alpha and Gen Z still know how to have fun without Roblox.”
11.
When the celebrated photographer Larry Sultan visited a porn shoot in a rented San Fernando Valley home in 1998, he was riveted by the clash of vice and domesticity. “What got me was the reality of the setting and its theater of the ordinary, and then this extraordinary set of occupants who had taken over,” Sultan told the New York Times in 2004. “I knew this was something I had to go back to.” The result is “The Valley,” a new photobook on the strange suburban mundanity of America’s smut capital. Huck magazine | AnOther magazine
- See more from “The Valley,” 1998–2003.
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- Urged to read Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” the entrepreneur Roy Lee balked. “I do not obtain value from reading books,” he said. Harper’s Magazine published an engrossing feature on the lonely, shallow young men of Silicon Valley’s new generation.
- “The guides would have known their choice carried real risk, especially under the conditions they faced — or they should have known.” In a gripping reconstruction of the Tahoe avalanche, the Atlantic’s Joshua Partlow wrote about the single decision that made all the difference.
- A student takeover of a hall at Cal Poly Humboldt was complicated by physiological imperatives after they found the bathrooms locked. Lost Coast Outpost reports: “It made them very, very mad, and they talked about the bathrooms almost as much as they talked about the reasons … why they thought committing this crime was worth potentially being expelled.”
- It’s dungeness crab season in Northern California. On a recent Saturday night, there were no fewer than six communal crab dinners, attended by thousands, in Sonoma County alone. The New York Times published a photo story on one of Northern California’s most delicious traditions.
- A Los Angeles voice actor has become an unlikely star with his “unhinged” radio ads for a law firm. Terrell “Lucky” John is the pitchman for TopDog Law, a personal injury firm, recording four commercials a week. “But to describe what John makes as just ‘commercials’ doesn’t quite capture what’s happening here,” wrote the Washington Post.
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