Good morning. It’s Wednesday, Feb. 4.
- Booming space race rattles nerves on the Central Coast.
- California figures named in Epstein files face scrutiny.
- And a pro-ICE billboard rankles locals in San Francisco.
Statewide
1.
This unusually warm winter has left record-low snow on the ground across the Western U.S. Three weeks ago, snowpack levels in the Sierra Nevada were 82% of average for the time of year. As of Tuesday, that figure had plummeted to 56%. With more warmth and no precipitation in the near forecast, the snowpack is expected to melt further, depleting one of California’s crucial water supplies. The good news: copious rains left reservoirs in healthy shape. S.F. Chronicle | N.Y. Times
2.
The space race is taking over the Central Coast, and it’s really loud. Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County is expanding dramatically to meet surging rocket launch demand for satellites, classified missions, and other payloads. For many locals, it’s a nightmare. “If I am upstairs and my door is slightly cracked, the boom can slam my door and we are 100-plus miles away,” said Mikayla Shocks. “One time I thought a car hit the house, because it’s that loud.” L.A. Times
3.
Several figures with California ties were among the boldfaced names included in the latest release of Jeffrey Epstein files.
- Elon Musk exchanged multiple messages with the disgraced financier, comparing schedules to find a time to meet, the documents showed. In 2012, years after Epstein’s sexual abuse of girls as young as 14 was widely reported, Musk wrote about coming to Epstein’s island in St. Thomas. “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?” he asked. N.Y. Times
- Sergey Brin, one of Google’s founders, went to Epstein’s island multiple times, according to the files. He also made plans to dine at Epstein’s Manhattan home and corresponded with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator. N.Y. Times
- Casey Wasserman, president of the committee for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, exchanged flirty emails with Maxwell in 2003. On Saturday, he expressed regret, but noted that the correspondence was “long before her horrific crimes came to light.” Even so, several L.A. politicians called on Wasserman to step down on Tuesday. L.A. Times | Wall Street Journal
- Mark Tramo, a neurology professor at UCLA, wrote to one of Epstein’s assistants with a message of solidarity after reading reports that Epstein planned to plead guilty to solicitation charges: “Please remind him that boys from The Bronx … stay true to their friends through thick and thin.” SFGATE
4.
As photography has become almost too easy, John Chiara embraces a process that is extraordinarily labor-intensive. The photographer builds his own massive box cameras, hauling them on a trailer. To take a picture, he steps inside the camera to position a giant sheet of photosensitive paper and manipulate the light and length of exposure. One picture can take hours. The essayist Dan Beachy-Quick wrote an appreciation of Chiara’s work, which focuses on the landscapes of California: “Chiara teaches us to see through the handmade humility that returns to the world its proper wonder.” Aperture
Northern California
5.
After California voted to gerrymander its congressional map, Rep. Jared Huffman, a progressive Democrat from Marin County, found his district radically redrawn to include some of the state’s reddest areas. Undaunted, he recently drove five hours to woo Trump-loving locals in Modoc County, where the Democratic Party doesn’t even have a local chapter. “At times, it felt like a scene from a sitcom,” wrote political columnist Joe Garofoli, who tagged along. S.F. Chronicle
6.
A conservative group debuted a pro-ICE billboard above a busy intersection in San Francisco in recent days. The digital ad rotated messages with a Super Bowl theme, including “Defensive player of the year: ICE,” and “They can’t win without defense. Neither can America.” In what is by some measures the most liberal big city in America, the messaging did not go over well. “It made me sick to my stomach,” said one passerby. S.F. Chronicle | KGO
7.
In San Francisco, cafe owners could not serve dinners by candlelight without first going to City Hall to prove that they wouldn’t set fire to the napkins. It’s the sort of maddening rule that Mayor Daniel Lurie has spent his first year in office eliminating. After years of bureaucratic headaches, he argues that making life simpler for San Franciscans is a revolutionary act. The approach has made him enormously popular. “We took the people of San Francisco for granted,” Lurie said. “We took our small businesses for granted.” N.Y. Times
8.
It’s many riders’ worst fear whenever getting onto a chairlift. Video captured the terrifying moment a 12-year-old snowboarder slipped from a chairlift at Mammoth Mountain on Saturday, falling hard to the ground below. She was not seriously injured. The girl’s mother said she never got a chance to pull the safety bar down before she found herself dangling from the chair. “It was awful but we survived it and will be riding again when she’s ready,” she said. KTLA
Southern California
9.
Southern California’s endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep migrate seasonally across the southern U.S. border, giving birth on the American side in the winter and spring and seeking water in Mexico during the summer. But starting in the fall, federal forces began installing hundreds of miles of razor wire along the border. Wildlife biologists are now scrambling to install watering holes in the remote desert. Without them, said wildlife advocate Christina Aiello, “you will see piles of dead sheep.” L.A. Times
10.
A tip about a suspected brothel in the San Gabriel Valley set off a statewide investigation that resulted in more than 600 arrests and the rescues of roughly 170 victims, including one who is just 13 years old, the authorities said on Tuesday. Nathan Hochman, the Los Angeles County district attorney, said L.A. County had the “dubious distinction” of being a major hub for sex trafficking. “This is a multibillion-dollar industry,” he said. “It is nothing less than modern slavery.” City News Service | L.A. Times
11.
After his viral video spurred a federal crackdown in Minneapolis, the right-wing influencer Nick Shirley is now on another hunt for fraud in San Diego, visiting Somali-owned day care centers. In a sharp profile, the New York Times chronicled how the 23-year-old came to occupy the top tier of conservative content creators, lauded by the likes of Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance. “I want to be the next Alex Jones,” Shirley once told a friend. The right-wing conspiracy theorist “spits probably the most facts out of any person,” Shirley said.
12.
Pasadena, a suburb of L.A., is a cultural heavyweight in its own right, home to Caltech, the finest Arts and Crafts architecture, the renowned Pasadena Playhouse, and one of the most impressive art collections anywhere. The Norton Simon Museum was born in 1974 from the merger of the Pasadena Museum of Modern Art and the extraordinary private collection of the industrialist Norton Simon. Artworks include those by Rodin, Rembrandt, Picasso, van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne, Monet, and Renoir, among other greats. LAist published a reminder to readers: “Don’t sleep on Norton Simon, Pasadena’s art gem.”
- Norton Simon’s latest exhibition: an exploration of gold across millennia.
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