Good morning. It’s Friday, June 7.
- Ruling clears way for People’s Park development.
- Trump supporters descend on liberal San Francisco.
- And a Bay Area engineer becomes U.S. cricket hero.
Statewide
1.
California ended cannabis prohibition three years before Michigan, and it has four times as many residents as the Midwestern state. Yet new data showed that Michigan, where the taxes are low and the regulations relaxed, now sells more legal cannabis than California. “Michigan is unquestionably better at running the legal cannabis market than California,” said Hirsh Jain, a cannabis consultant. “Michigan illustrates the ways that California has squandered the opportunity.” SFGATE
2.
Some state legislators are having second thoughts about a new law that bars businesses from charging hidden fees after an outcry from the restaurant industry. On Thursday, they introduced a measure that creates a special carveout for restaurants, allowing them to tack on fees so long as they are revealed up front in menus. “This should have never happened in the first place,” said Assemblymember Matt Haney, a co-author of the bill. “I’m sorry that we’re having this conversation.” SF Standard | L.A. Times
Northern California
3.
The California Supreme Court on Thursday gave UC Berkeley the go-ahead to build student housing at People’s Park, overturning a lower court ruling and putting an end to years of litigation aimed at preserving the site as a counterculture landmark. Neighborhood groups had said the project would cause too much noise, an argument the judges said lacked merit. UC Berkeley said it was “pleased and relieved.” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín said the ruling was “common sense.” Joe Liesner, a plaintiff, called it “depressing and awful.” Berkeleyside | S.F. Chronicle
4.
In one of the biggest shocks in cricket history, the USA beat powerhouse Pakistan at a cricket tournament on Thursday in Dallas. The upset minted a new U.S. cricket hero: Saurabh Netravalkar, 32, a full-time engineer for Oracle in San Mateo whose bowling performance helped seal the U.S. victory in the group stage of the T20 World Cup. Born in Mumbai, Netravalkar was a promising bowler in India before deciding to pursue a computer science degree at Cornell University. He later joined Oracle, squeezing in cricket practices between shifts and coding on team buses. SFGATE | Times of India
- As if he wasn’t talented enough, Netravalkar also plays a mean ukelele. 👉 @saurabh_netra
5.
Rare scenes unfolded in San Francisco on Thursday as roughly 200 red-capped supporters of Donald Trump rallied on the Marina Green to welcome the former president to the Democratic stronghold for a fund-raiser. “You have no idea how much you are freaking out the Democrat Party that there is this kind of support in San Francisco,” local GOP leader John Dennis told the gathering, the Chronicle reported. Trump never stopped by, but a giant inflatable Trump chicken did. KGO | Mercury News
6.
U.C. Berkeley’s chancellor, Carol Christ, is a longtime champion of free speech. But as she prepares to retire at the end of the month, she offered some advice to students: tone it down. She recalled how Mario Savio, the 1960s free speech spokesman, once climbed atop a police car during a rally to address students, but first took off his shoes to avoid damaging its roof. She wondered aloud whether a present-day activist would do the same. Probably not. They just “might kick in the windows,” she said. N.Y. Times
7.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talks with Jan Sramek, the former Goldman Sachs trader who is leading the campaign to build a new city in the heart of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. He acknowledged the audaciousness of the proposal. “We want to help California get back to where the state used to be where young families and working families … could afford to buy a home, and they could afford to buy a home in their 20s, not their 40s,” he said.
Southern California
8.
Newly released surveillance video showed a gunman shooting at passing vehicles as he walked down a sidewalk in Riverside County Monday morning, a random act of violence that left a father of four dead. Julio Rodarte, 39, was arrested and booked on one count of murder and 10 counts of attempted murder, police said. The deceased man was identified as Victor Leon, 42, who was on his way home from an overnight warehouse shift. His wife of 13 years said she was broken. She urged people to hug their loved ones. KTLA | TMZ
9.
“Nothing is as clarifying as seeing patients live or die because of what you know — or, just as often, how well you communicate it.”
A story last month by the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, the journalist whose reporting hastened the downfall of Claudine Gay at Harvard, included allegations of falling standards at UCLA’s medical school. Notably, the Beacon said several unnamed faculty members accused the school of evaluating applicants based partly on race, a practice long outlawed in California’s public institutions. Surveying the controversy, the physician journalist Benjamin Mazer considered the politicization of medicine and what it means for patient care. The Atlantic
10.
A black market for Lego items is fueling what Inside Edition has deemed a national “Lego Larceny.” Since April, thieves have hit a string of Lego stores across Southern California — in Ontario, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Fullerton, and elsewhere. On May 3, they hit a Bricks & Minifigs shop in Whittier, stealing 10,000 in merchandise, its owner said. “They’re not stealing big box sets,” she said. “They’re stealing mini figures, and those individual guys go for $500 to $600 apiece, so they’re easily stolen and resold for a quick profit.” L.A. Times
11.
The greater roadrunner thrives in the harsh, shrubby deserts of Southern California, feasting on pretty much any little creature they can find: snakes, scorpions, mice. They are famous sunbathers, ruffling their feathers to maximize the exposure of their skin. But this week’s heat has been too much for even the roadrunners. The photographer Sicco Rood captured video of a charismatic fellow seeking shade in Anza-Borrego Desert State Park while performing another odd roadrunner behavior known as gular fluttering: unable to sweat, the birds vibrate their necks, pumping air to create a form of evaporation cooling. @AnzaBResearch
- Forecasts called for another day of scorching heat Friday across California’s inland and desert communities. @NWSSanDiego | KABC
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- A bend in the Gualala River through redwood forest. A spring-fed pool surrounded by boulders along the Santa Ynez River. And “the most beautiful pool you’ve ever seen” along the Big Sur River. The New York Times shared six California swimming holes “that exemplify the best of the state.”
- On Nov. 8, Sierra County sheriff’s deputies found 71-year-old Patrice Miller dead in her Downieville home amid signs that she had been mauled by a black bear. After an autopsy, they’ve concluded that she was killed by the bear, making it the first documented fatal black bear attack in California history. KCRA
- At 13, the child prodigy Evan O’Dorney won the Scripps National Spelling Bee. A few years later, he won gold at the International Math Olympiad, and a year after that he solved a math problem that had stumped Stanford professors. O’Dorney is now 30. The reporter Jill Tucker, who interviewed O’Dorney as a child, wondered what had happened to him. S.F. Chronicle
- Every Tuesday evening, people pay $17 to sit quietly in a Los Angeles cafe and read books. The club’s founder, Helen Bui, has been surprised by its popularity. “Even though we’re selling out every week at this point, I still can’t believe it has become a thing,” she said. L.A. Times
- In June 1943, mobs of white sailors attacked Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles, targeting those dressed in the pachuco style. It became known as the Zoot Suit Riots. Every year a caravan of vintage cars cruise through L.A. to commemorate what happened. A photographer captured some fantastic photos. Reddit
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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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