Good morning. It’s Wednesday, July 31.
- People illegally climb California’s tallest redwoods.
- Parents of Bay Area Olympian want her to get a real job.
- And a photo tour of the state’s prettiest city halls.
Statewide
1.
Crews moved to clear homeless encampments in San Francisco on Tuesday, following through on a pledge by Mayor London Breed to launch a “very aggressive” crackdown. “No more encampments,” a police officer was heard telling one homeless man. “No more. This is what it’s come down to.” In a memo circulated on Tuesday, city officials said police officers would canvas cleared areas to ensure camps aren’t reestablished. Anyone who refuses to leave or accept housing, they said, would face “progressive penalties.” SF Standard
- Los Angeles embraced a different approach: openly rejecting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s push to clear encampments. N.Y. Times | NBC Los Angeles
2.
Naturalists working in Northern California’s ancient redwood groves have long embraced a code of secrecy, withholding the locations of the tallest trees for fear of inviting damaging attention. As coordinates have leaked online, however, a network of “ninja climbers” is now descending on some of the region’s most sensitive habitat. While they claim to love the forest, wrote reporter Ashley Harrell, “they also feel entitled to shoot lines into the trees with crossbows and climb on up, snapping bark and branches and disrupting the rare canopy ecosystem along the way.” SFGATE
Northern California
3.
The former leader of a San Francisco charity was arrested and charged with 34 felonies involving embezzlement and misuse of public money, authorities said on Tuesday. Kyra Worthy, 49, who served as executive director of the crime prevention group SF SAFE, is accused of misusing more than $700,000, failing to pay workers and contractors while diverting funds into lavish parties and her personal bank account. Her actions led to the 48-year-old charity’s collapse in January, prosecutors said. S.F. Chronicle | SF Standard
4.
There’s a restaurant at a state prison in Vacaville where the inmates cook for the guards. Opened in 2023, Delancey Street Restaurant kitchen is meant to promote normalization, a principle that aims to make life inside prison as similar as possible to life outside. Shaylor Watson, 55, incarcerated for two murders he committed as a teenager, said he expects to die in prison. “This program has given me hope again in life,” he said. CalMatters
5.
In May, Apple faced a backlash over an ad that showed an industrial press crushing musical instruments and other creative tools before offering its iPad as a substitute. Now Google is under fire for a new ad that suggested using artificial intelligence to write a child’s fan letter to her favorite athlete. Both ads were developed in-house, suggesting a disconnect between how Silicon Valley and the wider public sees the proper role of tech in our lives. “The whole thing is bleak,” wrote tech reporter Caroline Mimbs Nyce. The Atlantic
6.
The Bay Area’s Lily Zhang is the most decorated American table tennis player of all time — a six-time national champion and a four-time Olympian. Her parents want her to get a real job. “We always want her to focus on school,” said Linda Liu, her mother. “I always wanted her to get a job and be a regular girl.” Zhang, 28, concedes that her parents have a point: table tennis does not offer a path to riches like some other sports. But she isn’t done yet. On Monday, she notched the biggest win of her Olympic career to advance to the round of 16. Wall Street Journal
- See highlights from Zhang’s win. 👉 NBC Olympics
7.
For more than half a century, a noirish diner along an industrial corridor in San Francisco kept the promise of its neon sign: “We Never Close.” But now, without fanfare, Silver Crest Donut Shop has closed. The diner was boarded up on Monday, seemingly for good, reports said on Tuesday. The phone line has been disconnected. Attempts by reporters to reach the Greek American owners George and Nina Giavris came up empty. S.F. Chronicle | KQED
Southern California
8.
Democratic Party officials urged the mayor of the small city of Wasco in Kern County to step down after a video was alleged to show him trying to meet with a minor for sex. In the video, Mayor Alex Garcia is seen being assaulted by a pair of men who appear to be acting as vigilantes. One tells him not to touch “little boys no more.” Garcia replies, “I never will.” Since the video was posted on July 24, Garcia has taken his social media accounts offline and declined requests for comment. KGET | San Joaquin Valley Sun
9.
Two men killed each other in an apparent case of road rage in a suburb of San Bernardino late Saturday, officials said. Tempers flared after motorcyclist Jonathan McConnell, 38, clipped the side of a sedan driven by Aaron Harris, 37, on the 210 Freeway. Harris, traveling with his two children, ages 2 and 5, followed McConnell to a parking lot outside of Joy’s Lounge, a bar in Highland. There, the two men exchanged words, then gunfire, the sheriff’s department said. San Bernardino Sun | KTLA
10.
Wedged among the dense residential neighborhoods of the Los Angeles Basin is the largest urban oil-extraction complex in the United States. The 1,000-acre Inglewood Oil Field pumps millions of barrels of oil a year from its 436 active wells, bobbing up and down within 5 miles of more than 1 million Angelenos. The magazine writer Jonathan Blake is among them. “It is an eyesore that I see from my doorstep — but much more than that too,” he wrote. “It is an environmental burden, a font of toxicities, a cause of illness.” Noema Magazine
11.
South Pasadena on Monday introduced the country’s first all-electric-vehicle police fleet. The city of roughly 25,000 on the edge of Los Angeles replaced its gasoline-powered cruisers with 20 new Teslas. South Pasadena “is very environmentally and sustainability conscious,” said Sgt. Tony Abdalla. “We got a much better performing car that costs significantly less to maintain and fuel.” USA Today | A.P.
California the beautiful
12.
A city hall, done right, should make a statement about what we stand for, the architectural photographer Arthur Drooker wrote. In California, the grandeur of San Francisco’s house of democracy symbolizes the city’s resilience after the 1906 earthquake. In Palm Springs, a pair of palm trees soaring through the City Hall entryway suggests playfulness, while San Jose’s new glass-domed structure is meant to evoke openness and transparency. Below is a photo tour of seven of California most impressive city halls, drawn largely from appraisals by Architectural Digest, Curbed, and Drooker’s book, “City Hall.”
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