Good morning. It’s Tuesday, Oct. 22.
- Los Angeles County embraces street psychiatry.
- City Council candidate declares: “Fuck the police.”
- And San Franciscans learn to love driverless cars.
Statewide
1.
Kern County supervisors approved California’s first carbon sequestration project on Monday. To meet ambitious climate goals, the Newsom administration has endorsed the process that involves capturing carbon dioxide from smokestacks and injecting it underground in existing wells. Opponents of the Kern project warned of air pollution and safety hazards, concerns that the supervisors dismissed. “I’m not an apologist. I’m proud of our oil sector,” said Supervisor Jeff Flores. “It provides jobs, and I think it’s really a morally arrogant position to say that your jobs don’t matter.” Bakersfield Californian | CalMatters
2.
The Navy on Monday identified the aviators killed in a crash during a routine training flight near Mount Rainier on Oct. 15 as two trailblazing women from California, both age 31. Lt. Serena N. Wileman, from Sacramento, and Lt Cmdr. Lyndsay P. Evans, from Palmdale, had just returned from the Middle East, where they flew missions to “degrade the Houthi capability to threaten innocent shipping,” the Navy said. The cause of the crash remained under investigation. Stars and Stripes | N.Y. Times
3.
A collection of some of Ansel Adams’ most significant photographs brought in $4.6 million at auction, roughly double the presale estimate. The auction, held by Sotheby’s on Oct. 16, drew frenzied bidding from buyers in 17 countries. The highest price, $720,000, was offered for to “Aspens, Northern New Mexico (Vertical),” followed by “Surf Sequence,” photographed along the San Mateo County coast, which sold for $576,000. PetaPixel | S.F. Chronicle
Northern California
4.
Just last year, San Franciscans were howling in protest over the expansion of driverless cars on their streets. But locals appear to have learned how to love the cars. Last summer, Waymo was doing 10,000 paid rides a week. Now, it’s more than 100,000 across Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. Part of the appeal: not having to talk to anyone. “I’ll just get in the car, start my music, recline my seat back, and close my eyes the whole ride home,” said McKenna Dixon, 27. “It’s just the nicest way to end my day.” Wall Street Journal
5.
There’s another plan for a utopian town backed by a tech-centric group in California, this time in Sonoma County. The project, dubbed Esmeralda, draws inspiration from Chautauqua, a hamlet in western New York devoted to intellectual and spiritual enrichment. The look would be similar to a rustic Italian hill town. “Imagine living on a college campus,” the website for the project says. “You run into friends just walking to class, and everyone is learning and creating side by side together.” S.F. Chronicle | Press Democrat
6.
A whistleblower complaint that claims to represent more than half of the staff at Trump Media calls for CEO Devin Nunes to be fired, accusing the former Central Valley congressman of mismanagement. In 2022, Nunes quit Congress to join Donald Trump’s new social media company. According to the letter, he installed unqualified people from his inner circle in key roles, outsourced jobs overseas, and “consistently lied” to his employees. Sources cited by ProPublica said at least two executives were ousted in retaliation over the complaint. ProPublica
- Nunes has gotten rich at Trump Media. According to Forbes, he has made roughly $6.3 million, or about 13 times as much as he would have made had he stayed in Congress.
7.
At night, the stars over Yosemite seem to splatter across the granite face of El Capitan. In reality, the glowing dots are the headlamps of rock climbers setting up their hanging beds, known as portaledges, where they’ll sleep before resuming their multi-day ascent of the 7,573-foot wall in the morning. It’s said that if you turn your flashlight off and on in their direction, a climber may respond in kind.
- Here’s the view from the climber’s perspective. 👉 Thehearnes.com
Southern California
8.
Los Angeles County is sending psychiatrists to track down the most acutely mentally ill people on the streets and try to persuade them to accept medication. Critics of the approach worry about consent and cost, the New York Times wrote:
“But street psychiatrists say they are seeing transformations. When he gives presentations on the team’s work, Dr. Shayan Rab likes to display photographs of patients as his team first encountered them: inert, disheveled, barely visible in mounds of trash. And then, later, scrubbed clean, sitting on a bed in a group home.”
9.
Ysabel Jurado, a first-time Los Angeles City Council candidate who won the most votes in the March primary, was asked how she felt about abolishing the police during a recent event at Cal State Los Angeles. “What’s the rap verse? ‘Fuck the police,’ that’s how I see them,” she answered, according to a recording obtained by Westside Current. Jurado is trying to unseat incumbent Councilmember Kevin de León, who responded to her remarks in a statement affirming that he is “100% behind our frontline officers.” Westside Current | Boyle Heights Beat
10.
Prosecutors raided the office of a Kern County supervisor on Monday. In a charged moment during a supervisors’ meeting on Monday, Supervisor Leticia Perez accused district attorney investigators of trying to “make illegal entry” into her office without a warrant last Friday. She hinted at political motives ahead of Election Day: “Something is happening here in Kern County that is nefarious, inappropriate, and illegal.” Later, Perez abruptly left the chamber, saying investigators had returned with a warrant. Bakersfield Californian | L.A. Times
11.
Patti McGee died on Oct. 16. Long before skateboarding became a billion-dollar industry and Olympic sport, the teenage McGee was one of the few girls to join the boys in her San Diego neighborhood in the 1960s, flying down a hill on a board her brother made in shop class. She went on to become the first women’s professional skateboarder. Her signature trick: a handstand on wheels. “Skateboarding,” she told Skateboarder Magazine in 1965, “is 100% just as much for girls as it is for boys.” McGee was 79. Washington Post
12.
The James Oviatt Building in downtown Los Angeles is one of the city’s grandest art deco temples, but its real treasures are concealed inside. The ground floor of the 1928 tower is occupied by the Cicada Restaurant, a club that takes its stewardship of one of the last sanctuaries of old Los Angeles very seriously. To enter through its Lalique glass front doors on show nights, patrons say, is to step back in time. Ornate chandeliers hang from a soaring gold-leaf ceiling. The room vibrates with the sounds of horns, dancing, and conversation. And almost everyone is dressed impeccably in jazz-age attire.
- See some sizzling scenes inside the Cicada. 👉 @cicadarestaurant
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