Good morning. It’s Monday, June 26.
- Poll shows many Californians considering leaving.
- Housing developers move to bypass Bay Area officials.
- And Kodachrome views of San Francisco in the 1950s.
Statewide
1.
A new poll found that more than 40% of California residents are considering leaving the state. The survey, conducted by a consortium of nonprofits, found that roughly 70% of respondents are happy living here, citing attributes such as the state’s diversity and enjoyable lifestyle. But many simply can’t afford it. Roughly 80% of residents said they were dissatisfied with the cost of everyday living expenses. L.A. Times
- Relatedly, the state released its 2023 income limits, used to determine eligibility for affordable housing. Households making $104,000 a year are now considered “low-income” in San Francisco, San Mateo, and Marin counties. SFGATE
2.
A pair of editorials on California’s housing crisis:
- Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plan to reduce homelessness is aggressive but fatally flawed, the S.F. Chronicle wrote. “No matter how much money is spent or how many facilities built, if the underlying problems preventing people from getting the care and housing they need aren’t addressed, the crises in our streets will only continue to grow worse.”
- New legislation is about to make it easier to convert commercial buildings into housing, the L.A. Times wrote. “Forget the urban doom loop talk. The moribund suburban strip malls and downtown office buildings present a tremendous opportunity for California to address one of its most pressing problems: the crippling shortage of housing that has driven up rents and home prices to unaffordable levels.”
3.
“Detours and roadblocks bedeck its shores. Chemicals, manure and diesel pollute it. Palm trees and power poles poke from its surface. Day brings dragonflies. Dusk brings mosquitoes. Flocks of birds are settling in — swallows, wrens, ducks, egrets, chattering red-winged blackbirds. Algae bobs on the waves; underneath, on the tomato and cotton fields that make up most of the lake bottom, abandoned cars rust and catfish lurk.”
The N.Y. Times published a dispatch from Tulare Lake that includes some fantastic photos.
4.
California’s wildfire camera network began in 2013 with just one unit in the Lake Tahoe area. This wildfire season, there are more than 1,000. Last month, UC San Diego announced the rollout of a new website tailored for the public that lets you pull up every one. The cameras double as real-time portals to vistas all over the state, such as the Lost Coast, Mount Tamalpais, Catalina Island, and the Alabama Hills. PetaPixel
Northern California
5.
Eight-story condo buildings in wealthy Los Altos Hills. Hundreds of apartments in Brentwood. And 150 homes on a rustic hillside in Marin County.
Developers are moving to take advantage of a state law that allows them to build basically whatever they want in cities that fall out of compliance with state housing mandates. An analysis found 34 so-called builder’s remedy proposals across the Bay Area, amounting to more than 6,400 units, many of them in affluent neighborhoods known for blocking new housing. Mercury News
6.
Years ago, the deep-sea exploration entrepreneur Stockton Rush visited the Bay Area to get advice from Liz Taylor, an engineer with decades of experience in the field. During a “long conversation,” she explained to him why using carbon fiber to build a submersible would not work, she said. But he persisted. Rush was killed along with four others when his company’s carbon-fiber submersible imploded during an expedition to the Titanic. “We were all quite frustrated, really infuriated all at once and of course very sad for the people on board,” Taylor said. S.F. Chronicle
7.
Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are “dead serious” about fighting in a mixed-martial-arts cage match and plans are underway to stage the event, according to the Ultimate Fighting Championship boss Dana White. The tech writer Ian Bogost said it somehow makes perfect sense:
“Who needs either one of these jerks? The battle between the nerds and jocks was always kind of fake. At the highest levels of society, nerds and jocks cannot be distinguished. Mostly, they are bullies to the rest of us.” The Atlantic
- Zuckerberg is “trying to make himself cool again.” Washington Post
8.
☝️ Meet Scooter, the winner of the 2023 World’s Ugliest Dog Contest in Petaluma. Once slated for euthanasia, Scooter, 7, stole the show Friday night with his mohawk, hanging tongue, and reversed hind legs. “He kind of reminds me of a hairy hippopotamus,” one judge said. According to Scooter’s biography, “He has no idea that he is any different from any other dog.” N.Y. Times | Mercury News
9.
When Jeff Altman, a professional film colorist based in Chicago, inherited a bunch of Kodachrome film shot by his grandfather, he was amazed by the clarity of images. His grandfather had shot in 16mm rather than 8mm, the standard for the time. Altman went to work inspecting and restoring the archive, which included a vacation to San Francisco in 1958. A three-minute video shows crisp views of the city during a glamorous phase, when the men wore suits, the women wore their hair short, and seemingly everyone smoked. 👉 YouTube
Southern California
10.
“There was absolutely no supervision.”
A thumb drive of surveillance videos smuggled out of Los Angeles’ central jail shows horrifying violence inside the troubled institution. In one video, two dozen men are seen pummeling, kicking, and stabbing a man for roughly a minute. For the next 10 minutes, the victim stumbles around and tries to mop up his own blood. Then the beating resumes. Finally, roughly 14 minutes after the attack began, deputies show up and order everyone to the ground. L.A. Times
11.
The authorities recovered human remains Saturday from an area in the San Gabriel mountains where the British actor Julian Sands vanished while on a solo hike in January. The coroner is expected to make an identification within days. Sands, 65, known for his roles in films including “A Room With a View,” once told the Guardian that he is happiest when “close to a mountain summit on a glorious cold morning.” His family released a statement Friday: “We continue to hold Julian in our hearts with bright memories of him as a wonderful father, husband, explorer, lover of the natural world and the arts, and as an original and collaborative performer.” The Guardian | A.P.
12.
One of the hardest-working seawalls in California provides a sanctuary for harbor seals and sea lions. Constructed in the 1930s, the half-moon-shaped wall at Children’s Pool in La Jolla was meant to create a safe wading pool for children. But when a colony of blubbery pinnipeds began sunning on the shore in the 1990s, local officials created a reserve to protect the animals. Arguments over whether to eject the seals from the prime real estate have raged off and on ever since.
Cole Parker captured a wild drone shot of the seawall at Children’s Pool. 👉 @colepark.er
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