Good morning. It’s Friday, Oct. 18.
- L.A. puts price tag on fixing homelessness: $22 billion.
- Klamath River salmon swims past four former dam sites.
- And Oakland is named the best food city in America.
Statewide
1.
With nearly 2 million installations, California has embraced rooftop solar like no other state. But some researchers say home solar is inadvertently raising electricity costs while undermining the development of large solar farms. “I call it a ‘solar-shaped hole’ in the electricity grid,” said Jesse Jenkins, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University. “The more rooftop solar you have, the less valuable utility-scale solar is.” Washington Post
2.
On this week’s California Sun Podcast, host Jeff Schechtman talked with Forrest Gander, a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and author of the new novel-poem “Mojave Ghost.” In recent years, Gander lost his wife, younger sister, mother, and step-father. “That completely unsettled me,” he said. So he started walking. Gander spent two years tracing the San Andreas Fault, a rupture that spoke to what he was feeling inside. “The landscape seemed to be very expressive of my emotional condition,” he said. “And my emotional condition was being tuned by the landscape.”
Northern California
3.
Two young women were killed Wednesday night when a motorist fleeing deputies lost control and barreled into their Fresno home, the authorities said. The victims were sisters, Mang Yang, 25, and Eliza Yang, 18. Investigators said the driver, identified as Adam Canales, 18, initially fled when deputies pulled up on a group of suspected gang members. He crashed less than 30 seconds later, then exited his vehicle and ran only to be cornered by officers with the help of a police helicopter. Fresno Bee | KFSN
4.
A Klamath River salmon was observed swimming in Oregon on Wednesday, having swum roughly 230 miles from the Pacific past four former dam sites just weeks after removal of the barriers wrapped up. For more than a century, the dams halted the historical migration of the salmon along what was once the third-largest salmon-producing river in the West. The return of the fish is seen as a litmus test of the dam removal’s success. “The salmon remember,” Frankie Myers, a tribal leader, said of the Oregon sighting. S.F. Chronicle | KTVZ
- Oregon wildlife officials shared video of the salmon. YouTube
5.
In an essay in the New York Times on Wednesday, the tech investor Michael Moritz blamed San Francisco’s ills on politicians devoted to an ideology “that embraces a knee-jerk opposition to progress, a deep-rooted antipathy to many forms of law enforcement and a belief that higher taxes are a cure for all evil.” He cited one by name: supervisor and mayoral candidate Aaron Peskin.
On Thursday, Peskin responded with his own essay in the San Francisco Chronicle and remarks to Mission Local, in which he portrayed Moritz as a self-interested billionaire pouring huge sums of money into an effort to move the city rightward. “This is a guy who wants San Francisco to be a monarchy,” he said.
6.
Oakland is now the best food city in America.
That is, at least, according to readers of Condé Nast Traveler, which ranked the nation’s most beloved food cities based on more than 575,000 votes. The magazine celebrated Oakland’s “staggeringly diverse” food scene, including the soul food spot Burdell, the innovative pizza place Pizzaiolo, and taco trucks that serve some of the country’s best birria. Condé Nast Traveler
- In September, Bon Appétit named Oakland’s Popoca, a Salvadoran restaurant, one of the 20 best new restaurants in the country.
Southern California
7.
An arrest warrant has been issued for a former Los Angeles police officer who in 2015 fired fatal gunshots into the back of an unarmed homeless man after a dispute outside a Venice Beach bar, sources told the Los Angeles Times. In 2018, then-District Attorney Jackie Lacey declined to charge Clifford Proctor, despite the urging of the police chief. The reversal came after District Attorney George Gascón hired a special prosecutor to reexamine police shootings that led to no charges. A lawyer who previously represented Proctor called the timing weeks before Election Day “suspicious.” L.A. Times
8.
Los Angeles analyzed what it would actually cost to get every person living on the street indoors: $21.7 billion over a decade. Less than $7 billion is currently budgeted, which presents leaders with a choice. They can figure out how to triple that sum, change strategies, or continue muddling along with the hope that housing becomes more affordable. Margot Kushel, a homelessness researcher, said the number reflects decades of underinvestment in affordable housing. “This is the hole we’ve found ourselves in,” she said. “I don’t think there’s magical thinking that’s going to get us out of it.” L.A. Times
9.
Mead Valley, a majority Latino community of roughly 20,500 people in Riverside County, has one of the highest warehouse-per-resident ratios in the Inland Empire. Yet county leaders are now considering allowing even more warehouses, infiltrating a largely rural part of town once considered off limits. Karla Cervantes, who raises her children and sheep on two acres, said she worries about young people growing up in a mass logistics hub. “When they look to see the sun rise,” she said, “they’re going to see the sun rise on a bunch of warehouses.” L.A. Times
10.
Film production in Los Angeles this summer was so dismal that it trailed the summer of 2023, when production was halted by dual strikes. According to FilmLA, which handles film permits for the region, there were 5,048 shoot days between July and September, 36% below the five-year average. Many in Hollywood, once excited about getting back to work after the labor disruption, have now become resigned to the idea that the film and TV business has become permanently smaller. Bloomberg | Hollywood Reporter
11.
GQ tried to get Harrison Ford to talk fashion.
GQ: “This is GQ, so I have to ask you one fashion question. There’s this photo of you at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982, where you’re wearing blue shorts and a blue sweater. It’s become this sort of shining-star inspirational outfit for menswear enthusiasts. Are you aware of this?”
Ford: “I think I’m going to be ill.”
In case you missed it
12.
Five items that got big views over the past week:
- To help pay his tuition at Cal State Long Beach, the Oaxaca-born artist Narsiso Martinez spent his summers working in the fields. The agricultural workforce later became a focus of his art, which included portraits of the people who feed America painted on discarded produce boxes. Martinez’s art is now on exhibit in Los Angeles. This is Colossal
- See more of Martinez’s work. 👉 @narsisomartinez
- In 1939, the journalist Sanora Babb was putting the finishing touches on a novel about Dust Bowl migrants when John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” was released. He was catapulted to literary greatness, while Babb shoved her manuscript into a drawer. What few knew at the time was that Steinbeck had acquired Babb’s field notes. The Atlantic
- The columnist Gustavo Arellano headed out across the Southwest to ask Latinos about their hopes, fears, and dreams in this election year. “I found humor, I found grit. I found hope. I found a people thriving — and mostly ambivalent about this country’s partisan divide,” he wrote. L.A. Times
- When the adult daughter of columnist Mary McNamara had her car towed, she spent the next six hours playing phone-tag with government agencies trying to locate the vehicle. That was just the start of a Kafkaesque odyssey that would bring her to tears, McNamara wrote. L.A. Times
- Residents as far south as San Diego reported witnessing the northern lights last week after an unusually strong geomagnetic storm lit up the sky. A few of the photos and video shared on social media:
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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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