Good morning. It’s Tuesday, Dec. 31.
- California moves to ease home insurance crisis.
- Republicans see evidence that state is “reddening.”
- And Palm Springs gets the “36 Hours” treatment.
Please note: There will be no newsletter tomorrow, Jan. 1. Regular programming resumes Thursday.
Statewide
1.
Insurance companies will have to resume offering policies in fire-prone areas if they want to keep doing business in California under a regulation introduced Monday. In exchange, officials said, insurers will be allowed to pass on the costs of reinsurance — the insurance that insurers buy for themselves — to their customers. Jamie Court, a consumer advocate, warned that the changes would send rates soaring. “This plan is of the insurance industry, by the insurance industry, and for the industry,” he said. A.P. | L.A. Times
2.
While California was generally a bright spot for national Democrats during the year’s election, Republicans saw evidence that the state is “reddening.” Californians aligned with the state GOP’s position in eight of nine general election ballot measures. “You don’t get red-pilled overnight,” said Jessica Millan Patterson, the chairperson of the state Republican Party. “It’s the issues that affect your everyday life first, and then you connect them with people, and then you connect it with a party.” Politico
- In the Bay Area, the lowest-income areas experienced the biggest shifts toward Donald Trump, an analysis found. Mercury News
3.
The New York Times Magazine remembered some of the lives lost in 2024. Among them:
- Wally Amos, who made himself famous with his Famous Amos cookie shop then lost it all before embarking on an improbable second act.
- Edward Stone, a visionary physicist who oversaw a once-in-a-generation investigation of the outer solar system.
- Rosa, an orphaned sea otter that became a foster mother to 15 pups at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
4.
You’re not allowed to camp at Hot Creek Geologic Site, the breathtaking squiggle of magma-heated water in the Eastern Sierra. But the creek is surrounded by federal land bubbling with other hot springs where you can plop a tent pretty much anywhere you like, an area recently named among the best wild camping sites in America. On clear nights, the rising steam seems to mingle with the stars. The Outbound
Northern California
5.
The man behind a 2015 kidnapping and rape in Vallejo that police initially dismissed as a hoax has now been accused of two more home invasions that took place in the Bay Area in 2009, prosecutors announced on Monday. The fresh charges against Matthew Muller, 47, resulted from a “new lead” and DNA testing, officials said. In both cases, Muller broke into a home, restrained a woman in her 30s, and forced her to drink NyQuil as part of an attempted rape, they said. Mercury News
6.
When Alex Harrison accused his high school tennis coach of abusing him in 2006, he was shunned by teammates and parents in his insular hometown in Marin County. The coach was later exposed as a serial predator and sent to prison. In 2022, Harrison won a $10 million judgement against the Tamalpais Union High School District, which it appealed. But in a surprise move this month, the district and its insurers paid Harrison, now 38 and a lawyer, $11.5 million. “I’m just relieved for it to be over,” he said. N.Y. Times
7.
Tech columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler documented Waymo robot taxis repeatedly failing to yield as he tried to walk across a marked crosswalk in San Francisco. “It is a cautionary tale about how AI, intended to make us more safe, also needs to learn how to coexist with us,” he wrote. “The experience has taught my family that the safest place around an autonomous vehicle is inside it, not walking around it.” Washington Post
8.
In 1977, Humboldt County loggers outraged over a plan to expand Redwood National Park carved a redwood into the shape of a peanut and brought it to President Jimmy Carter as a mock gift. Carter refused it, the park expansion went forward, and in time the area’s lumber mills fell quiet. The so-called “Orick Peanut” was parked outside a gas station along Highway 101 in Orick, where it remained for decades as a tourist curiosity. But the sculpture was ultimately outlived by the former peanut farmer who inspired it. Carter died at 100 on Sunday; the Orick Peanut was smashed to pieces last year by a hit-and-run driver. On Monday, Donna Hufford, a local business leader, likened the log’s doom to that of Orick itself, which never was able to get back on its feet. Times-Standard
Southern California
9.
Will Ferrell showed up to a Kings hockey game in Los Angeles on Sunday night dressed as Buddy the Elf, his character from the holiday classic “Elf.” While Buddy was relentlessly cheerful in the 2003 film, the Buddy that sat rinkside wore a stubborn scowl, as if he had endured some hard times over the last two decades. A FanDuel Sports Network broadcaster reported that Buddy told her it had been “a tough holiday season.” L.A. Times | Variety
10.
Some retirees in Riverside County are spending their golden years jumping out of airplanes. “It’s great stress relief,” said John Miller, 77. “When you step out of that plane, there’s no wife, no mortgage, no bills, none of that stuff. It’s 100 percent concentration all the time.” The New York Times hurtled through the air with Southern California’s skydiving seniors.
11.
The world’s largest California fan palm oasis.
A roadhouse that has hosted Paul McCartney and Robert Plant.
And the finest collection of midcentury modern architecture to be found anywhere.
The New York Times gave Palm Springs the “36 Hours” treatment.
Year in review
12.
As 2024 draws to a close, here’s a look back at 10 newsletter stories that grabbed your attention over the past year based a review of clicks, reader response, and social-media shares:
- The Tahitian surfer Raimana Van Bastolaer won fans as an instructor at Kelly Slater’s surf ranch in the San Joaquin Valley, appearing in videos helping novices get to their feet on perfect waves. In a clip that earned millions of views, Bastolaer performed an incredible save after a collision toppled his young pupil. @raimanaworld
- The author Myriam Gurba wrote about Dorothea Lange’s iconic “Migrant Mother,” Florence Thompson, who became “a symbol of White women’s destitution.” On a research trip to Nipomo, where Thompson was said to have made camp, Gurba half hoped to find a shrine. Instead, she found indifference. Places Journal
- A San Francisco couple bought a run-down property on the Russian River for $148,000 and replaced it with a modern house. Over time, what was intended as a second home became their primary residence. “I do go to the city, but kind of kicking and screaming, now that we’ve tasted the other side,” said Johanna Grawunder. The New York Times published pictures.
- Writer Ryan Bradley and photographer Devin Oktar Yalkin set out on a quest to find the greatest trees in Los Angeles. “I’ve come to realize,” Bradley wrote, “that what I believe makes a tree great is not necessarily its size or its age but its ability to keep on living, especially if it has persisted despite prolonged neglect.” L.A. Times
- Adam Aleksic, an etymologist with a large social-media following, shared a video explainer on what he called the “Valley Girl ‘mmm.’” At some point, young women in the subcultural group associated with the San Fernando Valley began adding a small nasal sound to the end of their sentences. Watch until the end for Aleksic’s spot-on demonstration. 👉 @etymologynerd
- In a new tell-all memoir, Crystal Hefner recounts her life as a Playboy model and the last wife of Hugh Hefner. Crystal and other girlfriends who lived in the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles were paid $1,000 a week and were expected to cater to the aging pornographer sexually. Back then, she said, it felt like her destiny. N.Y. Times
- In 2021, Trader Joe’s approached Chitra Agrawal, the owner of an Indian condiment company, about partnering on her pickles and chutneys. Months later, without warning, Trader Joe’s debuted its Garlic Achaar Sauce, a product Agrawal denounced as “a cheap knock off.” TASTE wrote about an open secret in the food business: Trader Joe’s has a “blatant and aggressive copycat culture.”
- The story of how Los Angeles drained the Owens Valley of its water has been told endlessly, most enduringly in the film “Chinatown.” But Los Angeles was just as thirsty for energy. The photographer Brandon Tauszik traversed the Owens Valley to create a fascinating visual chronicle of the hydropower plants of the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Distillations Magazine
- At 13, the Bay Area 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 he that solved a math problem that stumped Stanford professors. A reporter who interviewed O’Dorney as a child wondered what happened to him. “I certainly see myself as an artist, more so than a scientist,” the 30-year-old told her. S.F. Chronicle
- In Cambria, an old-school oyster bar offers sunset views that are nothing short of spectacular. In Santa Barbara, a 138-year-old hillside tavern could double as a museum. And in Nipomo, a steak house makes one of the best burgers anywhere. Eater named 15 restaurants along the Central Coast that are so good they’re worth taking a road trip to get there.
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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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