Connecting California, Featured »

To Be Blunt, California’s Marijuana Industry Is Stoking High Anxiety

By | December 11, 2017

California’s 2018 transition to legal marijuana contains a mind-bending paradox: Ending prohibitions on marijuana is going to require an awful lot of aggressive law enforcement.
When January 1 rolls around, California will not merely be permitting adults 21 and older to buy marijuana for recreational purposes. The state and its cities also will be scrambling to create a new and wickedly complicated regime to regulate and …

Connecting California, Featured »

With Charles Manson Gone, California Needs a New Villain

By | December 4, 2017

It’s hard to find a villain who can bring Californians together these days.
That—more than any other factor—is why Charlie Manson’s death produced so many remembrances in California media. Manson was a murderer, but he also represented the time, a half-century ago, when people had enough in common to share certain experiences—like fear of the crazed killers of the Manson Family.
Today, it’s difficult to think of …

Connecting California, Featured »

New Skyscrapers in L.A. and S.F. Tell Tall Tales About California

By | November 27, 2017

This is a tale of two new skyscrapers—and of two cities that have more in common than they care to admit.
The Wilshire Grand Center towers 73 stories and 1,100 feet over downtown Los Angeles, making it the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. A project of the conglomerate that owns Korean Air, it opened this summer.
In San Francisco, the Salesforce Tower, which takes …

Connecting California »

A Very Cheech Marin Thanksgiving

By | November 21, 2017

This week, California should give thanks for Cheech.
Richard Anthony Marin deserves our gratitude not just because his new autobiography, Cheech Is Not My Real Name … But Don’t Call Me Chong, turns out to be the best California book of the year. And not just because his career should give you hope that no matter how short, bald, or brown you are, you can be …

Connecting California, Featured »

What Californians Can Learn From South Korea’s Nuclear Cool

By | November 13, 2017

Can Californians learn to be as cool as Koreans in the face of nuclear annihilation?
Visiting Seoul last week, I asked people how they stay sane while living within range of North Korea’s weapons. After all, Kim Jong Un’s capital, Pyongyang, is just 120 miles from Seoul—the same meager distance protecting San Diego from Los Angeles.
Seoul’s regional population is now 25 million, about half of …

Connecting California, Featured »

How Data Is Making California’s Water Wars Worse

By | November 6, 2017

If you thought California’s famously bitter water wars were hard-fought, just wait until you see our water data wars.
Californians fight over water because we all need it and there is rarely enough to satisfy the full needs of many competing interests—farmers and fishermen, environmentalists and industry, state and local water agencies, and, of course, residents. In this way, California water history mirrors that of the …

Connecting California, Featured »

California’s Fear of High-Rise Living Is Blocking Our View of the Future

By | October 30, 2017

Want to spook your neighbors this Halloween? Don’t bother with big displays of goblins, ghouls, or ghosts. Instead, just decorate your door with a picture of an eight-story apartment building.
Californians are famously fearless in most things. We devote ourselves to extreme outdoor sports, buy homes near earthquake faults, and launch startups and make TV pilots against all odds. But in the face of tall buildings, …

Connecting California, Featured »

All California Is Wine Country–and the Wildfires Make It More So

By | October 23, 2017

A wildfire burns behind a winery in Santa Rosa, California on Oct. 14, 2017. Photo courtesy of AP/Jae C. Hong.The deaths and damage of this year’s Wine Country wildfires are a historic disaster. They are also the product of an epic California success.
That triumph is the growth of the wine industry, which has come to dominate our state’s land, culture, and image. Indeed, it’s now …

Connecting California, Featured »

The Delicious Transparency of the Hamburgers

By | October 16, 2017

California could use a concert hall like Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie.
The signature structure of 21st century Germany sits atop an old pier above a dramatic bend in the Elbe River. Its creative design features performance space for the philharmonic, a dramatically curved escalator, and a dozen different public spaces for people to gather and enjoy spectacular city views.
But what California needs more than this stunning new …

Connecting California, Featured »

My Doubts About Single-Payer Just Show I’m Sick in the Head

By | October 9, 2017

I really should be 100 percent supportive of the effort to establish a single-payer health system in California. Because all the best Californians are for it.
California’s next governor, Gavin Newsom, has made single-payer a central tenet of his campaign. America’s next president, California U.S. Senator Kamala Harris, just sprinkled her stardust on it, declaring that single-payer was the “morally right” and “smart” choice.
So …

BROUGHT TO YOU BY