Hi Friend's!
Here we are, another Saturday, and a list of about 6 things in California we thought were worth sharing with you.
We may never get the perfect group of California things to do, see, or eat, but we do give it our best effort.
We hope you enjoy this week's read, and we'll see you next Saturday.
As always, thanks for supporting this newsletter. It is as much yours as it is ours.
Be Well! Stay Safe!
Mark & Patti
I've always had a thing about ghost towns, from the days of watching black and white westerns on television to after moving to California. Throughout the years, I've visited some ghost towns in Montana and Wyoming. I still haven't visited any here, but that's on my bucket list.
What it's like for the only four rangers living in a California ghost town
by Ashley Harrell, SF Gate
After all, the former gold-mining settlement, located almost 300 miles east of San Francisco, is preserved in a state of “arrested decay,” left just as it was when townspeople abandoned it in the late 1800s. Visitors are fascinated to see what remains of the isolated Wild West outpost where 10,000 people once cavorted in saloons, patronized brothels, fought in gambling halls and passed out in opium dens. Some visitors even show up on cross country skis or snowshoes.
This Calif. restaurant lets you eat for free if you're taller than the chef
by Farley Elliot, SF Gate
In Los Angeles, chef Bernhard Mairinger is putting his own prodigious height to the test, daring folks who hover in the 7-foot range to come and earn themselves a meal, on him, at his new restaurant Lustig. Opened in Culver City at the very end of 2023, Lustig is an ode to Mairinger’s Austrian heritage, with options like braised beef sauerbraten, a croque monsieur flatbread and, of course, schnitzel.
So just how tall do you have to be to score those dishes for free? Mairinger is an imposing 6-foot-8, which is a full 2 inches taller than the average NBA player. Neither the Warriors’ Klay Thompson nor Draymond Green would make the cut, unfortunately — but you can, if you’ve got the legs for it.
The hottest new celebrity hangout? The LA strip mall
by Paula Mejía, SF Gate
If you’re pulling into this two-story retail complex on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, chances are you’re knocking a few errands off your to-do list before going about your day. The nondescript strip mall with a metallic copper curlicue railing, dubbed the Sunset Collection, has a FedEx Office Print & Ship Center, a clothing alteration shop, and a Starbucks. Visitors with a little more time and disposable income can park their car underground and then swing by the nail or hair salons tucked away upstairs, or maybe hit up the place dedicated to lymphatic drainage massages.
Crystal Cave closed for second year in row
by Sheldon Gajarian, Fox 26 News
Sequoia National Park, Calif. — Sequoia Parks Conservancy regrets to announce the continued closure of Crystal Cave for the 2024 season.
This decision is a result of the damage sustained to the road, trail, and visitor facilities at Crystal Cave during the 2021 KNP Complex wildfire and the extreme winter weather in early 2023.
S.P.C. is working closely with the National Park Service to restore safe access to the public in 2025. Repair work will include removing dead-standing hazard trees left by the drought and KNP Complex Fire in 2021, significant repairs to the damaged road from the winter 2023 rains, restoring the solar electrical system that powers the cave lights, and the installation of a new ticket entrance kiosk.
A Whiskey-Coke Like Only California Can Do
by Tyler Zielinski, Punch Drink . com
Unlike so many modern bars that aim to transport guests to a far-flung locale or down a figurative rabbit hole through their thematic drinks and menus, San Francisco’s True Laurel relies on its local bounty, often through foraging, to firmly plant guests where they are: the Bay Area.
To evoke that sense of place, what True Laurel can’t forage themselves, they carefully source from nearby producers. For example, in The Doctor Away, a rum cocktail that is featured in the fall, the bar forages sappy, green pine cones to macerate in vodka and re-distill; sources lovage from Napa Valley–based Jackson Family Farms; and gets Granny Smith apples, which are juiced for the cocktail, from a farm just south of San Francisco.
Rare hummingbird turns Glendora family’s new yard into tourist attraction
by Brooke Staggs, San Gabriel Velley Tribune
Over the past two weeks, a couple hundred people have flocked from Northern California, Arizona and everywhere in between to stake out a quiet neighborhood in Glendora.
They come bearing binoculars, telephoto lenses and a shared mission: To catch sight of “BB.”
That’s the name birders have bestowed on an elusive broad-billed hummingbird that is now calling Kristin Joseph’s flower-filled front yard home.
He might not be quite as eye-popping as the snowy owl that captivated people for several weeks in January of 2023 after it veered off course and nested in north Orange County. But since BB’s variety of petite, fast-flying hummingbirds are usually only found in the canyons and woodlands of Mexico and southern Arizona, not Glendora, they can be tricky for local enthusiasts to check off their birding bucket lists.