Before March 2020, Sacramento enjoyed a 10-year golden age for small business.

Independent restaurants, shops and galleries opened throughout the city. The transformation was remarkable enough that in 2016 and 2018, we published “Inside Sacramento: The Most Interesting Places in America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital.”

The book featured more than 100 local businesses across eight neighborhoods. Today, much of it reads like history.

When Pam and Andrew Ferko open their front door, visitors get an immediate sense of what makes this River Park home special.

The view extends from entry through dining area and living room, across a patio and into the backyard. It’s an uninterrupted sightline that makes the 1,400-square-foot house feel much bigger.

“That’s our favorite thing about the home,” Pam says.
Built in 1953, the three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath house has been Pam and Andrew’s home since 2002. They gradually remodeled, creating a colorful interpretation of midcentury-modern that emphasizes natural light, open space and indoor-outdoor living.

At 90, Sacramento artist Gerald “Jerry” Walburg approaches his work with the curiosity and persistence of someone who sees no reason to stop.

Last month, I wrote about the remarkable East Sac home and garden Jerry shaped over decades. He oversees a collection of houses, studios, sculpture gardens and gallery spaces that blur boundaries between art, architecture and landscape.

The surroundings reveal how Walburg sees the world: carefully composed, deeply personal, always evolving.

Two culinary words not often heard together in these parts are “Japanese” and “breakfast.” Genki Kitchen is changing that.

The breakfast, lunch and brunch spot in East Sacramento takes Japanese comfort foods, blends them with American staples, sprinkles in a dash of Hawaii and delivers a remarkable experience.

Owner Dan Chan and his wife Nancy see their restaurant as a fully immersive family experience. Their 13-year-old son helps out on weekends. Nieces and nephews bus tables. All members of the family drop in to assist when needed.

Carlos Gonzalez-Jaime knows he has a big job as new executive director of MOSAC, the SMUD Museum of Science and Curiosity in the old PG&E power station on Jibboom Street.

The elegant steam turbine facility is an inspired home for a science museum, but MOSAC has never been on easy street. Successor to the Discovery Museum Science and Space Center on Auburn Boulevard, MOSAC needed almost 15 years to move from pipe dream to reality.

When the museum finally welcomed visitors in November 2021, the region was still recovering from pandemic lockdowns.