Mar 27, 2025
A close-up of musician Nina Simone is captured in blue, black, gray and white acrylic paint. Her face is surrounded by a large black letter “N.” Etched into the glass frame is “WORD.”
Artist Michael Stevenson created this piece for his 2015 exhibition “Civil Rights Civil Wrongs” at University of Texas. Personal experiences were the inspiration.
“My nephews were throwing the N word around very casually,” says Stevenson, a graphic designer raised in Nashville. “It’s a hip thing to do, but once you’re starting to have kids, you think about the history of the word and how hurtful and demeaning it is. So, I took on the N word. Nina Simone fought so hard to eliminate this word. Now my N word is Nina.”
Feb 28, 2025
Find out what is going on in Sacramento during the month of March!
Feb 28, 2025
People are excited about the team once known as the Oakland A’s playing home games in a minor-league ballpark in West Sacramento. Not me.
This fascination with the A’s and Major League Baseball is a sucker’s game, a modern version of the old carnival stall hook-a-duck.
The A’s are carpetbaggers. They swoop into town in search of accommodation, untethered to commitment. They linger as long as convenience allows, then vanish into the night. They won’t even mention their stopover city’s name.
Smart people tell me the A’s three-season residency makes Sacramento a contender for big league permanence, either through expansion or the A’s themselves. This is nonsense.
Feb 28, 2025
The city doesn’t know how to tell a story.
In January, I asked the city for documents related to the Del Rio Trail bicycle bridge across Interstate 5 and Riverside Boulevard.
You know the bridge.
It’s the $12 million span that never opened. The one with wooden construction forms still hanging above the freeway. Built with substandard concrete and rebar. Now facing demolition.
And begging questions about how the city waited until last summer, when the bridge was ready for its ribbon cutting, before anyone started screaming about the problems.
That bridge.
Feb 28, 2025
David Sobon, who founded Wide Open Walls mural festival, has something special on his own walls.
“As I gaze at two of my Norma Roos paintings in my living room, I see something different every time I spend time with them,” Sobon says. “The passion, emotion and skill that she has in her abstract work just boggles my mind.”
Sobon is not alone. Roos, 88, is having commercial succcess with art that’s lived in her soul since childhood. Her abstract paintings sold fast in two solo shows at Twisted Track Gallery on R Street.
Feb 28, 2025
Kat Boston loves to defy gravity. The high-flying athlete has been an aerialist since 2012 when she sought a new way to stay fit. Her sport involves yoga-style movements in the air, using silks, hoops, hammocks or ropes.
“I have a background in Olympic weightlifting and Crossfit, but I kept getting injured,” Boston says. “I needed something different for my body and I was looking for a creative outlet. I stumbled on an aerial class and was instantly hooked.”
Boston is always up for a challenge, which is why she loves aerial performance and the fire service. She became a firefighter in 2006.
