If you’ve driven down Folsom Boulevard—right at 60th Street—you’ve past the Zoe McCrea Feline Sanctuary, a two-story cat habitat at Happy Tails Pet Sanctuary.
If you’re a Sacramento SPCA supporter or have recently taken your pet to the SSPCA spay/neuter clinic, you’re familiar with the new Zoe K. McCrea Animal Health Center.
Unlike other big benefactors in Sacramento, McCrea might not be a name you recognize. But it’s time you did.
A self-described “bratty teenager,” Lori Ann Asmus saved her best attitude for houseplants.
“My mom was an avid gardener, but I really wasn’t interested in working with her,” Asmus says. “I would buy these little indoor plants and then kill them in short order by being uber-responsible, watering them every day, sometimes twice a day. I didn’t have success with houseplants until I went to college, where I didn’t have time to love them to death.”
All grown up, Asmus owns The Emerald City Interior Landscape Services. Chances are you have gazed upon her “interiorscapes” in Sacramento businesses such as The Citizen Hotel, Eskaton Village, and lobbyist, attorney and doctor offices. She designs and maintains indoor plants for mostly business clients
When the pandemic broke out, my big concern was our small business community. Obviously, global attention focused on people’s health and the rising COVID-19 death count. But I figured there was nothing much I could do about it, other than try to keep safe and my family safe.
I knew local small businesses were in for a rough time. Eager to help, our COO Daniel Nardinelli and I created the “Pledge 100% Local” campaign.
William S. White, a journalist who spent much of his career writing about Lyndon Johnson, called the late president and U.S. Senate leader an expert at “politics as the art of the possible.”
That was before partisan media and ideological zealots turned compromise into a dirty word. But the description came to mind recently as I read Sacramento’s “2021 Master Siting Plan to Address Homelessness.”
Baking sourdough bread is not just for professionals and pandemics. For many Sacramento home bakers, making sourdough is therapy, even a necessity.
It’s a cool October day. A fresh loaf of sourdough with golden crust cools in the kitchen as the aroma of warm baked bread and melting butter swirls in the air. As Alison Clevenger says, “Nothing beats fresh bread with some homemade jam on it and some salted butter.”
Twenty years ago, I wrote, “Tower Café is the kind of place you take your out-of-town friends to show them Sacramento is cool.” Today the restaurant scene shines much brighter, with culinary gems in every neighborhood.
But there’s still something magical about dining at Tower Café, one of the city’s great outdoor spaces, sheltered by palm fronds and lit by neon from The Tower Theatre’s majestic marquee.
When Tower Café opened in 1990, the “world cuisine” concept was novel. Going to a single restaurant and choosing among curries, tacos and jerk chicken made one feel like Carmen San Diego with a fork and knife.