Jan 28, 2022
Thirteen years ago, John Hamilton left Sacramento to pursue a career in digital music production. He harbored a deep passion for DJing and knew he would not be able to meet his goals if he stayed in his hometown. There simply weren’t any opportunities in the sleepy Capital City.
“In 2007, you had to be in a music city—an LA, a New York, a Nashville, an Atlanta—to really network, make moves,” Hamilton says. “Unfortunately, Sacramento has been shipping talent away to places like LA and New York.”
Having enjoyed success as a touring DJ, Hamilton’s back with a vision for his hometown that speaks to his passion for paying it forward. He believes expanded access to music production education can benefit the Sacramento community in multifarious ways, ranging from economic to emotional.
Jan 28, 2022
Gabrielle Myers joins Inside Sacramento this month as our new Farm to Fork columnist. Her work celebrates and explores the region’s remarkable bounty of food.
Jan 28, 2022
When the Ankers arrived in Curtis Park in the middle of the night after driving from Los Angeles with a U-Haul, their cat and two kids, they smiled and hugged each other.
“We knew we’d landed in the right place,” Dr. Thomas Anker says of the home his family occupies down the street from Omic Wellness, the medical practice he and his wife, Julia, opened a year ago on Freeport Boulevard.
“We love it here,” Sacramento native Julia concurs. “It’s such a tight-knit community with a small-town feel—we know all of our neighbors and say hi on the street. It’s those little things that make living in this area so great.”
Dec 28, 2021
Terry a O’Neal is the consummate storyteller. During our nearly two-hour interview, she regales me with stories about young motherhood, awakening her writer’s voice, going through a traumatic divorce, advocating for youth and more.
She talks about her mother, a Southern Creole poet who inspired her daughter’s creative career. She tells of the complex characters that populate her poetry and prose. By the end of the call, it feels like we’ve only scratched the surface of the artist and human being that is Terry a O’Neal.
“I credit my mother for everything,” says O’Neal, raised in Stockton by her mother, Barbara Ann Tillman-Williams, a native of Louisiana who moved to California in the 1970s but reared O’Neal and her three siblings as if they were still in the south.
Dec 28, 2021
When Rivkah Sass retired last month as director and CEO of the Sacramento Public Library, she left behind a list of accomplishments that could fill, well, a book.
But make no mistake. Just because she retired doesn’t mean the tireless Sass will be less busy.
“I have other adventures to be determined,” she says. “My No. 1 priority will be spending time with my two new grandchildren who live in Idaho—Facetime is nice but it’s not the same as cuddling two squirmy, stinky boys.
“No. 2 on my list is to get certified to teach English as a foreign language so I can do more work with the Zaatari refugee camp on the Syrian border. There’s also my guilty pleasure, the Isle of Wight Donkey Sanctuary. I plan to go there to volunteer. I also want to learn to read music. And, of course, I plan to consult with libraries, since they’re my passion.”
Dec 28, 2021
Their weapon is a crossbow—gunshots draw attention. They skulk under cover of darkness, late at night and early in the morning. Night-vision optics help locate their targets—big bucks with large antlers. The bigger, the better.
“They call the arrow a bolt,” says Tim McGinn, wildlife advocate, nature photographer and longtime member of the American River Natural History Association. “The tips are like five little razor blades. If they hit them in the lungs or chest area, the deer will last maybe two or three minutes. It’s lethal.”
