Meet Your Neighbor
Textile Traditions
Artists Pachia L. Vang, Jamie P. Cardenas and Ren Allathkani believe cloth art does more than decorate walls. It carries memory, preserves cultural knowledge and builds connections.
The three artists, working together as Culture through Cloth, created “Threads of Belonging,” an 8-by-30-foot handwoven mural installed on an exterior wall at the Valley Hi-North Laguna Library.
The monumental textile brings together artistic traditions from three cultures: Hmong paj ntaub, Ilocano kusikus weaving and Palestinian tatreez embroidery. The work is unified by themes of migration, resilience, ancestral memory and belonging.
Bells And Whistles
Doug Crawford supervised three telecommunication technicians who worked alone for many years in a Midtown building. They maintained the city’s fire alarm system headquartered at Winn Park.
Two technicians operated remotely, fixing nearly 550 sidewalk fire alarm boxes. Vandalized machines were brought to Winn Park where technicians worked next to walls of telegraph machinery, backup generators, alarm blueprints, wiring spools, boxes of parts, stained glass windows and a metal spiral staircase.
The alarm system, rare in California, served in a backup capacity on a 6-second response. But in 2005, the city slashed its budget. Alarm boxes and their ornate stands, along with the technicians who preserved telecommunications history, were declared redundant.
Pied Piper
Pied Piper There’s a fable behind chef’s love of pizza By James Raia November 2026 The lunchtime line breaks. Andrew Tescher emerges from the kitchen and sits at a small table in his new restaurant. He talks about pizza. Rome banned daytime use of pizza ovens...
Office Culture
Brandon and Molly Weber were pioneers in the shared office space business when they started The Urban Hive 18 years ago. Now it’s an expanded industry, adapting to workplace trends.
At its fourth and largest location, the Downtown business is where individuals and companies meet, work and socialize. The Urban Hive long ago replaced cubicles with motifs of work by local artists. Drab hallways became open spaces with high-beam ceilings.
“I don’t see us as selling desks,” Brandon says. “A lot of co-working spaces, that’s their business. But I don’t want to talk about widgets. If we start talking about that for 30 minutes, then we become a widget manufacturer.”
College Bound
About eight years ago, Andrew Noseworthy and his mother, Victoria Rosario, recognized a disappointing trend.
“We were talking about how more kids these days are calling college a sham and are really staying away,” the Sacramento attorney says. “It’s a mindset we noticed.”
The mother-son duo decided to help counter the phenomenon. They wrote a book. With Andrew as author and his mother, a long-time educator, as collaborator, “ABCs to College” was self-published last November.
Perfect Start
When Campus Commons Golf Course welcomed the public back in 2025 after a four-year hiatus, David Levin played on opening day. The lifelong golfer loved the greens and volunteered to repair ball marks.
His enthusiasm was noticed. Levin was offered a job as a starter on the nine-hole layout that parallels the American River Parkway near the Tara O’Sullivan Memorial Bridge.
Levin, 79, works Saturdays for six hours beginning at 6:30 a.m. He’s in a golf cart near the first hole. He greets players, answers questions and keeps the flow of play steady on the par-3 course that opened in 1971.
“I’ve always enjoyed getting along with people,” Levin says. “I know how to deal with people. You can get people to agree with you if you present something, you know, in a certain way that’s acceptable to them.
