Winter 2018

Journal of Alta California

Featuring great stories, in-depth reporting, beautiful photography, smart thinking — Alta is the magazine and website that bring you everything California.

Journal of Alta California2 min read
He Left His Harte
His friend (and later foe) Mark Twain is better known, but Bret Harte (1836-1902) was a similarly important figure in California literature as a chronicler of 19th century life and teller of tales, most notably “The Luck of Roaring Camp.” Like Twain,
Journal of Alta California3 min readPopular Culture & Media Studies
Alta is Much More Than This Magazine
Sometimes I like to say that Alta covers the past and the future, but not the present. This is somewhat in jest. The truth is that, as a quarterly, it’s virtually impossible to keep up with current events. But we are interested in how the world got t
Journal of Alta California4 min read
Closed for Business
Salaries in San Francisco are higher than just about anywhere else in the U.S., and the Bay Area’s economy is one of the nation’s fastest-growing. Overpaid tech workers compete to live in high-rise apartments that didn’t even exist a few years ago. S
Journal of Alta California3 min read
They’ve Got a Ticket to Ride
Peter Warner is not exactly homeless. He simply lives on public transportation. Most specifically, Amtrak trains and intercity buses, with the occasional ferry ride and Metrolink (or similar) tossed into the mix. In a typical month, Warner travels th
Journal of Alta California3 min read
Fantastic Negrito Goes His Own Way
Clad in overalls, a red plaid shirt and a straw cowboy hat, Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz proudly picks up one of his laying hens, Bessie. Then, smiling, he shovels horse manure for fertilizer and, later, displays voluptuous strawberries on the vine. Than
Journal of Alta California7 min read
The Case Against Junipero Serra
Dear Editors of Alta: As an occasional contributor to your magazine, and in light of your advertised policy of soliciting advice and commentary from your readers and writers, I thought you should be aware that Father Junipero Serra, listed on your ma
Journal of Alta California4 min read
All Hands on Deck For Research Project
With his proto-Fu Manchu mustache, bright eyes, salt-and-pepper hair, sporty brown vest and Australian accent, Simon Penny seems like he should be a BBC documentarian. But he’s actually a UC Irvine professor. And a boatbuilder. And the boat he’s buil
Journal of Alta California3 min readAmerican Government
For New Governor, Familiar Challenges
Gavin Newsom is almost certain to be elected governor in November, and he’ll have to grapple with a variety of major issues, some of them longtime California topics, others left behind by outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown. While Brown’s second governorship h
Journal of Alta California2 min read
Breaking Records on Two Wheels
For some people, age is just a number. For Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, turning 45 this year heralded a series of numbers: 41 kilometers and 2,397 meters; 2 minutes and 29.161 seconds; 1 minute and 18.435 seconds. Those are Van Houweling’s marks in c
Journal of Alta California10 min readCooking, Food & Wine
Food Fight: L.a.vs.s.f.
The menu at Santa Monica’s oh-so-busy Native Restaurant is a multicultural mix. Diners can fill their brunch table with a rainbow of California fruit, syrup sandwiches (a French toast remix inspired by Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar’s hit “Humble”) an
Journal of Alta California10 min read
Orange Blossoms
This will go down as the year that the old Orange County — the one of perfect tract homes and homophobic megachurches and angry conservatives — finally died. The place that has caused so much grief to the rest of the United States, home of Richard Ni
Journal of Alta California15 min read
The Beats’ Holy Grail
The audience at the Beat Museum in San Francisco’s North Beach was small, and it fit a certain profile. About 20 people, mostly older — gray hair, jeans and open sandals — occupied a few rows of folding chairs in an upstairs gallery on a Saturday aft
Journal of Alta California10 min read
Plight Of The Honeybees
REVEAL/THE CENTER FOR INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING The crime scene was a mess of boxes, some half-assembled, others scattered across patches of dried grass and partially gouged to raw wood. The victims scrambled about looking for food and water. There wer
Journal of Alta California3 min read
The Coach Driver’s Secret
COLD CASE A Clean Wholesome • Paper for • California Homes LAST EDITION San Francisco’s First Great Daily Founded — 1856 SIXTEEN PAGES SAN FRANCISCO, FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1879 PRICE ONE CENT Stagecoach drivers were among the most celebrated figures o
Journal of Alta California14 min read
Not Another Talking Head
Few American rock bands have been as original, influential and beloved as the Talking Heads. With their dark lyrics, angular beats and dazzling live shows, they wove together elements of punk, new wave and art rock to create a body of work that has b
Journal of Alta California10 min read
Atomic Blonde
The images are striking: Marilyn Monroe reclining in a red bathing suit on a lounge chair next to a swimming pool, a drink in her hand, her trademark platinum blonde hair perfectly coifed. She was at the dawn of her run as America’s favorite sex symb
Journal of Alta California9 min read
Access To Success
Bookstore managers didn’t know quite what to make of the oversized 64-page volume that showed up in their stores in the fall of 1968. It was called the “Whole Earth Catalog” and sub-titled “Access to Tools.” For $5, buyers got a hodgepodge of photos,
Journal of Alta California8 min read
Provocateur Of The Opera
In the first act of John Adams’ opera “Girls of the Golden West,” a New Englander — born Louise Clappe and pen-named Dame Shirley — arrives at the mid-19th century California Gold Rush aboard a mule. For audiences at the opera’s premiere at the San F
Journal of Alta California1 min read
The Playful Side Of L.A. Architecture
Giant milk cans, flower baskets, barrels, cameras, pianos, accordions, coffee cups and coffee pots. And, of course, a large shoe or two. The roadside architecture of Southern California in the early and mid-20th century was a riot of unusual building
Journal of Alta California5 min read
Stretching the Movie Experience
At the San Francisco Film Festival earlier this year, I gave a talk about the Netflix series “The Crown” and showed 15 minutes of clips. Afterward, several people said that while they enjoyed “The Crown” at home on their TVs, there was an extra thril
Journal of Alta California3 min read
Chicano Batman’s Musical Stew
When will the world wise up to Chicano Batman? It’s rare that a band so utterly in step with the moment can also fly so low under the radar. The four-piece group from Los Angeles has been making, for lack of a better term, sensual psychedelia for a d
Journal of Alta California6 min read
California Roadmaps
For most of its history, the constant for California has been change. In many ways, the state has been a laboratory for the rest of the nation, grappling with evolving demographics, birthing new ideas and industries and testing its power as the world
Journal of Alta California3 min readCooking, Food & Wine
A Lot More Than 31 Flavors
The first taste that hits your mouth is… green apple? It’s as if you ate a green apple next to a campfire built of cedar wood. You take another bite of your ice cream, luxuriating in the tart creaminess. This is exactly what you’d want to be eating o
Journal of Alta California2 min read
Putting the ‘Real’ Into Virtual Reality
For more than 25 years, virtual reality has been technology’s Next Big Thing. The promise is tantalizing: virtual worlds! The ability to interact with a computer-generated 3-D universe! The potential for VR as a tool for surgery, industrial simulatio
Journal of Alta California4 min read
Not Everything Turns to Gold
Theodore Roosevelt once said, “When I am in California, I am not in the West, I am west of the West.” The Rough Rider’s koan has been widely viewed as a celebration of the limitless California adventure, but it’s also a reminder of the dizzying, vert
Journal of Alta California4 min read
Disneyland Has Got Nothing on This
Stepping inside the bright red door that looks like a gothic version of the queen of hearts, with eyes sliding back and forth, I’m greeted by a disorienting forced perspective hallway that looks much longer than it actually is. As I start walking, I
Journal of Alta California2 min readFashion
Birkenstocks
People sure get attached to their Birkenstocks. Seattle ginger beer maker Rachel Marshall found her culinary calling after she got fired from a job for wearing the sandals to work. She wasn’t giving up her Birks. Even tossing out an old, blackened, p
Journal of Alta California3 min read
A Journalist’s Journalist
You probably never heard Frank McCulloch’s name, but if you read a major newspaper in California over the latter half of the 20th century, you saw his work every day. As a top editor of the Los Angeles Times, Sacramento Bee and San Francisco Examiner
Journal of Alta California3 min read
Our Father, Who Art In Virtual Reality
The collision of the divine and technology is nothing new. From Gutenberg’s Bible to Copernicus to sacraments delivered over Skype, secular innovation has been (controversially) adapted time and again by science- and tech-minded believers as a compat

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