The rapid growth of online media has enabled many previously ignored perspectives (like ours!) to get noticed more. But—to many—it has diminished legacy journalistic standards of fairness and objectivity. We highlighted examples of transparently partisan local media throughout the year. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreOverflowing sunshine. Flowers, green grasses, and fruits of every kind. Early California poet (and namesake of the Oakland park) Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) revels in the wonders of “A California Christmas,” below. We echo his gratitude for this special place and the folks in it—and, from the Opp Now team, heartily wish you a wonderful Holiday Season and New Year. :-)
Read MoreMisleading bond measures. Brazen tax-raising schemes. Nothing new this year as Bay Area voters faced a fusillade of misguided gov't projects targeting our pocketbooks. But this time, we weren't havin' it. Some of the worst offenders (like Prop 5) were rejected outright, suggesting an encouraging local pivot to fiscal conservatism. Here's our first in a series of five Opp Now exclusive takeaways from 2024.
Read MoreHistorian April Halberstadt whisks us back to Christmas a century ago in her historic San Jose home—when local agriculture was booming, the city rapidly expanding via annexations, and the faith-centered Wright family (living in now-Halberstadt’s home) making their mark on CA politics. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreIt's not North Beach, but SJ has its own legacy of Beat Literature from the 1950s. And perhaps none is more stirring than this dreamy, little-remarked passage from Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums, in which the narrator hitches a (literal and spiritual) ride on a southbound Xmas Eve train, beginning his SJ-to-LA journey from the sidings of the old Southern Pacific station downtown.
Read MoreIn 1769, Father Juan Crespi journeyed with Spanish officials to establish mission settlements in Alta (Upper) California. His diary, excerpted below, recalls Christmas '69 as “biting” cold—but abounding in good food, gifts, and jovial communion, between friends and strangers alike. From The Journal of San Diego History.
Read MoreRecently retired Cato Institute policy analyst and Opp Now contributor Marc Joffe, in a tongue-in-cheek X post, announces that Bay Area's Rapid Transit District and Housing Finance Authority are merging. (And thank goodness: this is satire.) Their next project? A $100 billion subway that—if we're lucky—gets completed by 2057.
Read MoreMaggie Angst, in a recent SF Chronicle article, discusses the proposal by the once-charming suburb to the north to install heavy restrictions on the overnight parking of recreational vehicles to decrease homelessness and increase available parking.
Read MoreTens of thousands of California (including Silicon Valley) millennials are exiting to red states—and with them, hundreds of thousands in annual income per household. NY Post’s Allie Griffin reports on a recent Smart Asset analysis.
Read MoreA state audit found that California invested a staggering $24 billion over the past five fiscal years to address homelessness. That's about $42k per homeless person/year. And yet the homelessness crisis has worsened. Fiscally responsible pols ask: is our Housing First strategy all wrong? KTLA reports.
Read MoreSJ State prof emeritus Dr. Elizabeth Weiss critiques—with James W. Springer in City Journal—today's anthropological trend of “social-justice ideology over verifiable facts.” Case in point? At SJSU, Weiss was censured (and blocked from research) for opposing reburying bones.
Read MoreAn abandoned construction site in LA’s Chinatown attracted a small group of squatters who proceeded to light it on fire—four times, this year alone. Neighbors begged the city for help, which, to the city’s credit, finally came. Early one morning, 130 firefighters responded when a conflagration spread to an apartment building. Karen Garcia of the LA Times reports.
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