Throughout Sacramento’s central city, houses, apartments and businesses have often sat next to vacant lots. It’s been a sign of economic imperfection and, perhaps, of Midtown’s funkiness, with the land sometimes turned into unofficial parks, urban gardens or vehicle parking.

This is starting to change.

When Alejandra Calderon narrowly escaped failing her ceramics class as a fine arts major at Sacramento State, she never imagined that seven years later she would co-own a ceramics business. At the time, she found the discipline to be frustratingly difficult compared to her primary passion, painting.

State and federal labor laws give employees a wide range of worker protections, from overtime pay and minimum wages to the right to unionize. But those rights don’t extend to independent contractors, whose ranks have grown dramatically in the gig economy.

With about $350 billion in assets, CalPERS is the largest public pension fund in the nation. Comstock’s spoke with CEO Marcie Frost about some of the challenges the system faces — including the decision to lower its expected rate of return, thereby driving up the mandatory financial contribution from state and local governments.

Isleton dates back to 1874 when Josiah Pool established the town in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and constructed a wharf for steamboats that stopped twice daily on routes between San Francisco, Sacramento and Marysville. Meanwhile, Chinese laborers built the levee system that transformed the Delta’s peat soil into fertile farmland.

Delayed college graduation is costly to students, schools and local economies. Both Sac State and Los Rios implemented measures to help students graduate faster. Can they move grads through without diminishing the quality of education? Results look promising. 

Isleton City Manager Charles Bergson offers his insight into the city’s revitalization.

To many consumers, the idea of edibles — cannabis-infused chocolate bars, brownies and other treats — sounds enticing. Especially considering health concerns about cigarettes have made people uncomfortable with smoke, including from marijuana.

The term wheelhouse has a shaky track record in Google Trends, spiking and dropping throughout the last decade, though somehow consistently trending up. Which begs the question: Can the incessant phrase go down and stay down?

When Madeleine Lohman took her first class at the YMCA in 1999, yoga was already a mainstream fitness regime. But it didn’t take long for her to realize that limiting yoga to physical fitness denied the mental, physical and spiritual balance that the Eastern practice seeks.