Real vacations are rare for Sacramento Republic FC public address announcer Jaime Coffee.

Juggling a full-time state job with side gigs in and outside Sacramento, the barrier-breaking Coffee works as a female announcer in a field dominated by men. Coffee’s crazy schedule comes at a cost: Vacations are usually of the working variety. 

The walls of Conscious Creamery’s commercial kitchen in Sacramento’s Del Paso Heights neighborhood are lined with stainless steel freezers, constantly humming loud and keeping chef Andrea Seppinni’s plant-based gelato frozen. 

After Thursday night’s 10-2 victory over Reno, Sacramento clinched the team’s first Pacific Coast League’s Pacific Northern Division title since 2012.

Outside the Hyatt Regency in downtown Sacramento, tower cranes rise above the skyline, harbingers of the city’s burgeoning building boom. Inside, the designers who are determining the new face of our city took to the runway to envision our future through fashion. 

Jessica Filip’s favorite weaving projects are the large commissions that take several weeks to complete, such as her 6-foot-by-6-foot wall hanging displayed in South, a restaurant in Sacramento, or an 8-foot-by-12-foot piece for a client’s cabin in Montana. Her larger commissions range from $1,600 to $4,000. 

Vintage suitcases, canteens, metal carrying cases and wooden boxes of varying colors and sizes occupy nearly every inch of a ceiling-scratching shelf in Kaden Hill’s suburban Sacramento garage workshop.

There’s a nice payoff for music fans willing to explore outside the city of Sacramento — and it doesn’t have to be a long trek. Photojournalist Steve Martarano takes us inside suburban entertainment gems in the Capital Region.

While working in a bike shop in the early 1980s, Steve Rex was introduced to custom small-scale bikes.

Using his bachelor’s degree in economics was going to have to wait — Rex wanted to become a frame builder. 

It’s a summer ritual for the nation’s car culture since the 1930s: catching a flick at the drive-in movie theater. Opening in 1973 just off Bradshaw Road and Highway 50, West Wind, a family-owned business operated by Syufy Enterprises, just finished major parking lot and building renovations as its 46th summer kicks off.

Nonprofit groups and businesses have launched programs to help inmates better prepare for life and a career outside the walls of a prison with the goal of nurturing productive citizens and reducing recidivism rates.