Small businesses found themselves in the spotlight as they decided whether or not to stay open Jan. 30.

Like Santa’s workshop, Sacramento has a bevy of elves preparing goods for your holidays, and some are months in the making. We stopped in to observe the preparations.

This Sierra Nevada foothills community is often the subject of glowing profiles in the national media and labeled a “Gold Rush-era town.” So what exactly does Nevada City tell us about that unusual and relatively brief time in history?

The Seat at the Bar diner explores a restaurant visited by luminaries including Snoop Dogg, Ryan Coogler and the Timberwolves in an unlikely location — a busy shopping mall. 

Comstock’s is one of the last remaining monthly magazines based in Sacramento, but it’s now part of a trend. Across the region and beyond, niche print magazines are gaining momentum.

I could, I felt, either wallow in sadness at this state of affairs or, with my wife, chart our own course and go to places that we had never previously visited, using the strangeness of new locales to ask myself a series of questions on, broadly speaking, what it all meant.

Through January, the only state-run monarch preserve in California becomes a magical stop for the overwintering western monarch butterflies.

The low-profile downtown Sacramento cocktail bar is making a comeback.