Sactown Magazine

6 days ago | sactownmag.com | Rob Turner

For decades, inflatable public art has been popping up around the world. We’d like to float this idea here too. The IdeaPublic art, in all its forms, boosts and beautifies a city, whether it’s murals or sculptures. But there’s a certain magic to one kind of public art that’s in a class of its own—inflatable art installations. Such creations can move with the wind and they’re usually temporary, enhancing the urban experience for a brief time until they’re gone.

2 weeks ago | sactownmag.com | Carla Meyer

With Chu Mai, James Beard Award-nominated chef Billy Ngo honors his mom and the dishes he grew up loving, while putting his own spin on Vietnamese and Chinese classics. The result is a noteworthy new restaurant whose dishes taste both comfortingly familiar and excitingly fresh. At his new restaurant Chu Mai, chef-owner Billy Ngo aims to both pay homage to his late mother and make food like no one’s mom used to make.

4 weeks ago | sactownmag.com | Hillary Johnson

Life for E.A. Hanks, who grew up in the Fabulous Forties as the daughter of Tom Hanks, may have looked like it was coming up roses. Too often, though, the reality was anything but, as the self-described “Sacramento girl” details in her poignant new book, The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road, which follows a childhood shaped by her mother’s mental illness and a writer’s search for the truth, thorns and all.

1 month ago | sactownmag.com | Mark Kreidler

AA little more than a decade ago, it felt like the whole sports vibe around Sacramento, the idea of this area as a place where professional sports should be taken seriously, was circling the drain. It felt terminal. The Kings were on their way out. The remaining highest-level pro entity was a minor league baseball club. The region had, over the decades, been the often-too-willing host of every unfit, half-wit, two-bit sports minnow that’d ever dreamed of swimming with the big fish.

1 month ago | sactownmag.com | Rob Turner

The IdeaLast July, Boston’s convention bureau reluctantly removed 20 swings (glowing from LED lights within that changed colors when triggered by motion) that were intended for kids and adults alike. “Our idea was that all ages could use more infrastructure for play and interaction,” says Eric Höweler of Boston’s Höweler + Yoon Architecture, which designed the swings that were erected in 2014.