Davisville

When Bapu Vaitla (pictured) joined the Davis City Council in 2022, he says today on Davisville , he was interested in pursuing policy solutions that would work for Davis and might be a model for the state or other communities. That approach ran into constraints.  “One of my primary motivations for running for council is I thought that Davis would be an ideal community to try to model some solution...

Imagine that you’re a child of 5 or 6, in a family with two younger siblings, your mom, and your dad. It’s the early 1970s. Your family quits the family home and steady employment in the United States to drive a van across Europe through countries including Morocco, Yugoslavia, Iran and Afghanistan, eventually deep into India. The goal is to be free. Uninhibited. Not square.  Your mom has an undia...

Davis has a City Council election this fall — sort of. There is a city election in November, with two seats open on the five-person council, but with just one candidate for each seat, the winners are already decided. Uncontested elections are also occurring in other districts, in Yolo County and beyond. Why is this happening, does it affect governance, and what does it mean, if anything, to the ca...

The story is unlikely, especially if you know ’60s American pop music and how time usually works, but it’s true. The Strawberry Alarm Clock, whose psychedelic classic “Incense and Peppermints” scored a No. 1 U.S. hit in 1967, released an entirely new record this month,  Where’s One? And here’s the time-defying part: Five of their six musicians in 2026 are original members from 1967. The sixth join...

People who drive downtown will see some changes starting in September. The immediate change is the switch to paid parking in three central parking lots with about 330 spaces. The change that will take awhile to show up is the impact of approximately 340 new apartments planned along G Street, mostly without space for parking (the photo shows the demolition in progress on Aug. 5 of a former Davis Ac...

Tim Akin spent 26 years at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, which gave him a large window on the business world. He retired as the school’s executive director of marking and communications in June, and today on Davisville we talk about what he has seen and learned over the years. The topics include whether he thinks business is ready to manage AI, what the school brings to the different...

Editorial cartoonist Jack Ohman is good at skewering whatever he targets in his cartoons, a talent recognized by the honors he has received, including the Pulitzer Prize a decade ago and the Herblock Prize this year. Most people in Davis know him for the cartoons he drew for the Sacramento Bee for a decade. But Davis and longtime local journalist Bob Dunning also helped Ohman save his career, he s...

Today we talk with two accomplished people at different stages of life about their experiences of Davis: Ken Wagstaff, a former mayor who moved here in the 1960s, and Adithi Sumitran, who just graduated from UC Davis and heads to law school at UC Berkeley this fall. The subjects include Davis, the recent defeat of the Measure V housing measure, and what they think the community needs more of, and...

2026 is a pretty good year for renters in Davis. The city’s vacancy rate has continued to grow, to around 10 percent, says real estate professional Kit Boschken on today’s Davisville . Rents are down from last year. Parts of the market are shifting, she adds— students are less interested in sharing a large house as a place to live, and students coming out of campus housing want leases that start i...

Almost anyone listening today is likely to have an opinion about the topic — namely, how well are bicycles, powered scooters, e-bikes, vehicles and pedestrians co-existing in Davis? In terms of safety, courtesy, observing the rules … and what are the current laws for powered scooters and bikes? Probably not what you think, and the Legislature is looking at changing them. Two people have been hit a...

Today on Davisville we talk with two of the five people who recently wrote “A Long-Term Pragmatic Plan for a Livable and Sustainable Davis.” Don’t let the dry title dissuade you — the article is clear, light on jargon, usefully specific, and all about Davis. Their ideas include developing denser homes along transit corridors in Davis, including along Anderson Road (pictured) , over several decades...

There are lots of ways to get to know someone you like, lots of ways to date. What if your outing consisted of you painting pictures together with your friend, partner, perhaps prospective spouse? Call it a paint date. The Davis Arts Center offers a Paint Date workshop as one of its events this spring, on May 16. It’s a clever idea for getting people to think about taking up a paint brush in front...

With enrollment in Davis schools declining, the Davis school district is looking at shutting at least one elementary school. So far, two concepts have emerged — to close Patwin and possibly also Birch Lane — and to move programs and shift attendance boundaries. The School Board expects to decide in spring 2027, with any closure starting in fall 2028.  Colleen Zern, a local attorney and UC Davis le...

The new economic development strategic plan for Davis might be an obscure document, but its pages include interesting goals for Davis and observations about the city, such as insights into how college students shape the city’s economy. Today on Davisville we talk about the plan with Katie Yancey, the city’s economic development director since 2024. Customer service is a core concern. She wonders i...

Pat McDowell (pictured) grew up in Northern California. I worked with him at the Fairfield newspaper 40 years ago before his career took him all over the world, working for the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. The experience helped shape his views on journalism, on how well Americans know the rest of the world, and how the United States has changed. We talk about this, plus one...

After years of dwindling news coverage in Yolo County, two regional news outlets — the Sacramento Bee and Abridged , a news source started by Sacramento public TV station KVIE in 2025 — have each launched free Yolo weekly newsletters this year, using stories written by journalists assigned to cover the county. Today we talk with one of the reporters, Daniel Hennessy of Abridged , about how he find...

Davis architect Maria Ogrydziak, whose designs include the Davis Food Co-op building (pictured) on G Street downtown, was born in Stockholm to Estonian parents, lived in Taiwan for two years while growing up, and began to make her mark as an architect when she recreated a gray classroom at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — her alma mater — “to be more exciting, more inspiring.” Architect...

Davis is updating its General Plan, which is meant to guide Davis’ physical development as a community through 2050. The update is a classic, easy-to-overlook civic project that works better when more people know about it and add their ideas about what they want for Davis. The Davis Community Action Network, a local nonprofit, has spent the last couple of years meeting with people in Davis and Yol...

One of the new events in Davis for 2026 is a competition, led by a Davis marine biologist whose awards include an Emmy for his camera work, that’s open to anyone willing to make a short movie during the next month. The film must include a Davis-centric prompt to be announced this Wednesday, Jan. 28, and run no longer than 7 minutes. You’ll have about 4 weeks to get it all done. The goal of the Dav...

The Trump administration’s deep cuts to federal spending on university research have prompted Ed Kiggins, who leads communications for the UC Davis College of Letters and Science, to start the Minds Over Matters podcast highlighting research at UC Davis. Every two weeks, he talks with a different UC Davis faculty member about their work and why it matters. “Think about reducing Alzheimer’s from a...

The turn of the year is a natural time to step outside the usual stream of events, and that’s what we do today. We asked three previous guests of Davisville to each offer an observation about Davis as 2026 begins — something they like about the town, or would change, or think is misunderstood or overlooked. Their choices could be serious, light or anything in between.  On today’s program you’ll he...

The Crest movie theater in downtown Sacramento has changed its mix of attractions several times during its long history — the vaudeville-era graffiti near the top of the curtains is one sign of that — and owner Bob Emerick has begun to revise the mix yet again.  Emerick, who bought the theater in 2011 and resumed managing it this year, says it’s still possible to run a movie palace like the Crest...

It’s been a strange year for food relief, marked most recently by the sporadic suspension of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) aid during the federal government shutdown this fall. Today on Davisville we talk with two people deeply involved in different areas of Davis food relief: Liane Moody, executive director of the Short Term Emergency Aid Committee, and Max Morgan from the Davi...

Today we enjoy Davisville’s annual fall movie show in which Davis film critic Derrick Bang (pictured at KDRT on Nov. 16) tells us about movies he’s looking forward to as 2025 ends, plus ones he’ll dodge if he sees them sauntering his way. Unless they’re playing in Davis, in which case he feels obliged to review them as the hometown critic. We also talk about why major movies are trending longer, d...

Yolo Local, an emerging Davis Media Access project to create a new place for local information and news -- with the goal of countering the decline of local news outlets -- has wrapped up several months of conversations and research to learn more about what people in Yolo County want and need. This fall the project published a  report  with insights and ideas, and early next year they'll start usin...