Connecting California

Why California Should Mourn the Loss of Topgun

The Navy’s School for Elite Pilots, Once Based in San Diego, Taught Us to Deal With Technological Failure

Why California Should Mourn the Loss of Topgun | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Bring back Topgun!

By that, I do not mean Top Gun, the cliché-ridden, late-Cold War, Tom Cruise film about speed-crazy Naval fighter pilots that still defines San Diego in the public imagination. That Top Gun never really left us, and it is already on its way back with a sequel scheduled to crash-land in theaters next year.

No, what California really needs back is Topgun, the U.S. Navy’s graduate school for elite fighter pilots that inspired the movie. For nearly 30 years, Topgun thrived in San Diego—before it was moved to …

by Joe Mathews |

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Why Small, Beleaguered Vallejo Is Huge in California Hip Hop | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

Why Small, Beleaguered Vallejo Is Huge in California Hip Hop

A Bankrupt Neighborhood’s Gift of Gab Created Music Rooted in a ‘Sweet, Idiosyncratic, Hustler Culture’

by Joe Mathews |

Conventional wisdom is that California’s greatest art is produced by collisions between the different peoples and cultures in the centers of our biggest cities.

But if that’s true, how …

The Lessons of Fresno’s Ingenious Underground Gardens | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The Lessons of Fresno’s Ingenious Underground Gardens

For 40 years, Italian Immigrant Baldassare Forestiere Wielded a Pickax to Dig His California Dream Home

by Joe Mathews |

In our search for inspiring new ideas for solving California’s housing crisis, we must dig deeper. We must take our cues from Archimedes, “Give me a place on which to …

The Fabulous Fable of Fabiola’s Scholarship Fund | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The Fabulous Fable of Fabiola’s Scholarship Fund

While Rich Californians Paid Bribes to Get Their Kids Into College, a Struggling Sophomore Shares Her Small Windfall

by Joe Mathews |

This spring—as federal prosecutors announced a major college admissions scandal that had ensnared wealthy movie stars and prominent Californians, who paid millions in bribes to get their kids into elite …

The True Horror of Sunny Santa Cruz | Zocalo Public Square • Arizona State University • Smithsonian

The True Horror of Sunny Santa Cruz

The City’s Residents Feel Powerless Over Their Future—From Housing to Climate Change

by Joe Mathews |

Is Santa Cruz the scariest place in California?

For sure, this state’s 21st-century reality is frightening: from the persecution of immigrants to the droughts and wildfires made worse by climate change. …


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