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Returning to Manresa Bread is icing on the cake for pastry chef

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

Longtime Manresa customers might recognize Stephanie Prida as pastry chef at the Michelin-star Los Gatos restaurant from 2012 to 2017. After six years, she’s back with Manresa Bread, in charge of expanding the pastry line and helping her longtime friend Avery Ruzicka move the bakery’s operation to a new commissary in Campbell.“One of the reasons Avery wanted me back was I have experience working with teams and pushing people to own their opportunity,” Prida says. “A lot of young people don’t have ownership in their jobs. I’m here to say, ‘This is yours; you can own it.’”Born and raised in San Diego, Prida didn’t set out to be a pastry chef.“I wanted to be an artist and a painter,” she says. “My sister mentioned culinary school, so I enrolled in the Institute of Culinary Education in Los Angeles. One of the girls was doing catering on the side, and she asked me to do pastries. I really mastered lemon tarts. There are so many variations!”She admits she never baked at all prior to culi...

New Milpitas fire chief is a 10-year veteran of the department

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

Milpitas Deputy Fire Chief Jason Schoonover moved up the ranks this month when he was named the city’s new fire chief. He was due to take over the reins from acting chief Brian Stelling on March 26.The new chief joined the Milpitas Fire Department in 2013 as a fire battalion chief and was promoted to deputy fire chief in 2022. He has managed the department’s training and special operations divisions, and has also served as the dispatch/communications liaison. Schoonover has been a member of the city’s emergency operations team, working in the areas of emergency management, hazard mitigation planning and critical infrastructure identification.Prior to joining Milpitas, Schoonover worked for 14 years with the Marysville Fire Authority in Washington, spending his final seven years as a fire captain.“We are truly fortunate to have someone with the level of experience and expertise as Chief Jason Schoonover,” Milpitas Mayor Carmen Montano said in a statement. “I am confident that he will...

East Bay’s pickleball evangelist inducted into Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

Most days, the distinct “pop, pop, pop” of balls bouncing off pickleball paddles echoes endlessly inside the tennis courts at Oakland’s Bushrod Park.Players immediately fill all four courts when the nets go up, while a dozen others line up on the sidelines waiting their turn and a group of first-timers start learning the rules of the “kitchen” — what players call the zone closest to the net — and how to avoid tripping over their own two feet.One voice can be heard above the commotion.“Oh, that was a beaut!” Darlene “Dar” Vendegna bellowed in between volleys on a recent February afternoon, grabbing another ball from her fanny pack full of extras. “But please be careful of that backpedaling.”She has been a community staple at pickleball courts across the East Bay, teaching and evangelizing the sport ever since playing her first game in April of 2017.“I was hooked immediately — immediately,” Vendegna said in an interview. “I bought a paddle the next day. A week later I bought a net. An...

Latest line: A good week for tree trimmers, a bad week for convicted prison warden

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

Tree companiesAfter a winter filled with a dozen atmospheric river storms, and extreme wind events across Northern California, demand for workers to remove fallen and dangerously leaning trees is sky-high.    Ray J. GarciaFormer warden of FCI Dublin, a prison in Alameda County, is sentenced to nearly six years in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing three female inmates and lying to investigators.   Gavin NewsomGovernor’s plan to give California Energy Commission new powers to investigate gas prices and cap oil industry profits wins committee vote. But there’s still a long way to go before it becomes law. 

Oakland A’s breaking camp: What we learned in Arizona

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

The A’s returned to the Bay Area with nearly as many questions as when they opened camp in Arizona two months ago.That’s not surprising for a team in a full-scale rebuild, a team that is coming off a 102-loss season and likely will challenge triple-digit losses again in 2023.The A’s broke camp in Arizona with the worst record in the Cactus League, and they have a daunting schedule in the opening weeks of the regular season. But after some of the A’s young core and other top prospects showed encouraging signs in the desert, there is reason to believe better days might be ahead.A lot of puzzle pieces remain for second-year manager Mark Kotsay and his staff heading into Thursday’s opener at home against Shohei Ohtani and the Angels, And the 26 players who make the Opening Day roster will be just the starting point in another season likely full of unprecedented roster movement. Oakland used a franchise-record 64 players last season, and it would be surprisi...

They said it: Freak weather

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

“I’m a scientist. I tend to not be a fan of flamboyant adjectives. But after the winter we’ve had, to get something like yesterday, I thought it was extraordinary.”— National Weather Service meteorologist Warren Blier on Tuesday’s rare “bomb cyclone” storm that split into two swirling low-pressure zones in what’s known as the Fujiwhara Effect. It blew down trees and electrical wires, killing three people across the Bay Area.

‘Holding my car hostage’: Bay Area drivers face DMV registration holds amid mounting express lane debt

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

Brenda Angulo’s license plate has been pinging off the Bay Area’s growing network of electronic toll transponders — into a colossal $30,000 bill.There were dozens of bridge tolls, and a flurry of express lane fees. For the past three years, they went unpaid as invoices filled Angulo’s mailbox.But when Angulo went to renew her DMV vehicle registration this year, she was floored by the sticker shock. A single 50-cent express lane fee from last April would now cost her $73.50 with penalties — an increase of 14,700%. And if she wanted to keep her Mazda on the road, she also would have to fork over $2,523, which included her annual registration fees and a portion of her unpaid tolls.The total Angulo owed to multiple express lane and bridge toll agencies was far worse, climbing to over $30,000 made up mostly of late payment fees and other fines, tacked on to her original charges of about $3,000.“I don’t have this money. I’m paying tuition, b...

Analysis: Five pressing questions SF Giants did or didn’t answer in spring training

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The cardboard boxes that appeared in front of players’ lockers this week slowly began to fill with their belongings and on Saturday morning were loaded into equipment trucks, their last stop on their way to San Francisco. There is no surer sign of the end of spring training than the presence of those big box trucks in the parking lot.The Giants arrived in Scottsdale six weeks ago with questions to answer. As they departed Saturday, their catching situation remained murky as ever, and they carry some injury concerns into Opening Day, but they can head home happy with some of the positive developments of camp.“I feel good about the depth of our team relative to the last couple years,” manager Gabe Kapler said Saturday morning, a few hours before their Cactus League finale against the Mariners. “I feel like our defense is improved … I feel great about where our starting pitching is. Good depth at Triple-A too. I think we’re in a f...

Why are so many Bay Area trees turning destructive and deadly in recent storms? The answer is years in the making

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

The same urban canopy that provides so much relief in the Bay Area’s summer is now exacting a winter toll, with hundreds of trees weakened by years of drought collapsing in relentless rain and wind — claiming lives, buildings and roads.“Like for us humans, it takes a little bit of time to recover from stress, the lack of water and high summer temperature,” said UC Davis ecologist Alessandro Ossola, who specializes in urban areas. “Some of our trees are failing to adjust to newly wet soil and atmospheric conditions….they’re simply unable to cope when climate and environmental conditions revert too fast.”In nature, downed trees are not a problem, but a benefit. They renew the forest by creating a home for fungus, insects, wildlife and sunlit space for new seedlings.But in neighborhoods, they have been destructive and deadly. On Tuesday, during the last in a series of strong atmospheric river storms, trees claimed the lives of five people in the Bay ...

Could the Silicon Valley Bank collapse be a good thing for Bay Area homebuyers?

Published Sun, 23 Feb 2025 10:19:08 GMT

The Silicon Valley Bank meltdown has roiled the banking system, financial markets, the tech sector and even the Napa Valley wine industry. But the economic instability is also bringing a measure of relief to homebuyers struggling to afford a Bay Area real estate market where prices are starting to rebound after months of declines: lower mortgage rates.And with the Federal Reserve’s decision this week to scale back raising its benchmark interest rate in response to the financial turmoil, mortgage rates will likely stay lower and could even dip through the rest of the year, according to some real estate experts and economists.While recent headlines may be giving buyers unease, a rate break could mean hundreds of dollars in savings on monthly home payments.“Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse is good for real estate,” said Chris Thornberg, an economist and founder of Beacon Economics. “I mean it.”A typical 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.42% this w...