Dispatch: Week of January 25
Yucca Valley approves STR cap and the Boy Scouts host a pancake breakfast fundraiser
Hello from California’s high desert. Today is my 30th birthday, and I am grateful for everyone that chooses to spend their Wednesday evenings with the Dispatch. I’ve heard that your 30s are by far the best decade, so there’s a lot to look forward to!
And with that, onto this week’s news:
In local news:
The Yucca Valley Planning Commission approved at 10% cap on short-term rentals. The cap applies to the town’s official inventory of detached single-family dwelling units as of January 2022.
The Yucca Valley Visual & Performing Arts Center resumed adult ballet classes on Tuesday and Thursday nights starting this week. Classes are open to all skill levels and run from 5:00 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. for a $15 fee.
The Cactus Wren Book Exchange is set to close on February 7. All books are currently half-off.
The “Invisible House,” a massive glass home in Joshua Tree that was available for rent, is up for sale. The going rate? A cool $18 million.
Z107.7 has the results of this year’s Christmas Bird Count in Joshua Tree National Park. Overall, there were 2,128 birds counted and 69 species identified.
The Joshua Tree Retreat Center was formally recognized as a historic district in the National Register of Historic Places.
The high desert’s Boy Scout Troop 77 is hosting a pancake breakfast fundraiser on Sunday at the Joshua Tree VFW. One $10 ticket gets you pancakes, sausage, fruit, coffee and juice.
King of the Hammers kicks off tomorrow and runs through February 11 at the Johnson Valley OHV area.
Active duty military can attend at no cost with valid ID. Veterans admission is 50 percent off at the gate.
For tickets, the calendar of events, and other information, visit kingofthehammers.com.
In state news:
A 75-year-old man who went missing while hiking on Mount Baldy over the weekend was found alive on Tuesday.
Two other hikers remain missing in the Mount Baldy area. They are British actor Julian Sands, 65, and Robert Gregory, 61, from Hawthorne.
There were two mass shootings last week across the state. Eleven people were killed in Monterey Park, outside Los Angeles, and seven people were killed in Half Moon Bay.
The storms that swept the state in December and earlier this month cost the state up to nearly $7 billion in damages, per a new report.
In other news:
Oscar nominations are out! I’m rooting for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
We will know the Super Bowl match-up after this weekend’s set of games. The San Francisco 49ers will face the Philadelphia Eagles at 12 p.m. Sunday, followed by the Cincinnati Bengals’ game against the Kansas City Chiefs.
Pupdate of the week: Alice cannot be trusted with soft toys because she never learned that you’re not supposed to swallow the bits and pieces. Oliver now gets special supervised fluffy toy time while Alice sticks to her supply of bones.
Trail tip of the week: Always tell someone else when you are expecting to conclude your hike if you are going solo. The missing hikers near Mount Baldy were all reported missing by folks that knew where they planned to be and when they were expected back.
Read of the week: I really enjoyed Anne Helen Peterson’s newsletter about “Layoff Brain” this morning. She discusses how multiple generations of workers have been desensitized to layoffs and instability while others expect to get laid off at least once in their career. Given the news around layoffs at large companies recently, I found her essay a really interesting look at why those layoffs are happening and how most folks think about them.
Watch of the week: We sat down to watch The Banshees of Inisherin last weekend ahead of its expected Oscar nomination (spoiler: it was nominated in nine categories). It took a bit to process the movie itself, but I can see how it earned nominations across the board because the acting (and Colin Farrell’s eyebrows) is great. Worth a watch, even if it takes a day or two to really understand what you just saw.
That’s it for this week! I hope you have a great weekend and get a chance to get ouside.
- Megan