The second Concerts in the Park show of this year was held amidst another record breaking attendance crowd at Cesar Chavez Plaza. Three bands performed on stage while DJ Whores was featured. Once Horseneck took the stage they gave a preview of what music would be like for the evening. Raw, energetic rock was delivered and the audience loved it. Their Facebook page states their influence as being “alcohol and other awesome sh*t” and if that was the case on Friday they showcased some amazing influence. One of my favorite Sacramento bands is Lite Brite and they were at Cesar Chavez Park once again to deliver some basic hard core rock Lite Brite are like transformers on stage. The def

In preparation for Sacramento’s International Academy of Design and Technology (IADT) annual Imagine Fashion Show the school held their final fitting day. Several designers and models attended the fitting on Friday, May 11. During the final fitting designers put  finishing touches on their designs. At this time several models had dropped out of the event because of various reasons and new castings were going through their initial fittings as well. One of the models at the event was Jereen Diaz who is a Sacramento model and will be modeling for Erika Diaz (no relation). I asked the model a few questionas about her fashion work. Tell me a little about yourself and your interest in the f

In some Sacramento neighborhoods, plant-filled traffic circles hardly get noticed by passers-by, but in Boulevard Park, neighbors see them as an opportunity to beautify an otherwise ordinary traffic-calming device in the middle of an intersection. This weekend, members of the Boulevard Park Green Thumb Brigade will be out in force to weed, trim and water the vegetation in neighborhood traffic circles to keep them in tip-top shape. Friends, neighbors and fellow green thumbs are invited to join the brigade from 9 - 11 a.m. Saturday to help out. For more information, call Green Thumb Brigade organizer Sally Flory-O’Neil at 446-3390, or email sfoniel@comcast.net . Melissa Corker is a staff

The next time you go to a city park, bring your pruning shears and garden gloves: Park maintenance in the city is about to be dealt a $119,000 budget blow – leaving the department with one-man maintenance crews and increasing the burden on volunteers to pick up the slack. “I’m not happy to say this, but we have inadequate resources and inadequate staffing,” Director Jim Combs told the City Council Tuesday. Even with a department budget reduced by more than 60 percent and staffing reduced by 50 percent over the past five years, Combs said everyone in the department has done their best to keep city services afloat. But it’s a losing battle, Combs said. The city’s park services maintains

In a life changing twist of fate, John and Sherry Turk each had a major accident in the same year and became disabled. Rather than letting their disabilities diminish their lives, they quit their jobs and in 1999 opened “Wheelchairs Unlimited” so that they could help others who also had mobility issues. Unfortunately, the Turks had to close their two-person business in 2008 when Sherry was having health concerns. However, in 2009 the husband and wife team re-opened it, changed its name to Turk Enterprises and changed its focus from durable medical equipment to recreational travel mobility. The store is now a retail shop where the Turks sell and service motorized scooters, travel chairs,

Hacker Lab, located on the border of Curtis Park and Oak Park, is a tech work space founded in March. It facilitates bootstrapped start-ups and tech enthusiasts. Bootstrapping is when start-up businesses fund their own endeavors instead of seeking investment money. (See Wiki.) Tech enthusiasts can be anyone interested in technologies such as programming, web design, mobile and web development, hardware technology and software. Hacker Lab’s focus is to build a community promoting technology, education, job creation and entrepreneurship in the Sacramento region. Inside the facility, aside from other techies, you will find a hardware lab for building out prototypes, gadgets and gizmos. The

Mahil Keval is an entrepreneur. He left his engineering career to pursue his dream, the American dream of owning his own business. Sounds familiar right? Well, Keval’s story is a bit different to me. He was not struggling in a 9-to-5 and barely making ends meet. He was not down on his luck living on his last dime, needing to make “it” happen, which is the stereotypical story of the entrepreneur. Keval is a UC Berkeley graduate (BS ’09) with a degree in mechanical engineering. He had an awesome job working for McCarthy Building Companies as a project engineer building a 200,000-square-foot, $200 million biomedical research facility on the Berkeley campus. Quite impressive, to say the leas

  Chrometa is a Sacramento startup, and its founders’ story is one of the tenacity it takes to make a startup successful. With all the stories such as Facebook and Instragram, one may think that building the next big thing is not that hard, and that you will be instantly rich with a movie deal in the near future. Chrometa is automatic timekeeping software that quietly runs in the background of your PC, monitoring your actions such as working on software, writing docs, checking email and doing any other tasks related to the work flow. It tracks time down to the second and can automatically categorize time to the appropriate clients and projects based on keywords. Chrometa is an awesome

Southside Park swimmers should know in the next week whether a bold new plan to reopen the Southside Park Pool succeeds – if it does, it will make for a cool summer for thousands of central city swimmers. The plan hinges on a new partnership between the city of Sacramento and the Sacramento YMCA where the YMCA will operate the pool and provide staff and maintenance all year. “If we can accomplish this, the Southside (Park) Pool will be open for business seven days a week,” City Councilman Rob Fong said. “It would be an amazing asset for the community again.” The new plan includes swim lessons, an aquatics program and open swim times at the pool for families and kids who are out of schoo

About 3,000 people and 120 different brews are expected at this year’s West Coast Brew Fest in Miller Park on Saturday. Started in 2000, the brew fest showcases California, Oregon and Washington’s influence in micro brews, and judges award ribbons in a blind taste test two weeks before the event. Organizer Matson Breakey told The Sacramento Press last year that dedicated followers from as far away as Arizona and Washington show up to try the beers, hear the local bands and sample the food. There are no tasting tokens, and festival-goers are given a cup upon paying admission, which gives them unlimited tastings until the event is over or the kegs are tapped. For more information, visit