Good morning, I hope you’re having a good week. If you're ever looking for good places to eat in the city, I recently came across a website called The Infatuation that posts great listicles and reviews.
You can even browse curated lists for “celebrity sightings,” “first dates,” “quiet meals,” etc., which I especially appreciate. And now, onto the five USC, Los Angeles and California stories you need to know for today.
1.
USC renamed its school of pharmacy after the late biomedical entrepreneur Alfred E. Mann. The school trains more than half the pharmacists in Southern California and was one of the first in the country to offer a doctor of pharmacy. The new name’s a bit of a mouthful, though: The USC Alfred E. Mann School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Gov. Gavin Newsom is backing legislation that would protect the iconic western Joshua tree, prohibiting people from importing, exporting or removing the species without a state permit. Experts say that — though large numbers of the trees still exist — climate change poses a substantial threat to the species.
For the first time since 2012, homes in the San Francisco metro area are selling for less than their asking price. The average sale-to-list percentage in the region was 99.2% in December, the first time since February 2012 that number has dropped under 100% — another reminder of the Bay Area’s housing cooldown.
California beach towns are still recovering from January’s violent storms. In Capitola, an 800-foot wharf that was the town’s main tourist attraction was torn in half; nearby businesses were similarly trashed when debris from the wharf blew through their windows. Experts say the total damage and lost economic output across the state is somewhere in the neighborhood of $34 billion.
A tiny California mouse won the Guinness World Record for oldest living mouse in human care. Pat – a 9-year-old Pacific pocket mouse named after “Star Trek” actor Patrick Stewart — was born at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park on July 14, 2013. For reference, that’s almost exactly a year after Gangnam Style dropped. I couldn’t even tell you what I was doing in 2013. Probably crying about having to go to Little League practice, or something.
