It was the last farmer’s market of the season, and the photo-op recalled The Last Supper. Standing in Cesar Chavez Plaza, Mayor Kevin Johnson spread his arms behind two tables piled high with fresh fruits and vegetables. And with scores of white-aproned restaurateurs to his right and left, he unveiled a logo promoting Sacramento as an agronomical Eden.

The first time Kimberly Foss went to a shooting range she froze her butt off.

“It was outside, it was cold and it was not a very fun experience,” says Foss, who took herself shooting for the first time to celebrate her 50th birthday. “I was brand new to shooting — it was something I’d been interested in for a long time — so I had no idea you could go to indoor ranges, much less really nice ones that cater to women as well as men.”

Call them the face of the new frugal. Erica Rhyne-Christensen and fiancé Bryant Giorgi, both 27, don’t vacation much. They hardly eat out. Until recently, they rented rooms in a group house for $400 a month each instead of getting solo apartments, and they didn’t have TV.

Chris Forsyth has a ritual: every time he finishes working on a campaign, he treats himself to a new tattoo. Having worked in the state Capitol for nearly 20 years, the heavily painted chief of staff to Senator Jim Beall (D-San Jose) estimates that about 15 percent of state lawmakers have at least one tattoo.

Two hundred, four hundred … twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, five hundred …

As the young woman behind the glass divider counts out the entirety of my paycheck, I can’t help but think of how measly it looks before I stuff it in my wallet.

Local commercial real estate brokers leased out one of the highest square-foot totals in the nation last year. But Sacramento as a whole still hasn’t rebounded like its regional neighbors.

Even a half-hearted glance at the headlines would suggest that these are hardly the glory days for the nation’s law schools.

Let’s say you’re in a glitzy Beijing restaurant. Your waiter uncorks a $300 bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. He pours you a glass and you sip it, savor it, let it breathe. But around the table, everyone else gulps theirs down one swallow, like a shot, yelling “Gan bei!”

Welcome to wine culture in China.

Back in 1985, Margaret Wong saw potential in China’s booming economy and took her Sacramento-based lighting company, McWong International Inc., overseas.

As her father’s dementia deepened, so did Tonya Roemer’s anxiety. Daily visits, a stint with a live-in companion and an experiment with expensive, 24-hour care didn’t curb Ray’s aggressive behavior as the 81-year-old lost the ability to walk and feed himself.

Children now have logical reasons for not finishing their brussels sprouts at the dinner table. If they’re thrown away, it could be good for the economy and the environment.

Bruce Monighan knows a few things about building something out of nothing. Facing the option of unemployment or bootstrapping, the local architect started his Sacramento-based firm Monighandesign from scratch in 1982. By the early 2000s, Monighandesign was completing between 50 and 60 public and private projects annually in markets across the country and looked to expand in 2007.

These days, the best reservation in town might not be at a restaurant, but at a chef’s table — in the chef’s private home or yours. Congenial chefs are inviting clients to stir and chop to their heart’s content before sitting down to a meal.

After more than a decade of work and a price tag that has grown by 50 percent, representatives for Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento report that the $750 million midtown hospital upgrade is in the final phases and is expected to be finished by mid-2014.

“Something isn’t quite right with Tim Collom. On the outside, Collom is doing far better than most of us. In the past year, he has been featured on KCRA-TV and HGTV speaking about real estate and in the pages of The Sacramento Bee and Sacramento Magazine showcasing his paintings. 

At first it sounds like backwards thinking: revitalize a downtown area by adding miniature plots of farmland on city blocks.

“Small Market, Big Heart” tells the story of the Sacramento Kings and their fans’ fight to hold onto the team. But the 80-minute documentary — packed with NBA archive footage and interviews with Kings’ executives, local politicians and sports entertainment personalities — isn’t from the NBA offices or an established production company.

When he’s not jet-setting to Tahiti or hobnobbing with his best friend Tom Cruise*, Sean O’Brien is just a regular guy. He’s 29, single, never pays full price when shopping online and likes to snowboard with friends in Tahoe. 

The arts may be underfunded in the Capital Region, but creativity abounds. Among Sacramento’s prime talents, a number of product designers stand out for their vision, craft and ingenuity.

We live in a world of labels. And right or wrong, the labels we choose have an impact on how others perceive us — even during the holidays.

With our August cover story, “Closing Remarks,” Comstock’s celebrated Brice Harris’ announced retirement as chancellor of the Los Rios Community College District and his 21-year career in that discipline.

Apparently, retirement didn’t take.

If your IT room is starting to look like a scene out of “Sanford and Son,” you’re not alone. In 2010, American consumers and businesses unloaded 40 million computers onto recyclers, landfills and the refurbished market, the Golisano Institute for Sustainability in Rochester, N.Y., reports. Some estimates show, however, that millions more are idling in homes and offices because owners simply don’t know what to do with them.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to uphold the Affordable Care Act briefly tempered some of the political brouhaha surrounding the new health care law. But partisan rhetoric flared again during election season, creating more confusion about the law than clarity.

Where Scalehouse Street meets Township Nine Avenue is, for now, a crossroads on 65 acres of dirt between Richards Boulevard and the American River Parkway. In less than a decade, this swath of land — offering striking views of both the downtown Sacramento skyline and one of the city’s beloved rivers — could be home to thousands.

At an age when many other couples still don’t have their day-to-day finances in shape, Sarah Britton and Will Gonzalez were already planning for their retirement. He was 36, she was 30.

In September 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the municipal bond market froze, Sacramento International Airport had just begun constructing the biggest capital improvement project in the county’s history.

The ports of West Sacramento and Stockton are betting that a $30 million public investment in new infrastructure will convince local importers and exporters to transfer their method of goods movement to the San Francisco Bay from trucking to barge shipping.

Visions of the golden years often include thoughts of second homes, lush fairways and RV cruises through Yellowstone, but for more and more aging baby boomers, one traumatic event — divorce — can upend plans for retirement.

Tony Mickela doesn’t consider his weekly massage an act of decadent pampering. The 67-year-old retired Sacramento educator instead views the therapy, which he has been receiving for the past 10 years, as an integral part of a healthy lifestyle and his effort to keep an array of health problems at bay.

There are roads that the director of San Joaquin County’s transportation-planning agency forbids his teenage daughter from driving on.

The icy retail climate along the Highway 50 corridor east of Sacramento is slowly beginning to thaw, but an overabundance of standing inventory remains.

Nathan Johnston has contemplated his own death several times over.

Sacramento County will need an estimated 23,000 low- and very low-income housing units in the next nine years. The six-county region stretching from Yuba to Placer to El Dorado would need more than 41,000 units. But without the tax increment financing once provided by redevelopment agencies, city leaders are wondering where they’re going to come up with the cash to build.

For business owners like Zennes Faljean, the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Obama’s federal health care overhaul marked far more of a beginning than a conclusion.

Developers looking to build in the Capital Region are finding cash in emerging green-financing products.

John O’Malley is the recruiting partner at Sacramento’s largest law firm, Downey Brand, which was founded nearly a century ago and employs more than 120 lawyers in five regional offices, 103 of them in Sacramento.

At a conference in China in November 2010, Harris Lewin and Richard Michelmore approached Jian Wang, the president of global genetics company BGI, with an informal question: Could they interest the world’s largest genomics research institute in building a lab at UC Davis?

Product and company branding is more complex than a logo, a slogan and a catchy marketing campaign. Branding is the way consumers talk about your product or service, how they remember you and how they expect you to behave.

Check out the license plates of your fellow motorists the next time you are out for a drive, and you may notice more dealer tags than usual.

A staffer in the office of Bonney Plumbing, Heating, Air & Rooter Service grew concerned after smelling alcohol on an employee headed out to a job site. The staffer immediately notified management, who met the man at the site and also detected the scent. This was enough reasonable suspicion to demand a drug test, which showed the employee had been intoxicated while driving a company vehicle.

Joining the 1 percent really isn’t that difficult.

Brian O’Hearn is an accidental landlord.

Like more and more homeowners caught in the descending mortgage spiral, O’Hearn and his wife, Juliet Williams, faced tough choices. Married in June, they owned his house in Folsom and her Sacramento condo — and both wanted to live in midtown.

When he was winning college golf tournaments as a Fresno State senior, pro golfer Nick Watney was content to come up a few units shy of a history degree. In fact, Nick didn’t want a college degree to fall back on.

Perry Ghilarducci holds a vivid memory from the day the Internal Revenue Service showed up unannounced at his office. Nobody wants a surprise visit from the IRS, and it’s even more nerve-wracking when the agents are from the criminal investigation division and when, like Ghilarducci, you’re an accountant.

Last fall, for the first time in his life, Nicolas Ridout, 58, removed his shirt in front of strangers and went for a swim. This was not the first time a t-shirt had marked a personal milestone.

There was a raucous debate on the political stage last year over whether California companies were giving up on the Golden State and moving to Texas.

Rollie Swingle didn’t have treatment options for his stage IV prostate cancer.

Andrew Nelson was raised in the horse-dotted hinterlands of Sacramento, served in the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan and Iraq, attended community college in Rocklin and is set to attend a prestigious four-year university in hopes of becoming a teacher and education administrator.

Companies in the Sacramento region have long counted on government contracts to smooth out the gyrations of economic cycles. Local, state and federal governments had deep pockets and a seemingly unending appetite for goods and services.

Companies in the Sacramento region have long counted on government contracts to smooth out the gyrations of economic cycles. Local, state and federal governments had deep pockets and a seemingly unending appetite for goods and services.

Northern California’s economy hasn’t edged far enough into recovery to encourage strong hiring. The bouncing stock market, shaky European economies and an upcoming presidential election have many managers wondering what kind of business climate they’ll be dealing with a year from now.