Ian Whitaker 60 posts 0 comments

Residents turned out for Planada's annual Community Day parade on Saturday, the first since January's catastrophic flooding left much of the town underwater. Members of local churches, biker clubs, little league teams and marching bands featured in the parade, which ended with an outdoor fair in the Planada park. The Grand Marshal for this…

Life is finally returning to normal in Planada after floods swept through the small town earlier this year. This Saturday the town will be…

A group of Planada residents demonstrated at the foot of the County Administration Building on Tuesday morning, raising signs calling for a halt…

Jesse Hunt was first drawn to art by his older brother. “He was really good at art and naturally I was like, ‘Yeah, let me try that!’” he said. “I was too young to even realize, but I kept going back to it because it gave me that positive attention that kids want. And I was good at it.” He won an award at school for a picture of…

Residents of Planada let loose on county and federal disaster officials in a town hall meeting last Thursday, criticizing the slow recovery effort after…

Members of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars are once again asking Merced County leaders to intervene to help them find their own meeting space. They took…

Residents of an apartment complex affected by the recent flood are speaking out after being forced from their homes. People who live on the first floor of the Woodbridge Apartments on Highway 59 near Olive Avenue were told Wednesday that they had two days to move all their belongings out of their units in order to make way for…

It was Max Brown’s biggest regret in life. He had never contacted the family of Lazaro “Lester” Martinez, the 19-year-old kid who had held him when he was…

Popular downtown flea market Superflea has crammed a lot of things into one over the past seven months. Craft fair. Art show. Thrift-heaven.…

ASIP is back! One of Downtown Merced’s popular coffee shop hangouts reopened on Dec. 11 in a 5,000 square foot brick building on Main Street between O and P streets. Only about a third of the shop is currently open — the “Sensory Lab” which serves coffee — but work is starting on a kitchen and coffee roastery next door that will have even…