Sailing lessons set sail on Lake Evans at Fairmount Park. (Charlie Flores)
Tuesday Gazette: July 1, 2025
Hello Riverside, and happy Tuesday! What a time we had last night celebrating our 10,000-subscriber milestone. If you were unable to join us, I was thrilled to share that over the weekend we hit a new milestone and now have more than 12,000 subscribers reading the Gazette every morning! Thank you to everyone who joined us to celebrate, and thank you for all the kind birthday wishes—it was so rad to spend my birthday with people who love this incredible community of ours.
As we do each year on my birthday, The Raincross Gazette is kicking off our summer fundraising campaign to support our independent journalism—always free to read, always 100% Riverside.
Our news will never be behind a paywall. So we rely on our Supporters to give when they can to keep our news free and accessible for everyone. We are currently supported by 491 Riversiders whose monthly support totals $2,968. Over this coming week, I'm hoping 109 of our loyal readers will sign up as monthly Supporters and help The Gazette build the newsroom Riverside deserves. We need your support not only to continue providing the news you rely on, but also to deepen the quality and strengthen the reach of our coverage.
If you haven’t yet, will you consider signing up as a monthly Supporter?
Beyond the Orange Groves: Riverside's Small Farm Revolution
As organizations work to develop 1,000 vacant acres, family farmers are already transforming small plots into diverse agricultural operations that feed the community.
Riverside has a prominent place in agricultural history. It became the birthplace of the Washington navel orange industry in California when Eliza Tibbets planted two young trees in her front yard in the early 1870s.
One of its universities, the University of California, Riverside, conducts extensive agricultural research and manages a large collection of citrus varieties. According to their website, the Givaudan Citrus Variety Collection at UCR contains information on more than 1,100 cultivars.
And let's not forget the Riverside greenbelt, home to the California State Historic Citrus Park, farms, and farmstands where residents can buy fresh produce along historic Victoria Avenue. With this article, I aim to offer a glimpse into the greenbelt and the small-scale farms that operate within it.
The Blue Zone concept originated from research into places where people consistently live past 100.
Why it matters: Blue Zones Project Approved status encourages restaurants to adopt practices promoting healthier lifestyles, potentially making Riverside a healthier place to dine out.
Similar projects in other communities have shown impressive results, including reductions in obesity and smoking rates.
The big picture: The initiative uses public-private partnerships to make healthy choices easier in participating communities, involving government policies, restaurants, schools, workplaces, and grocery stores.
Riverside fire crews contained a wilderness blaze near Tyler and Mandalay streets Sunday afternoon, prompting temporary evacuations before lifting orders by 9 p.m. with no injuries or structural damage reported.
The Magnolia Center Post Office reopened Monday at 3682 Sunnyside Drive after a three-year closure from a 2022 fire, restoring walkable postal services that Midtown residents had relied on for decades.
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