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In California | A SPOTLIGHT ON ALL THINGS GOLDEN STATE | Thursday, June 3 | | |
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| But first. What's in a name? A few weeks back, we told you about the most popular baby names in the state. This week, the San Francisco Chronicle is out with a deeper look at why certain names — such as Sebastian and Julian — are more popular in California than the rest of the country. |
| Know someone who cares about the Golden State? Let them know they can sign up for the In California newsletter via this link. I'm Julie Makinen, California editor for the USA Today Network, bringing you today's key headlines. |
Disneyland's Avengers Campus opens Friday. Here's a sneak peek. |
 | | Avengers Campus, opening June 4, 2021, at Disney California Adventure Park in Anaheim, California, will invite guests of all ages into a new land where they will sling webs on the first Disney ride-through attraction to feature Spider-Man. The immersive land also presents multiple heroic encounters with Avengers and their allies, like Iron Man, Black Panther, Black Widow and more. At Pym Test Kitchen, food scientists will utilize Ant-Man and The Wasp's shrinking and growing technology to serve up perfectly sized snacks. | | Christian Thompson, Disneyland Resort | |
| Sling a web like Spider-Man and help the superhero defeat replicating spider bots attempting to take over Avengers Campus. Train to be a member of the Warriors of Wakanda, or help Dr. Strange as he tries to protect a gold ring from villains. |
| These are just a few of the things guests of Disney California Adventure Park will be able to do when they enter Avengers Campus, which opens in Anaheim on Friday. |
| The experiential land offers guests the chance to not just meet their superheroes but to be superheroes. Avengers Campus was built on 70-plus years of Marvel superhero characters and stories and 23 movies and was a collaboration among many disciplines within Walt Disney Imagineering. |
| "This has been a global storytelling effort," said Walt Disney Imagineering's portfolio executive director, Scot Drake, Wednesday morning during a media preview of Avengers Campus. "We are telling these stories at a scale we've never been able to do before." |
| In designing the new land, it was a question of "what is the best way to get our guests right in the middle of those stories, right in the middle of that action," Drake said. |
| The 6-acre land, situated between the Hyperion Theatre and Cars Land, is where California Adventure guests will find all their superheroes, including Black Panther, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Spider-Man and others. |
 | | Doctor Strange trains recruits in the Mystic Arts at The Avengers Campus at Disney California Adventure Park. | | Harrison Hill, USA TODAY | |
| Speaking of leisure travel, two very young sisters in Utah have been dreaming of going to California and swimming in the ocean with dolphins. This week, they decided — without their parents' permission — to hit the road. |
| Officers in West Valley, Utah, were shocked Wednesday to learn who was behind the wheel of a car when they responded to an accident involving a semi-truck: a 9-year-old girl. |
| Police said the girl and her 4-year-old sister took the keys to the family car to head to the Golden State and go swimming in the ocean. The girls were 10 miles from their home when they hopped a median and slammed head-on into a semi-truck around 5 a.m. No one got hurt in the accident and police say it was largely because the girls wore their seatbelts. |
| "The car suffered serious damage. Even the semi had to be towed!" West Valley City PD said in a tweet. |
| Police said the parents were asleep during the girls' excursion and had to be awakened to the news of the accident. They told police the two girls were able to get out of the house through an unlatched door in the basement and the car keys were in a place "not normally accessible by children," KUTV reported. |
June 15 reopening: Even vaccinated California workers may have to keep masks on? |
 | | California Gov. Gavin Newsom removes his face mask before giving an update during a visit to Pittsburg, Calif. | | Rich Pedroncelli/AP | |
| California is set to fully reopen June 15 and do away with virtually all mask and social distancing requirements for vaccinated people. But those who regulate workplaces in the state aren't ready to go that far — and that has business groups upset. |
| The California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board on Thursday was considering new workplace rules that would only allow workers to go maskless if everyone in a room is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, Associated Press reported. The rules could remain in place into early next year even though COVID-19 cases have fallen dramatically and 70% of adults in California have gotten at least one shot. |
| Recent U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance says that fully vaccinated people can skip face coverings and distancing in nearly all situations. California is set to follow that recommendation starting June 15. |
| But Cal/OSHA staff says conditions are different among workers, leading to their proposed rule that even vaccinated employees remain masked unless everyone in their workspace is inoculated. |
| Helen Cleary, director of the Phylmar Regulatory Roundtable, a coalition of large businesses, said she was "astonished" that the staff didn't align with guidelines from federal and state health officials. The proposed rules would "create two classes of people" in the workplace, she told the board. Moreover, "there are conflicting messages in the proposed amendments and there is a lack of scientific evidence for them." |
| The California Chamber of Commerce also is upset. "If you are fully vaccinated, (under CDC recommendations) you don't need to wear a mask inside or outside. That's the science!" chamber President and CEO Allan Zaremberg said. "Under these (proposed Cal/OSHA) rules, workers' freedoms will be controlled by their fellow workers' decisions to get vaccinated, not by their own choices." |
| Speaking of vaccinations ... California's offer of cash prizes totaling $116.5 million to residents who get COVID-19 vaccinations may not be having the impact Gov. Gavin Newsom wanted. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that since it joined the states dangling lottery money and other incentives to try to boost the number of people receiving shots, California has seen its rate of vaccinations continue to fall steeply. |
Where does Huntington Beach go now that Tito Ortiz — once hailed as the city's Donald Trump — has quit politics? |
 | | Tito Ortiz has resigned from the Huntington Beach city council. | | Ethan Miller, Getty Images | |
| Ex-MMA star Tito Ortiz won a seat on the Huntington Beach City Council six months ago and proceeded to make a splash. He sailed through the harbor on his boat with "Trump" banners flying. His campaign slogan was "Make Huntington Beach Safe Again," but he brashly rejected public health orders to stem the spread of COVID-19. He mocked the pandemic as a "plandemic," calling it a "political scam" and a form of "population control" by liberals. He refused to get a vaccination. Last month, his twin sons were sent home from middle school after they arrived on campus sans masks — and claiming a religious exemption. |
| This week, Ortiz abruptly quit the council, the L.A. Times reported, claiming that he'd been the "sole focus of character assassination each and every week with multiple news stories" that sought to defame his name. "To put it simply," Ortiz said, "this job isn't working for me." |
| Huntington Beach leans Republican, but some complained that Ortiz's behavior crossed the line. What happens next? |
| "Tito's departure is a reset for Huntington Beach," said Fred Smoller, an associate professor of political science at Chapman University in Orange. "While the radical right gets a lot of attention in the city, it's a place that has been positioning itself as being more moderate. It will be interesting to see whether the appointment is a reaffirmation of the MAGA voice or if it's a repudiation of it." |
Woman recovers wallet lost 46 years ago at a Ventura theater |
| Tom Stevens was working last week on a remodel inside the historic Majestic Ventura Theater, and during the renovations he had to climb down into a crawl space littered with old candy bar wrappers, ticket stubs, soda cans and bottles. There, he found a wallet. |
| It had no cash, but contained clues to its age and owner: old photos, a ticket stub to a 1973 Grateful Dead concert and a California driver's license that expired in 1976. |
| Stevens' boss suggested he post the find on the theater's Facebook page. That set off a lot of chatter in the community, which eventually got around to the wallet's long-lost owner, Colleen Distin. |
| On Friday, Distin went to the theater to reunite with her red wallet, now brownish with age. |
 | | Tom Stevens and Colleen Distin met on May 28, 2021 at the Ventura Majestic Theater after he recovered her wallet and photos. | | WES WOODS II/THE STAR | |
| Distin said she lost the wallet in 1975. She was in her early 20s on a movie date. She can't recall the show she watched but remembers placing her purse on the theater floor. She later discovered her purse had a hole large enough to lose her wallet that had a $200 check and family photos inside. |
| "It's very emotional," said Distin, who had tears in her eyes after getting her wallet back. "It kind of caught me off guard. I was excited but then all of the sudden you start seeing things and you go back into your past. It's like a time capsule." |
| In California is a roundup of news from across USA Today network newsrooms. Also contributing: Associated Press, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle. Julie Makinen is California editor for the USA Today Network. Follow her on Twitter at @Julie_Makinen. |
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