A few weeks ago, folks were all abuzz about the prospect that the powers-that-be might snag a Bass Pro outdoor store to anchor the South of Stadium project in downtown Fresno. Turns out, Bass Pro is indeed coming to the Valley.

To Manteca. In 2007.

What does this mean for the possibility of a Fresno BP? It's unclear. City Council's showing a cheery face. From George Hostetter's story in today's Bee:

For our Newsmakers series, we conducted a phone interview with Ashley Swearengin, Chief Operations Officer of Fresno's Regional Jobs Initiative. Read on for this local business leader's story of her journey through Fresno, told in her words and in an archive of stories from The Bee in which she has appeared.

Fresno may be one of the least affordable cities in the country (according to Salary.com), but we're one of the most affordable places for families to buy health insurance, says eHealthInsurance.com. Which makes up for it, right?

One of this month's Rolling Stone features is an article focusing on four men from Visalia (all currently living in Brooklyn) who are saving themselves for marriage:

All four are from Visalia, California, a small farming city far from the coast. [Matt] Dunbar's best friend in the group is Robin Power, whom he met in the ninth grade. Power's whole family looked like the ideal of Christian authenticity Dunbar had begun desiring for himself since his parents divorced when he was seven. Dunbar grew up in an Episcopal church and entered evangelicalism only after the separation; Power's family had always been zealous for God. Power's dad recorded Christian rock albums and the whole family jammed together, not like the Partridges but like Christian Ramones. Power played around town in Visalia's punk scene; Dunbar practiced the drums at home and dreamed of joining one of Power's bands.

An interesting read, by Jeff Sharlet (find his other material here or here). (Thanks to Robin for the link.)

The CSU Summer Arts program began yesterday at Fresno State. Last Thursday, The Bee's Donald Munro and Marty Berry gave a list of recommendations for things to see during the month-long event (here are more recommendations, and here's the full list).

More recommendations from the Beehive:

• Scott McCloud, renowned comics artist and author of "Understanding Comics" and "Reinventing Comics," will be giving a lecture Thursday, June 30. ($5 students/seniors; $7 general)
• Indie filmmaker Mike Wellin (director of "Shards of Death 5: Now Hiring") will be talking about animated storytelling and screening his documentary "Through the Lens of Ira Latour" on Thursday, July 14. ($8/$10)
• Andrew Gordon, lead animator on the character of Mike Wazowski in Monsters, Inc., will be giving a lecture on animation. ($8/10)
• On Friday the 8th and Friday the 22nd, students will be showing what they've accomplished during the workshops.

Jocelyn Fuller of Fresno Magazine and Creative Fresno e-mailed in this photo of a mural in progress on the building behind downtown's Trade Center, being painted as part of the Creative Fresno mural project. The photograph was taken by Ron Peterson, who says Josh Wigger, Super, Mehran Heard, Jason Graham, Robot, Joel Dugan and James Naccaratoare are the artists working on the mural.

Ron says they hope to finish the mural within the next few weeks. It's already pretty gorgeous; I can't wait to see the end product.

Jocelyn also sent along word that Creative Fresno has won a first-place award in Leadership and Service from the Central Coast California branch of the American Planning Association. The award ceremony will be held July 15 in Patterson, CA.

From the moment she first stepped on stage at the age of 6, before mental illness brought her life to a tragic end, Brittany Benov touched the lives of many. In this multimedia feature, we present photos of Brittany throughout her life, accompanied with audio commentary by her mother Kathy Benov, and video clips of her performances. To view all parts of this feature, your browser must carry the free Macromedia Flash Player plug-in and the free RealPlayer plug-in.

Note: This presentation and the accompanying series by The Bee's Doug Hoagland drew a big response from our readers. Read comments from The Bee's executive editor Charlie Waters on the series and the response. We invite you to continue the conversation in this comment thread about how the story was handled and the issues the story involved. Thanks.

E.J. Schultz reports:

A Michigan-based energy company is considering building a $250 million solar-roofing manufacturing plant in the central San Joaquin Valley that could create up to 3,000 good-paying jobs, a company official said Wednesday.

Energy Conversion Devices Inc., a publicly traded company valued at $620 million, is looking for a site for a 350,000-square-foot facility.

Mike Seay, proprietor of the blog Audible Flux, is dipping his toes into the podcasting revolution. (See also, which Mike credits with getting him on the podwagon.) The theme of his second podcast is "former Fresnan from the City throws down love for the hometown." He is also podcasting about Wiffleball.

From time to time, we hope to peer into the lives of local residents who often appear in the pages of The Bee, for a series called "Newsmakers." This week, we spoke with Reza Assemi, an in-fill developer whose work has often been featured in the newspaper, most recently in Sanford Nax's June 12 story in the Real Estate section. Below the fold, you'll find an edited transcript of our phone interview, an archive of newspaper articles in which Assemi has appeared, and a link to a gallery of photos featuring Assemi and his work. Read on for a glimpse at Fresno through the lens of one dynamic person.

Remember the dot-com boom, with all those awesome companies that promised incredible services at bargain-basement prices? Remember Kozmo.com, the startup that employed couriers across the country to deliver convenience-store items to your doorstep? (Probably not. Kozmo.com only operated in nine cities, none of which was Fresno.)

Well, even after the dust from the dot-com boom is beginning to settle, there are still some crazy dot-com deals to be had, one of which is KeepMedia.com. For $4.95 a month, you can read through 12 years of online archives for more than 200 publications (ranging from FastCompany to Forbes to Family Circle to Men's Fitness), with articles up to the present-day. KeepMedia also has some pretty great clipping features, so you can hold on to articles you like.

Disclaimer: I have no personal stake in this company, other than hoping their crazy little mission subsumes all the other publications I subscribe to, like The New Yorker and Wired.

First, there was the Google Sightseeing blog, which used the magic of Google Maps to bring us satellite photos of strange and wonderful places around the world. Now, a new blog called Sprol is garnering a lot of attention, turning the all-seeing Google satellite camera on our bleakest landscapes of overconsumption and decay.

They recently trained their sights on West Fresno County, at the Harris Feeding Co. cattle feedlot in Coalinga. Look below the fold for another shot of the feedlot.

The latest controversy roiling the streets is the Fresno Uncensored DVD that went on sale June 1. Louis Galvan's story in today's Bee says the police are investigating some of the things depicted in the movie -- violence, drug activity, illegal weapons, etc. Tom Boyajian says, "Whether it's even protected free speech is a question."

It's on sale at FTK Online.

Update: The DVD has led to arrests galore.

One of the largest privately financed solar operations in the state is being installed at P-R Farms in Clovis. Read Sandy Nax's story about it in today's Business section.

FTK, the local hip-hop store, is going to be the official retailer for Common, says store co-owner Bobby Naugle in a CentralCali.com thread. You might know FTK as the official retailer for Kanye West, whom they brought to town for a highly publicized autograph-signing event in April.

Any chance FTK might go for the trifecta? Thanks to Mike Oz for sending along the news.

The Clovis City Council is looking into making the city a technology hub, Bethany Clough reports in today's Business section. They've cooked up a concept they're calling "Technopolis."

Yes, this sounds a bit at-odds with the city's image (the seal on the city's Web site shows a cowboy riding a bucking horse), but as Bethany points out, Clovis has already got a research and technology park, not to mention the Center for Advanced Research and Technology.

It seems whenever the Council members take up this particular question of whether to purchase employee-monitoring software, they engage in the best antics. Last time, Mayor Autry and Tom Boyajian exchanged words. This time, it seems, Autry and Brian Calhoun's offices sent dueling press releases:

Calhoun's release expressed concern about spending the $1.8 million during uncertain economic times. The city responded with a news release after "Calhoun chose not to correct" his release. The city said Calhoun's release had three inaccuracies.

Calhoun stood by the release and added that city staffers should do more to prove the software's worth and viability.

Merced's Katie Gallagher almost won last season's Survivor. Can another Valley resident win the million bucks in next year's show? Not if y'all don't try out.

CBS will be holding an open casting call for the show next Tuesday (June 14), from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Villaggio Shopping Center. Download an application from the CBS site.

Fresno's Pride Parade is all about families, puppies and balloons. And, um, leather. Check it out in this multimedia essay (Macromedia Flash Player required).

In today's Business section, E.J. Schultz notes an Intel survey of wireless hotspots in the 100 most populous cities in the US. Fresno, with 84 wifi-enabled locales, ranks 54th on the list this year, up from 76 last year.

We know you can snag a wifi connection at Starbucks and (sometimes) McDonald's, but where are some of the other lesser-known wifi hotspots (especially free ones) in town? E.J. mentioned Javawava in his article. Previously on the Beehive, we noted the CyberSub Café on Shaw (and commenter Patrick Sullivan put in a plug for My Internet Café across from River Park). Here's a partial list. And here's a map.

Any others?

From our sister paper up in Sacramento comes this story about a group of 17 young women, sophomores at Sacto's McClatchy High, who've started up a campaign to draw their city's attention to genocide in the Sudanese region of Darfur. The week before last, the girls staged a die-in before the city Capitol building.

If you were a fan of The Meatrix, don't miss Store Wars, the latest salvo from graphics studio Free Range Studios in the food fight between organic and traditional farmers. According to Dennis Pollock's article in today's Business section, farm industry reps don't find the movie very funny. But maybe you will.

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