After a few months away, I return to a San Bernardino City Council meeting, the first since the June 7 election that had a shocking result: the mayor lost. I write about what it means, how he skipped the meeting and how relieved everyone seemed in my Friday column.

The university outside San Bernardino owns a Kerry James Marshall painting that is going up for auction Thursday from Sotheby’s and is estimated at $8 million to $12 million. So how did a medical school end up with a valuable painting? I tell that unusual story in my Wednesday column.

The San Bernardino City Council is the gift that keeps on giving, as the decision to put the mayor’s job before voters is vetoed by the mayor (!), reconsidered by the council and voted down. I watch the fun and report the results in Friday’s column.

Venturing once again to a San Bernardino City Council meeting, I watch as the council has a healthy discussion about the merits of eliminating the mayor’s job and simply rotating it among the seven members. In a sort of preview of how that might work, they had to run the meeting without the mayor because he didn’t show up. I write about it all in Friday’s column.

I attend my third straight San Bernardino City Council meeting, and how could I not? They were going to discuss chopping by mayor’s salary by more than half. And they did. Not often you get to witness something like that. Or read about it, as you can do in my Friday column.

The owner of San Bernardino’s beloved Super Burrito has retired after 43 years behind the order window. Art Santoya’s mother opened the takeout stand in the 1960s and he took the reins in 1978. He told almost no one he was retiring because he didn’t want a fuss. I interview him for Friday’s column.

I attend my second San Bernardino council meeting and am amply rewarded. And so is the city, because a tribe is donating to Seccombe Lake Park after reading my Sunday column about how it lost out on a grant. How about that! I write about the unusual meeting, which saw the mayor leave twice and the council discuss how to cut his salary, in my Friday column.

It could be the Central Park of San Bernardino, but Seccombe Lake Park, which occupies four square blocks of downtown, has had its ups and downs. After a nadir, the park is looking better as Public Works is tasked with cleaning it up and is going at it with gusto. I take a tour for my Sunday column.

I attend my first, but surely not my last, San Bernardino City Council meeting as the mayor is censured, a milestone move that I write about in Friday’s column.

Meeting an interview subject in downtown San Bernardino at Viva La Boba, a coffee and tea shop, I was struck, and who wouldn’t be, by the mural inside. It depicts the downtown street grid, businesses and landmarks noted. I stepped outside and snapped a photo through the window to get the whole thing into the frame. Click on the photo for a larger image.

Co-owner Tansu Phillip told me the mural, like the shop, is two years old. I don’t know if it’s as useful as Google Maps, but close. And it’s got hometown pride behind it.