Happy Monday.

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

First off, congratulations to whoever took home this year’s SoFi District Battle of the Bands. I made it downtown, but apparently did not stay late enough to find out who actually won.

If anyone knows, please let me know in the replies. Either way, it looked like another great turnout and a pretty awesome day for local music.

Second, I owe you a small correction.

A couple of very observant readers emailed me on Friday to point out that I completely misunderstood the Rainbow Road event. It turns out it wasn’t a family event at all. It was actually designed for individuals with disabilities ages 16 and older.

That’s on me.

I usually spend a good amount of time digging into every story before it makes the newsletter, but every once in a while I get a little too excited about something that sounds cool and don’t dig quite as deep as I should have.

Thankfully, that doesn’t happen very often, and one of the best parts of this newsletter is having readers who are paying attention and aren’t afraid to keep me honest.

So thank you to Amy, Heather, and everyone else who reached out. I genuinely appreciate it.

Alright… with that out of the way, we’ve got another packed edition this week.

Here’s this week’s Trivia:

How much does a digital subscription to the San Francisco Chronicle cost per month?

I know you all love hearing about my latest City of Napa discoveries, and this one may be more useful for me than anyone else.

The city has a relatively new app called mySERVICECENTER where you can report things like potholes, graffiti, broken streetlights, sidewalk problems and other issues around town.

There is also an interactive map showing requests plotted across Napa, along with their status.

I imagine the app may be a little buggy, and we will see how quickly requests actually move through the system. There is also a decent chance it eventually gets filled with Nextdoor-style complaints.

But the city has one fairly important advantage: presumably, there is actually someone on the back end receiving these reports and sending them to the right department.

I will say creating a form is one thing. The real test is whether anything actually moves after someone presses submit. So we will see if this becomes a genuinely useful way to report problems around Napa…

Either way, I have a feeling I will be putting it to use.

Link: https://www.cityofnapa.org/277/Service-Center

I would not brush this one off quite as quickly as the crazy Taco Bell lettuce situation from a few weeks ago.

A dead crow found outside the City of Napa tested positive for West Nile virus, the first detection in Napa County since 2023.

West Nile is strange because it can literally cause nothing at all, or only very minor symptoms, for most people who get it. But for a small number of people, it can become serious and cause some pretty scary neurological problems affecting the brain and nervous system. There is also no vaccine or specific treatment for it.

Not trying to scare anyone, especially since there have not been any reported human cases in Napa County. But this is probably worth taking slightly more seriously than the average public-health alert.

So, what does it actually mean for us?

West Nile spreads through the bite of an infected mosquito. The main thing officials recommend is getting rid of standing water around your home, including water sitting in buckets, flowerpots, gutters, birdbaths or anything else outside where mosquitoes can breed.

You can also use mosquito repellent, check that your window screens do not have holes and cover up around dawn and dusk, when the mosquitoes that spread West Nile tend to be most active.

Again, the odds of becoming seriously ill are very low. But the precautions are also pretty simple, so this feels like one worth paying attention to.

This is one of the more interesting conversations happening at City Hall right now.

There was an S.F. Chronicle article about it floating around this week which, by the way, you do not necessarily have to pay for. Sometimes if you refresh the page, go back, return to it and refresh again, it loads without the paywall. Hot tip from Callie.

The Napa Planning Commission has directed city staff to develop a possible ban on new and expanded drive-thrus, primarily targeting fast-food restaurants and coffee shops. Depending on how the final rules are written, it could also affect businesses like car washes and dry cleaners.

Existing drive-thrus, including places like Taco Bell, McDonald’s and Dutch Bros, would be allowed to stay. Commissioners also appear open to exceptions for places like pharmacies.

Nothing has been banned yet. The proposal is still in its early stages, city staff now has to develop the actual rules, and the City Council would ultimately decide whether to approve them.

At first, this sounds like a strangely specific thing for the city to spend time debating.

But it is not really about Starbucks.

Supporters argue that drive-thrus encourage more car-oriented development, create long lines that can spill into streets and leave cars idling while people wait (prime example is that Dutch Bros on Jefferson. My goodness, business is booming over there) They also see a ban as one small step toward making Napa more walkable and less dominated by cars.

The other side is pretty easy to understand too.

Drive-thrus are convenient. They can be especially useful for parents with young children, older residents, people with disabilities or anyone who does not want to park and walk inside every time they need coffee or food.

But Napa is a car town. It is not New York, or even San Francisco, where most people can realistically walk everywhere. For a lot of residents, getting groceries, picking up food or running basic errands without a car would mean a very long walk. The buses are decent, but they are not used enough, or frequent enough, to make car-free living especially practical for most people.

That is why I am not completely convinced that banning drive-thrus automatically makes Napa more walkable.

The bigger question is what Napa actually wants to look like 20 years from now. And to be honest, with the direction things seem to be going, we sometimes feel closer to becoming a hotel and resort town than a city that is seriously building decent, connected, walkable areas for the people who live here.

That was a little cheeky with the trivia question. The answer is $14.99 per month for a digital subscription through the Chronicle app, although introductory offers may vary.

And yes, thank you to the San Francisco Chronicle for doing the reporting on the drive-thru story. But hey, I am giving you the important part for free, so I had to point it out.

I honestly do not know how many people are still subscribing to traditional newspapers these days. Journalism is an honorable profession, one that I definitely do not qualify for, but personally, I increasingly prefer hearing about local things from people I know, people who are actually around town, paying attention and hopefully helping me understand what is going on.

Sometimes that means a new city app. Sometimes it means West Nile. And apparently, sometimes it means thinking way too hard about drive-thrus.

Okay, sorry. That is enough of my soapbox.

Thanks for reading. I will keep digging around and see what else I can find.

Callie.