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Healdsburg
December 26, 2025

The Year in Preview: 2025

Dancing at Dia de Muertos, Healdsuburg
The first major event that comes our way in 2025 is the annual Lake Sonoma Steelhead Festival, on Saturday, Feb. 8. This one-day science fair of all things steelhead (and their allies, anadromous and otherwise), draws about 10,000 people on its single day of exhibitions and activities to the Milt Brandt Visitors Center, Lake Sonoma.

New Year’s Eve in Healdsburg

Champagne toast
New Year’s Eve is a few hours suspended from the normal rules of time, neither one year nor the next, yet both. While a “memorable evening” is often the goal, it’s all too frequently a night whose details escape memory ...

Plugging In to Pick It Up: EV Hauling on the Way

EV garbage truck
The crash and clatter were familiar, but not the whir and whine of the garbage truck itself. In fact, the noise the truck made was more familiar to owners of Prius’ and other EVs. The truck was a McNeilus side-load electric vehicle, or EV. Tracking its progress were City of Healdsburg Public Works engineers, evaluating the future of all-electric garbage trucks for everyday waste hauling.

Christmas Culinary Celebrations

Rotary Crab Fest, 2024
Don’t look now, but it’s almost Christmas. It may be too late to come up with the perfect celebration, but maybe not—several area restaurants have created special menus and events for the last big holiday of the year. Start off early on Christmas Eve with...

Is This America’s Best Restaurant?

Singlethread Restaurant and Inn
As Healdsburg’s celebrity has grown, so too has SingleThread’s. Now the destination restaurant has attained a new honor: It’s been named as one of the World’s Best Restaurants, sharing the honor with one other U.S. restaurant, La Bernardin in New York City, and seven more establishments on the global shortlist.

Setting the Stage for the Holidays

Decorating the tree
This year’s Merry Healdsburg party is, surprisingly, only the fourth for this still-fresh city celebration, though the tradition of a tree-lighting the first week of December is much older. But it used to be a quieter affair—maybe the Community Band would play a program of holiday music from the gazebo stage or something, but the glamor and the glitz of Merry Healdsburg didn’t start until 2021...

‘Thanksgiving Trotters’ Raise $100,000

The 14th annual Turkey Trot got underway on a brisk but clear Thanksgiving morning, as more than 3,000 runners competed in what’s become known as the Live Like Drew challenge. It was a younger-than-normal crowd: Of the 2,679 who finished the 5k loop, half of the top 10 finishers were in their teens,...

Wrestling Gym to be Rechristened for Drew Esquivel

Drew Esquivel wrestling
In what Superintendent Chris Vanden Heuvel openly said was a first, the Healdsburg Unified District School Board’s trustees voted to give a newly remodeled gym a new name: Drew Esquivel Hall, in honor of the late 2013 graduate.

Valorizing Valette for its Wine

When one thinks of celebrations at The Matheson in downtown Healdsburg (the town’s de facto club room), one usually goes straight to the top, literally the top-floor Roof 106 brasserie and bar where all manner of shindigs have occurred over the years. However, this year’s release of Valette Wines, which shares a proprietor with The Matheson, was a decidedly ground-floor affair.

Restaurant Dream Ends With Rude Awakening

Illustration
At the start, Molti Amici gave every indication of hitting Bingo. The location was much-loved by locals, having housed Ari Rosen’s Campo Fina for 10 years, only a few steps off the Plaza, and featured not only a large stone pizza oven but a bocce court as well (both left over from Campo Fina). Then the ingredients didn't mix any more.
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Arts & Entertainment

Raw oysters with squeezed lemon

New Year’s Eve dining ideas

Is there such a thing as “the most coveted New Year’s Eve party in Healdsburg”? According to the Quinn Public Relations firm, there is—and it’s at the new Appellation Healdsburg. Considering it only opened for business in September, that’s quite an accomplishment.
Santa Claus and kids

Holiday Happenings: Dec. 18-27