Lifestyle

The magical California state park that doesn't allow visitors

Published

3 weeks ago

May 23, 2024

The magical California state park that doesn't allow visitors

SUTTER BUTTES, Calif. —

About 60 miles north of Sacramento, the Sutter Buttes rise starkly from the floor of the Central Valley, the remnants of a volcano active more than 1.4 million years ago. Their cathedral-like spires twist upward, some reaching more than 2,000 feet into the sky — an imposing circular formation, 10 miles in diameter, that’s been called “the smallest mountain range in the world.”

Sheltered within these lava domes is an oasis of rolling hills, rich with wildflowers and Native American artifacts, and watched over by hawks and countless other species of birds.

Bitter debates over the lack of public access to the Sutter Buttes have roiled for years. But most everyone on both sides agrees on this: They encompass some of the most magical and otherworldly terrain in California. Long sacred to Native American tribes, the formation is now home mainly to cattle that chomp grass behind stone walls built by Chinese laborers more than a century ago, oblivious to the fact that some people want to throw open the gates and some want to keep them locked forever.

For the last two decades, the Sutter Buttes have also been home to a California state park that almost no one is allowed to visit.

For the record:

7:30 a.m. May 20, 2024An earlier version of this article misspelled the last name of the famed landscape architect who helped establish the National Park Service as Frederick Law Olmstead Jr. His last name is spelled Olmsted.

In 2003, the state of California spent about $3 million to buy 1,800 acres on the north side of the buttes, including an idyllic stretch of emerald called “Peace Valley.” The government has eyed a park in this ruggedly beautiful landscape since the inception of the state parks system in the 1920s. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the famed landscape architect who helped establish the National Park Service and also surveyed potential parkland for California in those early years, put it on a state park wish list, along with such gems as Point Lobos on the Monterey County coast and Donner Lake in Northern California.

In 2005, the state finally achieved its goal — sort of. The State Park and Recreation Commission officially declared its 1,785 acres a park. The property has its own state-sponsored webpage and a budget for conservation and maintenance.

What it does not have is any way for the public to get in.

“Please note: There is currently no public access point to enter this park,” reads a notice in big red letters at the top of the webpage.

Beneath that are breathtaking photos: sunlight glinting off a placid lake; a dirt road leading up a verdant hill; a haunting photo of the buttes at sunset — from a distance.

That last image — the one from a distance — is the only way most people can view the park.

Most of the land in the Sutter Buttes is held by a handful of families, some with holdings dating to the 19th century, who use the fields to graze cattle and sheep.

(Brian Baer / California State Parks)

The issue, according to current and former parks officials, is that all the roads leading into the Sutter Buttes are privately owned. And none of the landowners — some of whom have had title to the land since before California entered the union — will give the state permission to use those roads for park visitors. Nor has the state found anyone willing to sell them property near a public road that could be used to access the park.

With the impasse in its 20th year, state officials instead allow a few people into the park on occasion for carefully guided visits.

State parks officials were not available for an interview to discuss the situation, but said in a statement that the department “continues to look for opportunities to either secure land or easements to provide access.” So far, nothing has come up.

Many locals say the current status — an empty state park — suits them just fine. The Sutter Buttes are a precious ecosystem, they say, filled with delicate tribal artifacts and threatened species. It isn’t the same, they argue, as a state park in the immense Sierra Nevada or vast inland deserts or along the glittering coast.

“This little blob in the middle of the Sacramento Valley is so sensitive to encroachment,” said Marty Steidlmayer, 59, whose family has owned land in the Sutter Buttes since the 1930s. A state park, he said, would “let people in, free and unattended,” which could lead to vandalism, fires and degradation. “It’s not a good idea,” he said.

Sutter County Supervisor Mat Conant agreed. “It is more important to protect those land rights,” he said, noting that “some families have held that land for close to 200 years.”

Francis Coats is one of the few local landowners who think the state needs to find a way to let in the public.

“It’s absolutely beyond me why it’s not open,” said Coats, whose family has been in the area since the 19th century. Coats said he owns a small interest in 160 acres on the north side of South Butte, and so strong is the antipathy toward access that he faced death threats when he first tried to visit his own parcel.

The Sutter Buttes, though little heralded in modern-day California, have played an outsize role in the state’s history.

The Maidu people took refuge there for thousands of years during periods when the Sacramento Valley flooded. They believed it was a resting point for spirits on their journey to the afterlife.

In the 1840s, Kit Carson and Gen. John C. Fremont, fresh from their savage massacres of Native Americans in the north state, hid out in the buttes and plotted to seize California from Mexico. Then they headed to Sonoma County to lend support to the Bear Flag Revolt of 1846. Their Republic of California was short-lived, but helped stoke the Mexican-American War, which paved the way for California to join the United States.

When state officials first proposed a park in the Sutter Buttes in the 1920s, local newspapers took the opportunity to celebrate this history.

“These rugged hills hold a prized place in the hearts of Californians,” the Sacramento Union wrote in 1931. “They are indelibly linked with the romance of the state’s secession from Mexican rule.”

The park didn’t come to fruition then, and the Depression and World War II created other priorities.

The state tried again in the 1970s, putting money in a parks bond to fund the purchase of tens of thousands of acres in the Sutter Buttes. Local landowners were horrified, and the county Board of Supervisors voted in opposition. “We’ll fight them, right down the line,” Supervisor J.A. Bagley told the local newspaper.

The state backed down. But within the parks department, some never dropped the dream.

The department’s chief of land acquisition, Warren Westrup, knew how to play a long game. Westrup, who worked for the state for 37 years, figured out how to put together parcels of land, piece by piece, until a vision came to fruition.

He did it in the Santa Monica Mountains, where state officials devised ways to purchase land for a trail that connects communities from Los Angeles to Malibu; and in Chino Hills, buying one canyon after another until eventually a whole park came to fruition.

In 2003, Westrup heard through an intermediary that someone with land in the buttes was looking to sell. He arranged for its purchase, even though he was aware the property was surrounded by private land blocked by private gates and accessible only via a private road.

Parks officials moved forward to establish the park with the notion that they eventually could persuade someone else to sell them land adjacent to a public road, where they could build a parking lot, bathrooms and maybe a few tents for people to camp.

The problem: No one would sell.

Most of the land in the buttes is held by a small number of legacy families who primarily use the fields for grazing cattle and sheep. No one lives in the interior, although there are a few homes on the outside.

After the state pushed for a park in the 1970s, some landowners feared the government might take their property. To stave that off, they began providing guided tours that granted limited access to the public and also to researchers. Local schoolchildren were also invited in.

They hired a manager, who moved into a cabin for the job, along with his wife, their golden retriever and their cat. They fell in love with the quiet grandeur of the area — all except for the cat, who was snatched by an eagle and never seen again.

“Some places just attract us more powerfully than others,” Walt Anderson, the manager, explained in a 2006 oral history. “I mean, everybody loves the profile of the buttes when they pass it, but once they get inside, I mean, they’re hooked.”

Steidlmayer, who owns land adjacent to the state park, said officials have told him “that the state will buy anything that we would be willing to sell. But that is the last thing my family would ever do.”

Even some outdoor enthusiasts have reservations about opening the park.

Lisa Lindman, executive director of the Sutter Buttes Regional Land Trust, said she has come to view the issue as “really complicated.”

She wants the public to be able to appreciate the peace and beauty of the buttes, but echoed landowners’ concerns about the delicate ecosystem and centuries-old Native American artifacts that remain largely untouched.

In lieu of full public access, Middle Mountain Interpretive Hikes, a sister organization to Lindman’s land trust, leads private tours for small groups of people who pay about $35 apiece for a carefully supervised hike. Reservations can be hard to come by. The Middle Mountain hikes do not enter the state parkland. Instead, they traverse private land near the park under a long-standing agreement with landowners that grew out of those early tours from the 1970s.

On a recent spring day, a tour group wound up dirt roads and through locked gates in a small caravan of cars, before parking near the center of the range. Volcanic domes rose above a green meadow. Wind rustled through the grass. A flock of snow geese passed overhead, their silver wings gleaming against a blue sky.

From atop the lava domes, it was possible to see Mt. Lassen and Mt. Shasta. The snow-capped Sierra stood to the east. After a precarious scramble down, group members traversed the grassy base of the domes and came to the edge of the state park at Peace Valley. A guide warned the tour group they did not have permission to enter.

Ruth Coleman, who was head of the Department of Parks and Recreation when the site was designated a state park, said she hopes California will keep pushing to find a way to change that, while putting measures in place to preserve the land.

“It’s classified as a state park. And a state park has access,” Coleman said, adding: “I’ve been there. … It’s magic.”

Lifestyle

A Swiss museum will remove 5 paintings potentially looted by Nazis

Published

2 hours ago

June 16, 2024

Press Room

A Swiss museum will remove 5 paintings potentially looted by Nazis

A man walks past the entrance of the Kunsthaus Zurich on March 14, 2023. The museum is investigating the provenance of paintings over a possible connection to Nazi looting.

Arnd Wiegmann/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Arnd Wiegmann/AFP via Getty Images

A Swiss museum said five artworks will be removed from public view on June 20 as it collaborates with the owner of the artworks to investigate whether the works were looted by Nazis during World War II.

On longterm loan to the Kunsthaus Zurich museum from collection owner the Foundation E. G. Bührle (or Bührle Foundation) the paintings in question are Jardin de Monet à Giverny by Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh’s The Old Tower, La route montante by Paul Gauguin, Gustave Courbet’s Portrait of the Sculptor Louis-Joseph and Georges-Henri Manuel by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

In a statement issued on Friday on its website, the museum said the Bührle Foundation requested the removal of the artworks as it assesses their provenance. The renewed scrutiny comes as a result of the U.S. State Department’s latest best practices for handling Nazi-looted art, published in March. These expand the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art set forth in 1998.

“The Kunsthaus welcomes this stance, but very much regrets that, with respect to our visitors, five of the pictures are being removed from the Kunsthaus’ rooms by the current owner, the Bührle Foundation,” the museum said. “The Bührle Foundation is acting comprehensibly and correctly in accordance with the agreement with the city of Zurich and in accordance with the provisions of the permanent loan agreement.”

“The Foundation strives to find a fair and equitable solution with the legal successors of the former owners for these works, following best practices,” said a statement in German from the Bührle Foundation.

The foundation said it is also conducting a separate investigation of a sixth work currently on display at Kunsthaus Zurich, Edouard Manet’s La Sultane.

“The work does not fall within the scope of [the U.S. State Department’s] “best practices” due to the sales processes, but is classified as a case that must be taken into account separately,” the foundation said in its statement. “Due to the overall historical circumstances, the foundation is prepared to provide symbolic compensation.”

Focused on French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artworks, the Emil Bührle Collection, managed by the Bührle Foundation, is a core part of Kunsthaus Zurich’s offerings.

According to the museum website, the foundation’s loan of around 200 artworks “is permanent and can only be terminated with many years’ notice, for the first time at the end of 2034.”

Twenty-five countries, including Switzerland, have so far endorsed the expanded U.S. State Department guidelines for dealing with Nazi-confiscated art. The new agreement follows the 1998 Washington Conference Principles, which focused on providing restitution to the families of the original owners for treasures that were either stolen or forcibly sold by Nazis.

“Restitution should be to all lawful beneficiaries and heirs in accordance with a country’s usual inheritance law,” the March 2024 guidelines state. “All pre-War owners who are identified through provenance research or their heirs should be proactively sought by the current possessors for the purpose of restitution.”

Met museum is returning looted ancient art to Cambodia and Thailand

Hundreds of thousands of paintings and millions of books as well as cultural and religious artifacts were stolen from Jewish owners by Nazis in the Holocaust. Many have still not been returned to their rightful owners.

According to a recent report by the World Jewish Restitution Organization and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, countries such as Russia, Romania, Spain, Denmark and Turkey have made scant progress in trying to restore looted artworks to the original owners or heirs over the past quarter of a century.

Although Switzerland remained neutral during World War II, it maintained strong economic ties to Nazi Germany and its allies.

“Confiscated artworks were often saved for private Nazi and German collections, while some pieces were sold to buyers through neutral countries like Switzerland to raise capital for purchasing additional art pieces and to purchase materials for the Nazi war machine,” states an article about Nazi looted art from the National Archives’ Holocaust Records Preservation Project. “Additionally, Switzerland offered a large market to sell off ‘degenerate art.’ “

Lifestyle

Explore the California spot serving up weed country fun the wine country way

Published

2 hours ago

June 16, 2024

Press Room

Explore the California spot serving up weed country fun the wine country way

Mendocino County, Calif. —

As you drive through some of California’s most storied agricultural land, a few hours north of the Bay Area, you’ll zoom past fields full of plants straining under the weight of their almost-ready-to-harvest bounty. After checking into your boutique hotel, you’ll get to sample some of the local flavor and watch the setting sun. The next day, you might explore some of the region’s historic spots. Or maybe you’ll attend a friend’s wedding on a ranch next to a working farm.

At the end of the weekend, you’ll drive home with some of the local wares and likely a deep emotional connection to the place you just visited. That may sound like a classic wine-country excursion in the Napa or Sonoma valleys, but what if you swapped in pot plants for grape vines and consumption lounges for tasting rooms? What would a weed head’s version of the wine-enthusiast weekend look like?

To find out, I headed to Mendocino County, one of three counties that make up California’s famed Emerald Triangle, the historic cannabis-growing region of the state since the 1960s. (It’s roughly triangle-shaped, with corners of its wide base in Humboldt and Trinity counties.) The Emerald Triangle turns out to be the perfect place to court canna-tourists the wine-country way.

As the southernmost point of that triangle, Mendocino County has a bonus. It’s much closer to major population centers such as San Francisco (about 110 miles) than Humboldt or Trinity counties (270-plus miles). It’s also home to the 15-mile-long Anderson Valley, whose warm days, cool nights and maritime fog close to the coast make for top-notch pinot noirs but also, according to the region’s cannabis farmers, give the sun-grown herb here a distinctive terroir.

As a visitor might quickly discover, smaller cultivators are favored over industrial-size farms here, and the county tourism commission actively courts the budding canna-tourism market. Mendocino County has emerged as one of the best places to explore craft cannabis the way folks have long adventured their way through wine country.

So if you’re looking for an alternative adult getaway any time of year (though the pot plants are bigger closer to harvest in the fall), make sure the places listed below are high on your list of Mendocino County must-visits. Just remember, if you’re going to smoke up along the way, pick a designated driver.

Drive the Cannabis Trail

( Luke McGarry / For The Times)

Created in the spirit of the state’s Wine Road and Cheese Trail that provide self-motivated visitors with a rough DIY points-of-interest itinerary, the Cannabis Trail highlights some of the people, places and seminal moments in the history of the marijuana movement with special plaques.

The entirety of the trail includes more than two dozen monuments, cultural landmarks and points of interest stretching across nine counties, with a handful of stops in Mendocino County. These include Area 101 in Laytonville (the birthplace of the 20-year-old Emerald Cup cannabis competition) and the Plantshop dispensary in Ukiah (where a plaque commemorates the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s).

While the Cannabis Trail isn’t exactly a new effort (it was launched nearly a decade ago by cannabis travel consultant Brian Applegarth), its partnership with tourism boards that highlight stops in Mendocino and Humboldt counties and Oakland is. And that’s a result of increased cannabis-related tourism, says Visit Mendocino County’s executive director, Ramon Jimenez.

A building with the word Plantshop next to a wooden fence with a green and black plaque on it

“Since leisure-use cannabis legalization, Mendocino County tourism has seen a constant uptick in visitors, about 60% more annually since 2017 [based on Transient Occupancy Tax collections],” Jimenez said. “As travelers become more educated, they want to move past the lounges and dispensaries to an authentic place of source. … This growth has spurred a new co-op between Visit Oakland, Visit Mendocino County and Humboldt County Visitors Bureau [focusing] on the Cannabis Trail.”

Watch hash get made at Heritage Hash Co.

A cannabis dispensary counter with a window next to it that looks into an industrial-kitchen type room.

One of the fun things about touring a winery is getting to see some of that behind-the-scenes magic before you hit the tasting room; the immense stainless steel vats, the wooden barrels stacked floor to ceiling and the bottles clattering along an assembly line.

Mendocino’s weed country has its own version of that — kind of — at Heritage Hash Co. (1076 Cunningham St., Ukiah, heritage-mendocino.com). That’s where, inside a corrugated metal and weathered wood building, you’ll find a full-service multi-brand dispensary heavy on local wares. That’s where you’ll also find a square, wood-framed window that allows you to watch solventless hash being made by hand on-site in what looks like a cross between an industrial kitchen and Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Only instead of Oompa Loompas, it’s white-coated hash makers stirring cauldrons with comically large paddles, squeezing rosin in presses and pulling gooey strips of freshly made concentrate like saltwater taffy. (And, yes, just in case you were curious, there are plenty of immense stainless steel vats involved here too.)

And because Heritage, which bills itself as the world’s first public hashery, happens to also be permitted for on-site consumption, you can lean further into the tasting-room vibe by buying some of what the brand makes (extracts that range from $25 to $65 a gram) behind that magical window and trying it before you head out. (But only if someone else is behind the wheel.)

Throw a weed-friendly wedding at Yokayo Ranch

The view down a driveway past trees and shrubs at a white ranch-style house.

If your dream wedding involves saying “I do,” complete with a joint-rolling bar at the reception and a tour of the working weed farm next door, you’d be hard pressed to find a better setup than the one at Yokayo Ranch (800 Hensley Creek Road, Ukiah, yokayoranch.com). That’s where Rachel Powell has been booking nug-filled nuptials along with other weed-friendly events since deciding to embrace the cannabis tourism culture in 2019.

“We get people from all over,” Powell said. “But most of our clients are from San Francisco and L.A. and they’re much more interested in the cannabis [aspect]. We realized that it can really play to our strengths. For example, a lot of our people want to have cannabis bars versus alcohol [bars].”

A field of grapevines in the background with a weathered wooden sign that reads Mendocino Grasslands.

The property, which can accommodate about 45 overnight guests, consists of a 1920s-era main house, a cluster of cabins, nine glamping tents (each with a queen bed) and an outdoor ceremony space, all on a hillside high above Mendocino Grasslands. That’s the neighboring weed farm run by Powell’s brother, Ian. “When people come to stay for a wedding, we let them know there’s also a farm and we’d be happy to give them a farm tour,” she said. “And every group wants a farm tour.”

The brother-sister duo are hoping to eventually expand the farm-tour offerings to the general public. Right now, they’re mostly arranged for guests who are renting the Yokayo Ranch venue. “We’d like to offer tours that can be booked directly through Mendocino Grasslands,” Powell said. “And they would end with a farm dinner where people break bread in this really beautiful place where they’re surrounded by food, flowers and cannabis — all of these things that come from the ground.”

She added that the ultimate goal is to source everything for these meals (“Right down to the quinoa”) from within 25 miles of the farm. Wedding event packages, which include two nights of lodging for up to 29 people, start at around $20,000. If you’re not tying the knot but want to rent the whole place, you and your buds can plan on $2,400 to $3,500 per night with a two-night minimum.

Make your way to the Madrones

The exterior of a boutique hotel with a stucco tile roof and surrounded by lush greenery.

If you’ve got the bandwidth to visit only a single Mendocino County destination — or simply want to see what a fully realized weed-country-is-the-new-wine-country world can look like — blaze a trail down the Anderson Valley Highway to the Madrones with its on-site dispensary (9000 Highway 128, Philo, themadrones.com and thebohemianchemist.com).

A Mediterranean-meets-rustic-California compound bordered by a vineyard on two sides and dense forest on another, it’s the creation of partners (in business and life), Jim Roberts and Brian Adkinson. The boutique property includes a nine-room hotel (rooms, which accommodate two to four people each, start at $285), an on-site restaurant specializing in wood-fired fare (the Wickson) and two winery tasting rooms (Long Meadow Ranch and Wentworth Vineyards). A bottle cork’s toss down the road is another cluster of cabins and a wedding venue surrounded by redwood trees (the Brambles). Also, keep a look out for the ghost-white cat named Blanche roaming the grounds.

What makes the place of special interest is a tiny shop just to the right of the front door. Called the Bohemian Chemist, it’s a dispensary with the vibe of an Art Deco apothecary. Its glass and wooden cabinets and display cases are stocked with cannabis products and accouterments, both heavy on the local offerings. The shop’s namesake brand is sourced (mostly) from the owners’ Sugar Hill Farm just down the road; uncommon cultivars of sun-grown herb with names like Swazi Gold or Big Sur Holy Weed that even the most seasoned weed head probably hasn’t laid eyes (or lungs) on.

Its focus on rare cultivars has earned it a cultural landmark stop on the Cannabis Trail.

Other local brands on the shelves crammed with bell jars and vintage microscopes include packets of Anderson Valley Reserve flower, hash and live rosin badder from Heritage Hash Co. Locally made paraphernalia options include glass pipes from CoolHandSuuze and an exclusive edition of the Proto Pipe, the Swiss Army knife of pot pipes, made just about 50 miles up the road in Willits.

Customers who avail themselves of the shop’s cannabis can decamp to a small outdoor patio space just off the hotel’s gift shop and consume their locally grown goods while gazing out at the rows of grapes in Goldeneye’s vineyard next door. If your visit happens to fall between late May and late October, this is where you’ll find a seasonal third-Sunday-of-the-month cannabis farmers marketplace offering a showcase local legacy brands. (The full calendar and additional information can be found on the Madrones’ website.)

An old-timey-looking apothecary space with wood cabinets and glass shelves.

Roberts and Adkinson, who had been growing cannabis legally on their farm since 2016 (under the state’s pre-Prop. 64 medical marijuana law), opened the hotel property in 2010 and then the dispensary in June 2020 after being directly inspired by the wine-tourism business model.

“The retail part stemmed from the fact that we would have visitors who wanted to purchase cannabis, and we’d have to send them up to Ukiah,” Adkinson said.

“We had this crop growing,” added Roberts. “And we’re thinking, ‘What’s going to be the best way to actually get it to market?’ And we looked around at all these little wineries that are on our property and thought the best model would be to do something like they did. They sell [wine] at the tasting rooms. They have [wine] clubs and they have bottle shops. We knew that those three pillars provide a pretty strong foundation for a small winery, and we figured the same thing could happen with cannabis. So we got a micro-business license that allowed us to do all three of those things.”

The couple says the cannabis side of their business isn’t immune from the challenges facing the rest of the state’s legal weed business such as regulations, high taxes and a thriving illicit market. But approaching their business like the small wineries that surround them has paid off.

A glass cabinet filled with apothecary equipment and cannabis products

“We’re not exactly making a killing,” Roberts said. “But [2023] was a hard hotel year because of all the weather incidents, and the cannabis business actually floated the hotel business. And it had been the other way around as a startup.”

With almost four years under their belt of running the only dispensary in Anderson Valley, the couple has discovered that catering to wine country and weed country visitors has a certain synergy, specifically that their best sales day of the year isn’t on 4/20 or the day before Thanksgiving. It’s during the annual Anderson Valley Pinot Noir Festival the third weekend of May each year.

“It’s typically something like this,” Roberts said. “A woman will come into the Bohemian Chemist and say, ‘My husband loves wine but I don’t really care for it that much. But now we can both be happy because I love cannabis.’”

Lifestyle

How long can Taylor Swift dominate the album chart?

Published

9 hours ago

June 16, 2024

Press Room

How long can Taylor Swift dominate the album chart?

Taylor Swift performs in France during the European leg of her record-breaking Eras Tour on June 2.

Jeff Pachoud/Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Jeff Pachoud/Getty Images

As summertime gets into full swing, the charts of the country’s most popular songs and albums are still being dominated by two very familiar names: Post Malone and Taylor Swift. Given that summertime is usually ruled by individual (and often ephemeral) bangers rather thanfull albums, we might be seeing a full Swiftie season ahead on the albums chart. The Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, on the other hand, is less steady, especially in recent years, when we’ve seen the meteoric rise of newbies’ hits springing out of social media (“Rich Men North of Richmond,” anyone?), so that’s where we might see more movement in the weeks to come.

TOP SONGS

Most of this week’s top five on Billboard’s Hot 100 looks remarkably like last week’s: Post Malone’s “I Had Some Help” featuring Morgan Wallen is at No. 1 for the third week in a row, trailed by Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us,” Tommy Richman’s “Million Dollar Baby” and Shaboozey’s “Tipsy (A Bar Song).”

Post Malone (left) and Morgan Wallen on the red carpet at the 57th Annual CMA Awards on November 8, 2023 in Nashville, Tenn.

There’s one newcomer among their ranks: former Disney star-turned-singer Sabrina Carpenter, whose disco-inflected pop confection “Espresso” climbed one spot from No. 6 to No. 5. And right behind her, there’s still another indication that 2024 will indeed be the Summer of Country: Zach Bryan’s weeper “Pink Skies” makes its chart debut at No. 6.

This week also marks the annual return of (yet) another Billboard chart: Songs of the Summer, which the magazine introduced in 2010. This chart looks at songs’ cumulative performance throughout the summer (which Billboard begins with this week’s chart and ends the week of Labor Day). This early in the season, this chart is a snooze — all 20 positions are an exact replica of the top 20 spaces on the Billboard 100 chart — but it will be worth keeping an eye on in the months to come.

TOP ALBUMS

In news that is most likely a surprise to no one, Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department is spending a sixth week in the No. 1 slot on the Billboard 200 albums chart. What may be slightly more startling information: following a bump after she released many deluxe and special issues of Tortured Poets, Swift is starting to experience a downturn in sales and streaming — and she’s not the only one.

Last week, Swift moved (to borrow a reviled music industry term) 378,000 equivalent album units (I promise, that’s the end of the jargon — at least for now). This week, she only had 175,000 units, per Luminate, the company that compiles the data that make up the Billboard charts. That’s a nearly 54% drop in just seven days — and many psychic worlds away from the first week of Tortured Poets, when Swift earned 2.61 million equivalent album sales a mere month and a half ago.

But Swift may not the only artist starting to sing the summertime blues. Although Bilie Eilish’s album Hit Me Hard and Soft is right behind Swift in the No. 2 spot for a second week in a row, she too has experienced a big drop with 145,000 units, down from last week’s 339,000 — which was a career high for Eilish.

While we’re not at the doldrums of the early 2010s, this is a trend to watch.

WORTH NOTING

One of the not-so-hidden industry secrets of the Billboard 200 chart is that generally, a rather bountiful proportion of its membership is comprised of so-called “catalog” titles: albums that have been commercially available for at least 18 months and sometimes for far, far longer than that.

This week’s chart is a textbook case in point: By my cursory estimate, about 57% of this week’s entries are deep catalog titles, with even more just approaching the 18-month mark. For example, Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, which was originally released in 1977, is currently at No. 31, having now racked up 583 weeks on this chart; the Bob Marley & the Wailers’ perennially beloved greatest hits collection, Legend (issued in 1984), sits at No. 35, 837 weeks strong and counting. Other nearly eternally charting artists include Journey, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Eminem, Bruno Mars and Guns N’ Roses.

All that is a reminder of just how hard it can be for current — and especially emerging — stars to break through all those longtime favorites, even at the more modest chart positions. If anyone is going to challenge Taylor Swift’s hegemony on the Billboard 200 this summer, perhaps it will be one of these elders.