
Guacamole
lovers, beware: The crystal ball isn't looking so bright for
avocados.
Hot weather at the peak of avocado-growing season last June means this Spring
California farmers expect to have the smallest avocado crop in the last 10 to 20 years. Americans buy almost 1 billion pounds of avocados annually, and this number is increasing.

The intuitive trend in America to move to where the land is open and the climate warm has hit a road bump. Thanks to the housing crisis, which makes the idea of taking on a new mortgage scary and risky, people are
staying put.
The population slowdown specifically hit the western and southern states, which had seen huge growth and migration over the last decade.

In Healdsburg, CA (i.e. Sonoma County), there's a rare nearly all-white (actually, very pale gray) house with white furniture, recently
featured in House Beautiful, that is anti-shabby chic, anti-slick modern. Nostalgic, campy objects are interpreted in a contemporary fashion, and on glossy floors and against pale walls, large lived-in furniture pieces make a statement.

This weekend CA Attorney General Jerry Brown
asked the CA Supreme Court to void Proposition 8 because it is unconstitutional. The attorney general must defend the laws of California. Yet Brown says Prop 8 makes his job impossible, because the amendment contradicts another part of the state Constitution: the equal protection clause.

The California Supreme Court clarified the state's medical marijuana law yesterday,
deciding unanimously that individual suppliers can be prosecuted even when dealing to patients with doctor approval. Sellers, who are not caretakers, or fellow medical marijuana cooperative members, will not be protected from the law.
Patients will most likely turn exclusively to
marijuana collectives and cooperatives to get their fill.

Leonardo has
finally closed on the eco-friendly Battery Bark Condo that he
went to contract to purchase back in April, paying nearly $3.7 million. But, ever the environmental advocate, DiCaprio isn't swooping up energy-hogging properties left and right. He's made room for this purchase in his real estate portfolio and his wallet by putting his 2,374-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath midcentury oceanfront Malibu home
on the market for nearly $9 million.

With a murder every 40 hours, New Orleans crime rate is hard to beat. The latest
City Crime Rankings looked at reported incidents of six major crimes to determine the most dangerous dwellings in the US. With a population of only 250,000 that changed drastically after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans came out on top.

Back in April, I let you know that Christina Aguilera and husband Jordan Bratman were preparing to
ditch their Steve Hermann-designed Hollywood Hills digs, if a doting buyer were willing to part with a cool $8 million. Well,
according to Real Estalker, the couple has flown the coop, but are still sitting on the unsold property. While they've
moved into the Osbournes' former abode, their Hermann-designed home, like many houses around the country, remains unsold.

California Home + Design is
now online! The West Coast design magazine's website has lots to offer, including daily finds, archives, video, event recaps and photographs, and the currently monthly issue in digital format. For those of you not familiar with San Francisco, here's a
fun video of one of our most design-oriented hoods, Hayes Valley.

Cars can be deadly in California, but not in the way you expect. Air pollution
leads to more deaths than car accidents in two California regions. In addition to saving lives, bringing air pollution up to standards would save $28 billion each year in health care costs, missed work, and a loss of salary due to early death, according to a new study.