FILE – An aerial view of Vacaville in December 2025.
Stephen Lam/AP
The New York Times published a glowing profile this week on Vacaville, a Bay Area city that’s well known, but not always celebrated. And while exposure in the nation’s newspaper of record is a welcome surprise, some Solano County locals were baffled by how their bucolic city was presented to the rest of the country.
“First of all, I didn’t understand why the article was being written. What was the intent? Was it to discuss ‘vaca’ — a cow? A historical perspective? If so, I don’t think they went about it in the right way,” Sarah Chapman, a member of the Vacaville City Council, told SFGATE on Thursday by phone after reading the piece.
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Chapman said that Vacaville is an excellent community and it was nice to see it appear in a positive light, but she questioned why the profile, published in the Times’ real estate section, highlighted some areas while overlooking others.
For instance, Chapman noted that the section on the area’s education relegated the Vacaville Unified School District to a single sentence, but promoted the merits of its private, charter and Christian schools in more detail.
The councilmember also objected to how the Times only mentioned nearby Vallejo to portray it as suffering from a “reputation for violent crime.”
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“I didn’t think there was a need to provide a comparative to the other cities in the county,” Chapman said. “Each of the cities that make up Solano have their own culture and bring something positive to the lives of the residents. We’re all neighbors.”
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Interstate 80 bisects Vacaville and almost 700,000 vehicles pass through the area every day. Due to this repeated exposure, the city is sometimes reduced to what’s visible from the car window. It’s why nearly every time someone writes about Vacaville, they mention the Nut Tree. Vestiges of the celebrated roadside destination (where Gov. Gavin Newsom’s divorced parents would meet for handoffs when he was child) are still apparent, even though the Nut Tree closed 30 years ago.
The Times article makes an effort to steer away from the interstate and spotlight Vacaville’s downtown along with a few long-standing businesses. Nevertheless, it bungles the geography. The article’s subhead notes that Vacaville is an option for living “nearby” both San Francisco and Sacramento, when these cities are more than 50 and 30 miles away, respectively, through some of the Bay Area’s most high-traffic corridors (the article recommends taking the train). Later, it overlooks the town’s abundant open space, limiting its recreation options to Napa’s Wine Country and Lake Berryessa, both located in a different county.
Whether intentional or not, the profile reduces Vacaville to just another place between places. With regard to the city’s vibe, the Times wrote, “Vacaville has a refreshing lack of prevailing culture.”
When the Times writer, Alexander Nazaryan, who lives on the East Coast, first contacted one of the city’s native sons for an interview, real estate broker Mark McGuire said he thought it was “BS.” McGuire was pleasantly surprised to learn the request was legitimate and, over the holidays, drove Nazaryan around town for a few hours.
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“As a realtor, it was very interesting to give him a tour as I do with clients,” McGuire said. “Usually, I’m pointing out pros and cons, but then I thought, ‘Focus, Mark, only share the good stuff.’”
McGuire said he is a “cheerleader for this town” and that it was refreshing to read about Vacaville beyond I-80, In-N-Out Burger and outlet stores. That still didn’t shake some of the bewilderment he felt after reading about his hometown in the New York Times.
“The last profile they did was on Portland, I don’t know how you go from Portland to Vacaville,” he said. “I love Vacaville, but I think more people would be interested in Portland.”
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