For generations, the Santa Monica Pier sign has marked the start of a day at the beach. Now, the familiar blue neon landmark is preparing for a journey of its own.

Santa Monica scheduled removal of the 1941 sign for October 20–22, with shipment to Las Vegas anticipated October 26. The timetable is subject to change, according to the city’s October 19 announcement.

The temporary removal accompanies replacement of the aging bridge connecting Ocean Avenue to the pier. It also creates an opportunity to preserve the historic sign.

YESCO will restore it at its Las Vegas facility. The company’s experience includes work on the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign.

Crews will repair neon tubing, treat rust, repaint components and address structural needs while retaining historic features. The sign will remain in secure storage during bridge construction.

Once the project is finished, it will return above the new bridge at a slightly greater height for visibility and vehicle clearance. The city’s latest announcement targets project completion by 2028, ahead of the Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympics.

Meanwhile, visitors can photograph a lighted, half-scale replica near Pier Burger.

For anyone who associates that glowing arch with Southern California memories, its absence will be noticeable. The restoration is intended to ensure future generations can make memories beneath it, too.

Source: City of Santa Monica — October 19, 2026 announcement

Related Links

• City of Santa Monica: Official sign restoration announcement — October 19, 2026. Primary source for removal dates, shipment to Las Vegas, YESCO’s restoration work and the sign’s planned return.
• Santa Monica Daily Press: Sign restoration during bridge rebuild — October 20, 2026. Additional local reporting on the project and visitor access.
• LAist: Sign removal and how to watch — Reporting on the removal schedule and public viewing opportunities.

Follow more Southern California stories at STM Daily News.

Slate Auto’s new Chicago location gives prospective buyers a permanent place to see the minimalist electric pickup, explore customization options and learn about demo opportunities—but it is not yet proof that customer deliveries have begun.

CHICAGO — October 20, 2026 — The Slate Truck is moving out of computer renderings and temporary roadshow stops and into a permanent retail setting. Slate Auto opened its first Experience Center on October 15 at 1053 W. Grand Avenue in Chicago, giving consumers a year-round location to get an up-close look at the company’s highly anticipated electric pickup.

The Near West Side facility occupies a former Tesla location and includes showroom, retail and garage space, along with electric-vehicle charging infrastructure. For Slate, the opening represents an important step in turning strong online interest into a more tangible buying experience as the startup works toward launching its first vehicle.

Visitors can examine the truck’s compact dimensions, deliberately simple cabin and accessory-driven design in person. The center also showcases Slate’s personalization strategy, including exterior wraps, add-on accessories and digital design tools intended to let owners configure the truck around their needs.

Slate has also promoted demonstration opportunities connected with the location, although availability may be limited or appointment-based as the company continues to prepare its fleet. Early media access included passenger rides rather than unrestricted customer test drives, so prospective visitors should confirm current availability before making a special trip.

Why the Chicago opening matters

Until now, most consumers have encountered the Slate Truck through online reservations, media coverage or temporary appearances. A permanent showroom gives buyers a chance to judge details that are difficult to evaluate on a screen, including seating position, bed access, cabin materials and the overall size of the vehicle.

That is especially important for a product built around an unconventional value proposition. Slate is promoting a basic two-seat, two-door electric truck with manual crank windows and no factory-installed infotainment screen or stereo. The company’s strategy is to keep the starting price low and let buyers add features later through accessories and conversion kits.

The physical location also gives Slate a place to explain that approach directly. Rather than presenting the truck as an unfinished vehicle, the company can demonstrate how its modular accessories, wraps and planned SUV-style conversion components are meant to expand the vehicle’s usefulness over time.

Chicago is a logical first market for that effort. The city offers access to a large Midwestern customer base and is within the broader region of Slate’s planned manufacturing operation in Warsaw, Indiana. Reusing a former Tesla store also gives the startup a space already suited to displaying and servicing electric vehicles.

The roadshow continues beyond Chicago

The Experience Center is opening as Slate expands its public demonstration schedule. The company’s events calendar lists a Boston-area demo ride event from October 21 through October 25 at The Shops at Chestnut Hill, followed by an appearance at RADwood in Alameda, California, on October 24 and a New Jersey demo ride event in Freehold from October 28 through October 31.

Slate also lists future stops in Washington, D.C., Raleigh, Atlanta, Miami and Orlando. Together, the permanent Chicago center and the traveling events suggest the company is moving into a broader customer-education phase ahead of planned deliveries.

What has—and has not—changed

The showroom opening does not change Slate’s headline pricing or range claims. The truck is still advertised with a base price of $24,950 before taxes, registration and destination charges. With the currently listed $1,450 destination fee, the entry price would be approximately $26,400 before other costs or optional equipment.

Advertisement

Slate also continues to advertise an estimated range of up to 205 miles. That figure remains an estimate rather than a final EPA-certified rating.

Most importantly, Slate has not publicly confirmed that regular customer production has started or that the first retail deliveries have occurred. Limited deliveries have been reported as possible before the end of December 2026, while many reservation holders may receive later delivery windows in 2027. The Chicago opening is therefore a commercialization milestone, not a manufacturing milestone.

For customers and industry observers, the next major signals will be the start of production at the Warsaw factory, final specifications and EPA range ratings, and confirmed handoffs to paying buyers.

The bottom line

Slate Auto now has a permanent place where consumers can see and evaluate its unusually simple electric truck. That makes the product feel more real and gives the company a platform to explain a customization-heavy business model that may be unfamiliar to traditional truck buyers.

Still, the biggest questions remain unanswered. Opening a showroom demonstrates progress in marketing and customer engagement; producing vehicles at scale, holding the promised price and delivering a 205-mile truck to reservation holders will determine whether Slate can convert enthusiasm into a viable automotive business.

Sources and more information

• Slate Auto events and demo schedule
• Electrek: Slate opens its first Experience Center in Chicago
• Autoblog: Slate opens its first U.S. showroom
• Slate Auto

Category: Consumer Corner / Automotive

Forgotten Genius Friday | The Knowledge | STM Daily News

Octavia E. Butler: The Woman Who Reimagined the Future

When we think about science fiction, we often picture spaceships, robots, alien civilizations, and futuristic technology. But what happens when science fiction becomes a way to explore racism, inequality, human survival, and the consequences of our choices?

That is exactly what Octavia E. Butler brought to the genre.

Long before Afrofuturism became a widely recognized cultural movement, Butler was creating extraordinary stories that placed Black characters—especially Black women—at the center of imagined futures.

Her work challenged conventional ideas about who could be a hero, whose experiences mattered, and what science fiction could accomplish.

A Young Girl With a Powerful Imagination

Octavia Estelle Butler was born on June 22, 1947, in Pasadena, California.

Raised primarily by her mother and grandmother after her father’s death, Butler grew up shy and found comfort in books and storytelling.

Her mother worked as a domestic employee, and Butler sometimes accompanied her to work. Those experiences exposed her to the racial and economic inequalities that would later influence her fiction.

As a child, Butler loved science fiction, but she noticed something missing: people who looked like her.

Rather than accepting that absence, she began creating stories of her own.

She would eventually become one of the most influential writers in speculative fiction.

Advertisement

Breaking Barriers in Science Fiction

During the 1970s, mainstream American science fiction was largely associated with white male writers and protagonists.

Butler entered that literary world with a different perspective.

Her first published novel, Patternmaster, appeared in 1976. It introduced readers to a world shaped by extraordinary mental abilities, social hierarchies, and struggles for power.

Butler continued developing complex stories that explored humanity’s relationship with authority, identity, biology, and survival.

In 1979, she published one of her best-known novels, Kindred.

The book follows Dana, a Black woman living in 1970s California who is repeatedly transported back to a Maryland plantation before the Civil War.

Through Dana’s experiences, Butler forced readers to confront the brutality of American slavery and its continuing influence on the present.

Rather than treating history as something safely confined to the past, Kindred makes that history immediate and deeply personal.

Imagining the Future—and Warning Us About It

In 1993, Butler published Parable of the Sower, a novel set in a collapsing American society struggling with economic inequality, environmental destruction, violence, and weakened institutions.

Its central character, Lauren Olamina, is a young Black woman who develops a philosophy called Earthseed while searching for a way to survive and build a community.

Advertisement

The novel takes place beginning in 2024, making its imagined future particularly striking to modern readers.

Butler followed it with Parable of the Talents in 1998, continuing her examination of social instability, religious extremism, authoritarianism, and the struggle to create a better future.

Her novels were not literal predictions. They were works of speculative fiction that used recognizable social trends to ask difficult questions about where humanity might be headed.

Octavia Butler and Afrofuturism

Afrofuturism brings together African and African diasporic experiences with science fiction, technology, history, mythology, and imaginative visions of the future.

While artists such as Sun Ra and George Clinton explored cosmic identity through music, performance, and futuristic imagery, Butler used literature to investigate power, history, and humanity’s possible futures.

Her novels frequently placed Black women in situations where they had to navigate extraordinary challenges and reshape the societies around them.

Butler’s work is widely discussed within Afrofuturist scholarship, although her literary contributions also extend beyond any single cultural label.

She demonstrated that Black people did not have to remain secondary characters in someone else’s vision of the future.

They could be the architects of entirely new worlds.

Recognition and a Lasting Legacy

Butler received some of science fiction’s most significant honors, including Hugo and Nebula Awards.

In 1995, she became the first science-fiction writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, often called a genius grant.

Advertisement

Her work also included the Xenogenesis trilogy, later collected as Lilith’s Brood, which explored humanity’s encounter with an extraterrestrial species and raised questions about consent, adaptation, identity, and survival.

Butler died on February 24, 2006, at age 58.

Yet her influence has continued to grow.

Her novels are studied in classrooms, discussed by scholars, and embraced by new generations of readers and creators interested in science fiction, social justice, and Afrofuturism.

A Genius Who Made Us Think Differently About Tomorrow

Octavia E. Butler was more than a science-fiction author.

She was a visionary storyteller who understood that imagining the future also meant examining the past and questioning the present.

Her stories asked readers to consider how power operates, how communities survive, and how human beings might change.

And perhaps her greatest contribution was demonstrating that the future belongs in the imagination of everyone.

Why Octavia E. Butler Belongs in Forgotten Genius Friday

At STM Daily News, our Forgotten Genius Friday series celebrates extraordinary individuals whose ideas, innovations, and accomplishments helped shape our world, even if their stories aren’t widely known. Octavia E. Butler fits that mission perfectly. Although she received prestigious literary awards and recognition during her lifetime, her influence extends far beyond science fiction. Like the inventors, scientists, and trailblazers we’ve featured in this series, Butler challenged barriers, defied expectations, and opened doors for future generations. Through her imagination, she helped redefine who could tell stories about humanity’s future—and who could be at the center of those stories. Her inclusion in Forgotten Genius Friday reminds us that genius isn’t limited to laboratories and inventions. Sometimes, it begins with a pen, a powerful imagination, and the courage to envision a different world.

Sources and fact-checking

The Huntington Library holds Butler’s literary archive and confirms the chronology of her major novels, awards, and career. The MacArthur Foundation independently documents her 1995 fellowship. 

Advertisement

• Official Octavia E. Butler biography
• The Huntington — Octavia E. Butler Papers
• MacArthur Foundation — Octavia Butler
• The Huntington — Telling My Stories exhibition

For more stories about overlooked innovators, writers, scientists, and visionaries who changed our world, explore The Knowledge and Forgotten Genius Friday at STM Daily News.