After asking the S.F. vs. Sac question yesterday, I’m now dealing with the diss of the Big Tomato by Bee L.A. Bureau Chief (and sole reporter) Laura Mecoy. Well-known around the Bee newsroom as one of its best reporters, Mecoy headed south for The Bee 14 years ago and has filed some incredible stories in the years since.
But The Bee decided we didn’t need to know anything from L.A. (or S.F.) that couldn’t be pulled from the Associated Press wires and offered the far-flung correspondents either a bus ticket back to Sac or a buyout. (The recalled reporters also include Herb Sample in S.F., and Claire Cooper, who knows more about the California Supreme Court than the justices do).
Writes Mecoy, in the L.A. Observed blog:
I saw how the recall worked out for Gov. Gray Davis and decided it’s not for me. I look forward to traveling across the Los Angeles basin in search of a new calling. I know I will find great wisdom in all the wonderful people I will meet along the way.
Don’t bother checking in at the L.A. Times after that buyout money runs out, Laura. I got a Christmas card from a friend who’s pretty high up there, and in the note inside, that person scribbled a few words that weren’t entirely optimistic about prospects for the Best Darn Paper south of the Grapevine.
Sad.
The Sac Rag 
Sacramento has and will never have the “big city” urbanity of SF or even Portland and Seattle, which can/could at times resemble downtown SF…just a matter of the historical nature of those cities…guys in Brooks Brothers suits in the Business Section, Theatre District, Big Downtown Stores (Meier and Frank, Portland, Marshall Field, Chicago….), New Shopping complexes downtown meant to accentuate the historic nature of downtown shoppin, Big City Hotels (Pac 10 formed in 1915 in a downtown Portland Hotel during a meeting of UofW, Cal, Oregon State, Oregon)…Museums downtown…
Sacramento lacks all of those attributes and will never have them…
Sacramento does have magnificent old building and a great tree canopy and those places that mingle into this setting are the gems of Sacramento (Paragary outdoor Garden, CoHousing Garden at 4th/5th and T….)and having a beer outside at the Rubicon…
Ocean Blvd, Santa Monica 3rd Street, a walk from there to Venice and spending the day playing volley/basketball at the beach, pumping iron, finding Clapton’s Japanese Garden…
enjoy Sacramento for what it is…
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I agree in large part with that philosophy, Jack, sans the part about “never” having certain big city attractions. Big cities weren’t born as big cities, they grew.
The potential still exists.
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I love Portland. Portland has a really nice mix of small town charm with big city touches. Great public transit, cool independant stores, like the all zine shop accross from Powell’s and the cheap pizza and beer 21+ movie theaters, to the orange public bicycles laying around the city. My main gripe with Sacramento (which I never got around to clarifying on the other thread) is the new cost of living there. I see no reason why you should require a 6 digit income to buy a house in a crumby area. For the same amount you could buy a mansion in Portland.
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…Which is why I’m hoping to move there this summer. 😉 Cross your fingers my wife gets accepted to graduate school there. 😀
You can sleep on the floor of my “mansion.”
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Sacramento is great for what it is. If you’re a history nut, like me, it’s a wonderful place to walk around. If you like nature, there’s some great stuff like the American River Bike Trail. In fact, you can combine the two when you see the sluices in between Sunrise and Hazel, or certain other locations.
Sacramento is NOT great for things such as concerts, alas. Part of this is the lack of midsized venues larger than a club and smaller than Arco Arena. But part of it is the proximity to the Bay, and the unwillingness of tour promoters to do two large shows close together.
I have had two friends out of the blue say good things about Sacramento, and one of them wants to visit. That was nice to hear. I have another friend who refuses to speak of Sacramento, but that is solely due to an incident with an idiot relative of hers and a very bad experience helping him move. However, she has no position on Roseville, Elk Grove, or Carmichael.
It’s not that Sacramentans have an inferiority complex; it’s just that after hearing things such as “no culture”, “hicktown”, and “nothing to do” (and I have heard all of those things) from people whose idea of fun is narrowly tied to big-city life, one gets a little oversensitized, and perhaps forgetful of the values of a mid-sized city.
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