Sacramento based editorial writer for the LA Times, Bill Stall, writes an interesting article about Sacramento’s failure to make any “best places to” list. He does make you wonder, after listing all of the usual attributes, why we continue to get a bad rap.
I happen to live in Sacramento, which rarely makes any list of best places. My wife and I have talked of moving some place with lower housing costs as we both approach retirement, but have yet to find the perfect place.
I do find it curious that when the Internet boom was in full swing several years ago (approaching a decade, huh? wow.) the River City looked mighty appealing with its affordable housing, tree lined streets, and proximity to all things cool. And now folks talk of moving to areas with lower housing costs and populations. See a pattern forming here? Sacramento has been wined and dined until it put out and now is being kicked to the curb. Was Sacramento too easy? Should she have played hard to get? Most of our loyal readers can answer these questions as they’ve been through the bad, the good, and the bad again.
What does Sacramento have to do to get back on the “best places to” lists?
The Sac Rag 
Decrease the summer temps by at least 10 degrees. I still hate Sac summers, although this one hasn’t been too bad.
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I’m not sure there is any “back” to get to. Has Sacramento ever been on a “best of” list? (Besides the one about best place to ram your car into a building?)
Which isn’t to say we shouldn’t try to be. Sacramento has a lot to offer, but apparently we’re both too big and too small.
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maybe we need to take a cue from Marge Simpson and just not care about it. we don’t care about being on a “best of” list… and that makes us a “best of” caliber city, right? right?
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Then we’d have to take down that Sac-Eats post, right?
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Sacramento was the best.. at being cheap. Being expensive? Not so much. After the mortgage crisis shakes out and the 20 freaking thousand homes on the market push prices back down, Sacramento will pencil out again. Because in the past every conversation about Sacramento ended in “but at least it’s cheap” now those sentences fail to make sense without it, like “it’s a 110 degrees here but, uh?” or “Sure there are a lot of gang land shootings but..” “It’s strip mall, beige stucco hell, but..” “Public transit sucks..” “I have to go to SF to see (insert band name here) but.. “
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I can’t but wonder if it has to do with Sacto’s proximity to San Fransicko. I hear the phrase “I’m going to the City today” all too often, which just pisses me off. Sacramento is a city, is that what you mean? Modesto and Fresno are cities, are you going there? Look, it’s just Frisco to me baby.
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Warpkor, I too have always hated the term “the city” and have always responded with “why are you going to Galt?”
I don’t like Frisco either, I don’t like it when people shorten the proper names of anything, like, “the stones” etc.
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As a Bay emigrant, i can attest that Sacramento is California’s “Best Kept Secret”. Maybe what bothers Sacramentans is that the secret is kept by the general prejudice of outsiders against this city. Everytime a friend or family member visits me, they’re surprised with what they find.
What I’d love to see this city get rid of, is its self-depricating, cynical mindset. I think there’s a lot of humor and a little truth to most of it – but the cynism seems to go so far as becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, if everyone thinks something about Sacramento is going to suck, then that’s what you get.
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I think a lot of people, myself included, who have lived here for a long time like Sac how it is (or maybe I should say “how it was 10 years ago”) but if it is going to try & get bigger (and it’s clearly hell bent on that path), I believe it will fail until there’s some people with an actual city vision running things. Things that truly give a city a unique identity. It’s hard when you think “what do I want more of here?”. People’s first reactions are “maybe more parks” or “better public transportation” or “more art galleries & nightlife” – and I agree with those things – but city planners should have a unique vision – not just vague wishes. I mean, take something truly cool like the Pike Market in Seattle – those sort of things are visionary ideas (even though it’s a somewhat simple idea too) that city planners who are awesome come up with. I think the things that are sprouting up in Sac – expensive (but not necessarily good) restaurants, lofts (aka glorified apartments) etc – are not those visionary things. It’s often just developers seeing quick dollars. They’re flashy & noticeable but add very little at the end of the day. Sac never seems to get developed for the people already living here – it’s always trying to lure some magic hip urban dwellers from elsewhere & until we can respect our city for what it already is & has been, I don’t think we can grow & move forward effectively.
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RonTopofIt: I just meant as a city. As a blog I hope we never lose our desperation for popularity.
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mt sacramento: “Sac never seems to get developed for the people already living here – it’s always trying to lure some magic hip urban dwellers from elsewhere”…
that’s *exactly* it. that realization was one of the earliest things to compel RonTopofIt and I to create this here web log. that and my walking dude…
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Mark, I agree with you on the truncation of proper names. “Frisco” was a term my grandpa used and it stuck with me. For him, it was a term of endearment. I also knew it would stick in somebody’s craw and threw it out there for funzies.
Sure enough, mt sacramento hit it on the nail as CoolDMZ noted, too. The half-assed way Sacramento has been developed warrants a thorough investigation of the various city council people and their wallets. The sprawl (also known as the puking of stucco homes) is simply embarrassing. How do we justify to the next generation the wanton destruction of THE most productive farm land on the planet so that a select few can pad their wallets? When do we say “enough!” and ensure that the critters of the world have equal footing?
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Item #17 at Ming Palace: Wonton Destruction
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first we need a budget and second the legislative pool could use a good dose of chlorine. once that happens maybe we can get some fresh ideas that don’t involve thomas ent. and the failure that is john saca.
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Ah, yes. I’ve had the Wonton Destruction before, though I didn’t know it until I sat on the can the following day. But, using my vast connections within this fine community, my grammatical error has been revised. The lengths of my tentacles know no boundaries. If you need Romulan ale (this is an illegal substance by Federation standards) or uranium 238 (When hit by a neutron, it becomes uranium-239 (U-239), an unstable element which decays into neptunium-239 (Np-239), which then itself decays, with a half-life of 2.355 days, into plutonium-239 (Pu-239), just ask.
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This post is being considered for The Sacramento Bee’s roundup of regional blogs, which appears Sunday in Forum.
The Sunday newspaper column is limited to less than 800 words. Blog posts included in the column are often cut to fit. No editing is done other than to add ellipses to indicate deleted passages. The blog’s main address will appear in The Bee, and the online copy of the article will contain links to the actual blog post.
If you have questions (or you DON’T want your blog post considered for inclusion in the newspaper column), contact me at jhughes@sacbee.com
John Hughes
P.S. Forum editor Gary Reed, who normally trolls the regional blogs for suitable posts, is on vacation.
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Let’s keep it a secret. Otherwise, we’ll have more fucking places like Mason’s/The Park, with their botox parties, Hollywood DJ’s and plastic people.
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Sac-eats has referenced this before, but I’ll bring it up again. What we need in the downtown area is a college. We are getting two new schools, but they’re not in the urban core where they’d be the ideal catalyst for the types of things we each are likely envisioning.
We have the new Art Institute — but instead of downtown, it’s in the Natomas area. How’s that for sparking creativity? (Perhaps the students can fashion a papier mache levee.) There’s also the prospect of the four-year private Drexel University, but that’s proposed for Placer County.
SacRag U, anyone? Snarkiness 101 is a prerequisite for all students.
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Paper mache probably wouldn’t work very well as a levee. I’m sure that the army corps of engineers has already researched this.
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runnergirl – it’s a great idea, but colleges, even “urban core” ones like one of my alma maters, need a lot of space.
Hey, we could gut the downtown shopping mall and put it there! I’d be down with that.
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Funny, because I have this same conversation with everyone I know. Originally from Salinas (the lettuce-filled-colon of California), I have always viewed Sacramento as a wonderful city since I came here 5 years ago as a college transfer. Many of my fellow hometown expatriats are exactly the opposite, they can’t wait to get out of Sacramento, but I really just expect they bought the out-of-town sac-bash propoganda. For how much “the city” is romanticized, I wouldn’t move to “frisco” for just about anything. Every person who visits me here invariably expresses suprise at the quality of life in Sac, granted this is usually by about pint number 4 over at the Bonn Lair, but the point still stands. Oh, and for my part, we need a good beer garden, munich style, it would be relevent only about 6 months a year, but those would be glorious months.
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I wonder how many newcomers to Sacramento realize what amazing progress this place has had since…say 25 years ago? Especially midtown/downtown. You natives can attest to this far more than I, but I remember the Sacramento I visited as a youngin’ being pretty different.
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In response to this:
: Stickie said on 08/16/07 at 7:07 PM (link):
“I wonder how many newcomers to Sacramento realize what amazing progress this place has had since…say 25 years ago? Especially midtown/downtown. You natives can attest to this far more than I, but I remember the Sacramento I visited as a youngin’ being pretty different.”
An oldtimer’s recap:
I moved here from Toledo Ohio, where I was born, when I was 2.5 years old. During the journey, (circa 1959), after throwing my new saddle shoes out the back window of our Pontiac station wagon somewhere near Reno (bored, ADD child, terrible twos– you pick the reason) where my father reared up, slammed on the brakes and LOOKED for the damn $8 shoes, despite getting accepted for a new partnership in an anethesiologist’s practice…. this was my new entry into the journey to the Land of Sacramento.
I lived here during the “Kansas Years,” 1960-1980, when there was NOTHING to do but drink, play golf and commit adultery (adults) and drink, smoke dope, go skinny dippping, and try to get in someone’s pants (people under the age of 21).
Oh, and I continued to live here after that. People ask me, “Why are you still HERE?” I almost moved a couple of times, but either the job or the relationship fell apart before I had a chance to finish packing my bags. And after the advent of the Internet I talked to people all over, online. Plus I travelled around a bit (New York, Colorado, Connecticut, other places with ski slopes) and I came to the realization that while Sacramento ain’t the best place to live, it is FAR from being the worst.
I lived in Midtown (14th and G) in the early 90’s… fled from a bad “marriage” (well we didn’t legalize us because the state wouldn’t let us),and lived there for 8 years, and watched the gangbangers flee and gentrification develop. My rent went from $465 a month to $845 a month… with no improvements. When I left, the charming 1 bedroom upstairs Victorian flat (about 700 sq. feet) was upgraded, improved and rented for $1200 a month… welcome to progress.
I know the progress, I know the scope of the problems, and I know where the bodies are buried. Hell, I lived for 8 years a block from where Dorothea Puente buried her bodies before she became a CNN headline.
Ya wanna know Sacramento history? Write me, SASelmants@yahoo.com
Yeah, I’m old; I don’t have my own webiste/blog.
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.. or website/blog.
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Yeah- and why is it that all Sacramento TV personalities have private body parts as names? I tried to put my Verdoorn in my significant other’s tight little Javora, and s/he got mad. So I went to play with Dave n’ Lois (like I always do- ya’ know- to just tickle ’em a little) and s/he got all, “you think you so Finan an all, jus’ keep that Hupe to yo’self!” So here I am now, playing with my own Wu… Poor Turty Squip.
So maybe that’s Sacramento’s problem. Funney news anchors’/reporters’ names?
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Is it just me, or does Turty Squip take Really Special Drugs, and doesn’t share?
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Is it just me or does NotMalibuBarbie spend a lot of time reading the Sac Rag archives and commenting on everything. Just a little extreme is all I’m saying. Carry on.
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i’d rather hear more about the special drugs…
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All your questions will be answered if you Wiki “Jenkum.” Just don’t do it within 720 hours of any eating activity. Enought to share with everyone.
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Leroy Jenkum?
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I just want to see my name in lights.
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I love Sacramento. My family has lived there since the 20s or 30s. I inheireted my Grandmother’s house, where my dad grew up. My wife and I did a massive remodel during the boom. We got out right before the crash, but not until after a redployment from Intel and 3 very rough years looking for IT jobs in a very dry market.
I had no other options. On the flip side, in Ohio, I got a house twice as big, on 15 times the land (no joke), near urban centers, in a residential area for HALF of what we sold the house in Land Park for. California is out of control. The cost of living is insane, the value for your dollar is insane.
I mean, hardest choice I ever made in my life, and I still don’t know for sure if it was the right one or not – but I’ll tell you, I found a job here that pays about half of what I was making in Sac, but my money seems to go twice as far, which makes the overall quality of life improved for me. I feel less stress – in general.
The population growth brought good and bad with it too. Good for the urban core, but the suburban sprawl in the Sac area drives (drove) me nuts. I think I’d rather be the annoying transplantee than the annoyed local.
Funny that my Grandparents moved from Toledo Ohio to Sacramento, NotMalibuBarbie did the same, and I went the other direction. I brought back books that started in Toledo, spent 80 years in Sacramento, and ended up back in the Akron/Canton area.
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