Author: FauxPaws

L.A. vs. Sacramento, L.A. rules edition

From the L.A. Times:

The love affair between Phil Jackson and the state capital continued Thursday.

“It’s a beautiful place,” he said, opening his arms figuratively with an apparent compliment for Arco Arena. […] “It’s just one of the very few places where you have to walk across the court to get to a locker room that’s a dungeon.”

There’s more, and the LAT seems to like it just a little too much. In fact, they took a dig in another section, too:

Sacramento is a suburb of Los Angeles. Nothing drives home that point more than a walk through Terminal A at Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport at the start of the workweek, where you can see a host of L.A. lawmakers — and lobbyists, political lawyers, labor leaders and corporate executives — waiting for their short hops to the Capitol. […]

California’s capital city may be where all the state’s movers and shakers mingle, but L.A. still rules.

Yeah, just ask ’em. Here’s the rest.

L.A. vs. Sacramento

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.

Will we always be in San Francisco’s shadow?

Since 1925, the place to go. My father was born in San Francisco, and still — he’ll quickly tell you — holds baseball records set in 1949 when he played for Mission High School in what my family have always called simply, “The City.” When my parents married — at Fremont Presbyterian, back when it was on 34th and J — they decided to settle in Sacramento. My father, by then a professional baseball player in the Red Sox organization, said he “liked the heat.”

Flash forward a half-century and change. My parents last October celebrated their 52nd wedding anniversary. They are happy with most everything they’ve done and accomplished, save one thing: They wished they’d settled as newlyweds in San Francisco.

My father is still a San Franciscan in his own mind, even though three-quarters of his life has been lived in Sacramento. He is in The City at least three times a month, to attend luncheons for former star jocks, visit with high-school buddies, pick up ravioli and proscuitto at Lucca’s or (with sadly increasing frequency) attend a funeral.

When I ask him about this, he shrugs. It’s pretty obvious to him: Would you rather be from San Francisco or Sacramento?

Continue reading “Will we always be in San Francisco’s shadow?”

Guess the city! (And it’s not Sacramento)

From a piece in the NY Times:

The owners […] had warned that the team would leave unless the city provided a new arena.

The vote delighted Citizens for More Important Things, a group that, with the help of a statewide health care union, spent $60,000 to sponsor the initiative. Other cities “may be so desperate to lure tourists there that they have to overpay for an N.B.A. team,” said Chris Van Dyk, a founder of the group. “[We don’t] have to lure anybody.”

Mr. Van Dyk’s priorities are schools, transportation projects and health care, and he openly disdains wealthy people who buy professional teams, pay huge salaries to players and then demand handouts. Owners who threaten to take their teams elsewhere, Mr. Van Dyk said, are no better than “the neighborhood crack cocaine dealer.”

Guesses? The answer is here. (Need a log-in?)

Did the Maloofs take a dive?

Interesting article in The Bee today, wondering if the pro-Arena campaign was supposed to lose:

The big question floating around town Wednesday was whether Joe and Gavin Maloof’s actions in the campaign simply reflected their volatility and lack of political savvy, or whether they systematically sabotaged the campaign because they prefer that a new arena be built next to Arco in North Natomas or want to move the team to another city.

Veteran political consultant David Townsend said he thinks the sabotage was deliberate.

“I know a professional campaign when I see it, and this is a professional campaign,” Townsend said. “This is not all by happenstance. … This was an orchestrated, well-thought-out campaign to tube Q&R.”

Whether Ross was behind it or the Maloofs were simply clients out of control, he doesn’t know. Ross has not returned Bee phone calls about the campaign.

That would be on interesting explanation for the idiocy of that burger commercial.

Water, water everywhere

Cool’s mention of “The Good Old Days” on Channel 6 had me thinking of another show telling a Sacramento tale over the last few days.

Anyone catch “Mega Disasters: California Katrina” on the History Channel? The whole thing was revved up for maximum panic — the scarey music, the re-playing of a computer-generated loop show water crashing up the steps of the Capitol and a flood tide sweeping away the I Street Bridge. But there’s no denying the thing is sure thought-provoking.

Hmmm. Better check my flood insurance.

How low will they go?

The story on top of the Wall Street Journal’s list of most-viewed and most-emailed stories today is about falling home prices nationwide. The WSJ’s a subscriber site, but I’m a subscriber, so … this link is good for seven days. Check out the chart at the bottom of the piece. The prediction is a 9.9 percent drop in Sacramento prices with the market bottoming out in the second quarter of 2008.

Presidents, beware

SacBee.com has a breaking news story regarding the arrest of a Sacramento-area man accused of “sending threatening letters containing a powdery substance to the El Dorado Hills country club where President Bush will appear Tuesday.”

Hmmmmm … seems Sacramento isn’t a great place for presidents to visit. Remember Squeaky Fromme, who tried to kill President Ford in Capitol Park?