Category: Business

Views On Development, Sacramento Style

-This morning, my Peet’s coffee jerk said something shocking. There is a new building going up on the corner of 19th and S in the Safeway marketplace across the parking lot from Peet’s, and in reference to it she said, “How funny would it be if a Starbucks went up there.” Then she laughed maniacally. I love Peet’s employees for their coffee cockiness. They basically dare SBUX to move into their neighborhoods so that they can demolish them.

-A prominent article in the bee discusses development for West Sacramento. From the tone of the article, it sounds like most folks are looking forward to the change and the facelift planned for Capitol Ave. However, one resident complained that development brings traffic. “West Sacramento used to be sort of country, and now it’s getting like the rest of the county,” he says. Good point, sir. Things aren’t what they used to be since the Indians left.
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Those “real estate investor” signs…

Amanda Levy of Metroblogging Sacramento asked on Saturday what we have probably all wondered for a few months now…

I was just exiting the 80 by P Street in downtown Sac…I saw a sign for Real Estate Investor…make 10K to 20K per month…has anyone EVER made money by calling the numbers on one of those signs and signing up???? Seriously!!!

You’ve seen these hand-written signs, correct? I always assumed the reason he/she needed an apprentice was because he/she was clearly so busy making billions and billions of dollars in Real Estate to find a way to get those signs printed all professional-like!

Tower, Copeland’s bargain shopping

I have yet to follow the arrow guys to Tower Records or the Copeland’s at the downtown plaza to see what sort of outrageous deals I can find. I am in need of some running shoes and in need of spending as close as possible to $0 on them. I’m thinking the week after Thanksgiving the Copeland’s discounts will creep into the 80% range but I’m also thinking that shoes that can give me the support and stability I need will be in short supply in my demanding price range. Also I would like to pick up some CDs and books on the cheap. Anybody out there been to either of these stores lately and willing to report on the bargain shopping environment? Tower seems to have dropped percentages off their signs so I can’t tell how far the scale has slipped on that.

(On a side note I just realized that there should be a rating system for us bargain shoppers, akin to the clapping popcorn guy. Would it just be a scale composed of cheap skate graphics?)

Courting the creep crowd

Lots of print advertising these goes for the stripped-down, don’t give too much away approach that focuses on snappy catchphrases and color recognition. Mikescars.com (no, it’s not a service where Mike comes to your house to give you a rad scar) is getting in on the action too with its local billboards. Like the one near my bus stop this morning, hanging over Maria’s/Pancho’s taqueria–“INTERNET PICTURES YOU DON’T HAVE TO HIDE FROM YOUR WIFE.” Eww! Stay classy, Sacramento.

Good news, bad news

Well today brings two big stories, one sad and one incredibly good. First the sad, it’s now official: Tower Records is gone. Like, for real. Liquidation sales start today. First Sacred Heart, then Tower, and since these things happen in threes, expect an announcement soon after November 7 about another Sacramento institution packing house…

The good news today is that the DEA has busted Daryl and Solomon Summerfield (hmm Solomon, eh? so these stories really are related…weird) a father and son drug outfit that was moving large amounts of cocaine around. If you just read this story in the Bee, one bit they left out, and that Ron Jones reports on CBS13, is that this operation was the coke supply for Oak Park. One thing Ron Jones doesn’t report is who “Scott McGregor” is, the person quoted in the article several times. I have a hunch that he might be talking about McGregor Scott, the US Attorney in Sacramento. What is that dude doing reversing his names like that! Making Ron Jones’ job harder is what. Anyway here’s to brighter days ahead for Oak Park…

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.

Sac housing goes ironical

All right, it’s officially time to stop building new houses in the Sacramento region, now that I’ve discovered that there is a subdivision in Rocklin called Wisteria. That’s actually all I want to say about that. There is another subdivision called Fiddyment Farm which sounds like a neighborhood out of Dr. Seuss and is one letter away from being pronounced “Fiddy Cent Farm,” which is hilarious.

Slow-down, crash or soft landing?

The most-commented stories on SacBee.com always seem to be about the Sacramento housing market. Yesterday’s piece is no exception. with people arguing in the comments section that the market is a) vastly overpirced, with up to a 50 percent price reduction on the horizon; b) in stagnation, with no price increases in the future, but no “crash”; or c) just taking a breather.
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