Category: Misc

Looking for something fuzzy to stroke? Want a new friend for you and your pets? Tired of referring to the mangy stray in the alley as “my cat?” The Sacramento Animal Shelter has annouced that all cats, young and old, adorable and terrifying, are only 99 cents. This price includes vaccinations, microchip, collar, tag and a bag of food.

Sale ends September 1st, so act today!

Shaq Thompson, the Grant High School football star headed to Washington in the fall to play big time college football, is playing professional baseball this summer as an outfielder for the Gulf Coast League Red Sox. How is he doing so far? Epic fail. Thompson is 0-32 with 31 strikeouts. Yes, that’s correct: 31 strikeouts and 1 infield grounder (which produced an RBI, however).

I’m with Bleacher Report’s Michael Felder on this. I think it’s awesome that Thompson is playing pro baseball, and the maturity and humility he’ll gain from this will serve him well when he is playing D-1 football. Let’s all root for Shaq to break out of his slump!

UPDATED 7/30: The long national nightmare is over; Shaq is reporting for Pac-12 football on Thursday. His minor league career ends at 0-39 with 37 strikeouts. There’s nowhere to go but up!

In what I hope is a weekly installment (trust me, I’m well aware that this will quickly devolve into a once-every-three-and-a-half-month obligation that gets forgotten almost immediately) I present “The Best Thing I Put In My Mouth Last Week.”

Picture it, Sunday morning brunch at The Porch. New Orleans tunes coming from the band, sun dappling through the Midtown trees, a plate in front of me of ridiculously savory proportions. The duck McMuffin is basically eggs benedict but with duck confit and greens in place of the socialist bacon. Amazing. Creole hollandaise topping the whole thing and a random piece of bacon thrown in for good measure (hey, this is The Porch after all). Side of potatoes, perfectly toothy and just ready to sop up the leftover sauce and yolks. And since it was brunch I felt perfectly fine washing the whole thing down with a pint of Monkey Knife Fight.

So, if brunch is on your agenda this weekend, check out The Porch, and skip the Disney-esque lines at Tower Cafe.

Continuing to step away from its image as The Trucker Brothel Capital of Yolo County, West Sac stepped up its game today by hiring Martin Tuttle to be the new City Manager. Tuttle will rival Rancho Cordova’s Ted Gaebler as our region’s coolest city official. Sorry, John Shirey.

Tuttle has already made his impression of the future of Sacramento (and past futures, too) by spearheading the development of the SACOG Regional Blueprint, which is used as a model for regional planning across the nation. He also plays a mean air guitar whenever AC/DC comes on the juke. At least that’s what I hear. Continue reading “Martin Tuttle to manage West Sac”

Every year around this time, the winemakers of El Dorado County host a “Passport Weekend” where they put on the dog and invite folks to come up the hill and taste wines, eat food, and, hopefully, buy lots of stuff. I have to admit, they got me to do all of it.

First, a definition of what EDC wine is. It’s wine from a few distinct areas: 1. Apple Hill and environs, 2. Fairplay, and 3. whatever that part in-between is called. Let’s call it Pleasant Valley and move on. It’s about an hour plus a few country roads from Sac, but it feels a lot further. Why? I have no idea, but every time I go to one of these events in EDC I feel like it’s a pain in the ass. I’ll admit that I’m an Amador guy. I’m up in Amador almost every other month. I love it up there and I love almost all the wineries.

El Dorado, I feel, is a bit more hit and miss. Some of the wineries have good wine, some have good views, others have nice dogs, and all of them have horrid labels (honestly, almost every El Dorado wine I can think of has a label more fit to be on a crate of Armenian mid-range auto parts than a wine). Wait, I take that back. Stickie and I stumbled upon a new enterprise in the Apple Hill area that has both good labels and good wine (and amazing cider). It’s called Bumgardner, and it’s right off Carson road. Stop there next time you’re at Apple Hill. Continue reading “El Dorado Co Wine: It’s a Thing”

If you visit Fox 40 you’ll see banner advertising and a prominently featured page on the topic “Get It Done.” A visit to the web page tells you that the “It” is a new downtown arena, and that we citizens should get an arena done by contacting our local representatives and exhorting them to do an arena deal. The page indicates that, agree or disagree, now is the time to “be heard,” but it also touts an arena as “about Sacramento being a world class city” and that without a deal, there will be no Kings.

Is this all appropriate? Continue reading “What’s with Fox40 wanting to “Get It Done”?”

By Tweeting “Put it in the books and send him to the line!” Mayor Kevin Johnson announced that a deal had been reached and that the Kings had just made a “long-term commitment” to stay in Sacramento. I assume this means there is enough money in the deal to pay at least the $387 million which still seems a low-end estimate.

Yesterday the NBA and the City agreed to postpone the presentation of a term sheet on the ESC until next week. RanSACkedmedia.com was first to report it, and the City website has the joint press release (PDF) outlining activities for the next 10 days. (Ryan Lillis, and the Bee in general, are mum on the subject for some reason.) Apparently the public will be able to see the proposed term sheet on March 1, a week from today, instead of today.

So what now? I’m sure speculation is running wild about why the NBA would want to allow Sacramento more time. Maybe KJ’s Stern connection is really working for him here. Maybe Seattle is the one that needed more time. What do you think? What now?