Category: News

I’m sure many of us took a look at yet another Bee piece on the rail yard development issue. It’s so damn alluring because it’s such a huge tract of land just waiting to be pillaged by developers; it’s tailor made (or Taylor made if you were to be punny) to be an extension of both downtown and Cal Expo (did I hear monorail extension?); and it taps into all the things that make us Californians, our history (the railroad), our mentality (get rich quick scheme for everyone involved) and our morality (manifest destiny).

Let’s stop for one moment though to think about what this site actually needs. Do we need more high-rise housing, more entertainment, more Paragary’s and Mikuni’s establishments, more places at which to buy things? With housing developments already folding in downtown, what makes developers think that people actually want to live in overpriced downtown apartments? We’re Californians, we like space. The only people that want to live together, drink together, party together, sleep together and cheer together, all in the same neighborhood are college students. Yes, that’s right, college students.
Continue reading “The Missing Piece”

Like cars through the store glass, these are the days of our lives.

When I said “Please pull through the next window…”, I was only kidding, people.

I submit to you that this morning’s front page story about an art hoax in Colfax involving tiny Buddha’s head statues found floating in the American River, first mentioned here by SinghCity yesterday, is one of the finest encapsulations of the spirit of Sacramento. Go read it, it’s rewarding.

There is that particular feeling you get about Sacramento–the propensity to drive into buildings, the mobbing at local openings of giant chain stores, the tendency to seem incapable of maintaining the species that gives you pause, and yet you can’t quite articulate it in a full sentence. I believe (this theory is actually my wife’s, but I subscribe to it whole-heartedly) that it can be attributed to the theory that Sacramento is still a gold mining outpost, a lawless frontier fort, with all the paranoid grasping at civilization that you imagine the original ’49ers embodied. This story is a good example.
Continue reading “Tiny Buddhas make me warm all over”

When I saw this last night I couldn’t believe it. I had to order a transcript right away and share it. I’m surprised that nobody has touched on this yet today:
Continue reading “Another “Killer” Report from KOVR 13″

In a fit of IKEA-grand-opening induced hysteria, a truck drove through a Burger King yesterday in another part of town.

It’s been a while since we drove a vehicle into a building. It sure is nice to see that even with the upgrade in class that IKEA brings to Sacramento, we’re still the same, down home, driving crazy folks.

I am very confused by today’s front page Bee article about the Lodi terrorists. See if you can help me.

A different Hamid Hayat than the one interviewed by the FBI in June – more self-assured, knowledgeable of terrorist training camps and with outspoken anti-American views – emerges from the transcripts of hours of secretly recorded conversations he had in 2003 with an undercover FBI informant.

During the videotaped interview on June 4 and 5, the 23-year-old Hayat . . . confessed to attending a terrorist training camp there in 2003. He appears on the video as weak-willed, very unsure of himself, scared of violence and somewhat confused.

Which is the different one? The self-assured one, or the weak-willed one? Both seem to have been recorded in June, one in 2003 and one in an unspecified year. Do I have to have a timeline to read this story? Am I just not parsing it correctly?

This one is self snarkatory.