Holla at your board!

Lately we’ve been getting a lot of “I don’t know where to put this” comments, from document dumping to appointment TV spoilers, so I’ve decided to dust off an old idea and reintroduce The Rag Board, a community forum. This time it’s powered by bbPress, a robust forum software built by the WordPress people.

Sign up today and start posting. Feel free to send me ideas for new Forums, though the 3 existing ones should give us enough fuel for a while. I’m making a goal of 30 discussions going by the end of April. Have fun!

Smosh win YouTube award

As a further sign of how out of touch I am with the YouTube generation, I learned about this from none other than Christina Mendonsa. Local YTers Smosh have won a coveted YouTube award for Best Comedy video of 2006. I’m happy for the two, but I can’t believe more than 4 people thought this was the funniest thing they’d seen in 2006 on YouTube. Video after the jump.

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Fabulous!

Today is the second annual Queer Youth Advocacy Day at the State Capitol.  “Representatives from the more than 600 Gay Student Alliances (which are at 45% of public high schools), and other youth under the age of 24, are meeting in Sacramento to lobby for Senate Bill 777 (Kuehl).”  This bill will standardize the anti-discrimination policies in all schools receiving public funds to give all students equal protection from harassment, bullying and discrimination.

The students attended a lobbying training at the Crest Theater before meeting with legislators this afternoon.  A handful of protesters were on hand to inform the youth than they were sinners, but were scared off by the inclement weather (maybe God was trying to tell them something about tolerance, loving thy neighbor, and casting the first stone).

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The Union Pacific Food Hall

I just got back from Los Angeles yesterday and returned to our fair city with an appreciation for good urban planning.  I’ve been to several California cities in the last few months in fact, and I can say that Sacramento is much farther along in its trendy “dowtown revitilization” project than most of the others.  Nowhere is this more evident than in downtown LA.  For those of you that haven’t ventured to downtown LA recently, you’re missing a goldmine of an opportunity to see some of this country’s seediest homeless people along with one of the surest and slowest transformations of an American city.  The plodding gentrification of the downtown area is slow, true, but also relentless, transforming historical buildings and retaining some sense of SoCal history.  Instead of the “out with the old, in with the new” mentality so prevalent in LA,  planners are seizing this opportunity to do it right, mixing old and new in a symbiotic fusion.  The best example I can see of this attitude is at the Grand Central Market, an alomst open-air food haven that mixes spice sellers and fish mongers with kitchens and food stands, dishing out counter and street food from all over the globe.

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Grand jury slams arena backdoor dealings

News10 reported yesterday that the County grand jury found that Sacramento officials “violated the public trust” in rushing measures Q and R to the ballot last fall. Ironically, it’s not a binding decision and finds nobody at fault for any specific infraction.

My own take on this saga is completely in evidence so obviously you know how I feel. However, read the PDF of the Grand Jury’s report. It is very strange. With headings like “Hail to the Kings! The Costly Illusion that City Greatness Requires the Presence of Professional Sports” and “Downtown Railyard Development – What Have We Gotten Into?” and “The Train has left and the City now has the Station!” and with language like “Has the city initiated the much wished for revitalization of downtown or has it stepped into a polluted black hole?” it doesn’t read anything like the legal document you will expect. It reads more like some snarky blog poster obviously biased against the whole deal from the start. I don’t know much about grand jury proceedings but is this normal?

Looks like the city and county officials have to respond to the findings in this report later in the year. Specifically, by “June 00, 2007.” So we’ll all stay tuned for that!

Sac State and other CSU faculties authorize strike

The Sacramento Bee reports today that the California State University faculty has voted to strike. Statewide, 82% of the more than 11,000 members of the California Faculty Association voted, with 94% of them authorizing the strike. Tensions have centered upon the lack of a contract and extreme disparity in the salaries of various faculty members. A possible strike will take the form of a rolling walkout, with individual campuses striking for two days at a time.

Here at home, the faculty of Sac State met as a body for the first time in 30 years. Among the budget discussions, a vote of no confidence in University President Alex Gonzalez was proposed. As next week is Spring Break, the vote will not occur until the next Faculty Senate meeting on April 5.

Have you adequate postage, Master Luke?

I was on my way into the State Capitol this morning when I saw a mailbox painted to look like R2-D2 at 11th and N. At first, I thought that it had fallen prey to an incredibly nerdy vandal until I saw the Web site tag. Apparently, the United States Postal Service has teamed up with the Star Wars people to bring you mail service. Hopefully, my Netflix returns will not end up in a galaxy far, far away…

You heard it here first

Back in January of 2006, frequent Sac Rag contributor “Runnergirl” wrote a post about the area’s worst parking lots. Tops on her list was the Natomas Marketplace. And anyone that has ever had the misfortune to shop there has witnessed the Grade A Fuster Cluck (GAFC) that ensues on a daily basis.

Fear not, Sacramento, as the City has listened (probably, maybe) and responded!

The city of Sacramento is taking steps to improve access to Natomas Marketplace, a half-million square foot shopping center with a single main driveway.

Bravo! Now if they could just do something about the drive through line at In & Out Burger (it’s a burger, people, sure it’s good, but it’s a BURGER!).

Massive Meteorite Found in Delta

CBS-13 reported today on a meteorite found ten miles west of Stockton on Victoria Island. The crater is estimated to be three miles wide, several times larger than the really cool Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona. Scientists think that the impact was 50 million years ago and will begin excavating the blast site that lies underneath more than a mile of soil.

Could this be the magical tourist attraction that will change Stockton from a mediocre backwater shithole to… a less mediocre backwater shithole? If not, I hope that they can dig up enough of the fragments to put an exhibit on this in the Haggin Museum.