devolution in sacramento

[SSR]

every morning when i head out the door, the ipod gets turned on and automatically plays whatever the thing decides to play. for two days straight, it has brought up hardcore devo. today the morning started out with soo bawlz. i head down capital to a coffee shop and pass a sting of restaurants or what was a string of restaurants - one of them is now vacant. i start getting excited. in the last few days, i've noticed five or six trendy over priced restaurants in midtown are no longer. on the way back from the coffee shop, i pass another vacant space. this one in a new apartment complex which rents one bedrooms for $1500 (and is half vacant). the space used to be occupied by one of those home furnishing stores where you are expected to plop down $600 for an oversized urn imported from tibet. of course a place like that isnt gonna survive in this town, but for the last ten years people have been under the illusion that sacramento is made of money. yeah, i know that there are lots of cities across the US where that happened, but i don't think any town was as overvalued as sacramento. things got really crazy here. people where paying half a million for oversized suburban tract homes on tiny lots. they weren't really buying land. they were buying shittily built houses in neighborhoods that are destined to become slums. so what if the development has a fake lake and golf course. the fucking golf course has now gone to weed because no one could keep up with the dues and the lake is filling with algae and come summer will be a mosquito breeding ground. now these developments are a quarter to a third empty, house after house in foreclosure. while housing values have dipped in midtown, they havent crashed. still, there are more and more foreclosures down here, more and more boarded up buildings. i went to the coop today to buy some organic vegetables (ha!) and "spun" devo on the ipod. as i was getting on my bike ready to leave, society's fools came on and a fight broke out in the parking lot over a parking space. i havent seem a fight at the coop for at least fifteen years. i am not a drawn to violence outside of the boxing ring, but i am always keen to see a fight at the coop. first of all, coop fights are never real violence but more like a dance. second of all it is funny when up tight yuppies who never fight try to act tough. you want to bust a gut? watch an angry skinny guy storm out of his prius ready to "swing". tension in the air. i split and ride down the street. one of the dozen of tattoo/body piercing places that popped up in the last ten years is gone. i pass another empty space where a restaurant was. november has been a cruel month for these trendy businesses. fine by me. this town is looking more and more like it was in the late 80s, last time our housing market crashed. over the last ten years, the downtown/midtown area has started to suck more and more. its overpriced and boring. things are open later but they are mostly the wrong things or places for people with money or who dont care about their credit card balances. as the universe rights things, more and more of these places will fall and this place will turn more into what it was before money tried to move in. hopefully that means cheap culture will come back stronger. suburbanites will start getting scared to come down here again. lots of people in town would think i am crazy, but they believe that the grid was deserted before money moved in, that there was no night life. complete bullshit. from georgians and sam's hoff brau to idream and the stucco factory to the gallery sotodo and the loft, there's always been night life here, just not the kind that investors like. looking at abandoned buildings today made me happy. bring on the devolution.

[EJC923]

Beautiful man, beautiful. nice summary of the possibilities of a funky renewal in sacto

[Swampy]

Devolution is real.

[Thugs]

sam's hoff brau 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my FAVORITE place as a kid!! Well, Sam's Town up towards Ol' HangTown was THEE spot!! HUGE arcade, roast beef, root beer, and peanut shells covering the ground...

[EJC923]

sam's hoff brau 

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! my FAVORITE place as a kid!! Well, Sam's Town up towards Ol' HangTown was THEE spot!! HUGE arcade, roast beef, root beer, and peanut shells covering the ground...

I spent much of my youth at sam's town-the place was epic

[SSR]

ed - did you ever go to ponderosa ranch, the Bonanza theme park?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponderosa_Ranch

[goneoffdatlean]

KJ's gonna fix it all up.

[SSR]

ah if sacramento was only a high school girl we'd be in great shape.....

[akpasta]

YES.

[EJC923]

ed - did you ever go to ponderosa ranch, the Bonanza theme park?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponderosa_Ranch

no.  even though i lived close to it until 8th grade. still on my list

[Mitch]

Wasn't Sam's in the same shopping center as an old Tower Records?  Wasn't it near Arden Way or something?

[vulture]

cheap culture

awesome.

[SSR]

Wasn't Sam's in the same shopping center as an old Tower Records?  Wasn't it near Arden Way or something?

Thinking of Sam's Hoff Brau. There were several in Sacto. One on Watt next to Tower, one on J Street, where Hamburger Larrys or Marys or whatever it is called now, by the Beat - that one was actually GREAT, especially after midnight. We used to go there after punk shows in the 80s and every kind of deviant, sleeze, scumbag and greaser was there. 

Samstown was sorta a cross between Sam's Hoff Brau, an arcade, and the Nut Tree, up in the foothills.

[SSR]

Hey Rick -
Rather than clogging up the Williamsburger thread with Sacto talk, here goes:

The thing that I miss about Sacramento, specifically Midtown is community, not food (there have been good cheaper stuff that is now gone, but food has never been one of Midtown's strong points. Besides if I want cheap ethnic I dont have to go south of Broadway). Now I know you are gonna pimp the Fun Castle and the scene around there, but that isn't what I am talking about. I am not even talking about the Loft. Before you lived here, back in the 80s and into some of the 90s, it was common place to walk down the street and bump into a variety of people you knew. Walking from the bookstore to Uptown Market (then Comptons) could take 45 minutes even though it is 6 blocks away, because you'd stop and talk to people you knew. You walk into a restaurant and most of the time there would be at least a couple people there that you knew, who would invite you to eat with them - and if there was no one there you recognized there would be within 15 minutes of sitting down. This wasnt just one or two places, this was most places. Same thing with bars and coffee shops. And these weren't just musicians or arty types. People used to refer to Midtown as a village and that is what it felt like. That is gone. It is gone because people moved on, a lot of the places are no longer, a lot of buildings are no longer, rent is higher so you dont get that variety of people, and other reasons. Could it happen in some cheaper place like the south area? No. Part of what made it happen is the layout of the grid. People tried to recreate what was going on down here in Oak Park and then in Del Paso Heights. It didnt work. It couldnt work. People are too spread out, too isolated by their individual houses, not enough mix of housing and retail, etc. Could it happen down here again? Maybe. Unfortunately Midtown did not take the hit in housing prices that the burbs did. Prices dropped but not enough to make things affordable. It is also something that you cant just make happen. The Midtown as village thing evolved from the late 60s and took hold in the 70s. It had a pretty long run. Anyway, that is what I miss and anyone who was around then (Ed C & Smiller can back me up) misses the hell out of that vibe. 

[DJ Rick]

I remember how Midtown was in the early to mid-90s, but only from the POV of a tourist and not an environ. And I do remember a big difference at least in the mix of businesses that were there then. And that everyone there seemed like a real person. But I still bump into people walking probably every other time I walk to get lunch. It still seems village-like far more than anywhere else around here except a couple parts of Davis.

You really don't go south of Broadway for cheap ethnic food, though?