Sacramento is a great city. (San Francisco, Oakland: upper-class, best neighborhoods, hotels)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I have been there many times, and I gotta say it's a great city. It's very liveable, and there's no reason to want to leave there when you're in it. Every time I have walked through Old Sac, it's full of hot women and things to see. Over all, I think Sacramento is a great place and definitely would be nice to live in probably. Your opinions.
Sacramento has been a good place for us and we've enjoyed living downtown. Granted, the summers can be brutal (it was 102 about 10 days ago) and the winters can be wet but that's what gives the city its lush foliage and abundance of trees. With an historical Old Town, emerging downtown and thriving mid-town the city has a lot to offer. As Sacramentans are loathe to admit, the city is also equidistant from such destinations as San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. Finally, the circus is in town almost all year for your viewing pleasure. It's on daily display during the week in the great white asylum downtown, also known as the State Capitol. I refer, of course, to the Legislature.
Having said all that, the ONLY problem I have with Sacramento is that it's located in California.
I must admit, Sacramento has somewhat grown on me over the past year or two. I spent so many years disliking it, wishing it was this way, or that way, etc. The bottom line is, it is what it is. There are far worse mid-sized cities to live in California. I went for a walk on Sunday afternoon all over midtown and I must admit it was rather nice. The temperature was ideal, about 75 degrees with a clean, gentle breeze and the air quality was close to perfect! If late spring/summer afternoons were more like that I would be a great deal fonder of Sacramento.
My concern is with the continued growth and poor urban planning that we saw throughout the 90s and early 2000s, that Sacramento will only become hotter and smoggier over the next 20 years.
I like Sacramento. My principle complaint with the place was that I thought housing prices had gotten totally out of whack in relation to incomes. But that problem seems to be fixing itself pretty well right now.
I feel bad about other aspects of the adjustment, how people are losing there jobs and such. But in the end, I think the region will be much better off if it remains an affordible place for people to be able to start a family and buy a home.
I must admit, Sacramento has somewhat grown on me over the past year or two. I spent so many years disliking it, wishing it was this way, or that way, etc. The bottom line is, it is what it is. There are far worse mid-sized cities to live in California. I went for a walk on Sunday afternoon all over midtown and I must admit it was rather nice. The temperature was ideal, about 75 degrees with a clean, gentle breeze and the air quality was close to perfect! If late spring/summer afternoons were more like that I would be a great deal fonder of Sacramento.
My concern is with the continued growth and poor urban planning that we saw throughout the 90s and early 2000s, that Sacramento will only become hotter and smoggier over the next 20 years.
I moved to Vacaville in December and being just 30 miles from Sacramento, I took to liking the Kings and thought Old Sac was kinda cool and Midtown was kinda cool, but then I spent more and more time in SF, Oakland, and even cute towns like Benicia and now I realize that Sacramento has very little to offer me and everytime I pass by it, I just can't stand the city.
-----------------
I'm going to break from my current thoughts and say this: I mean noooo disrespect to anyone and I usually don't frequent the Sacramento part of the forum and I'm no troll, by any means. If you live there and you love it, well I think that's fantastic and I KNOW there are good places to live and wherever a family is happy, then that's where you should be.
-----------------
But I hate it. The second time I visited Old Sac I saw some meter maid rushing to ticket anyone's cars that just expired as I mingle through gift shop after gift shop and crap touristy restaurant after crap crepery after yet another gift shop and thought: This is just one big gimicky, horrible rendition of a once-great part of town that probably wouldn't remind anyone of anything they used to know. And this is one of the coolest parts to Sacramento.
I took the exit over to downtown and went to Westfield mall where I met some of the lowest forms of society and strolled through an out-door/indoor mall that left me looking for the exits so I could get back to my car.
I went to my first Kings game and thought as middle-aged and old women alike cheared in unison like it was their sons' high school basketball game and guys with cow bells yelled and acted like this team, last in standings, was going to revive its season and make the playoffs and thought to myself: don't these people have anything better to do? Some guy heckled me all game because I was wearing a Cavaliers jersey (I'm from Cleveland) but was nowhere to be found when the Cavaliers won in OT. =)
I'm really and honestly not a fan of the town, and I came here with the knowledge that people elsewhere called it a cowtown, or it was podunk, but in visiting here, that's exactly how I think of it. Some people will be endeered by these same attributes and experiences but I found it cheap, awkward and most of all, uninteresting. I would say the best thing about Sacramento is its proximity to Davis.
puddy4: Most Sacramento residents think of Old Sacramento the way San Francisco residents think of Fisherman's Wharf: a cheap tourist trap that they only visit when a visiting friend or relative wants to visit the cheap tourist traps. Considering that Old Sacramento is supposed to represent the period from roughly 1849 to the 1870s, anyone who remembered that period is long since dead, so I'm not sure how Old Sacramento is supposed to remind people of things they used to know. Parking enforcement tends to be fairly aggressive in any city where there is far more demand for parking than supply--I don't have much sympathy for people who can't be bothered to feed a meter.
Before it was Old Sacramento, that neighborhood was best known for its thousands of migrant farm workers and railroad workers inhabiting waterfront rooming houses, hotels and bars, freight trains and warehouses along the waterfront, and the city's original homeless shelters. The last time it was a great part of town was...the 1850s to the 1870s.
You won't get any objection over your distaste for Westfield's downtown mall. They consider it a write-off, a place to lose money so their balance sheets look better. Their "good" mall is the big one in Roseville, and they wouldn't bother spending a dime on the downtown mall because they don't want to take away from Roseville. They also reguarly sue anyone they consider competition for downtown retail in the central city. It's also not the only mall in town--most folks who want to go to a mall in Sacramento go to Arden Fair, or Country Club in Arden/Arcade, or Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights. In the central city, there is a lot better shopping, dining and entertainment to be found in Midtown and parts east, but those areas don't get as promoted as well as Old Sacramento. So people think Sacramento ends at the eastern end of the Westfield Mall, which is kind of sad.
Old Sacramento and the mall are on the very western edge of Sacramento along the river. Sacramento is not a "cute town" like Benicia, not an upper-class bedroom community, a boutique city or set up primarily to attract the tourist trade. It is a city bigger than Oakland in both population and area, and for the most part not particularly well set up for tourists.
wburg> Thanks for the kind and rational reply. I agreed with what you said and like I said, I know there's parts I haven't seen and I know I haven't seen the best but from what I've seen and what people rave about -- namely Midtown, Old Sac, etc - I just didn't think it was at all worthy of being the most highly touted places for someone to go.
Comparable to Fisherman's Warf, possibly, but I don't know a resident of SF (or me, who knows the city really well) that would recommend it. The thing with Fisherman's Warf that also helps leave it off my trashing list, is walking one block south on Hyde puts you into a neighborhood far more endearing and the further you walk south, the more you just can't get away from it.
Walking away from Old Sac leaves you wanting to return to Old Sac. The comparison, however, I agree, just isn't fair. I shouldn't expect Sacramento to be San Francisco in experience -- it just in no way reminds me of a big city. 30 minutes south of Cleveland is a town called Akron with 220,000 residents, and it feels just as big city as Sacramento.
I know I'm getting lengthy here, but I just would like to reiterate that I appreciated your thoughtful response and I do agree with alot of your sentiment.
To Shope: I don't believe by your response that you have done anything of value in Oakland just as I've done very little in your city. Oakland has alot to offer - it isn't simply the hopelessness depicted on the news. I've gone to places in Oakland - Rockridge, Piedmont, etc, that I thought rivaled some of SF's best neighborhoods. The hills are absolutely gorgeous and I'd be lying if I didn't say I didn't have some of my favorite times at Merritt Lake. It also helps to be near Berkeley, Powell Street in Emeryville, and gorgeous Alameda.
I hope to give Sac town another shot. Wburg, can you give me some advice on where I can go -- non-touristy -- to really get the real flavor of the city? I would be quite appreciative. PM if you'd like.
Thanks.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $53,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 1.5 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Sacramento is a great city.
