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Sacramento has never been a "cow town", but the idea that the arena is responsible for our fortunes, or has single-handedly revitalized downtown, is just as much an example of small-town mindset, or at least someone who doesn't know downtown Sacramento beyond a couple blocks from the arena/mall redevelopment zone. We're not a city of farmers as Chimerique suggested above--we're a city of knowledge workers and analysts, and folks who build stuff. It sounds like some folks consider a place a "cow town" if it is surrounded by suburbs, which is silly, because there generally aren't any cars in the suburbs, and every city is surrounded by suburbs, even pompous and self-important ones like San Francisco (they just pretend they aren't there.)
Plenty of nonsense to unpack here, like the idea that middle-class folks didn't start moving back to the urban core of Sacramento until the last decade or so, or that experiences like the one Chimerique had (going to a concert and a dinner in a busy/trendy restaurant) weren't possible in downtown Sacramento until last week. Maybe I'll go into more detail later on, but I've got a pretty full schedule of events to attend over the next few days.
You distorting what I said. I never said Sacramento was a city of farmers. I said Sacramento was involved in the lucrative trade the comes from Agriculture and still is. For example, the The California Almond Growers Exchange is directly involved in Agriculture and its headquarters are in Sacramento. The top research and development and production of Almond Products is centered in Sacramento.
Again distorting the truth, I never said that the experience I had in downtown could not have been had 10 years. You can't admit that the Arena is bringing in more people to downtown, and bringing them in by way of public transit like never before in the last 25 years.
It's interesting how you do not acknowledge facts that we actually agree on such as the fact that Sacramento was never a "cow-town".
We take pride in our "cowtown" image in the sense we are much more connected with the outdoors, we are gardeners, farmers.
The California Almond Growers Exchange is an industrial facility--they are a big employer, but none of the people who work there are farmers. Farmers are the people who grow the almonds out in the valley, the canning and processing is done by industrial workers. The folks who work at Blue Diamond's R&D department aren't farmers either--they are scientists, market researchers, analysts. Farmers work on farms; really, about the only "farmers" who lived in Sacramento over the last century or so were migrant workers who lived in the West End in between farm jobs, and the blue-blood upper class who called themselves "farmers" but had never worked on a farm a day in their life, but maybe their grandfather had. But, with the exception of Blue Diamond, Sacramento's once mighty canneries went still long ago, and for the past 50-60 years, the main industry in Sacramento has been technological knowledge work, at public agencies, military bases, and so on. The 90,000 or so people who converge on the central city every weekday at work aren't wearing bib overalls or driving tractors, despite the marketing campaign promoting our "farm to fork roots." I grew up in the Sacramento area, didn't know any farmers, didn't know anyone who knew any farmers. Farming is almost nonexistent in Sacramento except on little boutique urban farms, and it is a very small percentage of the regional workforce, but somehow having once been farmland makes us "gardeners, farmers." Well, sure, people garden, but that's not for employment except maybe for landscapers and such--gardening is for the most part a hobby. So defining us as "gardeners" is like calling us "videogame players"--and I'm sure there are more Sacramentans who play videogames than who garden (and plenty who do both, like me).
It is that mischaracterization of the Sacramento workforce that seems so ridiculous--a highly educated, professional white-collar workforce, but they're considered unacceptable because they work for the government. Sure, it's nice to have a more diversified economy, but treating the largest sector of existing workforce like they have the plague, or failing to acknowledge them at all, might explain why folks like UrbanRenter above are a bit less than enthusiastic about the arena--especially if the resulting vibrant excitement means they're being priced out of the central city (where they can walk or bike to work) and into the suburbs where they will be more likely to drive because most of the suburbs don't have decent transit.
We agree that Sacramento was never a cow-town, but I don't find your explanations compelling. You say you like Sacramento as it is, but seem hell-bent on changing the people, the businesses, the buildings, even the trees, because the current ones are somehow unacceptable. Population in the central city is and has been on the upswing, before the arena was approved and in parts of the grid far enough from the arena where even real estate agents' spiel about proximity to the arena just seems silly. RT Metro is getting a couple of thousand extra passengers on event nights during this initial push, but that's about a 5% bump at best--our light rail system gets 45,000 boardings a day.
And of course there's a large number of people visiting downtown because of the arena now--I'm just not convinced that those visitors will have a dramatic effect on the downtown landscape over the long term, simply because the spending power of a resident is so much greater than the spending power of a visitor. And the level of effort necessary to coax the suburban visitor, who seem to hate and fear downtowns, seems like a wasted effort, because in the process of making downtowns as suburban as possible, we simultaneously destroy that which makes them most appealing for people who like cities--many of whom already live downtown! And when central city residents complain about exactly that loss of existing urban culture, we get called "cowpolks" and told to move to Galt. I know that's WizardOfWhatever, not you, but he appears to not know much about major cities or the people who live there, because if he claims that residents of San Francisco, Los Angeles or other larger cities never complain about new development, he obviously knows nothing about them.
I walked by Malt & Mash and El Rey earlier this week, once about lunchtime and then again at a bit after 5 PM. I think there was one person in each restaurant. We'll see how long they last in the long run. Across the street is the 700 block of K Street, which is going to be a mid-rise apartment building, not a high-rise, and rather than just retaining the facades, they're keeping the front 90 feet of the buildings, which in a couple of cases is the whole building, but because they were vacant for several years while working through the lawsuit against the state in the wake of dissolution of redevelopment agencies, the roofs had failed and they had to strip out a lot more material. You might be thinking of one of the other four proposals for that lot that didn't get chosen because it was a lot more expensive--and a good thing too, because it never would have gotten off the ground. The housing will be low/moderate income, which is great news; but it was approved a couple of years before the arena.
Wanted to walk by the central plaza but apparently when events are happening you have to have a ticket to the event to walk down that part of K Street now.
Walms by a nightlife spot when at 5 during the week and proclaims it empty.
Dude that block is a nighife district now. Go by there at night during the week end.
This fantasy of yours that downtown Sac was humming along fine is simply not based on reality. The area was a run down sketchy area. And people started investing *after* the arena deal was sealed.
If stung out bums is your idea of urban culture, build a time machine and go to NYC circa 1979.
Burg's interpretations of what I said or what I meant is exactly why "History" is inherently very much subjective, biased and flawed. Regarding history -- Even in the present we may not get it right in what actually happened or what someone meant. Then you had 20, 30, 100 years and you can see how History should always be read very critically and often it is written with a bias that no matter how hard the author pretends he is not biased or subjective; he is, its human nature we can't get around that.
When I said Sacramento was a city of gardeners I meant its residents who have gardens in their back and front yards, which is very likely more than the national average for larger cities. When I mentioned farmers I meant primarily the trade that goes with the Agriculture business.
A classic example: you take 10 people in a circle, first person tells a short story with facts and details to the second person in the circle, and the second person tells it to the third person in the circle and so and so on until you get to the 10th person. Very very often the story the 10th person restates is completely different than what the first person originally said. If the story is similar by the time it reaches the 10th person, it often lacks important facts or details or those facts and details were distorted into something else, then you add bias to the equation and the product often is basically the author's own bias of history.
The author(historian) may be an excellent writer and a great story teller and so it is goes we all believe "history" as it was told by the few who make history their profession.
Burg talks about the Arena and trys to make a connection to Sacramento's developments of the past which is fine but keep in mind that his interpretations of the outcomes of Sacramento's past developments can be interpreted differently.
I am NOT saying don't read history books. I am saying keep in mind the inherent subjective biased and flawed nature of the business of interpreting the past. If you are interested in the history of Sacramento or this or that or whatever by all means read the history because there may be limited resources on the subject.
This is by NO means an attack on Burg, we should all keep in mind we all interpret things differently and we all have a bias no matter how hard we pretend we don't.
I encourage people to read about the history of Sacramento, and do your own research, read the resources out there as much as you can.
It is that mischaracterization of the Sacramento workforce that seems so ridiculous--a highly educated, professional white-collar workforce, but they're considered unacceptable because they work for the government. Sure, it's nice to have a more diversified economy, but treating the largest sector of existing workforce like they have the plague, or failing to acknowledge them at all, might explain why folks like UrbanRenter above are a bit less than enthusiastic about the arena--especially if the resulting vibrant excitement means they're being priced out of the central city (where they can walk or bike to work) and into the suburbs where they will be more likely to drive because most of the suburbs don't have decent transit.
I agree with this except your interpretation that the Arena is causing rent increases. Just as you cannot give credit to the Arena for the re-population and some of the limited new development that started before the Arena, you can not blame the Arena for rent increases......it was already happening.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wburg
We agree that Sacramento was never a cow-town, but I don't find your explanations compelling. You say you like Sacramento as it is, but seem hell-bent on changing the people, the businesses, the buildings, even the trees, because the current ones are somehow unacceptable. Population in the central city is and has been on the upswing, before the arena was approved and in parts of the grid far enough from the arena where even real estate agents' spiel about proximity to the arena just seems silly. RT Metro is getting a couple of thousand extra passengers on event nights during this initial push, but that's about a 5% bump at best--our light rail system gets 45,000 boardings a day.
Now this is complete distortion of what I said, and complete biased interpretation of what I've been saying.
I am not "hell-bent" on changing the people, the businesses, the buildings etc. I am all for keeping those that live in the central city there by offering affordable housing but I am also in favor of building more market rate housing so you have more upper income folks living there as well.
I have always been in favor of preserving historic structures and/or keeping at least part of the historic structure even it costs a lot more but you have to be more reasonable, mindful and open to the needs of the market and the risks private developers take. And to never forget the source of all that tax-payer money that is used for subsidized housing. The source of government money is the private sector providing business, industry, and jobs that is the backbone of government money. If the private sector fails the source of all the government handouts will diminish.
Where on earth do you think I don't like trees, especially the trees in the grid? I am a huge fan and proponent of Sacramento's trees. I am constantly talking about how precious those trees are to Sacramento's identity and well-being overall.
Just boggles my mind how anyone can be against this new arena.
Just boggles my mind how people assume anyone who fails to be suitably cheerful about the arena, or happens to mention any down sides to the arena and associated gentrification-type mayhem, is assumed to be "against" it.
If stung out bums is your idea of urban culture, build a time machine and go to NYC circa 1979.
Heck, that would be pretty fun! Just in time for "no wave" postpunk bands at CBGB's and Max's Kansas City watching the Talking Heads, Television, Patti Smith, the Lower East Side art scene alive with underground bands, transgressive cinema by Richard Kern and Nick Zedd, outsider art and crazy nightlife, hanging out with James Chance, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lydia Lunch, Cookie Mueller, and so on. Yes, I think that would be a great place to visit, if a bit scruffy:
In Sacramento, our own similar era was a few years later, the mid-1980s, and of course a lot less dangerous than 1970s New York.
So therein lies the disconnect. WizardOfRadical looks at 1970s New York and the culture it engendered as a bunch of "strung out bums" without value or meaning, so of course when he looks at Sacramento and sees the same sort of people doing the same sort of things, he also fails to see the value of those people or places, and wants to replace them with a sort of sanitized, sterilized, and pre-packaged "big city" experience that is like the experience one gets at a suburban mall, just with tall buildings. That sort of experience is a big yawn, in my opinion. I like my cities with grit.
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