What are the pros and cons of living in Sacramento? (Vallejo: real estate, rent)

[robertpolyglot]

PROS:
It's close to everything. Did I mention it's close to everything?

CONS:
a big slice of a mid-Kansas cow town thrown into the middle of California (but with better weather) and a ton of bureaucrats walking around with their chests puffed out in the city's core

[NorCal Dude]

Originally Posted by sacramento916

Yeah, but Sacramento's metro pop is only 2.3 million. Chicago's is like 9 million. And SF Bay area is about 6 million. It's comparing apples to oranges. Chicago's inner ring suburbs probably have more people than the entire Sac region.

That's not really true at all. Most of Chicago's population is in the city and the middle and outer ring burbs. The inner ring burbs hold a much lower portion of the population. But the density and vibrancy is roughly the same, as central sac IMO.

The changes from the grid to greater suburban sac are subtle at best. To the point that parts of the grid are actually suburban (albeit street car era). The core is kind of like a smaller, poorer, San Diego lite with out the gaslamp or a downtown sports venue.

That's why I don't get the midtown hostility. It used to be people in the Sac region stuck together. But with all the bay transplants moving there it seems that the area has gotten a bit too provincial. S' too bad, that used to be the cool thing about midtown, the laid back vibe. But perhaps that is all moving to the Alahambra triangle and North Oak Park....

[wburg]

Oak Park is the next Midtown, I've been saying it for years--the hip kids looking for cheap rent and the urban pioneers are already moving that way. The Alhambra Triangle is a teensy sliver of a neighborhood, but it's right on the hinge between Midtown, Oak Park and East Sac without quite being a part of either one. There are new lofts going up on Broadway and apparently Primo's Swiss Club (a spectacularly divey dive bar) is going to reopen as a "Naked Lounge" coffee shop soon.

As far as Midtown's laid-back vibe, it's still pretty laid-back--as you saw on Sunday night at Chicago Fire. Sundays are still very much a take-it-easy, good day to go biking kind of day in Midtown, the weekends are pretty bouncy and even weekdays are quite active, day and night. If you compare Midtown now to how it looked 20 years ago, it was more like how Oak Park looks now--some signs of life, but still considered unsafe by most sensible folks.

[shelato]

20 years ago was 1992. What gangs still considered Midtown there home turf in 1992? What streets in midtown still had an active stroll of streetwalkers in 1992? It can take a long time to turn around a neighborhood and the further it has fallen the more difficult it is to turn it around.

In 1992, Joe Serna won his first election as Mayor. During that campaign he was promoting Del Paso Blvd as the Uptown Arts and Entertainment district. If anything Del Paso Blvd in 1992 was further ahead then than Oak Park is today. But 20 years later Del Paso Blvd is probably worse today than when Joe Serna was elected Mayor in 1992.

[wburg]

Originally Posted by shelato

20 years ago was 1992. What gangs still considered Midtown there home turf in 1992? What streets in midtown still had an active stroll of streetwalkers in 1992? It can take a long time to turn around a neighborhood and the further it has fallen the more difficult it is to turn it around.

In 1992, Joe Serna won his first election as Mayor. During that campaign he was promoting Del Paso Blvd as the Uptown Arts and Entertainment district. If anything Del Paso Blvd in 1992 was further ahead then than Oak Park is today. But 20 years later Del Paso Blvd is probably worse today than when Joe Serna was elected Mayor in 1992.

In the early 90s there were still a lot of nazi skins in the central city (nobody called it Midtown then) and while they weren't that big on drive-bys, more than one house got firebombed in the clashes between nazis and SHARPs (the SHARPs won and pushed the nazis out into the suburbs.)

There was still a lot of obvious street drug dealing, including places like Boulevard Park and New Era Park, and there were some notorious meth labs in Newton Booth and Winn Park. The old firehouse on 21st Street, home of Mulvaney's Building & Loan, was abandoned and used as a "shooting gallery" by local junkies. Southside Park wasn't really "Hooker Hollow" anymore (the neighbors had pushed the prostitutes away in the late eighties) but the park itself was pretty dangerous at night--you went there to score drugs or to get robbed.

The prostitutes' stroll was on J Street between 16th and 19th (close to the motels on 15th/16th and centered around Georgian's Casino, where the Starbuck's on 19th and J now sits. Some of my female friends used to get "cruised" by johns in passing cars pretty frequently on their way to Java City or Capitol Garage--they figured any unescorted female was for rent. And the stretch of 20th Street between K and L was the designated zone for male prostitutes.

Not that the central city was all that miserable in 1992, it was already on the upswing, primarily due to activists in the community who kept bringing the city's attention back to downtown, a part of the city they had pretty much ignored for the preceding 20 years.

The big difference between the city's efforts to put an "arts district" into Del Paso and what is happening in Oak Park (and what happened in the central city already) is that the Del Paso efforts were top-down, from city government, not driven by the community or the market. Cities generally can't select what neighborhoods they want to "gentrify" because it's an economic process that comes from the bottom up, not the top down.

The Midtown and Oak Park efforts came from people who either already lived in the neighborhood or moved there of their own accord. They lived there because it was cheap, the houses were pretty and they could get around on foot or bikes more easily. Before long, people started locating businesses there to serve an emerging market--cafes, galleries, restaurants, boutiques. And before long more folks pay attention. Sure, sometimes city-backed initiatives and projects can help this process, or at least not hinder it too much--but generally, the approach where a city picks out a designated "hip zone" it doesn't work, because city governments are terrible at being hip.

Del Paso's efforts were not well-received because they assumed that the folks already living in the neighborhood were a temporary inconvenience, to be squeezed out of the way and certainly not to be included in their vision of high-end restaurants and arts venues. It wasn't even really supposed to be a neighborhood people lived in--like that other failed experiment, the K Street mall, it was supposed to be visited by people from the suburbs who would drive home. Another advantage that Midtown and Oak Park have is that they are residential neighborhoods with commercial components--people already live there. Visitors are an essential part of the combination--but a neighborhood can't thrive if nobody lives there, and if the people who DO live there are excluded and unwelcome, they will end up pretty resentful--which makes them hostile to these unwanted interlopers.

[shelato]

And you are claiming that this was still happening in 1992 and not 1978?

[wburg]

Yes. I think 1992 was the year that New Helvetia went into the old firehouse on 19th, displacing the heroin addicts, but the stuff I'm talking about all happened in the early 1990s.

[sacbound2013]

What are some good neighborhoods for families, say middle class range that don't require an hour long or more drive to many places of employment? We like having the basics nearby like grocery stores and places to eat, but it is not required they have to be at every intersection. We also like a decent sized backtard, by Sac. standards. Basically, the dream I guess?!

Thansk everyone!

[Curmudgeon]

Pros: Has everything you need, most of what you might want and near enough to the rest. But for a few really hot weeks in Summer and a few cold, rainy and windy week in Winter the weather is pretty good.

Cons: It's in, taxed and governed by California. Unless the delta breezes are blowing the air is really bad.

[tijlover]

I just returned from 2 days in Sacramento, no car, just rode every mile of the light rail system, and one long bus trip on 42A to Davis/Woodland/Airport. So my comments will stem from my limited travels, and my stay around E Street/16th. This was a "shopping trip" for me, looking for a city to retire in, and wherever I retire I will be car-less! So that's also what I walk looking at, how easy to live there without a car.

Midtown? Was I near that area, on the rails?

I'm more than aware of the temps in Sacramento year round, yes it can get near freezing or below in winter, but the summers, yes, it can hit 100, but I see it falls way down to the 60's at night! Doesn't do that here in Las Vegas!

Being there's fast food chains are on nearly every corner here in Las Vegas, I was pleasantly surprised to NOT see them in abdundance there. I walked all over downtown, and never ran into a McDonald's! Or Burger King! Even riding the rails, they were hard to find, except out toward Folsom!

I was on Trulia.com tonite, doing some investigating. My townhouse is paid for here in "Detroit of the West", so whatever proceeds I get here will have to get me a retirement place up there, we're talking less than $60k. And in that price range, outside mobile homes (not interested!) it's slim pickin's for townhouses/condo's. But when I check Walkability scores & Amenities I'm a bit shocked at the long distances I'd have to go just to grocery shop, and with no car, dragging it all back to my house. I'm spoiled rotten, in that respect, in my current east central neighborhood, with 5 major grocery chains within 5 blocks of my house! All can be easily accessed even by bicycle!

One of the more blissful aspects of Las Vegas is the absence of mosquito's, gnats, flies and even termites.
With that river running thru Sacramento, and the moisture received up there, I'm guessing there'd be insect problems. No?

Yes, I can see Sacramento is more car-centric than I had expected!