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 Facts
Things Sacramento:
$Revision: 1.2 $
- A number of actors have come from here, including:
- cowboy actor and nice-seeming guy Sam Elliot.
- those adorable Hanks kids went to school here, though Tom's the better known one.
- Carlos Alazraqui, perhaps best known as Deputy Garcia on Reno 911, though also secretly the voice of the Taco Bell Chihuahua.
- Pat Morita was born in Isleton, not far from here and worked here at his family's restaurant.
- Also, though we don't like to take credit for it much anymore, Molly Ringwald is from here too.
- Timothy Busfield, most notably of "Thirtysomething" isn't from here, but lives here now.
- Some nonacting famous people from Sacramento: 90s cop punching bag Rodney King was born here. Late San Francisco columnist Herb Caen grew up here and penned a wonderful nostalgic beat about summer in Sacramento when the streets actually melted (they still do, Herb). Black intellectual Cornel West graduated from JFK High.
- Michael Pulley wrote an awesome poem called "Sacramento".
- There are a dozen or so songs about Sacramento, most of them quite bad.
- Sacramento produces a number of websites that are both wonderful and bad. Qualifying neither, my two favorite sites in town are Rob Cockerham's Cockeyed dot com and Dave Smith's collection of stuff No Kill I. Cockerham broke the local sound barrier as far as internet stunts go by promoting "How Much Is Inside" to the NPR level in 2004 or something. Cockerham's occasional pranks can be found about town.
Smith is the bone-daddy of local mayhem here in town, being the godfather of Peepoff and being the No Kill I stunt clown or something. Both have won local awards (Cockerham: Dotties, Smith: Whatever that rigged thing the News And Review had) for web content if perhaps not design.
- The hottest growing areas in and around Sacramento are:
| Where |
Used to Be |
| Natomas |
Ag. Land, rice, corn and stuff |
| Folsom |
Lava-strewn hillside, now lava-strewn hillside with houses built over lava cap |
| Davis |
Ag. Land, pesticide and stuff (mmm--bottled water) |
| Granite Bay |
Hillside |
| Elk Grove |
Cows |
- It gets very hot here in the summertime. When you think the price of that house sounds nice, think about the fact that at times it can be as hot as 114 degrees for a week. The locals have learned to cope, but expect the occasional 'bout of heat sickness a time or two if you come.
- Sacramento has been the home to a disproportionate number of serial killers and terrorists. The UNABOMER, The SLA, Dorthea Puente, Scott Peterson (Modesto, but close enough to smell), and members of the Manson Family (S. Fromme) all lived here one time or another. Sacramento has also had a number of shootouts and family killings that are notable as well as a few local-area serial killers: Soltys, Ferguson (overshadowed by 9/11), the Thrill Killer, and the Goodguys Shootout rank among the finest.
Ian Golder's website as a whole should be up there on the list of excellent sites Sacramento, but its content is a bit older at this time.
- There seemed to be a lot more bands than there used to be, but probably because I am getting old and they shut down all the old people going-to places.
- There are a bunch of parks here and everybody has their favorite. I like Goethe, but only because you can get highly lost there. Lots of people enjoy our largest park, William Land. It stretches for several city blocks and features two kids amusement parks, a small zoo, an amphitheater and several bodies of water. My second favorite park is McKinley park which is much more urban, only a few city blocks long and steeped in Sacramento history. Despite its diminutive size it has some of the top-ranked basketball in town, tennis courts, a children's playground, a swimming pool and even a library.
- Many people have dogs and their favorite place to go is the river or the parks. Unfortunately unleashed dogs are against the law, so everybody has their favorite secret spot for running the dogs unmolested. There are a number of fine dog parks and "secret" locations along the river somewhat outside the view of the law.
- The lawlessness of the river works both ways. While infrequent, people have been mugged along the American River Parkway, the longest and most publicly traveled section of Sacramento waterway.
- Sacramento sits at the junction of two rivers, the American and the Sacramento. They've built a park at the confluence called "Discovery Park." One of the things you discover there is that being in the junction of two rivers, it is often flooded.
- Sacramento has a number of levees throughout town to prevent it from going underwater though much of the city exists in what planners call "the 100 year flood plain." This means that your house insurance is tripled to cover the eventuality of dam failure. This damn failure is expected once every hundred years so the Army Corps of Engineers comes by about once a decade to seriously improve the levee system.
Much of midtown Sacramento, especially the northern part, is built above flood level as most of the homes predate the levies. In modern years most of the underage has been taken up by add-ons. Come the apocalypse, anyone living in a midtown add-on will be wishing they'd been better friends to their neighbors.
Most of these add-ons tend to be janky.
- There are many nice, free concerts to be found in Sacramento, especially in the summertime. Venues only run as long as they don't get so popular the crowds don't piss off the neighbors, so many of the free shows in town also tend to be quiet. Flyers are usually set up in the vicinity of the event.
- Old Town Sacramento used to be a real dump back in the days before the freeway ran through it. Now its only a tourist dump.
- Tourists generally laugh at us for our backwoods ways but at the same time come here in the ungodliest costumes imaginable. And, like, they came here so what does that say about them?
- Sacramento has two nice colleges: Sacramento State and Sacramento City and one not so nice one: ARC. Davis is across the Causeway and every year beats us in football.
- Punk Rock veterans 7 Seconds lived here through most of their career and continue through to the present day: front-man Kevin Seconds
runs ran (Ed note: too bad, Kevin) the "True Love Coffeehouse" in midtown with his wife Alison. They seem like nice people. Also from Sacramento are the Deftones, The Cramps, and while they may obfuscate the fact mightily, the group Cake. Tesla is also from this town, but we don't claim them very often.
- While a fairly small radio market, our fair city has launched the careers of both Don Imus and Rush Limbaugh.
- Sacramento does not have very many fine venues for listening to music which is why most acts leave town at some point. The Memorial Theater downtown is a wonderful venue, though its multi-purpose oldschool design (featured in "Almost Famous") is not entirely suited to seeing bands. Out in the tulies we have our only amphitheater who'se name changes every few years. Right now I think it's the "Sleep Train Amphitheater" but is commonly known as "Sacramento Valley Amphitheater" or "Shorline: Cattle Country". If its loud, it'll be at the amphitheater until such time as it gets surrounded by some community and then they'll have to move TWO hours outside of Sacramento. You used to be able to see shows at Cal Expo, but no longer -- the neighbors complained too much.
- Cal Expo is the home to the California State Fair,home and garden shows, gun and doll shows, electronic swap meets, etc. It is large and covered mostly in asphalt. It is hot. It also has a water park -- that is humid. The State Fair runs the two weeks preceding Labor Day weekend. Early evening during midweek is the best time you can go.
- Sacramento has two professional sport teams that anybody knows about: NBA's Sacramento Kings and the Pacific League minor league baseball team the Sacramento Rivercats. We've also had indoor soccer (The Knights), roller hockey (The River Rats), World League Football team The Surge and CFL expansion gone-elsewhere the Gold Rush. The Surge is notable as the experiment that financed a major upgrade of CSUS's Hornet Stadium as well as the first career of wrestling superstar Goldberg.
- The Capital garners a lot of protests, but few people actually take notice until it shuts down traffic. The last major action down at the capitol was 2003's GMO conference protest rally which cost the city US$2 million to police with 2,000 officers. If you are coming from some other part of the state to try to do some act of civil disobedience down at the captiol, save yourself a trip: nobody cares, especially if you are sponsored by a local radio station. Especially if you are sponsored by a local radio station.
- There are very few independent stations in town, most of them being bought up by the massive entity we know and love as Clear Channel. KVMR in Grass Valley, Capitol Public Radio and KDVS are stand-out examples, as is that nice high-school station also running at 91.5.
- Sacramento doesn't really have enough of any one kind of people to make an exclusive group. Despite your personal background, politics or indebtedness you will be welcome most places.
- Ed Hunter has been researching an interesting story about an arsonist who popped up in the seedier parts of Sacramento in an area that is still kind of seedy -- that which wasn't buried under I5.
- The freeways in Sacramento were built up after Sacramento was a fairly large town. Entire neighborhoods were relocated out of its path when it was possible to do so -- North McKinley is a relocated neidghborhood. The freeway also segregated the ailing Old Town area from the rest of the town. Signs of its onetime decay can still be seen on the edifices of the few remaining skeletons left down there.
- Did I mention the trees? The reason we've got so many is unknown. Though simple protection from the shade and man's hand shapes the land pretty well downtown, the shallow water table feeds many massive trees throughout the region, some even buried in concrete.
- The lights from the Esquire building can be seen from as far away as Davis. The Esquire theater, once one of Sacramento's regal movie houses, fell into service as a dirty-movie house with such names as "The Pink Pussycat" before it turned up as officespace before its eventual renovation into the IMAX-based monstrosity that it is today.
- The Sheraton downtown used to be something else and was carefully gutted before the modern building was built.
- Longtime local favorite record shop The Beat is located where Newbert's Hardware used to be, an even more venerated local's haunt.
- Sacramento one had its own Denny's competitor in Eppies -- they've all but died out now.
- You can occasionally see seals in the Sacramento river.
- Locals call the big, unmissable pyramidy thing in West Sacramento "the ziggaraut".
- Local media sucks here. Cable and local delivery of the Chronicle save us,
- Keith Richards received a nasty electrical shock from poorly grounded PA equipment at the memorial auditorium. Locals always like to say he was "nearly electrocuted".
- Some of the town's best Victorians can be found in the worst neighborhood: Alkali Flats. This area also was home to Sacramento's most notorious serial murderer, Dorthea Puente, an aged bording-house owner who killed her equally elderly borders for their pension checks. She buried them in her garden after poisioning them.
- Every ten years or so, the California State Railroad Museum hosts a Railfair. These large extravaganzas bring still-operating museumpieces and modern train prototypes from all corners of the US for a week-long celebration of all things train. The last two events were held in 1990 and 1999, the latter allegedly a year early because of Y2K concerns.
- Sacramento is the home to very few famous acts. Everybody gets famous and leaves except for Timothy Busfield who inexplicably came back. Ed's note: though, given his career, perhaps this is not quite so inexplicable.
- We have a building in town everyone calls the "Ban Roll On Building" after the once-popular deoderant shaped the same way.
- We have a building some in town call The Darth Vader Buliding.
- President Ford was nearly assasinated here by Squeaky Fromme, a onetime
member of the Manson Family.
- The UNABOMER, Ted Kazynski both spent time here and sent packages here.
- Bill Pollock's former website, Drink More, Think Less was the best in town, though he never did win a webbie or whatever the hell they called them.
- Oak Park used to be a fashionable address.
- The State Fair used to be located near Broadway.
- The Target at 10th and Broadway sits on the site of a former Gemco and the site of a former Pacific League Baseball Stadium.
- The Safeway on Alhambra sits at the site of one of the most glorious moviehouses anywhere to fall under the wrecking ball. All that remains is a fountain tucked into one wall near the parking lot.
- Sutter's Fort is a reconstruction.
- There is a sister ship to the Delta King, the Delta Queen. It runs the Missisippi as the flagship of a paddle wheel cruise line.
- The Scottish Rite temple is a Masonic lodge.
- Nobody knows what the hell the Turnvurien is, but we do have an active chapter of the International Order of Redmen.
- There used to be a couple of VFW and American Legion halls here, but they've all been turned into swank nightspots.
- When the Folsom dam burst a floodgate they used a railroad flatcar to fill the hole.
- Bill Grhahm Presents used to run concerts out of Cal Expo until they received noise complaints. They now do shows out towards Marysville in a custom-built amphitheater.
- Sacramento TV news anchors Dave and Lois Hart are married -- to each other.
- On a clear day you can see all the way to the Sierras.
- Sacramento gets fog so thick they shut down commercial airports.
- The region is a major producer of tomatoes. Because of truck overloading you will see them piled along various portions of I5/I80 in the summertime.
- The State Net building on 21st and K streets used to be the local SMUD office and a one-time furniture store.
- Sacramento used to have a neighborhood with a strong lesbian presence who nicknamed the area "Lavender Heights".
- Sacramento currently has a gay-oriented district encompassing about six square blocks. Square, but not unfabulous.
- This content is ALSO content Bill Pollock.
- Sacramento has its very own kind of fish: a steelhead.
- The marine layer sometimes works its way into town, but more often the Pacific makes its cooling nature felt by way of the Delta Breeze.
- It gets so hot here that asphalt gets soft and the road occasionally buckles.
- Flight Of The Old Dog author Dale Brown lives here.
- Did I hear a rumor that The Cramps were from here or lived here once?
- There is a funky brownstone church down by the conventionc center.
- Sacramento used to be a fairly big test market, the last stage a product went through before it was released to the country at large. During our heydey we were responsible for such perverse products as Zimas and Crystal Pepsi getting a place on the nation's table.
- Camp Pollock is named after my grandpa who donated the land to the Boy Scouts. Pollock Park is located in Meadowview and is named after my great-grandfater who exchanged the land to developers for a dose of cash.
- There are more Old Spaghetti Factorys here than in any other town.
- One can still find Pabst on tap here.
- The middle school on Alhambra is allegedly built on the site of an old Chinese cemetary.
- Sacramento has no Chinatown per se, but there's a cultural nexus along 4th street and some areas of midtown/Southland Park are still so Chinese that the signs are still written in pictograms.
- Big names such as Stanford and Hopkins made their money here as outfitters to the miners and later pre-industrial tycoons.
- Possums and racoons still prowl suburbia here.
- Long trains often run through midtown, shutting down traffic.
- Laker Vlade Divac's wife set up a restaurant in Old Town called "Tunnel 21" when he was a player for the Kings.
- Sacramento King Doug Christie's wife owns an upscale store in midtown.
- We used to have a great fish taco chain here in town that all became Una Mases.
- There are huge piles of river rock depoisted Folsom that are the results of pond dredging (Thanks, CA Gold Rush!)
- Todd Kelly has been running shows at The Fox and Goose on Wednesday nights for a long time.
- Spiritual Optimist Harrington King hosts odd open nights and a piano bar in the back of a converted delivery van. He mispronounces my name.
- That bridge you always see in glamor shots of Sacramento is "The Tower Bridge", connecting downtown to West Sacramento.
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