Quick trip to Sacramento

I learned one thing on our short trip to Sacramento: Sacramenteros do not make eye contact.

No, that is not a fair description … let me be more precise: Sacramenteros avidly avoid eye contact as if they would crumble into a small pile of dust should they see themselves reflected in your eyes.

Red Light District

The downtown Sac employed are generally government workers ... beleaguered, furloughed, scapegoated in the endless budget battles ... and wear facial expressions that would be sobering at funerals. Sacramento’s many unemployed¹ are far beyond despair and hopelessness, sitting looking at the pavement between their feet, seemginly with minds as blank as possible, tomorrow as empty as yesterday, not panhandling, never laying down, only inactive. Slightly frightened and already wearied teenagers move slowly through the Westfield mall neither talking nor texting. The tidy streets seem withdrawn. Only entry level service staff show anything resembling enjoyment, albeit a joy distant and self-conscious.

It was hot. The streets had little traffic, few pedestrians and what stores were open closed by 4pm. Silent vaguely clumped commuters stood motionless waiting for their buses, looking like long time residents in a minor level of hell. Small knots of suits nattered down the walks and dismissed with minimal courtesy and maximum efficiency the hearty and insincere hallooos from solitary supplicating suits. Worn tourists with tired children stood bewildered at stop lights on the lightly trafficked streets waiting for something to happen. It just got hotter.

When we arrived we found all the hotel rooms between the capital and the Naked Lounge² had been assumed by a flock of congregating Methodists, so we ended up in an inexpensive “adequate value for the money” motel near Old Sacramento and on the edge of Sacramento’s small Chinatown. The motel was fine: it was quiet (except for the whistling trains that kept Cyndi awake all night); it was clean (except for the dirty corners in the tub and the bathroom and frankly every corner was dirty); it was safe (except for the bathroom wall heater that will set fire to the the room). Impressively, the tv had lots of Spanish channels, very little Fox and what I think was a community access geology channel.

Old Sac ... and New

Old Sacramento hugs the eastern bank of the Sacramento River and was basically where the city got started. Floods and fashion moved economic activity away from the river, turning Old Sacramento into a slum. About forty years ago the buildings were restored to look like they did during the Gold Rush and the area rehabilitated to be a historic tourist attraction. From my personal inspection of the historic area I determined that prospectors returning from the hills with their sacks of gold dust preferred to purchase infant t-shirts extolling the virtues of Nana (8 shops) or indulge their remaining sweet tooth with salt water taffy (7 stores and 18 flavors) or get a tattoo (5 shops). The stereotype that prospectors returned to drink and whore is completely wrong, as the alcohol prices in Old Sacramento make it impossible to get drunk even with a sackful of gold dust and the lobbyists have priced whores totally out of the reach of the individually rich.

Female Rail Wheel

The railroad museum in Old Sacramento was filled with well restored train engines, passenger cars and docents dressed as engineers and conductors. Some trains appeared feminine with brightly lipsticked wheels while others had strongly masculine steel coupling rods³. The trains were too large to photograph as a whole and as the wheels were at eye level, I decided to document the wheel variations. We enjoyed the museum.

We walked from the motel to the Capitol and passed block after block of empty store fronts to the north of the Capitol Mall and blocks and blocks of government buildings to the south. The CalPers building looked like a cross between a re-education center and a VA hospital, with disquieting greens and frosted glass walls so loved by HR departments⁴. The DOT building claimed architecture was one of their missions and while many California bridges and roads are beautifully designed, the DOT headquarters itself looks like post-Stanlist functionalism and somehow manages to make even the windows look like pre-cast concrete. The Stanford Mansion is California’s official welcoming center and it is a cute deteriorating little mansion. The nicest building housing a state office houses the state Controllers office, which seems wrong.

The capitol building itself is white, very white, with only a bit of gold leaf on the small dome atop the large dome. The Golden State has sold all its gold. The Capitol is in a very urban area surrounded by ample trees and sits next to a small, quiet, uninspired park. Even though it was built to look like the US capitol, no one would confuse the two.

While we were watching the capitol, the legislature passed a budget bill on the last day before the legislators would lose pay for not passing a timely budget bill. It was not a good bill, just one they passed to keep their paychecks and a bill the Governor vetoed⁵. Aroused news vans with their erected booms waited outside the capitol for the budget news that wasn’t really news. It was hot. The experienced reporters stayed inside their air conditioned vans and sent the junior reporters to do man-in-the-street interviews. The rare man in the street wasn’t very interested.

The next day, while the Governor’s veto caused fingers to point in all directions, we took a pleasant drive through gold country where we found a couple great used bookstores (the form of gold we prefer), an excellent Mexican inspired restaurant in Placerville and a fruit stand with wonderful cherries and lousy smoothies. Sacramento was, all in all, a little interesting and a little disappointing and could be a nice place to live if you didn’t have to work there. But it was the cherries and books that made the trip.

Want more photos?

¹ Economists say Sacramento has structural unemployment and is unlikely to experience a normal recovery. It does have the 4th highest foreclosure rate in the country and those who lost their homes regularly form tent cities in the city parks and vacant lots. The tent cites are then shut down by the government, which confiscates the homeless’ meager belongings and stored food and leaves the belongings and food to rot and mold in the lots, causing health problems for the neighbors of the lots. Meanwhile charities feed these homeless day old, nutrition free sugar based bakery products. Christian groups attempting to help are vigorously attacked by Christian groups of other denominations. Benefit concerts are given that raise enough money to promote more benefit concerts.

God Bless America.

² Disappointing me and the more life affirming Methodists, the Naked Lounge was simply an upscale coffee shop with a salacious sign.

³ The museum had wonderful exhibits but little explanation. While I wrote this, I was trying to determine the correct name for train wheels (which is in fact as correct a name as any, though “rail wheels” would be better), I came across this train technology site, which had clear, simple information. This information would have made the museum more interesting to me and probably to at least some of the kids.

⁴ It is very difficult to make green an upsetting color and hats off to the HR genius that managed it. I’m not sure but I think this shade is to dissuade people from actually visiting the Personnel Department. Frosted glass walls are a favorite because they give the illusion of openness with none of the benefits of privacy and allow for HR people to spy undetected on each other.

⁵ Bless his heart.