Monday, May 10, 2010
After one week as a fledgling Sacramentan — a Sacling, if you will — I’ve observed the following about our new environs:
Recycling. Pay attention, townships and cities of America, and Sacramento will demonstrate to you how it’s done as a public utility. This city recycles virtually everything, which is to say that the photocopied list our new neighbors recently shared with us is comprehensively specific about the items that can be recycled and refreshingly brief regarding the items that can’t be. We have two large, wheeled receptacles parked in our driveway here, and it pleases me to inform you that our blue recycling receptacle is noticeably larger than our green trash receptacle.
In other disposal news…
Yard Waste. They pile it in the street here. But neatly. Whenever a resident’s lawn, garden or landscape gets a once-over, the resulting green waste — grass clippings, pruned twigs, gathered leaves, what-have-you — is piled curbside in front of one’s house, right there in the street. Eventually a city truck with a backhoe comes along, scoops it up and drives it away.
Here’s the really amazing thing about this practice, though: None of it ever seems to blow away. It’s as if Sacramentans (or their hired landscaping crews, at least) have collectively mastered the art — comparable, in its own way, to origami — of forming a pile impervious to wind and other disturbances. We’ve seen people drive over mounds of yard waste and barely scatter so much as a handful of grass clippings.
Basketball Goals. I’ve spotted a few scattered, traditional examples of goals standing in driveways and backboards mounted over garage doors, but the overwhelming majority of basketball goals here stand at curbside and face the street. Most of these are wheeled, movable goals left standing at the curb, but in one instance I saw a goal whose pole was cemented into the sidewalk pavement.
While I could find no provision in the Sacramento City Code that specifically addresses the use, placement and permanence/portability of basketball goals, I like to think that an enlightened approach to their widespread acceptance has been encouraged during the administration of our first-term mayor, Kevin Johnson — former three-time All-Star guard of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns (también conocido como Los Suns de Phoenix).1
Public Transportation. Ever since I rode the El in Chicago and the subway in New York, I’ve been a fan of public transportation. Sacramento boasts a light-rail system whose natural hub is the city center and Capitol area, as well as an extensive bus system. I wasn’t crazy about buses when I lived in L.A., and I generally don’t have the patience to travel at their pace, but because the No. 34 bus stops right next to our house, I’m likely to climb aboard someday and see where it takes me.
That said, who needs public transportation when you’ve got…
Bike Lanes. Do this:
- Google “Sacramento, CA” and pull up the satellite map of the city.
- Under the tab labeled “More” in the upper right corner of the map, select “Bicycling.”
- Watch the grid light up in green like you’ve just entered the Matrix.
Adriane last week dropped off her old Schwinn for a much-needed overhaul at our neighborhood bike emporium, and I’ll be taking in my Trek for a tune-up as well. In addition to taking advantage of the tens of miles of bike trails along the city’s riverfront, we’re looking forward to exploring the city at large on two wheels.
On the other hand…
Walkability. As jazzed as I was to discover how bikeable the city is, I soon realized that there are times when it’s not even worth the trouble of dragging one’s bike out of the garage. To wit: We live less than a mile from both my neighborhood coffeehouse and the barber shop that, as of this writing, is my go-to.2
Additionally, for all the emerging models, theories and trends that city planners, zoners and architects bandy about for creating safe, pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods, it’s worth noting that Sacramento has managed to do so very effectively without dropping those damned traffic roundabouts in every single intersection.3
My sense is that even the more commercial neighborhoods feel so characteristically residential that drivers are naturally encouraged to drive slower in the first place, eliminating the necessity for unwieldy concrete obstacles while acknowledging neighborhoods that already are both pedestrian- and driver-friendly.
Which brings us to…
Bumps, Humps, Lumps and Undulations. No, this paragraph will not cover the city’s, ahem, gentlemen’s clubs, but rather traffic stoppers of a different kind. Apparently not satisfied with only one classification of traffic-control device, Sacramento’s residential neighborhoods boast no fewer than four street-spanning impediments to speeding. By my reckoning, they break down as follows:
- Speed bumps are the narrow ones we’re all familiar with from streets and parking lots;
- speed humps are as much as three times as broad as speed bumps and peak a bit higher;
- speed lumps are perforated speed humps, if you will — a hump broken into three distinct, smaller humps, divided by street-level grooves (which I assume are there so cyclists need neither slow down nor go all Knievel just to cruise down a residential street); and
- undulations, as nearly as I can figure, are merely a fancy, polysyllabic way of saying “Any of the above may exist in this neighborhood, so slow the hell down because children might be playing in the street.” Or legalese to that effect.
However, Sunday we toured West Sacramento, the area, not far from Adriane’s office, where she first entertained housing options for us. And while it’s not without its charms, it also possesses a certain skeeviness factor that was enough to put Adriane on alert and send her looking elsewhere for habitation. Still, it isn’t so crime-infested and pestilence-ridden as to deter us from exploring Discovery Park or attending River Cats games at Raley Field.
Our neighborhood, meanwhile, more suburban in feel and in fact than I generally prefer, also offers close access to the goods and services we need to get us through our days without resorting to chain restaurants and Wal-Marts as our sole means of survival. It’s possible to support (and be supported by) local businesses and mom-and-pops (groceries, pharmacies, bakeries, cafés, etc.) without going too far out of one’s way.
Farther downtown, naturally, there is even more activity and a stronger commercial presence, but those are exactly the sort of neighborhoods I would have sought out had I landed in Sacramento as a younger, single man: vibrant, colorful, packed with restaurants and shops, yet still inviting, offering at least the illusion of privacy and seclusion in well-tended houses and apartment buildings. Even the urban core here doesn’t feel threateningly urban; there is a homogeneity here that blurs the lines where you would most expect to find them demarcated.
… And that’s just the first week. More observations will follow as we immerse ourselves in our new surroundings, and sooner or later I have to find a job, so, you know, there’s that. Adventure is out there, as Ellie reminds us. Keep watching this space.
1 Certainly it’s by no means a qualification for the job, but did your city’s chief executive dunk on Hakeem Olajuwon in the 1994 Western Conference semis? I’m just sayin’.
2 After a strong, if imperfect, debut performance — all clippers, no scissors; a little too close, too high up the sides; an assured, if somewhat indelicate, hand with the straight razor (I seriously thought for a moment that he was going to go all Sweeney Todd or Mr. Blonde on me) — the barber as yet known only as “Barber” at the barber shop identified only as “Barber Shop” will be granted two more opportunities to cement his status as my headcutter of choice.
3 I have encountered a few roundabouts in midtown Sacramento, mostly around the busy J Street corridor and its neighboring streets as they transition from more commercial to strictly residential zoning and back again, but the roundabouts are few, far between, and are not such impediments that their judicious placement doesn’t seem justified. Compare these to the roundabouts in my erstwhile neighborhood in downtown Overland Park, where instead of clearly designating the right-of-way, the city placed ungoverned roundabouts in every other intersection and effectively gave the right-of-way to everyone.
