Dec 28, 2021
On wintery Friday nights when the town is quiet and my friends have gone home, I sometimes treat myself to harness races at Cal Expo. This ritual is not driven by a gambling passion—outside the track, I never bet on anything—but because I find the races peaceful and nostalgic.
If you grew up in Sacramento, horse racing has always been around, a low-profile piece of the sports landscape, faithfully delivering entertainment and fellowship and cold beer and hot dogs. It’s a living museum piece woven into local history.
When Leland Stanford sought photographic proof that racehorses launch themselves into the air as they gallop, he brought his experiment to Union Park, a 19th century track in Midtown. Joe DiMaggio liked to sit in Cal Expo’s dull, gray press box for State Fair thoroughbred races because nobody bothered him there.
Dec 28, 2021
Some people get frustrated when local government tells them something obvious. Not me. I find it satisfying, even comforting, to see a municipal report that validates precisely what I’ve been saying all along.
The Pocket Greenhaven Transportation Plan is one such document. The plan is a big deal, sponsored by the city to establish priorities and expenditures in traffic safety and connectivity for decades to come. The work started before the pandemic. Now it’s nearing the finish line.
Bureaucratic delays, combined with a reluctance to bring large groups together in town halls under COVID-19, slowed the project. Opportunities for public discourse were limited. But final opinions are now being solicited, leaving local City Councilmember Rick Jennings with a clear picture of community traffic priorities.
Dec 28, 2021
Now we know how Darrell Steinberg’s political story ends. The mayor doesn’t fade away to cheers from sports fans thankful for the soccer stadium he coaxed into existence. There is no stadium. He doesn’t salute a revitalized embarcadero along the Sacramento River. There is no new waterfront.
But there are 11,000 homeless people.
After years of parliamentary gamesmanship, passionate speeches, tax hikes and wasted opportunities, Steinberg will be remembered for one thing—how he took Sacramento and turned it into the capital of homelessness.
Nov 28, 2021
It’s getting tough to hold an election without someone claiming the results are rigged or crooked or somehow fixed. But there’s an easy way for Sacramento citizens to tell whether elections are less than honest. Keep an eye on the athletes.
In our modern culture, no collection of humans knows more about cheating than athletes. Name a sport and you’ll find a cheater.
If county and state election officials start to hire athletes—or former athletes or coaches or trainers—and put them anywhere near the polling, counting and certification process, look out. Where athletes go, cheating follows.
Nov 28, 2021
People in Pocket are becoming shy. I don’t know the reason for this, but I know it’s happening because part of my job is to ask people to pose for photographs. About half say no.
It wasn’t always this way. When I started writing for Inside eight years ago, my success rate with asking people to pose was close to 90 percent. I would interview someone for a story and explain that our photographer would call for a quick photo session. People were generally agreeable. The published photos were always flattering.
Nov 28, 2021
The sights on lower X Street did it for me. Coming off the freeway, I saw wrecked cars and busted campers and people standing around, a pitiful procession pinned against the gutter like a forlorn carnival that took a wrong turn. Somebody stuck two orange traffic cones partway into the street, warning motorists to steer clear.
Lower X Street, home to warehouses and body shops, never delivered a welcoming hug to visitors who enter the city from river’s edge. Now it arrives with a punch in the face.
