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Friday, February 10, 2012
The New York Times gets Sactown right
by David Watts Barton, published on October 30, 2009 at 1:04 PM
Storyline: Life in the Grid
Longtime Sacramentans are accustomed to our city being misrepresented in the media - we get attention for legislative gridlock, under-performing teams, homeless tent cities, the foreclosure crisis and the latest, our chart-topping rate of drunk driving. Oh, and Dorothea Puente.
We're so insecure about how we're perceived that we have a well-established civic inferiority complex.
But we're a pretty good time, really. Beautiful, interesting, comfortable, entertaining, sporty, unpretentious - if you tell the truth about our city, it sounds like a made-up personal ad. But it's true!
So, it's gratifying to have Sactown portrayed so accurately today, in no less a place that the New York Times. The Times regularly features a city or place in its "36 Hours in..." feature, which runs in its Sunday Travel section.
In the chronological feature, which suggests a step-by-step weekend here from Friday at 4 p.m. into Sunday afternoon, author Beth Greenfield takes a virtual visitor from the Capitol (with the inevitable lede about how dysfunctional it is) to Ella for dinner, the B Street Theatre for a play and Harlow's for a nightcap. Saturday she throws in everything from the Tower Cafe and Old Sacramento to Second Saturday to dancing at Faces. Sunday she forgets about eating, but features a visit to the farmers' market and a ride on the American River bike trail.
In all, a very appealing portrait of a very appealing city. Ours.
Kudos to New Yorker Greenfield for getting it right. Take a look and let us know how you think she did - and what she might have missed. The story won't be published until Sunday's Times Travel section, but you can get a sneak peek online now:
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Having lived in New York, and still maintaining a home in San Francisco, I've got to say that my native Sacramento's principal charms lay in the magnificence of its tree canopy, its proximity to great fresh food, and its affordability...Now, if we could just import some of the great architecture of the world to reside here, we could earn that 'world class' brass ring *some* are so desirous of...
I also agree, "But we're a pretty good time, really. Beautiful, interesting, comfortable, entertaining, sporty, unpretentious - if you tell the truth about our city, it sounds like a made-up personal ad. But it's true!".
Sometimes I rest in the unsettlling because it's a dirty job but somebody has to..... But their is really much good in Saramento and through the pain some of us suffer we do really have a good time, we do see the beauty within Sacramento- and their is much beauty. Thank you so very much for reminding me --through this article- to look for the beauty.