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HIGHLIGHTS FROM TEDX SACRAMENTO April 16 2010 at Hinde Auditorium, 6000 J Street Sacramento, CA 95819.

2010-04-22T06:06:17Z

April 16 marked the arrival of TEDx in Sacramento, bringing a “TED-like experience” to our area.

What is TED? TED stands for “Technology, Education, Design.” It is a small nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” Started in 1984, its purpose has spread to include an annual U.S. conference in Long Beach as well as a TEDGlobal conference in the United Kingdom, a TEDTalks online video site, an annual TED Prize, a nationwide local program called TEDx and more.

Per TEDx Sacramento, “The TEDx Conference provided a license and general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.”

Brandon Weber, TEDx Sacramento curator, said the local team wanted to create a special event to “lay the foundation for a strong TEDx presence in Sacramento…to contribute to the dialogue of ideas and encourage creativity, innovation and action in our beloved city.”

The event was held at the Hinde Auditorium at California State University, Sacramento, to a packed house of several hundred registrants, and the program was recorded for subsequent online viewing.

Weber started the program by saying TEDsters are in a class of their own, that TED conferences are a mix of things and that we would be watching live video from other TEDx conferences in addition to live multimedia presentations.

The first presentation was a video called “Derek Sivers: Weird, or just different?” The focus of the video was that sometimes we have to go to the other side of the world to realize assumptions that we didn’t realize we had. Whatever brilliant ideas you have – the opposite may also be true. An example was shown of how addresses are determined in the United States versus in Japan. U.S. blocks don’t have names, streets have names. In Japan, blocks have names and the streets are the unnamed places between the blocks. Street numbers are based on when the homes were built.

Next was a live presentation titled “David Mogavero: An American Frontier.” Mogavero is senior principal at Mogavero Notestine Associates, with special expertise in the areas of ecological building, environmental planning, infill development, urban design and energy-efficient design.

Mogavero said the suburbs are a unique American institution, generating vast amounts of appreciation and scorn. Suburbs are the most inefficient form of human habitation ever done on earth, and an important place for focusing on environmental change in America, he said.
He started his practice by doing passively heated homes for people moving back to the land, mostly hippies. He realized that if he was going to be an ecoarchitect he had to work in the fabric of the community. He has done infill work in Sacramento and throughout Northern California.

The quantity of issues relative to urban sprawl are immense. People are moving back to urban America in large quantities, mostly in central cities. This has both limitations and opportunities for capturing infill growth.

In Sacramento, we build on average about 10,000 homes per year. Sacramento can only handle 19,000 new units – about two years of growth. The opportunity is tens of thousand of acres of underutilized areas such as parking lots, vacant housing and shopping center spaces, which can be eliminated for hundreds of thousands of houses and apartments.

When you have to design in these kinds of situations, you take the perspective of “do no harm.” You’re trying to instill more density but have an industrial complex that causes you to be creative. As an example, there is a commercial district in Yuba City – an opportunity to put people in a place with a services available now.

For Mogavero this is like jazz, which emerged from a convergence of cultures. Architectural development design is fascinating and fun for him for reasons like this: With a 10- or 15-acre site in the suburbs, you can integrate food into the project through agriculture. A community can be involved in the growing of food. There is also an opportunity for technology, which is more challenging in the city. Holistic integrated systems flowing back and forth continuously are possible in such areas. This is one of the most exciting venues in American building culture.

Next shown was a video titled “David Gallo: Underwater Astonishments.” Diving into the deep sea is a dark black world. We’ve only explored about 3 percent of the oceans. We don’t know much about this planet at all.

We are learning lots from the shallow water, which is full of predators that can change color & texture to match surroundings, but the deeper water still leaves much to be explored.

The Gallo Video proved a good precursor to Sacramento guitarist Ross Hammond, who received the Best Area Jazz Musician award for 2008 and 2009 from “Sacramento News and Review.” Hammond gave a spirited performance that integrated sound system issues that would affect the evening’s musical interludes.

The music was followed by another video, this one titled “Kirk Citron: And Now, the Real News.” The top story of this year was the economy. What kind of stories might make a difference for the future?

Some include the invasion of the nanobees, China’s rising, food shortage, the age of discovery, an ant mega-colony taking over the world or self-directed robots making discoveries. With or without us, life will go on.

For Citron, the top story was that water was found on the moon. In the long run, some stories will be more important than others.

Next was a live presentation titled “Ron Vrilakas: The Great Green City.” Vrilakas is an architect who likes buildings. He is working on what he loves, which is trying to build a great green city. He comes from West Sacramento, a place that has failed to solve how housing and commercial roads should come together. He spent eight or nine years avoiding going to Sacramento. He learned some things along the way about what makes cities exciting and green. We have been out of sync building cities over the past number of years, he said.

Once there was a way – we knew how to build the Great Green City. We used to build communities commonly, but technology got us away from earlier ambition and we turned in another direction. Things were cut off from each other by highways. Simple basic community-oriented buildings were changed. Places to gather and take pride in your city became places like retail with parking lots.

In 50 or 60 years, we’ve lost the ability to build things like McClatchy High School. We couldn’t do now what was done then on six sheets. He showed a picture of a bicyclist who will hopefully survive the Freeport Bakery parking lot.

An urban memory – he tries to find ways to reintroduce these things into our environment. Streets need to be for people. Emptyness in a block is a bad thing. Menacing facades are an embarrassment.

Preserving the past is something Vrialas said he believes strongly in. We need to cherish historic landmarks, adapt for activity, create the unexpected (alleys in Sacramento can become a network of interest within our grid) and resist demolition. Underutilized places need to be identified. Single-use is not good – everything must be a mixed-use environment. Empty spaces need to be change to active places.

History forward – Vrialas said he believes we find the identity of our city in the past. Getting to know oneself is how you make something. San Francisco has its identity, as do Seattle, Berkeley, Boston, Portland and Paris – all of the best of an urban life put together. In Sacramento we have a real history to build upon.

He looks to buildings for stories. We’ve been building cities for thousands of years, but we’ve only been building in a suburban manner for past 60 years, and we’ve been getting it wrong. We don’t have to look for a technological fix. We can have the fix in the way we organize ourselves – an urban design ethic that is important for human civilization.

Next came a video titled “Dean Ornish: Your Genes Are Not Your Fate.” The video offered encouragement for a healthy lifestyle. When you eat better, exercise and love more, the benefits can be measured. Topics covered things to do to grow your blood cells and things to make it worse. You age less quickly when you change your lifestyle. Arteries become notably less clogged, you can stop breast cancer, change prostate growth and even change sexual potency.

You can change genes, turn on the good genes and turn off the disease-promoting genes. We all have genetic profiles, but our genes are not our fate. We can also change how our genes are expressed.

It was now time for another musical performance, this one from Autumn Sky, who said, “My name is Autumn Sky. Really.” She and her guitar ,which she has named Samuel Taylor, performed and sang whimsically.

Next, it was back to the green theme, with a video titled “Catherine Mohr: Building Green.” Mohr explores energy usage depending upon what she uses to wipe up a spill. Sometimes the things you least expect have the greatest effect.

Mohr wanted to know how to achieve a green lifestyle. The average house has 300 megawatts of embodied energy. Some ideas she explored were deconstruction of the house, putting in a rainwater catchment, alternative roofing and framing, if putting aluminum windows will double the energy use and others.

Following that, it was time for another live presentation, “Chris Schuring Recycles Carbon.” Schuring's company, Ternion Bio Industries Inc., grows algae in a controlled environment to reduce carbon.

Schuring asked, “Why do you do what you do? Why do we want to build better cities, to go green?” He said he believes it’s because we inherently want to do better in our lives, be smart and leave a better legacy. There is a sense of camaraderie, of community. It’s me and you in the solutions we come up with. He did it because he thought reducing greenhouse gases and carbon footprints would be great.
Lots of people don’t want to do these things. People won’t care about what you do until you care about why. If we come together as humans, we can bring communities together to effect change.

Schuring has a personal goal to help 100 entrepreneurs start businesses to effect change in the next 18 months.

Next came a very cute video titled “Rives: Mixed Emoticons.” Rives – star of the Bravo special, "Ironic Iconic America," told a typographical fairy tale that was short and bittersweet.

After this short bit of comic relief came another live presentation titled “Robyn Waxman: F.A.R.M.” Waxman is an award-winning designer, activist, farmer, educator and founding member of graphic communication program at Sacramento City College.

Waxman looked at design’s role in the last 10 years. Moving more into letting other people design for themselves as the role of the designer seems to be the direction the industry is headed. She produced a 56-page tabloid on how to make your own farm. Millenial farmers have built Farm Davis on eighth and K streets. They have donated more than 100 pounds of food, or half of their production. The other half they ate. The farm runs on a gift economy without a budget. The space is on a privately owned front yard.

A similar Sacramento farm is coming May 2010 at 13th and C streets in Alkali Flats.

Up next was another video, titled, “Julian Treasure: 4 Ways Sound Affects Us.” Treasure said he wants to transform our relationship with sound, which has become largely unconscious. There are four ways sound affects us:

Physiological – an affect on breathing, heart rate and brainwaves.

Psychological – musical has the greatest effect. Music and bird sounds are reassuring.

Cognitive – you have to choose what to listen to. We have limited bandwith to decide which sound to listen to. People are one third as productive in open rooms as private rooms.

Behaviorally – move away from unpleasant sounds and toward pleasant sounds.

Most retail sound is unpleasant, with retailers losing 30 percent of their business because the sound is so dreadful. Treasure's company has developed a SoundFlow to design soundscapes. Music is powerful. Every brand is making sounds right now. Several well-known brand jingles were used as examples. There are four golden rules for commercial sound:

Make it congruent

Make it appropriate

Make it valuable

Test it, and test it again

We can achieve sound living through good use of sound

Another video followed, titled, “Alan Siegl: Simplifying Legal Jargon.” It takes a blizzard of paperwork to get benefits or a business loan. Siegl has been simplifying things for 35 years. He didn’t see why we couldn’t have a simple one-page consumer credit agreement, so he created one.

He seeks to define terms in plain English. Plain English is about changing the content. An agreement for IBM was received very favorably by businesses. IRS letters are pretty unintelligible, and he proposed changes to the IRS.

We must make clarity, transparency and empathy national priorities. We should not do business with those using unintelligible provisions.

It was then time for another musical interlude, this time from Sacramento musician Julie Ann Bee, titled “Sea of Bees.” Bee’s first full-length album is about to be released by Davis-based Crossbill Records. She performed two songs.

The next live presentation was titled “Scott and Julie Brusaw: Solar Roadways”, and was presented by Scott, an electrical engineer with more than 20 years of experience who hails from northern Idaho. They have spent years working on the concept of a solar-powered roadway system.

The Brusaws spent a lot of time together 30 years ago. His favorite toy then was a slotcar. He thought, “What if we made real roads electric?”

They discussed how there is no easy solution to global warning and other issues, including that 65,000 children die each day because they can’t get clean drinking water.

Couldn’t you make electric roads out of solar panels? Could they make solar panels you can drive on?

They said they believe so. There are some problems, but they aren’t insurmountable. We can’t let snow build on it, so he put heating element on the surface. He put LEDs on there to light it up, a microprocessor so all panels can talk to each other even with cars traveling overhead. The system can even warn drivers of animals on the road.

Storm water spills right into a nearby body of water. What if we could route that to a filtration system and send it for reuse? We can put power cables on the shoulder instead of in the air. We can grind up recyclables to use.

Brusaw started a website, and Treehugger.com picked it up. He received an e-mail from Booz Allen Hamilton – one of the biggest consulting firms in the nation. They now have four sample panels in their lab.

Brusaw has received a research grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation and has built a 12-foot-by-12-foot prototype. He said panels could be used in playgrounds and parking lots. See more at solarroadways.com.

Up next was another live presentation, “David Garibaldi: Paints with Passion and Purpose.” Garabaldi throws paint around and sweats profusely. He started about six and a half years ago. It was graffiti, and it was illegal. During his junior year of high school, he was introduced to animation. By senior year he wasn’t able to graduate on time. He was creating art out of the environments he was in.
Garabaldi called his show “Rhythm and Hue.” He created pop icon paintings on blank black canvas. Santana popped up behind him at halftime at a Golden State Warriors game.

In March 2005, he asked if his art could do more than entertain. Can it benefit and inspire others? He has been able to help raise $500,000 for charities and organizations through spending $200 and painting on stage. He changed why he was doing it.

Each of us has passion and purpose. We can be creative, charitable, profitable and grow algae. He said we all need to keep going to put bigger purpose behind our passion.

Finally, a video titled “Derek Sivers: How to start a movement,” was shown. The video made its point showing a group of young adults in action. A leader needs the guts to stand out and show everyone else how to follow. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. Then comes a second follower. New followers emulate the other followers, not the leader. As more people join in, it’s less risky to join in. Eventually, all who don’t join in would be subject to ridicule.

Nurture your first few followers, he advised. Leadership is over-glorified. It was really the first follower who transformed the first nut into a leader. Have the courage to follow, and show others how to follow. TED is the perfect place to do that.

All in all, this was an extremely varied, educational and entertaining multimedia extravaganza. It was also announced that there are plans for another event in November, so stay tuned.

More information about TED can be found at ted.com, and more about TEDx Sacramento can be found at tedxsacramento.com.

Suburban Cowboy

2010-04-13T17:34:05Z

For the last week, I've been living the life of Riley. Jess' aunt and uncle took her little cousins on vacation to Hawaii. We've been housesitting their place in Land Park. Riley lives in a three-bedroom house in the suburbs, he's got a cat and a dog. And this week, so do I.

I thought I'd share with you some of the people and places that I've experienced during my week as a Sacramento suburbanite. A Suburban Cowboy, if you will. While I'm not ready to trade in my 'Vette for a minivan a la Steve Sanders, BH 90210, Episode 7, Season 10 (a part of me died that day. Also, no one's gonna mistake my 1990 Honda Accord for a Corvette with plates that read I8A-4RE), I found that Land Park has a lot to offer a (quasi) young man about town such as myself.

Saturday morning I had some friends in town, and we went to Tower Cafe for breakfast. This probably isn't a groundbreaking revelation for you locals, but the meal was fantastic. A house french toast with fruit compote and whipped cream that is the best in the state, and a crab cake benedict with avocado and Bearnaise sauce, instead of the usual Hollandaise, that was a revelation. I'l put it this way. Jess and I came back the next day and ordered ... the crab cake benny and house french toast. I never, ever do that (unless it's at a taco truck).

Saturday night (and Monday and Wednesday) we went to Big Spoon Yogurt. At the risk of hyperbole, it is the single greatest place on Earth. It is just stupid how many toppings they have for their yogurts, which also come in many flavors. And the best part about it is that the yogurt is low fat, or even fat free! Granted, I got cheesecake, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, hot fudge and about eight candy bars on mine, but that's not the point. Yogurt is good for you! Just ask Jamie Lee Curtis.

On Sunday, after our second-straight breakfast at Tower, we rode our bikes to the farmers market under Highway 80 at 8th and W. Very impressive produce selection. I highly recommend checking it out despite the less than aesthetically pleasing locale. The venue just screams for strategically located trash can fires. When we arrived, we realized that we only had 6 bucks on us, but that was more than enough to procure some fantastically thin asparagus, a couple of Meyer lemons and a large sweet potato. For dinner we had a wasabi-pesto crusted salmon with teriyaki stir-fried cashew asparagus. It was great. The sweet potato ended up being fed to the dog, but she enjoyed it immensely.

Monday I went to the DMV in Oak Park. Now I know it's cliched to whine about trips to the DMV. Everybody has to do it, and everyone gets a little taste of what hell may be like. Suck it up, rub some dirt on it, whatever. But my story has a twist. Monday was my third trip to the DMV in the last week, all for the same thing. The first time I threw in the towel before making it through even the second level of front doors. The next time, I left for lunch at Jarritos on Broadway. It was my most disappointing meal in Sacramento; I still think about it *shudders*. When I got back to the DMV, I still was 120 people away. So I went back to Jess' aunt and uncle's house to get schooled on our housesitting duties. When we returned, they had just called B215. I was B213. What is it the kids are saying these days, FML?

Which leads us to Tuesday, our third trip to the DMV. Once you park at the Oak Park DMV, don't even think about leaving till you've handled your business. You may end up parking a half mile away. I made that mistake the first time around.

Got our numbers and walked down to the Boom Boom Cafe, without a doubt the best restaurant within walking distance of the DMV. Outstanding Asian fusion at a very reasonable price. I got the Korean pork bul go gi, Jess got a Thai curry eggplant, and we both were exceedingly pleased with our choices.

Don't worry, we got back to the DMV well before my number was called. We got back, suntanned a bit by the car, signed some petitions. Then I decided it was time to head back in. So I locked the car. With the keys on the center console. I locked my keys ... in the car ... at the DMV. So next time you're at the DMV and cursing your luck or lack thereof, consider this. At least you didn't lock your %^*&#@& keys in the &#*@%#@ car! On the bright side, AAA got there a good 20 minutes before my number was called.

Tuesday night, we tried Oscar's Very Mexican Food, whose name is oxymoronic. If it were so "Very Mexican", wouldn't it be "Mucho Mexicano"? A decent Americanized taqueria (Very Americanized. It has a "California" burrito with french fries in it), its saving grace is the salsa verde, which is reminiscent of the one at La Taqueria in the Mission. Unfortunately, the resemblances end there.

Wednesday was our big night out. We got all gussied up (I wore a shirt with a collar on it! And considered shaving!) and walked up the street to Taylor's Kitchen. A little American bistro attached to a gourmet market, Taylor's Kitchen somehow manages to be both elegant and homey. Jess and I, as we often do, eschewed the entrees in favor of a larger selection of small plates. We started off with steamed clams with chorizo and a lovely Dungeness crab salad. It took all my considerable restraint not to lick the bowl the clams came in. The crab salad was lovely as well, though I'd have preferred it been served with fresh avocado rather than the avocado panna cotta it was paired with. John Paul, our waiter, then brought over a pot of macaroni and cheese, gratis. They had forgotten the bacon, thus the freebie, but it still was outrageously rich and tasty. We finished with the mushroom gnocchi in a Parmesan cream sauce, and this time, they remembered the bacon. A wonderful end to a wonderful meal. We took our desert at Big Spoon.

Thursday was our final day of suburban bliss, and I finished it off with gusto. Chloe, the family dog, is 14 years old, a cancer survivor, and suffers from severe arthritis. The family recently had enlisted the services of Karen Krstich, DVM. Karen makes house calls, and she put Chloe on some new meds and a new diet. I would have gladly eaten everything that I fed the dog while housesitting. In fact, I did eat a bowl of the last meal I cooked for her: a chicken, yam, carrot, zucchini, celery stew. It was yummy. Pretty standard vet stuff, right? Well, Karen also practices the ancient Chinese art of acupuncture. Doggy acupuncture. And so, I spent 20 minutes Thursday morning assisting in that most suburban of activities, a doggy acupuncture and electrotherapy session. Much as I once scoffed at yoga, there was a time where this whole procedure would have led me to offer up a dismissive wanking motion. But I can say unequivocally that Chloe is markedly improved from just two weeks ago. Her energy is up, she walks less gingerly and seems much happier. Doubt the healing powers of pet acupuncture at your peril.

It was an eventful week in the suburbs. I laughed, I ate, I helped a woman stick pins in a dog and then run electricity through said pins.

I'm ready to get back to Midtown.

A 10-Step Plan To Fix K Street, Or: The Legend of the Skyscraper Fairy

2009-10-12T03:55:54Z

As a Sacramento resident keenly interested in the history of K Street from the gold rush to the present, I have read many opinions regarding the best ways to fix the ongoing problems of K Street. Some have been proposed recently, ideas that I view with a mixture of amusement and horror. Most involve returning to the mistakes of the past while clearly avoiding its successes. In order to take the best from the past while avoiding some of its mistakes, I have selected some favorites. I can take credit for none of them, as they are all ideas that have been suggested at other times and places, but they seem like the best of the lot to me. This ten-point plan varies in scope from the very simple and inexpensive to the rather complex and expensive, some are short-term solutions while others are longer-term solutions for better times, but all of them are practical. I can provide more detail about most of these points if requested.

1. Accept that the Skyscraper Fairy does not exist.

Many landlords along K Street have no apparent interest in maintaining or improving their properties. Some are convinced that as long as they own the land, the magical Skyscraper Fairy will give them uncountable millions for the land where their decaying buildings sit, and will replace them with shiny new skyscrapers. Thus, they have little interest in maintaining or tenanting their buildings. The result is under-utilized or vacant buildings whose facades continue to crumble. Despite the Downtown Partnership’s efforts to power-wash streets and alleys, buildings allowed to fall into disrepair, inhabited only by bats and squatters, make our historic buildings into eyesores. Ideally, the city’s code enforcement division would issue stiff fines to property owners who allow their buildings to fall into disrepair, in order to prevent demolition by neglect. Unfortunately, the city of Sacramento is also one of the guilty parties, and one of the strongest believers in the Skyscraper Fairy. City-owned properties currently sit vacant, awaiting their own savior in the form of a deep-pocketed developer who will brush aside the old building and provide badly-needed money to build something else. Given K Street’s current state, this is unlikely—the only propositions so far are dependent on generous subsidies from the city of Sacramento. Until both the city and K Street property owners can be dispelled of their belief in the magical skyscraper fairy, their properties will continue to rot.

2. It’s time to leave the shopping mall in the past.

K Street was a bustling place until the 1950s, when most of Sacramento’s population moved out of the central city, the residential neighborhoods adjacent to downtown Sacramento were demolished, and the city streetcar system was replaced by highways and automobiles. Suburban malls were closer to the new suburban neighborhoods and had plentiful parking, while K Street was far away and none of the stores had parking lots. The K Street pedestrian mall of the 1960s and 1970s was a desperate move to woo suburban shoppers by simulating a suburban mall, including demolition of nearby buildings to provide parking. But the suburban malls were still more convenient, and their parking lots bigger and more obvious, so K Street’s rebirth as a mall of the 1970s failed. A 1990s re-vamp that enclosed the section from 4th to 7th Street has become another failure, due to its failure to move beyond the idea of a suburban mall downtown.

A new generation of city planners has noted that shopping centers of the 2000s look a lot like old downtowns, with stores that copy historic styles and a mixture of pedestrian paths and driveways. These planners have decided that this is the future of K Street, and call for a return of cars to K Street so they can pretend K Street is a new suburban "power center," the 2010s equivalent of a shopping mall. But those suburban “power centers” are still closer to suburban shoppers, and their parking lots are still bigger. If K Street is simply opened to cars and its facades remodeled to emulate new suburban shopping centers in North Natomas, how can the result be any different from the last two attempts to disguise downtown Sacramento as a suburban mall?

3. Cars, no. Bikes, yes.

The simplest change to energize K Street will cost very little: permit bicycle riding on K Street. Bike riding is already on the rise, and the freedom to bike on K Street would turn it into the main cycling corridor of the central city, free from the vehicular mayhem of J and L Street. Provide a few bike racks so bike riders can stop and shop as well as ride through, and the numbers strolling past store windows will dramatically increase.

4. Shrink light rail to streetcar size.

Until the 1940s, K Street had transit in all sizes. On K Street itself, streetcars ran from the heart of downtown to Midtown, Southside and nearby suburbs like Land Park, Oak Park and East Sacramento. These cars were small, typically 30-40 feet long, about the size of a modern bus, and operated at speeds up to 25-30 miles per hour. Like a bus, they worked reasonably well with traffic, but because they had fixed rails they had a smoother ride and a predictable path, making them more comfortable for riders. Trains ran every ten minutes during the day, and “owl” runs carried late-night travelers all night.

On the corner of 8th and K Street, interurban trains ran in both directions. Passengers from Woodland, Chico, Stockton and even Oakland could hop on the train and get off on K Street. These trains were bigger, 60-80 feet long, and operated in trains as long as 6-8 cars. They were taller and wider than streetcars, and could reach 60-70 miles per hour going flat-out through the countryside. They ran on 8th Street because K Street was far too busy to handle the big trains.

Today, modern Light Rail trains are more like the interurbans than streetcars. With 80 foot long bodies and operating in four-car trains, they are not well-suited to playing the role of a streetcar. By through-routing Blue Line trains north via the upcoming 7th Street extension and connecting to North 12th Street via Richards Boulevard, light rail trains could bring passengers from Folsom, Rancho Cordova, South Sacramento and North Highlands to K Street without crowding pedestrians off the street.

Meanwhile, the streetcars can return to K Street. Some of Sacramento’s historic streetcars exist in unrestored condition in private collections, but modern streetcars offer amenities like air conditioning and ADA-accessible low-floor entryways. They can run on the existing K Street tracks while leaving more room for pedestrians and bikes. Using existing light rail lines and sharing their tracks, these streetcars can link nearby neighborhoods and connect with light rail. Extending streetcar lines into existing neighborhoods and new development areas costs less than one-third the price of light rail extensions and drives population density, economic investment and reduces the need for cars and parking. Run them until after 2:00 AM to give downtown visitors an option to leave their cars at home—especially if they plan on drinking.

5. Legalize street life.

This is another cheap and easy solution. Part of Second Saturday’s success is its prolific use of street music, performers, and vendors, but its monthly status creates a feast-or-famine condition. A permit program to allow music, performance and vending at any time means that visitors to K Street won’t need to check their calendars before going downtown. Street music and vending also gives local entertainers and small businesspeople a stepping stone to a retail storefront or a musical career. Musicians and vendors will promote activity, give walkers a reason to stick around, and attract visitors to enjoy the street life. This also does not rule out special street festivals and special events above and beyond the day-to-day activity, and maintaining K Street as a pedestrian walk maintains this valuable civic amenity for more public festivals. Both everyday street life and special events will draw visitors from within Sacramento, the surrounding region, and tourists from out of town.

6. Tours bring tourists.

Despite the demolition of the past few decades, K Street still retains a remarkable number of historic buildings, proud evidence of our architectural heritage in stone, terra cotta and concrete. Many cities use local tourism programs to bring visitors into the heart of the city, but to most visitors, Sacramento’s history ends at the edge of Old Sacramento. Efforts to alter this perception have been minimal. The Downtown Sacramento Partnership has a guided tour program, but it is minimally staffed, minimally funded, and minimally advertised. Downtown visitors looking for local history information are likely to come up empty-handed. Sacramento needs a full-strength tourism program worthy of a city with such a rich and diverse history. K Street, the walking street at the heart of the city, can be the center of such a tour program, with more tours branching out into nearby downtown streets and our architecturally rich residential neighborhoods. History tours appeal both to visiting tourists and to locals interested in learning more about their city's past.

On K Street, the potential star attraction of local tourism is right under your feet. Sacramento’s underground sidewalks, the result of a street-raising measure intended to keep the city above flood waters, run the length of K Street from the river to about 12th Street. Many are demolished, but enough material remains to allow a tour to weave in and out of underground sidewalk spaces, sunken alleys, basements, and even below-surface businesses. Combined with the dramatic story of the raised streets, and some entertaining and colorful stories from Sacramento’s history, the potential of an underground sidewalks tour is unlimited. In Seattle, local booster Bill Speidel turned a walk through clammy underground sidewalks in a notoriously bad part of town into a million-dollar tourist attraction that is known worldwide, drawing as many as 300,000 visitors a year and employing as many as 50 full-time staff. There is no reason that Sacramento can’t do the same.

7. Bring on the nightlife.

If a suburban mall isn’t the answer, what will bring suburban residents downtown? The answer is simple: Give them something the suburbs don’t have. Sacramento is best known for its quiet suburbs, the result of a decades-long whitewashing operation to conceal our party-animal past. The rowdy days of the Gold Rush, the proliferation of local breweries and wineries, our almost total refusal to acknowledge Prohibition, the legendary jazz and blues clubs of Sacramento’s West End, and even last year’s New Year’s Eve party (2,000 expected, 12,000 attended) burst through the “town where nothing happens” façade. It’s time to face the truth, and bring more nightlife down the length of K Street. This doesn’t just mean bars, it also means late-night restaurants, theaters, live music venues, dance clubs, movies, spas and salons, comedy clubs, coffee shops, and other imaginative options for entertainment. Cooperative parking agreements with state parking lots can provide tens of thousands of parking spaces, and better public transit can carry revelers home in safety.

8. Shop local, even if you’re from out of town.

The shopping-mall consultants are half right about K Street—it does need more than nightlife to survive. Daytime and early evening traffic means retail stores and services in between the state-employee lunch rush and the arrival of the dinner, drinks and dancing crowd. However, national chain stores are hesitant to expand, even if bribed into doing so. And again, suburban visitors won’t drive downtown to a store in their local mall. The answer is, again, to give them something the mall doesn’t have: unique, local stores. Local businesses keep money in the local economy, stimulate local employment and provide a unique character that chain stores simply can’t match. Encouraging local businesspeople to rent storefronts on K Street should be a city priority. Matched with neighborhood-serving retail like food markets, cleaners, drugstores and small department stores, locally-based retail on K Street should appeal to suburban shoppers, out-of-town visitors, and central city residents. As stores fill and crowds start to appear, instead of having to beg national chains to locate on K Street, they will appear on their own, smelling money to be made.

One idea we might lift from San Francisco: the much-adored Metreon, high-tech consumer wonderland, is falling on hard economic times, with many vacancies. Earlier this year, a full-time farmer’s market moved into the Metreon, and has already proved a popular destination. A permanent farmer’s market on K Street, instead of the current sporadic weekly markets, would provide fresh foods to a neighborhood where none are sold. Downtown workers, visitors and residents would all benefit from a convenient source for the Sacramento Valley’s agricultural bounty.

9. Living on K Street shouldn’t mean sleeping directly on it.

The destruction of the downtown neighborhoods near K Street was followed by the destruction of thousands of inexpensive rental rooms, commonly known as SRO hotels, where thousands of workers lived. As inexpensive housing disappeared, the poorest people did not. Out of necessity, they made their home on the streets. Many are still there, and as existing SRO stock is phased out of service and homeless services disappear, their numbers grow. They will not vanish and they will not simply move away, because they have nowhere to go and no alternative. The only way to reverse this trend is to replace the housing that was lost. This replacement housing need not be here on K Street, but it needs to be somewhere. Our only alternative is to accept the presence of people sleeping on the streets as an unalterable condition, and tell them that their suffering is necessary and unavoidable—or to simply remain in denial of the problem, which amounts to the same thing. As a people, as a city and as a nation, I think we are capable of better than that.

But it isn’t just the poorest that need housing in the central city. Housing for all income levels should be included in new development projects, but putting it into existing buildings would be even easier. Many formerly residential buildings were converted to office use in the 1960s and 1970s, so why not convert the abundance of vacant upper-story office space back into residential units? This housing should cross the economic spectrum: SRO units for the disabled and seniors, low-income units for service employees, workforce housing for office employees, and high-end, high-up housing for the high rollers. A truly urban life results when you can see all the way across the economic spectrum just walking down the street. That can’t happen unless the street has places for all of them to live, dine, work and shop. Again, not all of these places have to be directly on K Street, but they should be close enough to walk there in a few minutes. Restoration of residential buildings will preserve their architectural value, bring life back to the neighborhood, fill a great social need, and jobs restoring and maintaining the buildings will create more employment than comparable levels of new construction.

10. Have faith, be good, and the Skyscraper Fairy will come.

Part of the current mentality of property owners on K Street is based on outdated models of how downtown development should happen. For decades, cities were assumed to be teeming pits of an imaginary disease called “blight” that could only be cured with wrecking balls and a liberal application of public-funded redevelopment dollars, designed to push out “undesirable” tenants and solicit only the coveted suburban émigré to return to the central business district, and then only to spend money and leave, never to live. Today’s cities don’t work like that anymore. People want to live in cities because they want the amenities of urban life unavailable in the suburbs. If K Street can offer those amenities, not a sanitized Disneyland version and certainly not a copy of a suburban mall, they will grow interested in K Street. If they are interested, they will come to visit. If there are places to live, and things to see and do, they will want to move downtown. Once enough people have moved downtown that there is no longer room in existing buildings, and people feel safe and secure in neighborhoods that are well-maintained, high-rise developers who understand how cities work will look at K Street and see dollar signs. Instead of developers seeking handouts to build on K Street, they will come with money in hand where they think they can make even more.

And when they do, the Skyscraper Fairy will visit the property owners and civic leaders who took care of their buildings, who encouraged vitality and street life instead of a tax write-off, who promoted transit and walkability, and drew people back downtown to share in K Street’s uniqueness, character and history. She will shower them with money and riches and blessings, and cranes will rise on K Street, filling the gaps between the last century’s architectural gems with bright, tall new buildings. Yes, Sacramento, there is a Skyscraper Fairy, but she has very high standards.

William Burg is a board member of the Sacramento Old City Association. This story is a guest editorial opinion, and does not represent the opinion of Sacramento Press or its editors.

Hear Me Roar

2009-04-07T18:34:22Z

Today, shortly after 5 PM, my son called me from his cellular phone. It was obvious to me, immediately, that he was upset. Apparently, while walking home, an older Caucasian man approached my son and accused him of harassing his younger brother. Per my son, the man was "in [his] face," and he felt threatened. My son stated that he offered this man respect by referring to him as "sir" and looking him straight in his eyes; and although it was not necessary, he also told this stranger where he was after school, which was not where the incident took place. The man then asked my son if he was lying and told him that "this kind of behavior is not tolerated around here." There was also a Caucasian woman in the parked minivan, who, according to my son, was smiling (or smirking).

My son was close to tears as he relayed the above tale to me. He was breathing heavily and talking loudly. He also spoke of all the things he would have done had the man attacked him. At some point during the altercation, he felt that this was a possibility. On the other end of the phone, I remained calmed and gathered all of the necessary information. Unfortunately, my son did not retrieve a license plate number. However, I calmed him down and told him that we would contact the police department when he arrived home.

While talking to the police, I made it clear that this incident was not only inappropriate, in that an adult approached my child in a threatening manner, but it also appeared that the incident was racially motivated. There is absolutely no other way to explain why this man would, out of nowhere, approach my son on an empty suburban street unless he was told that the "kid" who actually did attack his brother was African American. I also let them know that this was not the first incident of this kind for my child while living in this neighborhood; and I now feel unsafe for my son, a young, outspoken, intelligent, African American male. In fact, I feel unsafe, afraid, and saddened.

Of course, because we have little information, not much can be done. Yet, my main focus was to alert the police to the racial profiling that is occurring in this 'diverse' suburban town. Racial discrimination and prejudice are high on my no tolerance list; in fact, they sit at number one. I don't tolerate racism or discrimination from or by anyone. So, to have this happen to my cub, so blatantly, and potentially, violently, I am enraged. I know that we both handled the situation well, and I am quite proud of him. So proud even that I allowed him to have his Friday night pizza treat and XBOX for the evening, even though he skipped 2nd period today. (He will lose the controllers first thing tomorrow morning, and is stuck in the house all weekend.) However, this isn't the end for this lioness. The local police department and city council will definitely hear me roar.