To celebrate my 25th year of residence in this quaint little valley that has been my home, I’ve decided to present you, dear Pilgrim, with what I have thus dubbed The Three Unwritten Rules Of Sacramento. And of course, since they are previously unwritten, naturally, I’m going to completely blow it and write them down for your reading pleasure today.
Shall we proceed? Let’s start with The First Unwritten Rule…
1. SACRAMENTO IS A SMALL TOWN DISGUISED AS A BIG CITY.
When I first moved here in ’84, Sacramento was definitely in fetal civic form. No light rail, no NBA team, and cable TV was barely laid out with like, six local TV channels to choose from for most households. I won’t even start to kvetch about the (lack of) choices for pizza. Paradoxically, if you were an aficionado of punk and hardcore bands (I was) there was rarely a dull moment in that department. There were quite a few decent bands coming through town back then.
Yup, things have definitely grown here and not just the population. Fact remains, though, that Sacramento, for all intents and purposes, is currently a small town disguised as a big city, and will be in foreseeable decades to come.
That’s nothing to be embarrassed about. As a matter of fact it’s one of the benefits of living here. It’s got a larger city’s population, but has a decent small town level of livability in lots of areas. Overall, I think that Midtown is one of the best neighborhoods in the country, nay the world, to live in. Even though I like to keep to myself nowadays, I know that there is a lot of interesting, vital and (most importantly) homegrown cultural activity here at present. If we give this place a chance to develop its own personality, we will only improve in quality, and instead of making the mistake of trying to mimic other, larger metropolitan areas we will be one of those great cities on our own.
Oh, shit. Did I just say that over the whole Internet? Oh, uh, like I was saying, Sacramento, like, sucks, man. It’s a cowtown fulla empty foreclosed houses and home invasions and shit. Don’t move here, man, you’ll hate it. Don’t even read anymore, it’s only gonna get worse with what I’m describing.
Are they gone? Good. Carrying on to our Second Unwritten Rule.
2. SACRAMENTO IS A MAGNET. IF YOU TRY TO LEAVE FOR GOOD, SOMEDAY, YOU’LL BE BACK.
I’m not just talking about coming home to visit the family for the holidays, or the Unabomber or whatever. If you become a resident for any considerable length of time, what will happen is inevitable. No matter how hard you try to relocate out of here, you will be dragged back into the city limits by a heretofore unseen and indescribable force. It’s happened to too many others I’ve known, and yes, myself as well. Quite some time ago I’ve thrown my hands in the air and said, “Fuck it! I’m down by cosmic law here for life! Might as well make the best of it.” Hey, there are many worse places you could be stuck in. Just throw a dart at a map of… well, I’m trying to keep a somewhat positive vibe going here so I’ll let that one go.
Concluding with The Third Unwritten Rule:
3. SACRAMENTO IS A CITY OF SOCIAL CIRCLES, AND YOU WILL BE IN ONE, WHETHER YOU WANT TO BE OR NOT.
You could be the most housebound hermit in history, and yet in this city, you will be corralled into one sort of social circle or another. It’s not quite like the cliques you encounter in other places; no, in Sacramento, one tends to move interchangeably from scene to scene with relatively little effort. A person’s race, creed, political party, gender preference, etc.? None of that stuff has anything to do with it, and furthermore, no individual trait can do anything to interfere with this strange invisible matrix of group affiliation. Yet, each circle is distinct, though quite arbitrary in its makeup and purpose.
You may show up at a party thrown by your friend in the music scene and somebody you know from the art gallery scene shows up. Then you’ll go to a Second Saturday event and somebody you hang out with regularly at a local watering hole or from your AA Chapter shows up, and of course they know the artist you’ve showed up to support and when you all go out to Lyon’s later that night, who the Hell do you run into but the music scene folks whose party you went to previously and lo and behold! No introductions necessary all around. Everybody standing in the circle in the parking lot knows at least one other person through somebody or other.
It’s devoid of any Rule 1 (small town/big city) argument; what is in motion here is some weird Olympic Ring-like interlocking of urban culture. There’s nothing wrong with this picture whatsoever, and as a matter of fact, quite of few folks have used this social phenomenon to their advantage at one time or another. Sure, there's occasional friction between certain circles, but even then there's still the mingling for commercial or sexual purposes or illicit criminal activity or mayoral advisor appointments or whatnot.
I’ve not only learned to love these rules, I’ve grown to appreciate their existence. They are a constant amongst the ups and downs and all of the kooky changes which I’ve experienced in my quarter century in Sacramento. We may have periods of bad government and urban planning, and efforts to encourage conspicuous consumption as a substitute for true development of community character, but The Three Unwritten Rules are what produce the genuine quality of life and the best things that happen to this city,
So there you have it, Sacramentan. Keep these three rules close to your heart and nothing will stop you here. Sacramento is a city where you have the space to get things done, you will have the support and friendship that you need, and you can have the opportunity to break out of here for something bigger, if that’s what you so desire. Just remember, you’ll be back. Trust me on this one.
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