I just did my morning round up of local blogs and hardly anyone ever posts besides me! Entertain me!
I saw Brokeback Mountain last night and it really is as good as everyone says. I never would have believed that Heath Ledger could give such a great performance. It's great! Go see it.
For you architecture buffs, I stole this link from the chick list. I haven't had time to read it yet, but it tells about a common Sac architectural style. I think a bunch of these houses are in Davis, too.
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Matt and I stumbled on to a neighborhood of those homes one day. I like them in a guilty pleasures kind of way.
I like things that ride the line of mid centurty modern right to terrible but stop just short.
-natalie
That was a sweet article. Those little old guys! I love those Eichlers in South Land Park. Hey, isnt' Paloma's one of those? The custom ones out in the Delta, Orangevale/Carmichael or in Stockton out by the water are real fancy. The tract home ones are cool too. To me it always reminds me of my Mom and Sunset magazine from the late 60's and early 70's. I think the whole concept of building homes that bring the outside in is wonderful. Someone needs to step up and start building subdivisions that look INTERESTING. It is possible for crying out loud! Given the legacy of modern design from the 'teens through today (Wiener Werkstaat anyone? Le Corbusier? Aalto? Wright?), isn't it bizarre how conservative today's subdivisions are? I think it is rather weird. I also think that developers are not necessarily selling people what they would like, they are not giving any alternative to the sheet rock, shitty 80's looking box house.
If I had to live in one of the typical new Sacramento subdivisions, I'd go crazy. I'd rather live in an old house. If money were limitless, I'd probably build something weird in the delta.
Ella
There a lots of them in the South Land Park Dr area on the way to Fruitridge. I like many of them too.
Tess
Yes, the first time I got a tour of these houses was with Ella...
Tess
I know those bros are so cute!!!!
My dad lives in an Eichler, and I was really admiring it on this last visit. There's a huge wall of windows looking onto the patio, and where the two roof levels are separated, there's a thin lines of windows that let's in an amazing amount of light. Also, there's almost a full wall devoted to the white brick fireplace. So nice!!! It is perfect for the Palo Alto weather...Anyway, I was talking a walk in his neighborhood (every house is an Eichler) and I noticed that someone tore down an Eichler and built one on those crappy sheet rock houses!!!! It's ten times as big, and sticks out like a sore thumb in the neighborhood. Wierd.
I always kind of liked the S. Land park and American River Drive houses, and the ones in my dad's neighborhood, but I've never like the neighborhoods that are composed of them...still to suburb-y...although, not as bad as the newer ones of course!!!!
-michele
I love the newer modular homes. They're doing some really great things with them now a days.
I know what you mean Michele! I was just saying the other day how much that South Land Park neighborhood gives me the creeps. I do like the houses though.
-Connie
I have mixed feelings on that style of house. I'd take on if someone gave it to me (duh), but I wouldn't seek out one to buy. Ha ha! Me, buying a house! Good one!
I feel like if we had houses like that, we could decorate them in a way that they'd be reallly rad and beautiful and cozy...but more often when you see the insides they are just boring and tacky, which then makes the house itself look less cool. Like I imagine filling them with hella plants, and cali-style furniture...I always took that style of house for granted, thinking they were just the normal suburban house...being on the east coast I realize they are distinctly Californian, which makes me like them more. But, the fact remains that the neighborhoods they create just aren't that cool.
-michele
I think my boss has one and she's done some cool shit with it. They do have nice light, but hers is all new inside.
i really love this type of beam & glass design, when we were looking for houses and settled on the idea that we were going to get stuck in the suburbs, i was hoping we'd find an eichler or something similar built by like-inspired architects. didn't happen, but there are a few in our neighborhood (garden of the gods, behind whole foods) and most of the plain little 50's built homes have modern accents. its rare that you find suburbanites with any sense of style who a) kept them up or b) restore them, most of them got a remodel in the 70's (dark wood, country home cabinetry) or 80's (fucking formica). they were built to be cheap and affordable in the 50's, so i'm not sure how they've held up on their own over the years (modern design rarely ages well, one scratch or some dirt and it looks like shit, unlike a victorian or arts & crafts home). one of the catalogs i work for was shooting exclusively in bay area Eichler's and was having a hard time finding them in good shape or kept in the original style.
dwell magazine always has features on junior architects creating affordable homes with beams & glass or other basic building blocks. so why the fuck are all these McManions popping up in tacky, ugly sheet rock/stucco crap with no yards or windows? not only are they ugly, they're built to last about 5 years (my friends who have bought new tract homes in Natomas and other burbs all say the freakin' door nobs and everything else fell off the house the day they moved in). "investment homes", buy them cheap, sell them for a killing to some other sucker in 2 years before it sinks into the ground.
if anyone's lucky enough to buy something eichler-ish, Time Bandits on 12th (moving soon to Broadway) is stacked with modern furniture from that era. nicest dudes too.
I think maybe suburbs are just inherently creepy. Regardless of their architectural style. I wish city planners would only give developers land one lot at a time, scattered around, so that the homes would truly be different and maybe there would be more chance of these "developments" becomming "neighborhoods"? I don't know. Suburbs are always going to be creepy. Stip malls are always going to be ugly. The USA will all look the exact same by the time we are old people.
Ella
Liv and I were looking for a Streng or other modernist home last year when we had the momentary delusion that we could afford to buy a house. HA!
Sadly, most of the cool modernist tracts are out in burb hell, unless you can get into one of the 60 Eichlers in south land park. and those is pricey. Maybe the weirdest of all these subdivisions is out in Elk Grove... right off Elk Grove Blvd by old town Elk Grove. There is a mid-sixties Streng neighborhood that, except for the cars in the driveways, looks like a timewarp straight out of the Brady Bunch show. It is really weird driving around there.
The worst part of all this was finding out that you can buy incredible houses in other parts of the country for DIRT cheap. I found several Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian homes for sale for about $200K each... in the middle of the midwest. sigh.
Anyway, it's nice to know that there were forward-thinking folks in sacto back in the day....
I agree Ella, I think giving developers small lot sizes or single lots would make for better neighborhoods and more competition for contractors and builders. But heaven forbid something in this country isn't done by a big assy corporation. Here's to realizing that we get to come of age during just about the crappiest most uninteresting time in our countries history!
-Connie
ps
I agree with klj about the modular homes. Natalie and I used to look at them on the internet and daydream about buying one to put on our imaginary lot downtown.
-Connie
i'll attest to Time Bandits being one of the best things we have going in Sac. they're moving in where Funky Funishings once was.
nice guys, not out to rip anyone off, and, they do most resorative work themselves.
i once saw the most amazing Eichler. it was just out of highschool, so i don't think i knew then what it was. some weird janky neighborhood off Watt Ave. and we popped in for an estate sale.
but the house had a gated driveway, a pool house, a wall of windows out the back, a vintage Jaguar in the garage, and the piece de resistance....a full atrium smack dab in the middle. it felt like a mansion, but wasn't even that huge.
turns out the woman who had lived there had once owned a clothing shop downtown in the 60's. she never married and would throw huge intertaining parties. i would have loved to have met her. and her zebra print bar.
Having gown up in a Carmicahael suburban neighborhood that was inehrently creepy (at least in aesthetic way), I can say that Streng brothers houses were a relief. There was one three doors down from us, and a couple around the corner from me in the cul-de-sac (including the one in which the gurl to which I later lost my virginity lived). I know that's crossed that narrow line over into the realm of something about which we'd all like to less, but that was a great house, especially the way you could see right through house into the backyard from the very cool entranceway. My mom, probably bercause of her desire to be an architect before that dream got crushed at Stanford, had a near-encylopediac knowledge of where all the Streng designs, as she called them, were for miles around; I'm pretty sure that top one in the vertical row of photos in the article is right around the corner from where I grew up (but I could be very wrong; they were found of using an identical design and size again and again). It goes without saying that the article should be required reading for all the people who are converting the fields and wide-open spaces and calm, spare horizons of my youth into development after tract after unsightly blight chock-full of "great rooms" and gobs of stucco.
Speaking of this stuff: Jeanette (juju) & Wes (collectively Park Avenue Music) are selling their 1953 MCM Blomberg 2 bedroom house in so. land park, if anyone's interested. under 300k.
http://homepage.mac.com/jujuhearts/PhotoAlbum23.html
i kind of have a different view of suburbs than the rest of ya'll. i mean, some of them aren't bad. the one i grew up in had a canopy of trees lining the streets much like midtown, was a ten minute bike ride to the american river and was safe as hell. i'd walk around alone at midnight in high school and not even flinch. my friends lived anywhere from 4 to 10 blocks away from me and we'd all meet up on bikes for adventures in the summertime. the stores weren't too far away and apparently there used to be a small movie theater in one of the buildings that is now just part of a "quaint" strip mall. there was also a library in this same set of buildings that my mom (who also grew up in this neighborhood) used to check out her books from as a kid. she has memories of standing in line at that theater with a dime in her hand to pay for a ticket!
but, i guess a lot of that has changed now. many longtime dwellers of this hood (arden park) bemoan that fact. it's definitley turning into something less desireable (people are tearing down the cute houses from the 40s and 50s and throwing up stucco monstrosities). it's hard to watch that happen to what used to be a haven for environmentally conscious, middle class liberals, but you can't really stop it.
thanks for reminding me about time bandits. i'm going to try to go there tomorrow and look for stuff for my new place. those guys are rad.
River Park has some really nice 50's style house tucked away here and there.
Quant shopping center that once had a small movie theatre in it? Which one was it? Somewhere right by/in Arden park?
There are two amazing Strengs in my burb - Garden of the Gods.
Also, in defense of some of the burbs, they aren't always that creepy. Our hood has tons of original owners (from the mid-50s) and they're all always out on their porches or hanging out in their open garages, drinking highballs, whittling or whatever. They're sweet and can tell you crazy tidbits about Sac history (like, the area where Arden Mall is, used to be land owned by a guy who had about 1,000 goats. My neighbor used to have a little plane and the goat man would let her land and take off from his field.)
And we have elderly swingers next door who throw parties and have sex with the windows and curtains open all summer long.
OK, the burbs are a little creepy....
Er, "quaint," not "quant" was what I meant.
Arden Park would be a good neighborhood, out of the Sacramento Burbs, in which to grow up. My parents' best friends, environmentally conscious liberal types if there ever were, especially for the 70s, lived there, and still do, and raised there kids there, who were roughly the same age as me. They live on Sierra something, I belive. Vista? Just Sierra? Perhaps I'm totally trippin' on that.
The Burb of my youth wasn't quite that quiet and leafy, or that close to the river, but out house was along Chicken Ranch Slough and that allowed for some creek adventures in hiking and exploring, if not river ones.
And it wasn't too far from Garden of the Gods -- I did always like that neighborhood; it was right around the corner from my bank and Bel-Air and that neighborhood fish market (sadly, now a Starbucks, I believe). And so is that where all the elderly swingers are?
"elderly swingers"
aka the Tanimals!!!
stephen,
the movie theater and library were in what is now a fancy little shopping center at the corner of watt and fair oaks just behind the arco gas station. i guess that was kind of a happening spot when my mom was growing up on san ramon. there was a small grocery, a library and a small theater.
yeah, arden park is pretty cool. i am so lucky i got to grow up there. my mom had a real estate agent who put flyers on all the doorsteps telling them that a single mom with four kids was looking to buy a cheap fixer upper in the neighborhood and raise her kids there. an very old widow took pity on us and sold my mom her house for pennies. it was a steal. she recently sold that house for 6 times what she bought it for back in 1980.
yeah the Tanimals are a lot of fun, especially when the Kiminal gets wasted at 10am and falls down in our yard or blathers a bunch of incoherent shit about other people's tits that gets the neighbors all upset.
the people our age are squares, super boring mall shoppers with no interests in anything other than TV and gossip, and that talk at you in that insincere "i'm giving a formal speech" voice that's all the rage with the desperate housewives and starbucks employees. the dudes don't talk ever. no style, no sense of humor, mostly young money hungry conservatives and its seems like all these guys have the "jail pussy" beard that's all the rage in sacto, that neatly kept mustache that wraps around into a neatly kept goatee thing that drives me nuts. Dani's going to probably give me a hard time about the few exceptions, but trust me, i sat through that neighborhood BBQ, they were all squares and they hated our guts.
i DO love the old people, if they're not totally fucking nuts they're really cool. like ol' Gert next door, who lived and partied in SF back in the day, travelled a ton and led an interesting life, all while having 5 kids. she says things like "oh that's a load of horseshit" and "i had two kids 9 months apart, we call those 'Irish twins'" and a bunch of other stuff that's really funny. And nice ol' Bob on the other side of us, who's been with his wife since they were 14, helps me fix everything around the house and likes to joke around like he's a member of the cast of Howdy Doody.
our burbs are the older burbs, so i don't mind them so much, though i'm definately more of an urbanite. the houses are old enough to be built to last and have some cool accents. there are still little bits of cool things close by if you seek them out, you can ride your bike all over the place, and the trees haven't been replaced entirely by powerlines yet. there are also a TON of good restaurants out there, and the best thrift stores. plus a bunch of weirdly depressing/awesome bars i want to hit up too.
Alice, did you used to go to PartyTime? In that strip mall at Watt and Fair Oaks? I loved that place so much when it was open til midnight and had old waitresses and the original decor from the 50's or early 60's. It was still good after it got yuppied up but I haven't been there in about 10 years. Any good anymore?
Ella
I did go to PartyTime occasionally! But not nearly as much as I should have. It closed down maybe five years ago i think. they had jacked up their prices a bunch though, so that sucked. but, yeah, the staff was tops. For a while it was a bunch of eastern european cooks and a bunch of powder-covered salty dogs taking orders. and the inside was impeccable.
Was that the shopping center with the bar "The Ram?"
Omniwha?,
if you and the missus don't mind me passing out on your floor sometime, i'm down to hit up some of those strip mall bars.
namely, Ernies Interlude!!
i'm not sure if "the ram" was in that shopping center. I just remembered the name of it--Arden Town. So original! but, I guess it was like a mini city at one point what with having a grocery, a library and a cinema. now it's just high end boutiques. although, my fave italian restaurant in Sacramento is located there. Cafe Vinoteca. It's amazing. If you haven't been, you have to check it out.
Yeah, Arden Town. What was the name of the grocery store there, the one that faced Fair Oaks, I guess sorta? I did notice in my recent visits back to the home city, as I was stuck at that light, that the tenants there in the center had gotten a tad more high-end, to say the least. But that sure beats the ol' neighborhood fish market becoming a Starbucks. Was the library really there once? The one that's up the street now? I recall when Town and Country village had a library in it (and come to think of it, a movie theatre, at least right across the way, called, originally enough, "The Village.")
stephen,
just talked to my mom. ok. i guess the cinema she was referring to was actually the one in town and country. but, the ram was in arden town. apparently that was a pretty cool place but it didn't last. do you know anything about it? the arden library on watt further down by arden is the one that used to be at watt and fair oaks. the market was called "holiday market". there was a plant nursery a drug store and a barber shop as well. the drug store replaced a 5 and dime shop that my mom said had bins and bins of comic books. i guess she'd pilfer money from the gparents and ride her bike over there a lot as a kid. and she did research in high school at that library so it was definitely still in that location in the early 60s.
The Ram was one of my family's gathering places for decades. Along with Sam Hofbrau up Watt. They had excellent goulash and brisket.
I hung out at Partytime all through highschool, both before class and late into the night. When things started getting too crowded and stupid at the Java City at Loehmans Plaza, and we didn't want to drive downtown, a lot of us would meet at Partytime.
It recently turned into a Starbucks. So sad.
And Katy, you name your date, and we will go to Ernie's Interlude. I hear they make a great Greyhound.
Ernie's Interlude.
The bar which I grew up about half a mile from, at which my best friend in high school worked in a video store right next door (long gone; I believe it's now a bongporium of some sort)...
...and where I've still never been. In the old days I was afraid they'd spot my fake ID; 17 years later I just don't get to Sacramento often enough. Just let me know how the Greyhounds are.
Alice,
Oddly enough, I think the Village Cinema staggered all the way into the early 1980s as a second-run theatre before finally biting the dust, joining the Sac Inn, the Capitol, the Crestview, the Madison Square, the Starlite Drive-In and the infamous Towne (alright, that was a porno theatre that became a boat-supply place) as great long-gone moviehouses of the area. I miss the old Town and Country, which at various times had the library, a filthy donut shop, a semi-fithy pet store, one of the greatest camera stores in the world in Pardee's, the old-school Italian restaurant Aldo's and various other odd establishments. It opened back in 1946, back when there was nothing else about in the area except Del Paso Country Club down the two-lane road and a whole lotta open space (I'm not THAT old; this has all been passed onto me over time).
The Ram was popular with my friend's dad, and more than a few other people of his ilk, judging by my hearsay. I think it more of a restaurant/bar rather than a mere tavern, but I could be getting my facts all wrong.
I love the library in the round building at Watt and ... yikes, what is that, Northrup? I spent a whole day thre when I was eight years old reading about sharks, and sharks still make me think of the place and vice versa. Its collection has to stand in for a year while the Carmichael Library way out on Marconi gets gutted and rebuilt. Which believe me you; this an inconvenience I have to periodically hear about from my mother.
I used to work at Town and Country during the early 90's. (1990 actually) and that movie theatre was still open. It might have been mostly bingo at that point, and kung fu movies. Town and Country really used to be rad. It claims to be the first Mall in California, doesn't it? I had my grandparents take everyone out to Aldo's once for my birthday in 1987. (I think) It was French. I loved it so much. They had those wonderful uniformed waiters who would pull back the whole table for you to get into the banquette. Very exceedingly San Francisco circa 1955. Lots of red leather, starched linen and low lights. Tres elegant for Sacto.
Ella
stephen,
it's funny you should associate that library with sharks cuz i associate it with mythical creatures. in junior high, i had to create a phylogyny out of images of mythical creatures for a zoology class. it was me and 4 other 13 year old girls shacked up in that library for an entire day trying to figure out how to organize these 90+ fake animals into some kind of classification system. everytime i think of that library (which is totally rad with its shingles all over the outside), i remember that assignment. i also remember seeing a little girl pee all over the floor when she was asked to participate in a magic trick in front of a crowd. that really sucked for her. the worst part about it was that all the parents and kids just sort of pretended like it wasn't happening, like there wasn't this giant pool of urine under her feet as the magician was pulling a coin from behind her ear. lots of eastern european immigrants use that library now. and it's fancier on the inside (BOOOO!!!).
ella,
i went to a restaurant in town and country which i think might have been aldo's (or perhaps it was the one that replaced aldo's). it was a fancy italian restaurant. i went for my 18th birthday and my grandma let me have a sip of her strawberry daquiri. she leaned over to the waiter before ordering it saying something like "these girls have never tasted alcohol before". i tried really hard not to laugh out loud! i remember that place being really fancy though and the service was excellent.
Alice,
I had to call my mom too. She said it was called "Aldo's Continental Cuisine" or something to that effect, back in the old days. I remember asking to go there because it was the only "french" place (and I was taking french in high school)in town besides the Town and Country creperie place. Aldo's wasn't really french though. More like fancy European hotel food. I remember they had an opera singer/pianist too! I think it's funny that you 'first tasted' alcohol there!
Ella
I stand corrected -- Aldo's wasn't really an "Italian" restaurant now that I think about it, more French/continental I suppose. I guess I just associate that decor (the leather, the dim lights, all the red) with that sort of cuisine. Hey, that's profiling on my part. I could get into trouble for that. It's my understanding that Aldo's hung on until just a few years ago, but I could be wrong. That's amazing that the Village Cinema was still open until the 1990s, but I believe it. Yes, Town and Country Village lays claim to being the oldest shopping center in the country, although I think that's sort of difficult to prove. My feeling is that hundreds of them opened everywhere in 1945-46 so they should probably share the honor.
yep. and when i took that first little sip, my grandma explained to me that the alcohol my burn my throat. i'm glad she told me that or else i would've freaked my shit out.
Alice,
I love all the shingles on that library, and also the fact that it appears to be round (I was quite disappointed on the day when, as a child, I walked around the outside and found out that it wasn't exactly, perfectly round. But that's life). I wonder what that gurl who peed in the library is doing right now? Some people really don't like magic tricks, however. That is one hell of a childhood memory. That's even worse than the time, as a nine-year-old, that I vomited everywhere inside Graphic Hobby House.
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