Reviews & Comments
Sacramento, CA
re: biggest little cow town in the west! - 12/1/20 -
3/9/2008Sacramento gets a lot of flack for being a "cow town" (maybe we should just make that the new official name. In reality, as some who has lived in the area my entire life, that's not the case. There are half a million people the Sacramento area! I have lived in a cow town before - try Woodland, or Eureka, those are small hick towns for sure. Sacramento just has a "little sister" stigma because what city can measure up to San Francisco, only an hour and a half from us? The answer, as a previous poster observed, no city in the world can really measure up. SF is an amazing (and amazingly expensive:) place. Which brings me to the pro's and con's of Sacramento. Honestly, there are many good things about living in this area (just put SF out of your mind, stop comparing the two, pretend it doesn't exist right now). Pro's: anyone living here will tell you - an hour and a half to the Sierra Nevada mountains, an hour and a half to the coast. Wine country is close, and Lodi, which is very close to the south, is also a great wine region. Sacramento has also benefited from the influence of the Bay Area - since I have lived here the restaurants, bars, nightlife, art and music scene have all grown tremendously. The politics here are moderately to the left, being the state capital of California. I would prefer to live in a slightly more liberal area myself, but I would NOT classify the area as a conservative hick town. We are a college town, and the politics fall in line with that. The majority of conservative population live in the hills to the east (Placer county is a major area for that). Con's: The summer heat. The main reason I want to move. If you like the sun, we have at least 330 days of sunshine a year. The winters are mild, fall is awesome because of our urban forest. But the summers are blistering hot. This also effects the air quality here because of the inversion layer. That's the main draw back of the area.
Eureka, CA
What quality of life? -
4/19/2007Living in Eureka was a five month nightmare. Seduced by the redwoods, my boyfriend and I moved up from Sacramento eager to live in a coastal climate, liberal environment and with low cost of living. What we found was dirty, depressing, drug ridden city and constant conflict between the loggers and the tree sitters. The house shortage is unreal, we lived in an apartment that was really awful and our landlords were nothing short of exploitive. The housing was almost as bad as the job market. The market is so competitive and there were so few jobs that people felt lucky just get minimum wage work working crazy hours. I finally found a job only to lose it one day later because the owner had already hired someone else when the manager hired me. Eureka is riddled with drug addicts, and not the kind you would associate normally with Humboldt. I would frequently find hypodermic needles in the gutters and city parks, also the white Supremicists like to hang out in Redwood Park. This is unfortunate because it is a beautiful place where people bring their children. The bottom line is, there isn't much that's good about Eureka. It is a very depressing and very economically depressed place. If you want to move to Humboldt County, choose Cutten, Arcata, Fortuna or one of the other lovely little cities along the coast (Ferndale is adorable). I still love Humboldt and its gorgeous redwood country, but Eureka was not good to us, and we moved back to Sacramento 5 months after we arrived.
Sacramento, CA
Are we talking about the same city? -
4/19/2007I have lived in Sacramento for going on 8 years - since I moved out on my own and left the small agricultural town I was raised in. Sacramento is a wonderful place to live, in many respects! I take issue with the "cow town" ribbing that so many people (particularly those from So Cal) seem to enjoy when they come here. The crime is not significant here, compared to the Bay Area. We have Second Saturday, emulating Portland, during which all the art galleries in downtown open up to the public for free. The influx of people from the Bay Area, as well as the relocation of Gov. Schwartzenegger to the area has accounted for increased night life, a wider variety of restaurants, and the music scene keeps getting better and better. We have an urban forest in the downtown/midtown/east sac area, where the streets are lined with old growth sycamores, elms and other gigantic trees which are as old as the city itself. I have not experienced any more arrogance or rudeness from people in this city than from people who come from out of town, and look down their nose at us. I'm really tired of the superior attitude so many people take toward Sacramento. We have a great quality of life here, good universities, and the largest solar energy industry in the state. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District is one of the most forward thinking in America - a substantial amount of their money goes toward wind energy, solar, biomass and other renewables. We are also, block for block, THE most diverse city in America (read the article in TIME magazine) and we coexist peacefully compared to other cities. I could go on and on about the benefits of living here (I already have:) but I know that what I consider good quality of life might not be the same for someone else. The only real downside I see about Sacramento, as others have mentioned, is the hot summers and poor air quality during the dry season. That I understand. If you have bad allergies or asthma, consider living somewhere else. Also consider living somewhere else if you are going to complain about what a cowtown Sacramento is. Thank you