But this is Chico, too

Coming up with my favorite Chico streets in a recent post has started me thinking about what a neighborhood is.

If I'm considering only how it should look, a neighborhood must be full of surprises, with each lot different from the next. Just about everything built since the end of World War II has been mass-produced, creating an appearance that is too homogeneous to be counted as a neighborhood.

But there's another quality that makes for a neighborhood that has nothing to do with how it looks. For want of a better term, let's call it social cohesion. This dimension of neighborhood is a measure of how people who live in it act toward each other.

I first experienced a neighborhood  when I was a child living in the area that would later become known as Silicon Valley. It was a neighborhood mainly in the social sense, although location and economic status also set it apart from its surroundings.

We lived in a solid middle-class neighborhood built in the late 1940s. It was surrounded by prune orchards and rural slums. Even as a kid, I knew that the street just beyond the next orchard was full of trashy people, including wild kids who liked to bully the better-behaved kids in our neighborhood.

Our neighborhood was full of families with two to five children. Most of the mothers stayed at home. They would meet each other for coffee at their  houses. The dads were around on weekends. It was your typical baby boomer gestation zone. The adults in the neighborhood looked out for all the kids. We felt safe there. But if we were looking for a little danger and adventure, we could head to the orchards or the slums.

The houses in our neighborhood were all custom-built, but they were modest and nondescript in that 1950s way. They certainly weren't charmers. Our house had a self-consciously modern look.

When we moved to Santa Rosa when I was 12, we went from the suburbs to an older neighborhood. Again, location and economic status set us somewhat apart from our surroundings. This time we were outside the affluent part of town. My parents opted for a  less glamorous neighborhood because it allowed us to afford a huge house. There were five kids in our family and we each had our own bedroom.

Our neighborhood consisted of three one-block parallel streets connected by a single street at the end of the block. We were sandwiched between a placid creek and the busy main street of town. For no apparent reason, our street was populated by European immigrants. In our neighborhood, English was spoken with German, Austrian, Russian and Finnish accents. There weren't as many families in this neighborhood, but at least on our own street, the residents knew us and looked out for us.

The houses were built around the turn of the 20th century. Some of them had two stories. But they were by no means charmers. They were vaguely Victorian or craftsman.

As an adult, I've had few experiences of neighborhoods in a social sense. In the last 40 years people's ties have become based on shared interests rather than proximity. The shrinking number of kids in post baby boom America has made neighborhoods less socially cohesive than they used to be.

Also, neighborhoods just aren't that important to me. In a social sense, I'm the boy in the bubble. I don't make much of an effort to meet people, and I usually keep my distance from people who try to get to know me. I live in world where 6.5 billion people are strangers, 2,000 are acquaintances and 20 are close friends and family members. So the social advantages of neighborhoods mean less to me than they do to most people.

Despite my self-contained nature, I'm by no means a hermit. I have a  family after all, though I suspect my wife wouldn't have minded if I'd been more of a talker.

One of the things I've always like about writing for a newspaper is that it has forced me to go out and talk to people. I find most of these encounters to be enriching and energizing, yet I'm always happy to regain my solitude afterward. One of the things I like about being a flaneur -- a sentient ambler through urban space -- is that it forces me to have random encounters with people. One of the reasons I like San Francisco so much is that it has such a vibrant street life. By contrast, Chico's streets are pretty quiet, but there are enough people out there to make things interesting.

I almost refused a recent encounter. I was walking through the neighborhood east of downtown and passed a couple of Chico State students who were tossing a Frisbee back and forth. One of them urged me to catch it and toss it to his friend. At first I said no, but then I asked myself, "Why you are you being so uptight?"

I couldn't come up with a good answer. So I caught the Frisbee, tossed it, caught it again and tossed it one more time before continuing  my walk, feeling invigorated by my decision to step outside my bubble.

The life of a flaneur is full of opportunities to observe people, but once in a while there are invitations to interact. I'm trying to become more comfortable about accepting them.

Excuse my French. As a flaneur, I enjoy throwing French phrases around. Let me translate the headline that leads off this post. What I'm saying is, "How are your alleys?"

I know. You don't have alleys. Neither do I. But Chico has lots (or beaucoup, as a flaneur would say), and I can tell you how they are. A flaneur goes everywhere.

Chico's alleys are: bucolic, hidden in plain sight, an incomplete network, notable for where they don't go and far neater than you may think.

If the old part of Chico reminds you of a quiet small town, the alleys will confirm this impression. These narrow dirt and gravel, tree-lined ways have no real traffic and no noise, except for the occasional dog barking and lid thumping down on a garbage can or dumpster.

Alleys have been out of fashion for several decades, but new urbanism enthusiasts are bringing them back. So it's no surprise that they are common in the oldest and newest parts of cities and scarce in the typical mid-20th century suburban zones.

Strangely, downtown Chico and the South Campus neighborhood -- the oldest parts of Chico -- have no alleys. This is why delivery trucks have to double park on Broadway and Main streets. This is why it would be absurd to put in angled parking on these two streets.

The Mulberry and Barber neighborhoods and the streets and avenues are well-endowed with alleys, yet even here they are not a parallel universe to the street system they mimic. I tried making my way north through the Barber neighborhood  in the area between Broadway and Normal Street and found that some of the blocks are missing alleys entirely, or they run east and west instead of north and south or they come to a dead end somewhere in the middle.

Among the most interesting anomalies in all of Chico are the two sets of alleys between Citrus and Arcadian and First and Second avenues. One property is entirely alley-locked. The more easterly of these two alleys runs along the playground at Citrus School after it crosses Second. It stops at Third because the school itself is in the way, then picks up again behind an apartment building on Fourth and keeps going for two more blocks.

Once in a while you come across an alley with an open vista, such as the one the runs along west end of the site of the Enloe Medical Center expansion project.

The only other pedestrian I met on my alley assessment walks was the screaming dumpster diver. As a flaneur, I'm aware of  Chico's many street people. This seeker of  empty cans seems harmless, but his periodic cussing at the top of his lungs can be unnerving. I stared him down in a pleasant sort of way as I walked past him. He didn't scream at me. But later, when he thought I was out of earshot, he muttered that I should stick to  the streets.

I don't intend to make walking in alleys a habit. I feel like I'm half-trespassing as I treat myself to this back view of Chico. I feel like a voyeur. Surprisingly, there aren't as many granny cottages and other backyard living units as I thought -- not enough  to tempt a would-be Peeping Tom.

But there are a lot of different kinds of garages -- modern and rustic, immaculate and falling down, colorfully painted and bare wood, squat and tall, spacious and compact.

The thing I like most about alleys is that garages are right next to them.  I don't like garages that face the street. They have zero curb appeal, especially the three-car monsters. 

I want to give credit to fellow Norcalblogs blogger Joe Shaw for getting me interested in walking Chico's alleys. He mentioned them in one of his posts a few months ago.

He wrote: "The alleys expose a back side of Chico that you won't see from the streets. Life is more casual in the alleys. The beauty is there, it's just a bit more subtle. Weather-worn trenches that must be negotiated as you drive through, unkept small yards as well as hanging plants on slanted porches, cars parked within 10 feet of the front door, back yards that join the back yard of the larger house that faces the street, flaking paint that exposes raw wood, lazy cats nestled on worn out furniture, and squirrels running effortlessly over fence tops and telephone wires."

The alleys make a flaneur want to appropriate yet another French phrase and cry out "Chico alors!"

My last blog entry about coffeehouses brought me a rebuke. When I wrote that Chico has no new coffeehouses, a reader let me know that Beatniks Coffee House has opened at the site of Market Cafe and its predecessor, Bean Scene.

This is a great spot for a coffeehouse. It's right off the freeway, has plenty of parking and is close to the Chico Police Station and the Chico Unified School District offices. I don't understand why the last two coffeehouses couldn't make a go of it.

Owner Mike Huber says half the former space will be occupied by another tenant, but Beatniks has the side with the kitchen, which will soon remodeled so that it can offer a more substantial menu than typical coffeehouse fare.

Beatniks pays tribute to beat culture. Photos of Jack Kerouac decorate the walls. There's a poster for the San Francisco Beat Museum that mentions Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl." On a chalk board next to where the coffee is made is a Kerouac quote: Enlightenment is: do what you want. Eat what is there." This is followed by an announcement that Beatniks will soon be serving breakfast and lunch.  

The coffeehouse also pays tribute to beatnik culture, the movement that made fun of beat culture. I hope to see some photos of Maynard G. Krebs (the G., which is silent, stands for Walter) alongside Kerouac. Maynard, "The Loves of Dobie Gillis" TV show character, who was played by Bob Denver, is the most popular beatnik of all time. Menus on the tables mention Maynard and give other facts about beat and beatnik culture.

I'd like to see some beatnik-type lyrics grace the chalk boards at Beatniks Coffee House, like the ones that close the song "Alley Oop," the 1960 hit by the Hollywood Argyles: "Look at that caveman go. He sure is hip, ain't he. Like what's happening. He's too much. Ride, Daddy, ride. Hi-yo dinosawruh, Get 'em, man. Like -- hipsville."

I'm still waiting for some beatnik-style coffeehouse to call itself Sugar Shack, based on the 1963 hit song of that title by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireflies. Sugar Shack's a "crazy little shack beyond the tracks," which is "made out of wood," where "expresso (sic) coffee tastes mighty good." Working there is "a cute little girlie" with a "black leotard and her feet are bare."

If you were a beatnik "girlie," you had to go around in black leotards and wear your hair long and straight. If you were a beatnik guy, you had to wear a goatee and play bongo drums. You went to coffeehouses and either listened to jazz, while snapping your fingers and bobbing your head, or sat in a corner and wrote ponderous stream-of-consciousness free verse poetry.

The beauty of coffeehouses is that they are both a stereotype and the real deal. The coffeehouses that surrounded Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights bookstore in North Beach in San Francisco were where beat writers and other artists hung out.

I look forward to Beatniks Coffee House playing up both sides of this mid-20th century cultural phenomenon.

I have some more coffeehouse news for all you hep cats out there. I'm probably the last person in Chico to find this out, but Cafe Flo has new owners. I stopped by there a couple of weeks ago. It had been a while since my last visit. I could see that some things had changed. The furniture had been rearranged and the floor had been stained a darker color. The real giveaway was that new people were serving the coffee. I talked to Monikah Niemczynowicz, one of the new owners. She and her husband bought Cafe Flo in September. She said they plan to carry a number of local products.

Tin Roof Bakery will be opening a bakery and cofeehouse right in the middle of hipsville, just south of downtown, in a neighborhood I call SoDo. It will be at the northeast corner of Broadway and Seventh streets in the former quarters of Urban Roost. Several years ago, I did an interview with Tin Roof Bakery owner Brandon Siewert for a story in the E-R style section. He mentioned then that he'd like to open a retail outlet for his bakery.  

Jumpstart Espresso, which was in C & M Automotive's waiting room, has closed. The space will be used for a tire showroom. I will miss the coffee and breakfast burritos, but look forward to being able to buy my tires  at C & M. In fact, I have already bought two tires there.

Welcome to the new and improved Norcalblogs site. In this ever-changing world, everything must change because - well, because this is an ever-changing world. This is America, where "creative destruction" is a way of life.

Change is good and new is good, but for the time being I'm sticking with this old photo of myself. Right now (probably because we live in an ever-changing world) I'm going through a phase. Call it aging hippie. I have long hair and a beard. I don't look like myself. This photo may be almost nine years old, but it looks like the usual me. I could go back to looking that way at any time. Phases don't last.

Ultimately, I'm heading toward a final phase. I will be an old, bald guy. When this happens, I will definitely need a new photo. In this ever-changing world, some changes are written in stone. The transition from young to old is one of them.

It's shocking to think I'm almost elderly. I'm sure 15 million to 20 million other baby boomers feel this way. In less than three years, I be turn 60. I see now that worrying about turning 40 is for wimps. Sixty is a serious milestone.

But why am I so surprised at my advancing age? Listen to how I talk. In this post, I'm making fun of the idea that change for the sake of change is a virtue. If that's not a sign of age, I don't know what is.

I love the belief that some things don't change, including love itself. How's that for an old-fashioned point of view?

In this aging hippie phase, I'm looking at the past and romanticizing it. I like the Sixties more now than I did 40 years ago. I was an awkward teenager in the Sixties. Why would I want to go back to that?

Part of me would like to be hip in a 21st century way. I would like to occasionally surprise my 23-year-old son, who's always accusing me of "geriatricating."

But I'll show him. This may be the last blog entry I will ever compose in longhand. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a baby laptop computer. My son has been giving me lessons at home, but soon I'm going to go out into the world and take it with me to my coffeehouse haunts. Pen and paper will be banished. How cool is that?

I have a feeling it won't be long before I start taking photos with a digital camera, downloading music online and - wonder of wonders - making calls and even texting on a cell phone.

And why not? When was the last time I used a typewriter? Would I ever clean my clothes with a ringer washer, use ice to refrigerate my food or drive a horse and buggy? Of course not. This is America. In this ever-changing world, nothing changes faster than technology. If I didn't think this was true, I wouldn't be sending you this message from blogoland.

A few years ago, I wrote about my favorite Chico streets in my former E-R column "But This is Chico."  It's time to do an update in my blog, using photos.

Some streets -- The Esplanade, Woodland and Vallombrosa avenues and Bidwell Avenue -- are such obvious candidates there's no sense in mentioning them.

Not surprisingly, all of my favorite streets are in my favorite neighborhoods. They are in the only places I call neighborhoods.

Chico has, at most, eight neighborhoods: South Campus, Barber, the avenues, the streets (not really their name), Mansion Park, Chapmantown, Mulberry and the place east of Mangrove Avenue and north of Bidwell Park that I call NoPa.

The rest of Chico consists of subdivisions, the mass-produced projects of developers. California Park has a name, but it's several developments rolled into one. The Doe Mill Neighborhood is called a neighborhood, but it's a subdivision. It tries to look like a traditional neighborhood, but it's a facsimile. I'm still trying to decide whether I like 21st century reproductions of older neighborhoods. I like them better than the typical mid-20th century suburban housing development, although I have a soft spot for Eichler homes.

In my book, a neighborhood is assembled lot by lot. Truly great streets have to be unpredictable. Subdivision streets may be pretty and charming, but they offer no surprises. Because cities are no longer built lot by lot, neighorhoods are no longer being created, at least not in a physical sense. That's why it's so important to preserve them.

It's hard to single out my favorite street in the Barber neighborhood. The most improved street is 21st Street between Park Avenue and Salem Street. New construction and renovations of existing properties have rescued this two-block stretch that was once on the brink of turning into a slum.

The best streets in Barber are Salem and Broadway. The photo that leads off this post is on Salem between 17th and 18th streets. Another favorite street is Chestnut between 9th and 10th. When you drive over the bridge that crosses Little Chico Creek, you feel like you're entering another world.

Without a doubt, my favorite street in the avenues is West Sacramento between The Esplanade and Palm Avenue. As you head east, you first pass through two blocks of modest craftsman bungalows. I've written about them several times. Beyond that are two blocks of houses built in the post-bungalow style but pre-date the mid-20th century ticky-tacky suburban ranch-style home. It's a quiet street, and extremely pleasant to walk. East First Avenue, which lies a block to the north, is also nice, but there's too much traffic for a pedestrian to feel comfortable. The two or three blocks that lie north of East First are also great walking streets.

Another favorite street, on the west side of the avenues, is Hobart Avenue, four blocks of semi-rural solitude just east of Warner Avenue. Ugly apartment buildings that serve as rentals for Chico State University students have made inroads into this part of the avenues, but Hobart has unbroken rows of older houses.

The day I walked this street to recall what it's like my serenity was shattered by a woman walking down the street yelling obscenities into a cell phone. This wasn't some college student who had the mistaken idea that swearing is a sign of maturity. This woman was easily in her 40s.

I'd venture you'd never hear this kind of talk on the streets of California Park. On the other hand, you don't see a lot of people walking the streets of any of Chico's subdivisions. There's no life to them. The thing about neighborhoods is that all kinds of people live in them, which is part of their unpredictability -- good or bad.

Mansion Park is such a distinctive part of the avenues that it more than deserves its own name. It gets its name not because it has mansions in it but because it's next to Bidwell Mansion. It was subdivided in the early 1920s, and was built up lot by lot over the next 20 years. It has few bungalows, but several storybook-style houses. It's impossible for me to pick a favorite street. I chose this one because so many of the yards were in bloom the day I was taking photos of the neighborhood. Despite being in the heart of town and right next to Chico State University, it retains a quiet, early 20th century atmosphere.

The streets, the unnamed section east of downtown, is Chico's version heaven on earth. It's the perfect early 20th century small-town neighborhood, replete with charming houses, well-tended gardens and tree-lined streets. It's impossible to pick out a favorite street.

I arbitrarily picked out a corner house about two blocks south of Bidwell Park. Heaven runs south for another two blocks past this location.

It's hard to find even one decent block in the South Campus neighborhood despite the historical and architectural significance of its numerous 19th and early 20th century buildings. it has too many bad remodeling jobs and ugly apartments. Fortunately, there are a few property owners in the neighborhood who value the old houses. I took me a while to notice that a few blocks of Eighth Street between about Salem and Ivy, still look like old Chico. I wasn't inclined to walk it because of the traffic. But when I gave it a chance on foot, I discovered this is a good stretch. I was especially intrigued by this house with the witch's cap.

NoPa is a much newer neighborhood than the others, but most of it was developed lot by lot. The queen street is Arbutus Avenue, the one stretch that was built up before the mid 20th century. The homes in this neighborhood are on large lots that bask beneath the blue suburban skies.

It and Mansion Park are the most consistently middle class of the neighborhoods, so they aren't as likely to provide the same element of surprise that walking in more economically diverse realms of Chico does.

Chapmantown and the Mulberry neighborhood offer the most surprises. I like how churches, stores and other non-residential buildings can pop anywhere. I like the neighborhoods' mixture of shabby charm and drab ugliness. I like how when you leave the precise grid of Mulberry and cross over into Chapmantown, you risk losing your sense of direction. Chapmantown streets are a labyrinth. Here's a fence in Chapmantown. I challenge you to find anything like this in a Chico subdivision.

My mental map has Chico ending precisely at Eaton Road. I like cities to have well-defined boundaries. I don't want them to ooze into the countryside.

Eaton Road marked the approximate northern boundary of Rancho Arroyo del Chico. If that was good enough for John Bidwell, it's good enough for me.

Modern-day Chico, alas, has a mind of its own. Or maybe it would even be more accurate to call it mindless. Its northern boundaries are especially sloppy.

In the northwest corner, housing developments have jumped Eaton and are creeping toward Mud Creek. Along Highway 99, businesses of every size and description crowd out the countryside for a good mile or two north of Eaton.

The biggest breach of the boundary is the Chico Municipal Airport and the ring of businesses that surrounds it. This isn't even an extension of the sprawl that spills past Eaton. It's a separate entity. Drive north on Cohasset Road and you go through a patch of open space before you get there. But when you arrive, if you look at it closely, you see that it's a world unto itself.

It's a world where lots of people work and nobody lives, although there are other things besides businesses there. I was surprised to come across a Little League field. Not far from it is a place called Sky Creek Dharma Center, where beliefs and practices, rather than goods and services, are the focus. There is an aviation museum out near the airport, which I still haven't visited.

It's a land of immense buildings, some of them vacant, and tiny sheds and Quonset huts, most of them containing thriving enterprises.

It's a place that has no sense of place in the traditional or new urbanism sense. Its scale makes Chico's big-boxland look like a village. It has long blocks and wide streets, but you do see people out on the sidewalks, power-walking and jogging. It's geared to cars, but the roads are pretty much empty. Except during commute time, all the cars are in parking lots.

It's a realm full of businesses I've heard of, but didn't realize they were at the airport until I went out there. Six Degrees is one example. Another is Fifth Sun.

There are probably more car repair and parts places out at the airport than in the rest of Chico combined. But it's also the home of some cutting-edge businesses. Chico Technology Center is the home of Travidia, Inc., an online marketing company, (the final photo in this post) and PathoLase, a medical laser technology company.

Mooney Farms, which makes sun-dried tomato products, is also out there. It has just completed a handsome addition to its facility, as the photo the leads off this post shows.

When you drive through this other world and really look around, you realize Chico's economy is more diverse than you've imagined it to be. The city is based on other things besides agriculture, Chico State University and health care, government and retail services.

The vacant buildings are evidence that this is a land of great expectations, but the number and variety of businesses that fill most of the buildings show that it's possible for employers to find success in an area outsiders may dismiss as a backwoods part of Northern California.

I suspect that most Chicoans are unaware of what's out at the airport. We don't go there much. When we decide to fly, we usually drive to the Sacramento International Airport. Chico isn't yet part of the friendly skies network.

The part of me that is a student of urban design principles looks upon this area as a perfect example of leapfrog development. But the economic realist sees it as a ray of hope for Chico's most important quality of life issue -- good-paying jobs.

The city's proposal to create a bike path alongside Highway 99 from Mud Creek to Southgate Avenue poses a twofold challenge.

The first is: Where do you build it? The second is, if you build it, will the bicyclists come?

The city should have thought about this project 50 years ago when the freeway was still in the planning stages and before suburban sprawl began to hit Chico bigtime.

Back then, of course, people made plans for freeways and major thoroughfares, but they weren't thinking about bicyclists. Bicycle City USA? What's that?

And, indeed, Chico is as car-friendly as any city in California, except for the "obstacle" of Bidwell Park. In most parts of Chico, it's way too late to find enough open space to create separate bike paths. And a lot of the existing streets near the freeway are either too congested or too fragmented (cul-de-sacs galore) to function as bike lanes.

But here (slightly above and to your right) is a spot where a bike path could be built. This is where an existing path peters out behind Kohl's department store and turns into a rough trail that passes through Teichert Ponds. This trail could be paved and somehow be linked up with an existing bike path that runs between Humboldt Road and Little Chico Creek. The west end of it passes underneath the freeway.

Here's an example of how hard it is for the city to be attempting to create bike paths at this late date. A beautiful path runs through a stand of oak trees between the Mission Ranch subdivision and Lindo Channel. Because this is a fairly new development and had been open land until the 1990s, the city was able to establish a bike path here.

When you cross Holly Avenue, the path continues to the west. It looks enticing. You look ahead, see a bend and wonder what lies beyond it, only to discover that it comes to a dead end at a fence. From this point to the railroad tracks, the Lindo Channel frontage property is full of house. The path has nowhere to go.

Despite having to backpedal -- so to speak -- and create projects well after most of the suitable land was already occupied, the city has been ingenious about making do with what was still available.

This bike path, which starts at 20th Street and follows Park Avenue and the Midway halfway to Durham, was part of a street improvement project. East Eighth Street between Highway 99 and the deer pen at Bidwell Park, was recently given a similar treatment. Paths like this follow streets, but they are entirely separate from the roadway.

The great northern escape for bicyclists follows an old railroad bed from Lindo Channel to Chico Municipal Airport. This part of Chico isn't a bit bike-friendly, so this route is a godsend. What I don't like about this path is that it doesn't connect to a lot of streets. As you walk along it, you feel fenced in.

One of Chico's best bike paths follows Little Chico Creek from Highway 99 to Bruce Road. It has a spur that crosses a bridge and runs by Marsh Junior High School. It passes right next to the front doors of a new apartment complex.

The farther away from the freeway you are, the better the bike paths. That's not surprising. Not only is open land scarce next to the freeway, but paths and freeway interchanges don't mix well.

A bicyclist approaching the freeway on 20th, Ninth and Eighth streets, First and East avenues and Cohasset Road, may find it a frightening experience. It may not be a good idea to put more bicyclists in that area.

The city argues that this is where most of the city's most popular destinations are, so building a path would cut down on the number of drivers, but these are primarily shopping destinations. I can't foresee a time when any but the most intrepid bicyclists would abandon their vehicles to do major shopping. We can't overlook the clear advantage of cars for hauling stuff.

As the city grows and crime increases, bicycle paths may no longer seem like friendly stretches of open space. They may one day become perceived as dangerous and full of unsavory characters. Growth is inevitable, but it can sure have its downsides. A diminishing sense of safety is one of them. The fact that people have recently been beaten up and robbed on bike paths is bound to prey on our imaginations.

Here's an update on a second house that was in limbo for a while, but is showing signs of coming back to life. To read about the first house, see "Moving out of limbo," May 3.

This house, at 14th and Mulberry streets, is much further along in its rejuvenation than this photo shows. I think I took it about a month ago.

It's owned by David Kim, who's with the firm Anderson/Kim Architecture + Urban Design, along with John Anderson (the developer, not the architect). Both of them worked for New Urban Builders, but then left to start their own practice.

Kim said he had been planning to tear down this house and replace it with a two-story live-work structure with a detached garage and an accessory unit above it, but soon realized the project would be too costly. He said he was unable to secure a construction loan.

So he's decided to refurbish the existing house "without breaking the bank"  He isn't planning to increase its square footage. So far,  a new front porch has been framed up and the exterior siding is being readied for painting.

He said he plans to eventually build a home on the part of the property that lies to the west of the house.

In the 11 years since I moved to Chico, I've seen a lot of houses on Mulberry undergo renovations. The street is looking great. I'm glad this house is joining the ranks of the rejuvenated.

My days are built around going to coffeehouses as much as they are walking. Both activities are part of what it means to be a flaneur -- a sentient ambler through urban space.

It's a little more purposeful than it sounds. I'm not idling my time away, which is what flaneurs are said to do. I walk for exercise, which is a part of a diabetic's daily regimen, especially for someone like me, who has been recently diagnosed and is highly motivated to get the disease under control.

My time in coffeehouses is  equally productive. Once the caffeine hits my bloodstream I become energized and focused. I do rough drafts of blogs, make lists of chores and errands to do, figure out my household budget, read books, write in my journal and engage in people-watching.

The immediate effects of caffeine in my system are so salubrious that even if I choose to back my chair away from the table where I'm sitting, cross one leg over the other and stare into space, I will have some significant "aha" moments. It's my best time to brainstorm blog ideas. But even when ideas are scarce, my random thoughts are of a higher caliber in coffeehouses than they are elsewhere. These are good times for me time to think about eternity.

Coffeehouse visits are especially fruitful when the places are crowded. The background din of conversations helps me do better work and stimulates my thinking. I'm accustomed to working in noisy, distracting newsrooms, so I seek it out in other environments.

Occasionally, I end up sitting next to pontificators: people with loud voices who dominate the conversations at their tables. That's too distracting. If that happens, I get up and move to another table.

Sometimes I end up sitting near community movers and shakers and then, of course, I eavesdrop. The twitchy vitality of these people is hard to ignore. You know that once they've finished their coffee break, they're going to go out and pull off a couple of moves and the most strenuous part of  a shake before lunchtime.

My current coffeehouse favorites are Cafe Paulo (which I have mistakenly called Cafe Paolo for years), Empire Coffee, Augie's and Higher Ground. I'm always willing to check out new places, but lately no new places have opened. In fact, some of the old places have closed.

Empire, which is in a train car next to the Chico Train Depot, can sometimes be a little to quiet for my taste. It's hard for me to concentrate in an atmosphere that reminds me of a study hall.

Lately, the chairs at Augie's are getting hard for me to sit on, so I don't go there as often as I used to. The chairs are the same, but something about me is different. I've lost a lot of weight, so I have less natural cushioning to protect me from the unyielding wooden chairs. I try to grab a place on one of the padded pews. Sometimes, it's so crowded at Augie's I'm lucky to find any place to sit.

It's hard to believe Higher Ground, across the street from the Longfellow Terrace Shopping Center (which has been almost completely taken over by In Motion Fitness), has been around for nine years. Here's a photo I took of it when it was being built. You might have guessed by now that I like taking photos of buildings under construction or being torn down.

Higher Ground can also be extremely busy at times.

By the time I've taken my walk, visited a coffeehouse and done chores and errands, I've had a busy day. Then it's time to go to work, which lasts from mid-afternoon until about midnight. Sometimes, when I leave work, I feel like I've lived through two days.

Because so many of my waking hours are spent either running around or sitting in front of my computer at work  dealing with the unvarying deadlines of the daily news cycle, the time I spend at coffeehouses is an oasis. It's a time to sit  down and accomplish mental tasks without having to stick to a timetable or just do nothing except muse about life.

Since spring started, I've taken several strolls through a 200-acre plot of woods, fields and orchards at the edge of Chico. It may turn out to be one of Chico's permanent edges. Along with foothills and plains dotted with vernal pools, this may become one of the Chico urban area's hard-and-fast boundaries.

I've taken to calling this place the tree farm. Its official name, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Mendocino National Forest Genetic Resource and Conservation Center, doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

Butte County's almond orchards are a familiar part of the landscape, but the tree orchards provide an interesting twist. Native seedlings, mainly conifers, are grown here and then planted on National Forest property throughout the state. The trees are developed to have characteristics that promote growth, vigor and disease-resistance.

This is a de facto park. The trails running through and around the edge of the orchards are open to the public. To the people who walk here, it's just a pretty spot. To the dogs that walk here, it's heaven. If they stay on the trails, dogs can roam without a leash in many of the areas.

To me, the trees are more welcome than the dogs. Dogs are so dog-like. They don't approach people directly. They head around to our backsides to give us a sniff. Some of them do this while yapping or growling. I find this annoying. What's worse is that owners don't understand that not everyone is enamored of dogs. They seem disappointed when I don't go up to their pets and try to make friends. Sometimes, when a dog seems especially aggressive in its approach, the owner will say "He's not usually like this." That's because the dog probably senses my indifference.

I have a feeling this won't become a favorite walking place. I'm just not hitting it off with the dogs.The best non-dog times seem to be the middle of the day, but in the summer that will be when the heat is at its worst.

I like to walk the perimeter of the property, which takes about 30 minutes. The paths pass through not only orchards, but open fields. They are now turning brown and the golden poppies that give them a dash of vibrant color are starting to fade.

At the south end of the property, you can see the golden glow of the roof of the Neighborhood Church through the barbed wire fence. This is where you can hear the cars whizzing by along Highway 99, but it's such a peaceful place you hardly mind.

One of the paths I seldom walk is of interest to the casual stroller. It follows Comanche Creek and is dotted with non-native plants, such as Chinese myrtle, Japanese pines, Australian and Algerian eucalyptus and Palestinian cypresses.

There's a formidable stand of bamboo along the path. This photo shows the bamboo growing next to native oak and sycamore trees.

The tree farm lies just beyond the belt of businesses south of the Skyway. Heading east, turn right on Dominic Avenue, left on Morrow Lane, then right on Cramer Lane. The gate to the property is closed to vehicles after business hours, but you can park outside the gate and walk in.