But this is Chico, too

Eating has become an art, a hobby, a way to pass the time. For some people, the pursuit of exotic culinary experiences has become a status symbol.

For most of us in this country, eating has nothing to do with hunger, or even appetite.

Chico is becoming one of the epicenters for epicurean eating. All of the trends converge here. We are becoming more linked to local growers and producers, through their own or others’ retail outlets and the farmers’ markets. We are becoming more aware of health foods and organically grown foods, which are sold not just in our specialty stores but in just about every supermarket. We are surrounded by restaurants where many of the dishes are prepared from scratch using fresh ingredients and suprising spice combinations. We are becoming the hub of agritourism — a stop on a tour of wineries, olive growers, cheesemakers and fruit and nut delicacy producers.

Such a good life has its pitfalls, which become especially obvious during the holidays. The transformation of eating from necessity to entertainment and leisure activity has made no impression whatsover on our metabolisms, which are determined to store excess calories as fat. Our bodies persist in their age-old practice of keeping us from famines. And so our bodies become rounder and rounder, year by year.

We can easily put on 10 pounds during the month of December. My pitfall is sweets. My particular downfall this year was brandy cakes. I can’t blame Chico for this overindulgence. The candies, cookies and pastries I’ve eaten have come from all over the map.

My pants no longer fit me around the waist. They shimmy down to my hips. I try to hitch them back up and cinch the blubber with my belt, but the downward drift is unstoppable. I don’t want to buy new pants, so the fallback position is to go on a diet. For a time, I will become a culinary puritan. I will mortify my flesh until there’s less of it to mess with the way I’m trying to wear my pants.

Posted by at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The movie “It’s a Wonderful Life� has one of the best Christmas Eve meltdown scenes ever filmed.

Jimmy Stewart, who plays smalltown businessman George Bailey, is scary in his portrayal of a man who unravels in front of his family on a night when the air itself is supposed to be suffused with love and joy.

On the verge of losing everything, George cries out for help. An angel takes him on an unblinkingly unsentimental journey through a parallel universe that has never experienced his presence.

As Christmas Day dawns, George discovers how much of a difference his life has made to his friends and family in Bedford Falls.

You expect the happy ending. George is a tower of strength and virtue. In holiday movies, good things come their way to good people. But the most vivid part of “It’s a Wonderful Life� is George’s dark night of the soul, triggered in part by his family’s excited preparations for Christmas. In real life, things don’t turn out so well. We hear about how holiday family gatherings turn violent, sometimes ending in death.

The dark parts of the movie remind me of how the emotional weight of the season is getting to be too much for me. In recent years, I’ve had a couple of near-meltdowns at Christmas. They failed to teach me about the wonderfulness of life, the way they did George.

In real life, we aren’t good — at least not the way George is. We are lamentably flawed beings. In real life, bad things can happen to us regardless of how hard we try to be good. In real life, the high expectations that attach themselves to Christmas can open old wounds and make us painfully aware of our imperfections.

Dark moments aside, another reason I like the movie is that Bedford Falls is a cinematic rendering of Chico’s smalltown spirit. Thornton Wilder’s play “Our Town,� William Saroyan’s novel “The Human Comedy� and Alfred Hitchcock’s move “Shadow of a Doubt� also evoke that spirit.

In “It’s a Wonderful Life,� the fate of Bedford Falls is as important to the story as what happens to George. If it weren’t for George, the rich and greedy Mr. Potter would have destroyed the soul of the town.

We Chicoans sometimes feel that the soul of our town is at stake. We each have our own ideas about who the Mr. Potters are and how to stop their influence, but we feel duty-bound to protect and defend whatever it is we feel makes Chico special.

Posted by at 05:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For me, Christmas isn’t what it used to be.

The longer I live, the more I realize I can’t count on anything to be permanent — not even longtime comforts and joys.

I have learned that just because I liked the holiday season for more than 50 years, it doesn’t mean I’m going to feel the same way forever.

There are a lot of reasons to be disenchanted with Christmas. Most of them don’t bother me. I don’t mind that it’s so commercial. In some ways, I like that part of it. It reminds me of the Ghost of Christmas Present in “A Christmas Carol.� He stood for the abundance and excess of the celebration.

I’m not upset about losing sight of “the reason for the season.� My family isn’t churchgoing. This doesn’t mean we’re atheists or — God forbid — secular humanists. You could say we’re culturally Christian, but we have never observed Christmas as a religious holiday. We think of it as a family birthday. A question on a recent “Jeopardy� episode about the pagan origins of Christmas as a winter solstice celebration reminded me that there have always been many reasons for the season.

The holiday schedule tends to become cluttered with customs and rituals, but we’ve done some streamlining in our household. We’ve stopped sending Christmas cards, scaled down the size of our Christmas tree and are keeping social events simple and to a minimum. Last weekend, my sister came over from Nevada City. We had bread and homemade soup. Today, we were planning to host a visit from my Dad, but he had to cancel because of illness. Tonight, our family of three will have a nice Christmas dinner, but we won’t be eating turkey and all the trimmings.

The one holiday habit I haven’t been able to curb is overeating. This is such a big issue that it deserves a blog entry of its own.

What I think is getting me down is the emotional weight that attaches itself to the season. It seems to grow heavier as the years go by. At this time of the year I find I’m missing the relatives who lit up my life — and my experience of Christmas — when I was a child and young adult.

I’ve known all along that beloved members of my grandparents’ and parents’ generation would die, but there were supposed to be compensations. Children, grandchildren and nephews and nieces would come along to lighten our hearts. This isn’t happening in the way I imagined it would. There haven’t been a lot of kids. In our family, we’re not even replacing ourselves. My four siblings and I produced only seven offspring among us. So far, those offspring have produced only one child. If we keep this up, our family will be extinct in 100 years.

This is good for the Earth. It would place too much of a strain on our planet’s resources if the typical affluent American couple had four or five children. On the other hand, the scarcity of offspring plays havoc with the Christmas spirit. Children are the lifeblood of the season.

I miss our son Todd’s excitement about Christmas. Now that he’s 20, he shows no interest in it. He’s our only child, so our only hope for re-enchantment lies with the next generation. But if Todd follows our example, we won’t be welcoming a grandchild into our lives until we are about 70.

I will have more to say about Christmas and its emotional weight in my next blog.

I feel fortunate that I didn’t find Chico until fairly late in life. I would like my attachment to my adopted hometown to be an enduring pleasure. I don’t want to become disenchanted with it over time, the way I have with Christmas.

Posted by at 08:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I can’t say I visit downtown Chico every day. But I estimate I go there about four or five times a week to get that hit of energy only the city’s heart and soul and can provide in a world of suburban sprawl madness.

Having said that, I have to acknowledge that I don’t patronize a lot of the businesses. I suppose that throwing a bit of financial support to all of them in exchange for downtown’s ability to recharge my psychic batteries would be the right thing to do, but there’s only so much money
to go around.

The establishment on Second Street between Main and Broadway that gets most of my business is the Naked Lounge, one of Chico’s many independently owned coffeehouses. It’s actually one of two. There’s another Naked Lounge in Sacramento.

A few months ago in this blog, I extolled Hotel Diamond for its swank, upscale appeal. Downtown needs a few such establishments. Places like Zucchini & Vine, Christian Michael restaurant and some of the women’s clothing stores amply fill the bill.

But downtown also needs cozy, laid-back places like the Naked Lounge, which function as public living rooms. This is the place to lazily drink your coffee and nibble your pastries. Along with tables and straightback chairs, it has couches and easy chairs. The Naked Lounge is open more hours than just about any business downtown, from early in the morning until midnight every day. During finals week at Chico State it was open 24 hours.

There are some businesses on the north side of Second Street I think I can be forgiven for ignoring. Gi Gi’s Shoe Parlour and Ché Divina Beauty Bar immediately come to mind. But just a little farther down the block is a place that has been open just a few months. I have already paid it a couple of visits. The Old Town Rootbeer Co. sells about 40 kinds of rootbeer and other soft drinks and serves rootbeer floats and freezes at an old-fashioned soda fountain. On my two visits, I bought a customized six-pack of rootbeer to take home.

A coming attraction just a few doors down is The Banshee, which is being modeled after an Irish pub. It shows that although downtown Chico has been around for 146 years, the lineup of businesses is constantly changing. I don’t hang out in bars, but doesn’t downtown already have an Irish pub?

The place on the east side of Main between Second and First streets that I’m always intending to visit is Thai House. I like Thai food and I’ve been to Chico’s other two Thai restaurants several times, but I have a hard time remembering that this third option is available. Maybe putting it down in a blog will help me.

I blogged about the helpfulness of Collier Hardware employees several months ago, so I will end this walk around the block just by saying I appreciate how the store has been able to hold on when most traditional retailers have abandoned downtown Chico.

Join me again soon for another walk around a block.

Posted by at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The sign on Door Number 4 on First Street between Broadway and Main always tickles my funnybone. It says “This door for employees and the illiterate.� It leads to Collier Hardware,
but the public is discouraged from using this entrance. The sign isn’t meant to be vicious. There’s a smiley face next to the message.

It’s hard to keep the four doors straight. I can’t remember where the doors lead unless I’m walking right by them. A willingness to read the signs can definitely help strollers sort things out. The last time I walked that block I made a mental note to remember the order. Door Number 1 leads to the upstairs Blue Room Theatre, Door Number 2 is the official side entrance to Collier and Door Number 3 leads to the upstairs Arroyo Room. If you are looking for a way in, you know you’ve gone too far if you reach Door Number 4.

The doors are gateways to two of Chico’s oldest buildings, one of which illustrates this entry. To the eye of this beholder, they aren’t beautiful. They fall into the category of hulking and substantial. As we reach the end of The Esplanade, their purpose is to announce that downtown — the object of our desire — is almost at hand.

If you’re not interested in entering any of the four doors, you’ll soon reach one of downtown’s bleakest corners. I ran a series based on readers’ comments about Chico’s best and worst buildings in “But this is Chico,� my weekly column in the Enterprise-Record. Readers have been especially critical of this corner, which has a vacant lot, a 7-11 store and the ugly twin buildings, 25 and 35 Main Street. The saving grace is Ringel Park, which has recently been spruced up with new landscaping.

Turn right and you’ll find The Bookstore on the other side of the vacant lot. It’s a good name for a bookstore. I like how it’s not cutesy and clever. Now that the store that once housed Victorianna Antiques is vacant, the Bookstore has become my nominee for the downtown business with the squeakiest wooden floors. Buildings with pressed metal ceilings, brick walls and wooden floors are part of what gives downtown its charm.

The Bookstore gives away bookmarks. They’re in a rack next to the cash register. I’ve collected bookmarks for 30 years, so this bit of generosity is a windfall for me. But I’m not greedy. I limit myself to one bookmark per visit.

The Upper Crust is the next stop on Main. At one time, it was a good place to rub elbows with fellow Chicoans, if you liked that sort of thing. Its popularity, combined with its limited space, guaranteed that customers would be packed tightly together. What a relief that the lunch, dessert and coffee establishment was able to expand by taking over the space directly to the south.

Subway sandwiches, at the corner of Main and Second streets, was once one of my son Todd’s favorite eating places. Back when he was in high school, he would come here for lunch with his friends. A couple of times a month I would take him here on outings. Todd’s eating habits are marked by shifting enthusiasms. By the time he’d started college, he was finished with Subway and had embraced Quizno’s.

Join me tomorrow and we’ll complete this walk around the block.

Posted by at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It’s fun to be a feature writer for a newspaper. I work in the Style section of the Enterprise-Record, covering a beat that is so broad it allows me to write about the smallest and biggest things in the universe.

In November, I did a series of stories about the brain. I wrote about neurons and signaling molecules. Last week I did a profile of Anita Berkow, volunteer curator at the Kiwanis Chico Community Observatory. I wrote about stars and galaxies.

Berkow’s excitement about astronomy was infectious. We are often tricked into thinking that the everyday world is mundane, but it’s only because we let habit and routine rule our lives. All we have to do is look up at the night sky to be reminded that we live in a place so huge, so ancient and so populated with strange and wondrous objects that it boggles the mind. Maybe we deliberately filter out these facts to keep our minds from being boggled.

The observatory is one of Chico’s special institutions. It’s a community-based labor of love. People who are passionate about the cosmos share their enthusiasm with anyone who cares to come out to upper Bidwell Park and — weather permitting — observe and learn about the night sky.

Throughout the winter and early spring, the observatory and Northern California Natural History Museum will present a weekly program featuring the Emmy-winning PBS series “Astronomy: Observations and Theories,� hosted by its writer and producer Kris Koenig, director of the observatory. They will be at 7 p.m. every Thursday from Jan. 4 through March 29 at Community Center, 545 Vallombrosa Ave. This is the winter offering for the “Museum Without Walls� series Tickets are sold at the door. They are $3 for adults. Students who show an ID are admitted for free. Tickets for the season can be purchased for $25 through Jan. 4 at Grace Jr., 331 W. Fifth St., or Expeditions, 228 Main St.

The museum’s Web site, www.ncnhm.org, has detailed information about each program in the series.

This seems like a perfect way to explore the night sky during the time of the year when it is most likely to be obscured by clouds.

Posted by at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Has Beans Creekside coffeehouse, which I mentioned in my last blog, is a new business on Humboldt Avenue. On the same street, a few blocks to the west, is Café Coda, another new eating establishment. While I was having breakfast there last Sunday, I was doing some more thinking about this long wedge of a neighborhood, which links downtown to the freeway and lies between Eighth Street and Little Chico Creek.

Today, Eighth and Ninth are the neighborhood’s key thoroughfares, but back in the early days of Chico, Humboldt was the main road. It started at the Junction, where Main Street and Broadway meet and turn into Park Avenue, and went all the way to Susanville.

One of my favorite conceits is the idea that places have energy. In my Enterprise-Record column “But This is Chico,� I’ve written about places that are vortexes of energy. The Junction is one of them. As the western terminus of what was known as the Humboldt Wagon Road, it was a hub of commerce. It had livery stables, hotels, a brewery, saloons, restaurants, a laundry, a grocery store, drug stores, blacksmiths and an iron foundry. In the illustration for this entry, the building on the right, which dates from 1874, started out as a brewery.

Humboldt Wagon Road was built in 1864 by John Bidwell and three partners to establish a route to transport supplies to the silver mines in Nevada and Idaho from San Francisco Bay by way of the Sacramento River, Chico and the southern edge of the Cascades.

If, in fact, places do have energy, Humboldt Wagon Road must have been a lightning rod, and not just because it was a vital transportation route. It embodied Bidwell’s energy. If he had a mind to do something, he did it. It didn’t matter that he would have to cut across 100 miles of mountainous terrain to reach Susanville. He decided it had to be done, so he found a way to do it.

He wanted to be a farmer, so he bought Rancho Arroyo Chico. He wanted a town to be next to it, so he founded Chico. He wanted the new branch of the state Normal School to be in Chico, so he campaigned to get it here and donated land not far from his house to make sure there was a site for it. He wanted to be in politics, so he became a state senator and a U.S. Congressman and ran for governor several times. Once, he even ran for president.

If, in fact, people can imbue places with energy, there was nobody in Northern California in the late 19th century who could have done a better job of it than John Bidwell.

Posted by at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In a recent blog about the new Has Beans Creekside coffeehouse and bakery I mused about the future of the neighborhood that surrounds it. I saw many signs that it is being revitalized.

A proposal by Chico developers Randall and Gregg Stone to tear down the A&A Pear Grove Mobile Home Park on Eighth Street and replace it with an apartment building for people with low incomes comes at just the right time.

Let me be blunt. The mobile home park is one of Chico’s biggest eyesores. It took my breath away the first time I saw it. This is Chico, I said to myself. What’s a place like that doing here? I knew that something would have to be done about it sooner or later. I saw it as a barrier to improving the neighborhood.

If the Stones are successful in getting their project approved, I suspect the living conditions of the apartment building will be a substantial improvement over what the mobile homes on the site offer. At the same time, the new units will be affordable for people who are caught in the trap of either having to pay a huge percentage of their income for decent housing or having to live in squalor.

The project is a commendable effort to overcome one of the biggest pitfalls of revitalization. Often, when neighborhoods improve, poor people get displaced because the replacement housing is too expensive for them. What’s the point of revitalization if all you’re doing is creating a city that only affluent people can afford? I hope Chico isn't becoming that kind of place.

As a person who has struggled with high rental costs and has sometimes been forced to live in sordid surroundings, I appreciate proposals that are based on the principle that everyone, regardless of their income, has a right to live in decent housing.

Posted by at 01:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is an update of a blog I posted about a month ago, when I wrote about three houses on my street that were for sale.

They’re still available, at prices ranging from the mid $200,000s to the high $700,000s. As you can see from the photo, which I took a few years ago during the height of the fall season, it’s a desirable street to live on. Even my block, at the poor end of the neighborhood, has a certain charm. This is one of Chico’s old suburbs. It dates from the late 1950s to early 1960s. In some ways, it’s as pleasant as the city’s vintage pre-World War II neighborhoods. The trees on my street are as tall and shady as they are in the avenues or the Barber neighborhood.

It’s clear from how the houses for sale on my street have fared that the days of the bidding wars are over. Real estate isn’t such a hot commodity anymore. For now, residential property has stopped being perceived as the road to instant wealth and has reverted to its old function of providing shelter and serving as one of the most potent symbols of domestic life.

That’s why the houses on my street are bound to sell sooner or later. Now that the holidays are here and winter is on its way, the chances that they will sell anytime soon are shrinking. But come spring, they’ll be ready for a wave of would-be homebuyers who won’t be looking at houses primarily as an investment. Investors will wait until the market has bottomed out to get back in.

Come spring, even more “for sale� signs may have sprouted. There may be six available houses on my street instead of three. We could be looking at the best buyers’ market since the turn of the 21st century. Some real bargains could be out there by then.

Posted by at 04:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Long live unisex restrooms, which despite their name aren’t places where the sexes are likely to mingle. They are nothing more than private public restrooms. Go in, lock the door behind you, and you’ll have the place to yourself. They’re in many coffeehouses and some restaurants. A recent story in the Enterprise-Record about a unisex restroom at Chico State University indicates their popularity is spreading to public buildings.

The restrooms at the redesigned City Plaza consist of four private cubicles. Two each are reserved for men and women. Earlier this week, I used a restroom at Enloe Medical Center. It was designated as a men’s room, but it was a private and the single toilet and sink quickly conveyed to me that it was intended for one person at a time.

Private public restrooms tend to be relatively spacious, clean and, in some cases, nicely decorated. They seem to inspire us to remember our manners. There is more incentive not to leave a mess. The space feels more personal, less anonymous. I think this makes it less likely to be vandalized.

For me, privacy itself is a wonderful amenity. One of the conventions of our culture is that people aren’t supposed to feel reticent about performing bodily functions in close proximity to people of their own sex. This has always bothered me.

Modern restrooms have gradually come to offer more privacy. Individual urinals separated by partitions have become standard in men’s rooms. The communal urinals of my childhood are largely a thing of the past. Whenever I had to use one, I’d wait for a stall to come open. There was usually a wait. Many males share my sense of modesty. The emergence of the private public restroom comes as quite a relief to us.

Obviously, such facilities won’t work in crowded public places, such as malls, stadiums, theaters and workplaces that have hundreds of employees. You’d need to have dozens of cubicles in one spot. Some vintage public restrooms have a certain grandeur that cries out not to be altered. The men’s room on the second floor of Kendall Hall at Chico State is an example. It’s as big as some people’s living rooms. It has high ceilings. Its four windows let in plenty of light. Its substantial floor pre-dates the linoleum tiles that are found in the rest of Kendall Hall. It even has a small anteroom. That restroom is a keeper.

Posted by at 04:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m about to wind up a six-year stint as a volunteer at Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park. For the first three years I was a tour guide. For the last three years, I was on the Bidwell Mansion Association board. I was the editor of the group’s quarterly newsletter.

I spent my first two years in Chico volunteering for several organizations. At Chico Junior High School, I worked in the attendance office and the library when my son was a student there. At Chico Museum, I welcomed visitors, answered the phones and handled museum bookstore purchases. At the Northern California Regional Land Trust office, I typed up minutes and agendas of the organization’s board meetings. For the Share Program, I helped sort food into boxes.

I soon reached the point where I wanted to put all of my eggs in one basket. I was getting ready to start writing my Enterprise-Record column, “But this is Chico,� so I wanted to become involved in an effort that was consummately Chico-ish. Volunteering at the Bidwell Mansion proved to be the right choice.

Now, I’m ready to shift my focus again. After eight years of community service, the effort has begun to feel too much like the rest of my life: meaningful and purposeful, but lacking in unbridled pleasure. So I’ve joined the fledgling Chico Community Chorus. Music has always had the power to instantly fill my heart with joy. It’s my “natural high,� one of the quickest and surest ways for me to get my endorphin and serotonin fix. It has been 30 years since I last took part in group singing. I could have chosen to pursue a solitary pleasure, but I like the synergy that this type of collaborative effort generates. I’m a loner and an introvert by nature, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve come to appreciate the value of affiliation, whether it’s with my family, civic organizations or something as abstract as a community. Take individuals who have little in common and give them a goal to work on together, and, as unlikely as it seems at first, bonds will be forged.

I’m convinced that people’s ability to achieve unity through the adversity that characterizes diversity is one of the keys to world peace.

But Ken Lacy, the chorus director, has been having a hard time getting people to come to rehearsals. He worries that choral singing is a dying custom. Indeed, most of the people who show up are middle-aged and older. Music is still a meaningful activity, but it’s losing its ability to meld individuals into a cohesive group.

Robert D. Putnam, in his book “Bowling Alone,� talks about how the fabric of our social connections is deteriorating. I’m bucking this trend. Despite being the archetypical “solitary man,� I find I’m becoming more appreciative of the power of collective energy as time goes on.

Posted by at 03:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The topic of this blog is turning out to be as much about what it’s like to blog as it is about Chico. It’s a relevant topic. The main reason I bother to blog is that I have more to say about Chico than the Enterprise-Record can accommodate in its print edition. Time will tell if I really have twice as much to say as the space in my column “But this is Chico� allows. That’s my goal right now: Three blogs a week that add up to the equivalent of the 30 inches of text in my column.

It’s still pretty quiet for me out here in the blogosphere. It appears that most of my audience reads my column, not this blog. I think the habit of reading news and commentary is far from becoming universal among people who are baby boomers or older. And I don’t think I have too many readers who are younger than that. Caring about and identifying with a community comes with age. I felt the same lack of interest in my community when I was in my 20s and 30s.

My decision to start the blog was based on my faith that online readers would eventually age into a period in their lives when they would be interested in a topic as broad as what it means to be part of a place like Chico.

But I do have a sense that even older people are becoming confident about going online. My mother has been using e-mail for the last five years. As a result, she is more in touch with her children. Like so many of us, she wasn’t a faithful letter-writer. Recently, she told me she reads the online editions of three newspapers, in addition to the print versions of the two newspapers she subscribes to. So I wouldn’t be surprised if more of my readers in their 60s and 70s start checking out this blog.

You’ll notice that I started adding illustrations about three weeks ago. Just as in newspapers, photos and graphics — in the news biz we call it “art� — blog illustrations make stories more readable by breaking up the monotony of the text. In the news biz, we say there is “too much gray� in a story that is lacking in visual elements.

Doing a column and the three weekly blogs means I’m having to write about four different topics a week. Coming up with topics isn’t the hard part. Chico is always on my mind. The problem is deciding how many of my ideas would interest readers.

I’ve come across far too many blogs that need some rigorous editing. The bloggers seem to believe that their every thought is worthy of being published. The limitless amount of space in the blogosphere makes such expression possible. At the same time, it makes it even more worthless than rambling, unfocused newspaper copy. The online marketplace of ideas is too competitive for self-indulgent bloggers to survive, even when they resort to dredging up what they think are the juiciest details of their private lieves.

As always, the ability to connect with readers is what counts in writing.

Posted by at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)