Vortexes of energy
During the time City Plaza was being remodeled, I went to other cities to have a look at their central squares. I took photos so that after I returned to Chico to write about them in my E-R column “But this is Chico” I could remember what they look like.
Now that I’m a blogger, I’m free to illustrate my entries, so I’ve decided to post photos from four of the places I visited. As a new blogger, I’m curious to see how an entry with four photos looks.
First up is Union Square in San Francisco. Like City Plaza, this bit of open space in the heart of the city’s shopping district has had a massive facelift that replaced much of the greenery with hard surfaces.
Union Square was never as sylvan as elm-shaded City Plaza and it now looks even more barren. This change hasn’t diminished its popularity, but I think planners would have had to do something truly horrendous to discourage people from coming there.
San Francisco seldom has heat waves, so it doesn’t matter if Union Square doesn’t have a lot of trees.
Shade does matter in Sonoma, where temperatures can get up into the 90s during the summer.
This photo shows that Sonoma Plaza is well-protected from the sun. At eight acres, It’s one of the bigger city squares in the state. It seems more like a park than a plaza.
Sonoma’s City Hall stands at the center of the plaza, but there is plenty of room left over for playgrounds and ponds, as the photo shows.
The plaza was laid out in 1836. In 1846 Sonoma was the site of the short-lived Bear Flag Revolt. John Bidwell took part in it, penning the sentence that declared its purpose: “The undersigned hereby agree to organize for the purpose of gaining and maintaining the independence of California.”
Arcata’s plaza has fewer trees than City Plaza, but because it’s on the north coast, it almost never gets hot. It’s closer to City Plaza’s size, so the surrounding buildings underscore the sense that this is an oasis nestled in the heart of town.
I took photos of it on a weekday during the summer. It was filled with people of all ages. A bronze statue of President William McKinley, dedicated in 1906 in memory of his assassination, stands in the center of the plaza. At one time, the plaza was the only place in Arcata where bars and liquor stores could be located. This accounts for the number of those businesses that still face the plaza.
Sproul Plaza, which links the UC Berkeley campus with Telegraph Avenue, is the last of this entry’s illustrations. It’s one of the East Bay’s most intense vortexes of energy. Completed in the late 1950s, it was the site of the Free Speech Movement, led by Mario Savio, in 1964.
It was the opening salvo of campus revolts that took place across the country in the Sixties. It’s custom-made for demonstrations and other kinds of street theater.
For 40 years it’s been lined with rows of with tables promoting every imaginable kind of political cause, spiritual philosophy, intellectual discipline and lifestyle choice.